Chapter 25 – Night Watch
1626 Words
The palace was quieter at night, but it never slept.
I found out around two in the morning, when my body decided rest was a luxury and dragged me up out of a half‑dream of stone corridors and red sigils.
For a moment, I didn’t know where I was.
Not Mara’s narrow bed, springs groaning every time I rolled. Not the dingy little room above the clinic with the leaky radiator. Soft mattress, too‑wide space, faint glow from the warded window.
Palace.
Right.
Beside me, the bed was empty. My son had started the night here, starfished against my side. At some point, he’d migrated.
My wolf pricked her ears.
I swung my legs over the edge, padding barefoot across the cool floor. The suite was dim, lit only by a low lamp in the sitting room.
Mara snored softly from the couch, one hand flung over her eyes, a ward charm still clutched in her fingers. El had disappeared hours ago, muttering about “pillow engineering.”
The door to my son’s room was ajar.
I eased it open.
He was there—but not alone.
Kaiden sat on the floor beside the bed, back against the wall, one arm resting on a bent knee. No crown, no shoes. Just a dark T‑shirt and sweatpants, hair mussed like he’d raked a hand through it too many times.
My son was sprawled sideways across the mattress, one foot kicked out of the blanket, hand dangling over the edge. His fingers were loosely curled in Kaiden’s shirt, as if he’d grabbed and held on even in his sleep.
They were both out.
Something in my chest did a slow, painful twist.
I leaned against the doorframe, watching.
Kaiden’s wolf‑scent was softer like this, less storm, more stone after rain. Lines of tension had eased from his face, shadows under his eyes still there but muted.
He looked younger. Not eighteen, not the boy I’d met. But less like the statue the Council had carved.
My son muttered, kicking once as if chasing something in his dreams. His fingers tightened.
“Hey,” Kaiden murmured, not fully waking. “You’re safe. Got you.”
The bond between them pulsed—a faint, second echo under the thread connecting me and the boy. Not as bright. Not as deep. But there.
Heat burned behind my eyes.
I could’ve walked away. Let them sleep. Protected this small, stolen moment from scrutiny.
Instead, I stepped into the room.
Kaiden’s eyes snapped open, sharpening from foggy to alert in a heartbeat. His wolf surged, then recognized me and settled.
“Did we wake you?” he whispered.
“No.” My voice came out softer than I expected. “Night decided I’d had enough of it.”
He huffed a sound that might’ve been agreement.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked, nodding at the improvised vigil.
“Shifted with Grace,” he said quietly. “We’re rotating presence. Nolan’s wards will scream if anything tries to touch him from a distance, but… I couldn’t sleep two floors away yet.”
I looked at the tiny fist curled in his shirt.
“He grabbed me when Mara brought him back from the bathroom,” Kaiden added, as if he needed to explain. “Wouldn’t let go. I sat.”
“And stayed,” I said.
“And stayed,” he echoed.
I hesitated, then lowered myself to the floor opposite him, back against the other wall. The room was small enough that our legs almost brushed; I drew mine in, keeping the inch of space between us.
“Rule two,” I murmured. “Still in effect.”
His gaze flicked to the gap, then up to my face. “Noted,” he said. “Thank you for… letting me be here at all.”
“You’re his father,” I said, surprising myself with how natural the word felt this time. “If I trust you in tunnels and Council chambers, I can trust you to sit by his bed.”
His jaw tightened, emotion crossing too fast to parse.
“He had a nightmare earlier,” he said after a beat. “About the cell. About… red ropes.”
My stomach clenched. “What did you do?”
“Sat,” he said simply. “Let him smell me. Told him this wasn’t a dungeon. Told him we’d both hear if anyone tried to make it one.”
We.
My wolf hummed.
“You’re good with him,” I said before I could stop. “Better than I expected.”
“Not good enough,” he said. “I wasn’t there for the first three years.”
“That wasn’t on him,” I said. “We both know whose choices those were.”
His throat worked. “It was still time he didn’t get. I’ll never give that back to him.”
“No,” I said. “But you can stop bleeding all over the years he does get.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “Is that the clinical term?”
“Ask Nolan,” I muttered.
Silence settled. Not entirely comfortable. Not hostile either.
“He likes you,” I said after a moment. “You know that.”
“He likes my pancakes,” Kaiden corrected.
“Same thing,” I said. “Food is love in this family.”
He looked at the sleeping boy, expression softening in a way that made my chest ache.
“I keep thinking,” he said slowly, “about what they meant to do with him. If we hadn’t moved when we did. If you hadn’t yanked him back through that ritual.”
“So do I,” I said. “Then I stop. Because living in all the almosts won’t keep him safe in the nows.”
He nodded, gaze still on our son. “What do you want for him?” he asked. “If you could strip away prophecies, Council, crown. Just… him.”
The question caught me off guard.
“Boring things,” I admitted. “A childhood where wolves under the bed are stories, not metaphors. Friends who don’t care who his parents are. The choice to decide what he wants to be when he’s old enough to know. Not a king, not a key, just… something that makes him happy.”
“And for you?” he asked quietly.
The bond thrummed, curious.
“I don’t know yet,” I said honestly. “I spent three years wanting nothing but distance. Then the universe dragged me back and handed me a war. I’m still… recalibrating.”
“You can have more than one want,” he said. “More than one home.”
“You sound very wise for someone who used to think sleeping in a tree solved everything,” I said.
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Trees are still underrated.”
We fell silent again.
After a while, my son’s breathing settled into the deeper rhythm that meant he was truly gone, not just skimming the edge of sleep.
“You should rest too,” Kaiden said. “You’re carrying more than anyone should have to.”
“So are you,” I said.
“Difference is,” he replied, “I spent years training to carry it. You were handed it because I let other people pry my fingers open.”
The admission sat between us, raw and unadorned.
“I won’t apologize again,” he added. “Not because I don’t mean it. Because it doesn’t fix anything. I’d rather spend that breath on doing differently.”
“That’s new,” I said softly.
“I’m trying,” he said.
My wolf watched him, measuring.
“Keep trying,” I said. “We’ll see where we are in thirty days.”
He glanced up. “You’re still counting.”
“Old habit,” I said. “I started this trip with a deadline. Maybe at the end of it, we’ll renegotiate the contract. Maybe I’ll take my son and my aunt and my friend and find a quiet little human town with no prophecies and terrible coffee.”
“And if you do?” he asked.
“Then,” I said, “if you’ve kept your promises, maybe we send you a postcard.”
Something like hope flickered through his eyes, quickly buried.
“I’d frame it,” he said.
The absurdity of that tugged a reluctant smile from me.
I looked at my son. At the small hand still knotted in Kaiden’s shirt. At the faint lines of ward‑light humming along the ceiling.
“Stay,” I said at last. “For tonight. If he wakes up, I’d rather he not see an empty room.”
“I wasn’t planning to move,” he answered.
I eased to my feet, quietly as I could, and slipped back toward the door.
“Lia,” he whispered.
I paused, hand on the frame.
“Thank you,” he said. “For letting me be part of his safety. Not just his danger.”
My throat tightened.
“Don’t make me regret it,” I said.
Then I left them there—king and child and stuffed wolf tangled between them—while I went back to bed and lay in the dark, listening to the steady hum of two bonds instead of one.
Outside, the palace muttered and shifted around us, old stones dreaming old dreams.
Inside, in one small, warded room, a new pattern was quietly, stubbornly, starting to weave itself—crooked, fragile, nothing like the one the Council had planned.
Mine.
- Writer
