Chapter 350: What Did You Tell Them?

April shifted slightly on the velvet bench, adjusting her posture so her legs wouldn’t go numb under the weight of Oliver’s head.

She reached into her pocket with one hand, pulling out her phone to pass the time playing winecraft while her other hand stroked his soft, dark hair. It was too bad her biggest rival was asleep on her thigh.

The library doors opened with a barely audible click, and Samuel slipped inside as silently as a ghost. He carried a small silver plate lined with delicate almond shortbread biscuits, setting it soundlessly on the side table next to Oliver’s glasses.

"Miss April," Samuel whispered smoothly, his eyes taking in the sight of the doctor sound asleep in her lap. A flickering pulse worked in his jaw, but his expression remained calm. "The others are currently scouring the entire estate looking for you. Nat Collins is threatening to tear the courtyard apart, and Master Reed is demanding to know why I have not logged your location."

April let out a quiet, stifled giggle, her dark eyes sparkling with mischievous delight. "And what did you tell them?"

"I told them absolutely nothing," Samuel replied cleanly, a shadowy, wicked glint touching his eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses. "I informed them that my lady’s movements are entirely confidential."

"I love it when they’re on a wild goose chase," April whispered, taking a small bite of a biscuit as Samuel bowed his head in quiet satisfaction. "What is Emily up to?"

"She is looking after Lily. She still hasn’t woken up, Miss April. Do we need to get a vet to examine her?"

April’s brows drew together. Yes, it was even more concerning now but a normal vet wouldn’t be able to do anything about a divine beast sleeping like that. Once again, it gave her a bad feeling that there was something she was missing, likely overlooking, but she could not quite put her finger into it.

"Let’s leave things as they are for now. Next week, if Lily still doesn’t wake up, then I’ll take matters into my own hand," she said and Samuel nodded.

An hour bled smoothly into two. April didn’t have the heart to wake Oliver when the one-hour mark passed. She simply ate her snacks, scrolled through her phone, and watched the rhythmic rise and fall of Oliver’s chest.

When eleven in the morning finally arrived, Samuel stepped closer, his voice dropping into a low, apologetic register. "Miss April, we must depart for the arena within fifteen minutes if we are to arrive before the final evaluations begin. What shall we do regarding Dr. Baxter?"

April looked down at the sleeping surgeon. His face, usually so rigid, cold, and calculated, looked strangely relaxed, almost vulnerable in the soft morning light filtering through the high windows.

He had to have been completely exhausted. Pushing himself past human limits, working four-hour emergency surgeries after sleepless nights, drowning in medical journals, his own research on matter and spatial disperities and so on—this was probably how he had been living his entire life up until now.

It was no wonder his trust value had shot up to a full hundred percent the moment she offered him her lap to use as a pillow and promised to guard his sleep. No one had ever told him to stop. No one had ever told him he could rest. All they wanted was to benefit from the brilliant surgeon, take more and more from him until there was nothing more to take.

Take, take, take, and never give anything equivalent to what was taken. Money? He didn’t need it. Power? What good would that do? None of them knew what he really wanted. None of them looked beneath his brilliance. They never looked at the tolling man, but the successful facade.

Yes, he loved to experiment, he loved science, he loved to explore the unknown, but even all of that was not enough and he now knew it. He now understood that among the unknown he could explore was the most basic—the human heart. And not just any human heart, but the heart of the woman who had offered him her lap as a pillow so he could just rest.

So, he was going to hold on tight.

For a brief second, April was tempted to pull up her Eye of Destiny to peek into Oliver’s future, to see if her interference had altered the trajectory of his life—if he would still be in that underground bunker with the sole goal of finding the root cause of the zombies.

But she stopped herself.

She didn’t want to create a bad habit of invading their lives when she hadn’t been asked to.

"Let’s leave him," April murmured softly, looking back up at Samuel. "He doesn’t really need to be at the closing event anyway."

Samuel nodded once, stepping back to give her space.

April carefully slid her hands under Oliver’s shoulders, lifting him just enough to slip her legs out from under his head, replacing her lap with a soft velvet cushion. He stirred slightly, a subtle furrow appearing between his brows at the loss of her warmth.

Leaning down until her lips brushed the shell of his ear, April whispered, "Rest, Oliver... I’ll show you far more of my spatial dimension later."

A faint, contented sigh escaped Oliver’s lips at her voice, his tense shoulders relaxing back into the cushion as he sank right back into a deep, dreamless slumber.

April stood up, smoothing down her emerald silk dress, her heels clicking sharply against the polished marble floor as she stepped out of the library’s hidden corridor into the main wing.

She had barely made it three steps before the air around her suddenly shifted.

Before Samuel could even slide out from behind her, a towering, impeccably dressed figure stepped smoothly out from behind an arched pillar. A firm hand wrapped around April’s wrist.

"Looking for me, April?" Alexander’s low, smooth voice rumbled against the shell of her ear.

"Alexander—" April gasped, her eyes widening in genuine surprise.

He didn’t give her a single second to react. With fluid, practiced grace, Alexander pulled her flush against his chest, scooped her up, and swept her through a discreet set of heavy double doors leading directly to the private courtyard driveway.

"Your knight is here to steal you away,"

"You—" she definitely did not see this one coming.