Chapter 21

Sophia had never seen Aaron so out of control, and she understood that Duke Oliver was really important to Aaron.
"Bastard! Bastard!" Aaron's voice was a little hoarse, and the fake Duke's head was on the verge of being smashed, and his wailing voice was gradually weakening.
Sophia couldn't watch anymore and came up to stop him, holding his hands tightly in her arms: "Aaron, calm down!"
"Even if he killed Duke Oliver and took his place, he doesn't necessarily have the guts to go against the royal family, this is not right, there must be something else that we don't know." Sophia said quickly, afraid that Aaron missed and killed the fake duke, then lost the clue.
With Aaron's safety at stake, Sophia would never be careless.
"You're right." Aaron dropped to the ground and took a big breath, "I'm the one who got too excited."
Sophia held and soothed him for a while, then squatted down in front of the fake duke herself, holding back her nausea and lifting his head to shake him awake.
"When was Duke Oliver murdered by you?"
The fake Duke did not dare to resist any more, and fell limp to the ground, answering vaguely, "A month ago."
"You have successfully replaced Duke Oliver, why did you risk coming to kill the king?" Sophia asked again.
"Because ......" the fake Duke coughed, spitting out a mouthful of blood, and his tone smoothed out, "Because I was told that my actions had caught the attention of the King, who had planted his own eyes in the Dukedom and was ready to catch I promised to come to the reception also want to cure me, I will hardly escape the fate of death."
Sophia and Aaron looked at each other with a serious expression, this is really not a simple matter.
"Who is the one who told you this?"
"It's ......" the fake duke struggled to brace himself, his mouth hanging open, "it's someone from the palace, it's, uh ......"
Sophia was yanked backwards by a strong force and fell into Aaron's arms as a feathered arrow grazed her hair through the barred window and penetrated the false duke's throat.
The false duke did not have time to finish his last sentence, his eyes widened in disbelief and fell down, before falling down, he still looked dead at a position, Sophia keenly looked over, that position is only a fallen body.
"It's okay." The red in Aaron's eyes faded a little and he looked at her worriedly.
Sophia shook her head.
Without having to be told, the moment the feathered arrow came in, Nick sent someone up to check it out, and a few minutes later, the person who did came back and shook his head at them.
The man had run away.
Aaron pulled Sophia up and ordered, "Keep the guests under guard, don't let any of them go, and send someone to find the two bastard boys from Duke Oliver's house."
He turned his head to look at Duke Oliver's tattered corpse, his eyes darkened: "Have someone make a coffin, collect Duke Oliver's bones and bury them when they return."
Looking for a clean room, Aaron dragged Sophia to take a shower and treat the wounds on her body.
The things that need to be investigated are arranged down, he is now free.
The long period of high tension made them both mentally exhausted, they lay side by side on the bed, no one spoke.
Sophia sighed first, turned around and pulled Aaron over, pressed his head into her chest, and said softly, "I know you're upset, if you want to talk about it, you can always talk to me, I'm the closest person to you."
Aaron didn't say anything.
Sophia hugged him tighter again: "Aaron, I understand how you feel."
"I will not advise you that the sinner has been punished, do not grieve such words, I know it is futile, you do not have to think about anything, do nothing, I will help you take care of everything."
Aaron still didn't say anything, just his head squeezed on her chest.
Sophia sighed again and patted his back soothingly, "If you don't want to talk then don't talk, just rest for a while."
Aaron moved his head away from her chest with difficulty, took a deep breath, and said with a bitter smile, "It's not that I don't want to talk, it's that your chest is too big, I almost got suffocated."
Then it became the first king in the history of the wolf tribe who was suffocated by a woman's breast.
Sophia's face instantly darkened, and she turned back without saying a word, pretending to sleep.
A trace of tenderness crossed Aaron's eyes and circled her from behind, letting her lean against his gradually warming chest, whispering, "I understand your heart, don't worry, I'm not as fragile as you think, those who want to harm me I will catch with my own hands, I will kill them with my own hands in front of Uncle Oliver's tombstone."
......
Unlike Sophia and Aaron's warmth, the Duke's banquet hall was already in chaos, all the guests had learned the news of Duke Oliver's death, and were also told that the accomplices were in the Duke's house waiting for an opportunity to assassinate the King, and all of them had to cooperate with the investigation.
No one dared to refuse, and no one wanted to take the blame for the assassination of the royal family, the investigation progressed very quickly.
But until the investigation was finished everyone, did not find any suspicious people mixed in, only found the people who were arranged in by the fake duke, used all kinds of criminal law, but could not learn the identity of the killer behind the scenes from these people.
"They should really not know." Sophia, who had watched an interrogation, looked a little worse, and she took a big sip of warm tea to get rid of the chill in her heart.
"That man is well hidden and there is no one suspicious among the guests." Nick chimed in from the side.
Aaron sat in front of the Duke's most used desk, one by one, caressing the familiar things, and finally landed on an old photo on the desk, which showed two 12 or 13-year-old boys, with the Duke and his brother's names written in one corner of the photo.
Oliver& Owen
"Any results on what I asked you to look into?" Aaron asked Nick.
Nick was silent for a moment and pulled out a stack of papers from his pocket.
"Owen's mother was the old Duke's first love, and gave birth to Owen without the old Duke's knowledge, so he is actually Duke Oliver's half-brother, he was picked up at a very young age, the old Duke and his wife and Duke Oliver have always treated him well, and never treated his mother poorly, until the old Duke and his wife died. "
"Oliver Duke in order to protect Owen, pleaded with the old king to send Owen and Owen's mother away, the old king sent someone to send them to a remote community, leaving two people there to protect, but the people protecting them have been remembered back to the capital, so inevitably there is an oversight."
Speaking of oversight, Nick paused for a moment and sighed, Sophia listened on the sidelines and understood that the problem probably lies in this oversight.
"I sent people to visit the only remaining members of that group, according to their story, someone in the group coveted Owen's mother's beauty, so they tied him up when the guards weren't looking and raped his mother in front of him, or several people together." Nick was a little unforgiving, "His mother was afraid that it would cause trouble for Duke Oliver and wouldn't let him talk to the guards, and the guards didn't even know about it."
"Those people see them timid, they often go to bully them, every time they get full of injuries, after they began not satisfied with only touching Owen's mother, focus on the young Owen, his mother is in the protection of his time, by those people killed, he also did not escape the poison."
"The guards knew when it was too late, and left Owen alone and ran away for fear of being chastised. Owen was afraid of being targeted by those people again, so he ran away from that pack, suffered a lot, and was trampled underfoot by the lowest of the low, and it was probably at that time that he developed a hatred for Duke Oliver and the royal family, and then Duke Oliver picked him up, and he looked for opportunity to kill those who had humiliated him, and burned that community in a fire."
Sophia sighed, "That's pretty sad."
Aaron stared at the photo for a moment and put the frame on the table, "Arrange for the guests to leave."
After Nick went out, Aaron also stood up, and just wanted to take Sophia out of the study, when he saw that there seemed to be something stuffed in the crevice of a book on one side.
Aaron's heart beat faster, took out the two envelopes stuffed in the crevice, and quickly skimmed through the contents, almost crushing the corner of the table.
Sophia watched his expression turn grim little by little, rushed over to take a look, and after two minutes of silence, exclaimed, "Duke Oliver's youngest son is really stupid."
The guests were all sent away within half a day, and the ducal palace was surrounded by the personal soldiers Aaron had deployed, so that not a fly could enter.
Aaron planned to stay at the ducal palace for two more days to wait for the burial of Duke Oliver, so he sent Nick back to the palace to bring all the urgent political matters.
Sophia was so sleepy that she fell asleep on the table. Aaron put down his pen and gently picked her up and put her on the bed.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her sleeping face, couldn't help but pinch her face, quickly withdrew his hand when she muttered and threw it away to fight, carefully covered her with the blanket and quietly left the room.
Sophia didn't sleep long before she was awakened by a nightmare. She sat up violently, wiped a handful of cold sweat from her head, and panicked a little when she didn't see Aaron in the room.
The Duke's house was quiet at night, only the sound of patrols changing guard. Sophia stood in the long corridor and felt an eerie chill containing the scent of death, like the sigh of the Duke's soul.
She stepped quietly down the long staircase and saw the half-open door of the basement and the little moonlight peeking out of it from afar.
The basement has been cleaned up, the smell of blood has become very faint, the original place where the chair was put on a dark coffin, Oliver Duke is lying in the peaceful sleep.
Aaron sat on a wooden chair, sitting facing the coffin, holding a bottle of wine in his hand, already drank only a bottom, he was so quietly with Duke Oliver, no sadness or joy on his face.
Sophia's footsteps pause, did not bother them, quietly returned to the room, pick up the pen to continue to deal with political affairs.
There was still much she needed to do, for the sake of her people and for Aaron's sake, she had to work twice as hard to be worthy of this position as queen and to stand by his side.
She shot up and set aside the papers she had been working on, giving herself a mental pep talk.
"Go for it, Sophia!"