Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs novel Chapter 365

Chapter 365: Emma World of Denied Desires

The air around Emma felt thick, charged, like atmosphere before a storm. Peter’s new presence was a physical force, pressing against her skin, making her pulse leap in a frantic, traitorous rhythm.

She’d felt this pull before—whispers of it, flickers she’d beaten down with logic and shame. But now? Standing here, inches from the face that had haunted her dreams for years, the whispers had become a roaring tide.

It all crashed back. The memory: fourteen years old, Jack Morrison’s sneering face, the circle of jeering kids. Stepping forward to protect her, Peter had taken the beating instead—curling into himself on the asphalt, lip split, already swelling.

The image seared into her mind: his blood mixing with rainwater on the dirty ground.

She remembered the coppery tang of blood when his lip split, the way he’d curled inward, taking kicks to the ribs without a sound. Protecting her.

That wasn’t just a moment—it was the moment her world tilted.

Gratitude curdled into something visceral and feverish as she watched him stagger up, wiping blood from his chin with the back of his hand, eyes locked on hers. "Stay behind me, Em." He’d barely whispered it, but it branded her.

He’d done it without a word, just stepped in front of her. That was the first crack. Gratitude, fierce and fierce, warred with a confusing, warm ache low in her belly. He protected me.

That was the first crack.

She was seeing the ghost of the fractured boy she’d loved since she was thirteen and he eleven. Even then, she’d understood the secret weight of a crush—the thrilling ache of wanting someone forbidden.

At eleven, Peter was still a boy who barely understood love, a blank slate trying to navigate a world that already despised him. But Emma, at thirteen, had already tasted the bitter ache of a secret crush—thirteen and already tasting the edges of it — knew what it meant to hide a crush, to feel something she could never confess.

She knew the thrill of hidden longing, the sharp pang of wanting someone she could never, should never, confess to. And she’d watched. Watched as the world bent Peter down, piece by brutal piece.

Peter remained a blank slate, emotionally walled off long before Jack’s fists began breaking him.

Jack made sure of it. Jack, who blamed Peter’s dead mother for everything rotten in his parents’ marriage, who decided the boy should pay for sins he never committed. The schoolyards became his stage: fists, jeers, and the cruel chorus of children who called Peter the son of a whore who died giving birth to him.

Jack Morrison made sure Peter’s walls became his tomb. "Son of a whore who died giving birth to you!" The jeers echoed in Emma’s ears now, mixing with the sick thud of kicks to ribs.

Some teachers looked away.

When hauled into the principal’s office, Peter lied with terrifying calm: "I just fell." he’ll deny it over and over again... all with a smile too steady for a child.

"I just fell," he’d say the next day they called him again in office until teachers who cared and the Principals gave up.

He lied, because he had to.

Jack’s threat was poison in Peter’s veins: "My mom runs Mercy Hospital. Talk, and Linda loses her job. Your charity case family starves."

Peter had internalized his role: "I am the burden. I endure so Emma and Sarah eat."

His silence wasn’t weakness—it was martyrdom. The unending penance of a child who never asked to be born.

The School became a battlefield than a school to Peter. Jack’s taunts, his shoves, Peter enduring it all with a quiet, stoic resolve that shattered her. "Don’t interfere, Em," he’d murmur, his voice low but firm when she or Sarah bristled. "If Mom loses her job at the hospital... we lose everything. If you ever tell her, she’ll lose and I will deny it." Foolish as she was, she’d looked away. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

He’d suffer to protect their fragile stability. Each time she witnessed it, that ache deepened, twisting into something darker, hotter. Anger at Jack, yes, but also... a desperate, secret longing to be the reason he fought, the one he’d protect so fiercely. She’d shove it down, bury it deep, labeling it ’sibling loyalty’. It was a lie.

Then Trent. Weeks ago, the nightmare in the office. The hands, the breath, the terror. Peter appearing like an avenging angel, brutal and efficient. Saving her again. The sight of him, fierce and lethal, had shattered something inside her. The restraints snapped. The guilt, the shame, the careful walls she’d built around her feelings—they crumbled into dust. The hidden desire wasn’t just a flicker anymore; it was a wildfire.

Peter didn’t just fight Trent—he erased him. The savage crack of bone, the feral roar—it shattered Emma’s last restraint.

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