The Seductive Pretty Boy of the Matriarchal World

Chapter 200: Chapter 200: The Final Winner

Chapter 200: The Final Winner

Serena could not quite believe what she was seeing.

For the first time in longer than she could remember, uncertainty reached her face before pride could stop it. Her eyes trembled faintly as Elias held onto her and cried.

Serena Blackwood had never been a woman who doubted herself. She had built her life on force, judgment, and the kind of confidence that made other people move before she even opened her mouth. Nothing was supposed to shake her.

Yet a moment ago, she had been shaken.

Between her and Giselle, whom would Elias choose?

For that single, humiliating breath, Serena had not known the answer.

That was why Giselle had found so many openings. Serena’s mind had slipped out of the fight. Her focus had cracked. Her pride had taken one hit too many before Giselle’s fist ever reached her.

She had lost.

In that fight, she had truly lost.

So what?

Serena abruptly pulled Elias deeper into her arms and held him with a force that left no room for escape. The corner of her mouth lifted. It was not a gentle smile, though she tried to make it one. It was satisfaction, relief, and possession bleeding through the same thin seam.

There was no sweetness in the world like taking back what she thought she had lost.

In this, she had won.

She stroked Elias’s back as if soothing a frightened boy, her palm slow and careful over the curve of his spine. Over his shoulder, she looked at Giselle.

The look in Serena’s eyes was unmistakable.

It was a victor looking down at someone left behind.

[Serena Blackwood’s favorability has increased. Current value: 79%.]

After all those days apart, Serena’s favorability had finally jumped by a large margin. Even then, it stopped firmly below the line marked love.

Elias gave a small laugh in his head.

"Cute."

System Theta sounded confused. "Serena Blackwood still has not fallen in love with you?"

"Women like her are cheap in the ugliest way," Elias said coldly. "She thinks she got me back. That is why she only hit seventy-nine. If I died in front of her right now, it would break eighty without a pause."

System Theta jolted. "Host, are you about to die?"

Elias’s inner voice softened into a smile. "Little fool. I am going to die eventually. Not now."

The system went quiet for a second.

"Mm..."

Giselle stood a short distance away with her head lowered.

She looked as wrecked as Serena. The corner of her mouth was split, and a thin thread of blood stained her skin. Several buttons had been torn from her shirt, exposing the clean white layer beneath. Her silver hair, usually immaculate, hung in uneven strands around her face.

She had won the physical fight.

Somehow, she looked like the one who had lost everything.

Serena exhaled, then lowered her lips near Elias’s ear. Her voice became soft in the way she used for public tenderness, for private control, for rooms where she wanted him to forget that orders could be disguised as comfort.

"Enough. Don’t cry anymore. I’m fine, see?"

His sobs began to weaken almost at once.

Serena’s confidence thickened.

She had always known how to touch him. How to hold him. How to make his body remember her before his mouth could argue. One arm stayed around his waist, and her fingers pressed into the familiar softness she had not held in days.

Then she said, still gentle, "Eli, we’re going home."

The wording sounded like an invitation.

It was not.

She did not ask whether he wanted to leave. She gave him a sentence with no clean place to refuse it, the kind that slid into the mind as if the answer had already been decided.

Elias gave a small sniffle and said nothing.

That suited Serena fine.

She rose slowly from the ground, bringing him up with her, one arm locked around him as though she could carry him away before anyone’s eyes caught up.

Then Giselle lifted her head.

"Elias."

Serena’s gaze snapped toward her. Her eyes went icy, and a sneer touched her mouth.

Still not giving up?

Even now, Giselle thought she could call him back?

But Elias’s steps stopped.

He had been moving with Serena a second ago, half-carried by her pull. Now he stood fixed in place, refusing to take another step.

Serena’s pupils tightened.

For a rare instant, shock cut cleanly through her face.

She looked down at Elias, searching his expression as if she could force an explanation out of him by sheer pressure. He did not give her one. He only turned his face away, slow and guilty, leaving her with the side of his wet lashes and the stubborn silence of someone she could not command.

Across from them, Giselle’s expression shifted.

A faint smile appeared on her pale face. Under the dark campus lights, her sea-blue eyes looked almost luminous.

She looked steady. Certain.

As if she had known this would happen.

Behind her, Liora and Yvonne saw the truth more clearly.

Giselle’s hands had been clenched so tightly that the tendons stood out beneath her skin. Only now did her fists loosen.

Giselle walked toward them.

Serena’s arm tightened around Elias, but Giselle did not fight her in the messy way the two of them had fought moments ago. She reached in with a movement that was tender toward Elias and merciless toward Serena. Her hands found the exact places to guide him away, one at his arm, one at his back. She moved him out of Serena’s embrace before Serena could react.

"Let’s go," Giselle said.

Serena did not take him back. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

For once, she seemed unable to.

She stood there, hollowed out by the sight of Elias leaving with someone else. A woman who could turn boardrooms silent and make executives lower their heads now looked almost lost.

Liora finally walked over. She lifted one hand and waved it lightly in front of Serena’s face.

"Serena. Back to earth."

Serena blinked.

When she turned to look at Liora, she still said nothing. She did not need to. Liora saw the thing inside her eyes, sharp and fixed, and it took her back to years ago, to when the Blackwood company had almost collapsed and teenage Serena had looked at the ruins with that same expression.

A vow, quiet enough that no one else could hear it.

Serena was going to take her boy back.

Yvonne had already left.

No one had noticed when.

Elias was still crying.

This was why some women said a man’s heart was harder to read than the ocean floor. Giselle was the one who had been hit, bloodied, and humiliated in public. Elias was the one sobbing like he had been broken open.

Half his body leaned into Giselle as she guided him away. He cried all the way down the campus path, one trembling breath after another, his tears wetting his face and soaking into her already ruined shirt.

Giselle told him again and again that she was fine.

He only shook his head.

In the past, Giselle would have hated the dampness, the messy contact, the way his grief clung to her clothing and skin. She had always liked cleanliness. Distance. Control.

Now she did not seem to notice.

Outside the campus gates, Giselle stopped.

For the first time since taking him from Serena, she looked around and realized she had no destination. The fight had been simple. Leaving had been simple. Deciding where to take him afterward was harder.

Elias’s crying had finally softened into broken little breaths. His voice came out unclear, clogged with tears.

"Back... to the apartment..."

Giselle understood.

The apartment Serena had arranged for him.

Her brows drew together, and refusal rose at once.

Elias lowered his voice before she could speak. "She hasn’t been there. Only you..."

The words settled into Giselle’s chest.

Only you.

He said it as though that place belonged to the two of them alone. A small space outside Serena’s reach. Somewhere untouched by the woman Giselle had just fought. Somewhere that did not belong to the Blackwood residence, to Serena’s money, or to the theater of the anniversary event.

A place like that had another name.

Home.

Giselle pressed her lips together. When she spoke, her voice came out softer than before.

"Okay. We’ll go home."

The words were almost identical to Serena’s.

The difference was simple.

Serena had said them and failed to take him away.

Giselle said them while Elias leaned against her, one arm around her, letting her lead him through the night.

They returned to the apartment step by step, not quickly, because Elias kept stumbling against her as he cried. Giselle did not rush him. She supported his weight without complaint, even when his fingers twisted into her clothes and refused to let go.

When the door opened, the apartment inside was dark.

Giselle reached for the light switch.

Before she could touch it, Elias turned and threw himself into her arms.

He buried his face against her, both arms winding tightly around her waist as if he wanted to disappear into her body and never come back out. His grip was almost desperate.

Giselle stiffened at first.

His sudden closeness still caught her off guard. Even after everything, even after sharing a bed, even after letting him cry on her for half the walk back, this kind of need pressed against instincts she did not know how to name.

Then, slowly, she relaxed.

Her hand found his back and began to stroke it with a practiced gentleness she had learned only recently, because of him.

"It’s over," she murmured. "Nothing will happen now."

Elias nodded faintly.

Then he pressed closer.

In the dark, no one could see the blush spreading over Giselle’s face.

His breath was hot through the fabric, trapped against her skin, intimate enough to make her fingers pause for a second before she forced them to keep moving.

She did not hate it.

The realization came quietly, and it was worse because of that.

She wanted him to depend on her more.