Fated to the Lycan king

Chapter 9

CAELAN'S POV

A week and Damon had not moved.

Which meant he had.

The rooftop was empty when I came up except for Draven already at the stone ledge looking out over the city. Soren stood a few feet away arms crossed thumb moving slow circles against the inside of his wrist. Mira near the far edge her eyes sweeping the grounds below the way they always swept everything. Twice and then again.

Rafe against the wall by the door jaw tight. The expressiveness from the cave packed deliberately away since the throne room. I had watched him do it and said nothing.

"Kira," I said.

"East corridor," Draven said without turning. "Movement patterns. Every servant every guard rotation every face in a room it has no business being in." He paused. "She will have something by tonight."

I moved to the ledge beside him.

Asveron below us in the hour before dawn. The lights of it spread out familiar and changed at once. The bones exactly as I remembered. The skin something I was still learning.

My lycan was not looking at the city.

Three floors below Rhea was still asleep and I had left the room and the distance between that floor and this roof was something my lycan was noting with increasing displeasure every morning.

I put it aside.

"Seven days," Rafe said from the wall. "Nothing."

"Something," Soren said.

"We have not found it," Mira said. Still watching the grounds.

"The records in the east wing," Draven said. "Accessed once. Not again since we found it."

"Because he knows we found it," I said.

Nobody disagreed.

Below us the city was quiet. The specific quiet of a place that had been under one rule long enough to forget what other rules felt like.

"He is patient," Draven said. "He was patient before. Eight months of that smile and by the time anyone understood what was happening it was already finished." He turned from the ledge and looked at me. "He is more practiced now."

"And he has had eighty three years to prepare for exactly this," Soren said. "Every move you would make. Every alliance you would reach for. Every person you would trust."

The rooftop was quiet.

Rafe pushed off the wall. "The gathering."

"Three days," Mira said.

"He framed it as welcome," Rafe said. "The court took it as welcome."

"The court takes everything as whatever he tells them to take it as," Draven said.

I looked at the city. "The gathering is assessment. He wants the factions in one room watching her. Wants to see how she moves in a crowd that knows what she is." I paused. "Wants to know if she is a problem he needs to solve before she becomes one he cannot."

The word solve sat in the air.

My lycan had thoughts about that word. Loud specific thoughts that I was managing with visible effort and would continue managing.

"Soren," I said.

He looked at me.

"You have something," I said. "You have had it since you came up."

His thumb pressed against his wrist once.

"A question," he said. "Not an accusation. I do not have enough for an accusation."

"Say it," I said.

He looked at the city for a moment. Then at me.

"Aldric was not working alone," he said.

The rooftop went very still.

Aldric. The council member Draven had removed from the secret building in Valeria the morning of the loyals meeting. Eleven years feeding information from inside. Gone before he could be questioned properly.

"You have a name," I said.

"I have a pattern," Soren said. "Someone has been inside our movements since we arrived. Not Damon's people. Someone closer." He pressed his thumb against his wrist again. "I need two more days to confirm it."

"Two days," I said.

"Yes," he said.

I looked at the city.

My lycan was very quiet suddenly. The specific quiet of something that had just heard information it was going to remember.

"Two days," I said. "Then you bring me the name."

Soren nodded once.

Mira turned from the edge of the roof. "The gathering gives him cover. Whatever he is planning it happens in three days in a room full of people who will all have their eyes on her."

"Then we make sure she is not the only thing they are watching," Rafe said.

I looked at him.

He met my gaze and his jaw was tight and the expressiveness he had packed away was there underneath it close to the surface.

"We did not survive eighty three years of his rule," Rafe said quietly, "to lose in the first month of yours."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Below us Asveron started to lighten at the edges. Dawn arriving slowly over the city that had been waiting longer than any of them knew.

"Draven," I said.

"My lord."

"The gathering," I said. "I want every person in that room identified before they walk through the door. Loyalties confirmed. Positions known." I looked at the city one more time. "He thinks he is setting the stage."

I turned from the ledge.

"He is not setting the stage," I said.

I left them on the roof and went back inside.

Three floors. The same corridor. The same door.

My lycan had been tracking the distance back to it since I left.

A week of this. A week of leaving before she woke and coming back after dark and sleeping beside her with her warmth against my chest and her hand that had laced through mine without planning to and the memory of a kiss that had cost me more restraint than anything in eighty three years of chains.

The mark.

My lycan wanted the mark. Had wanted it since the beach. Was wanting it with increasing insistence every day that passed without it. The gathering in three days was making the wanting louder because the mark meant something specific in a room full of factions assessing her. The mark said what she was. What I was. What anyone who looked at her wrong would be dealing with.

My lycan was not wrong about any of that.

But she was not ready for it yet even though she thinks so, and I was not going to override that with what my lycan and I needed regardless of how loud it got.

I stopped at the door.

Put my hand on it.

Took one breath.

She was on the other side of this door and in three days she was going to walk into a room full of people who had already been told a story about her and I had not told her everything yet about what that room was going to mean.

I needed to tell her.

Tonight.

I opened the door.

Yara was standing in the corridor.

Not inside. Not knocking. Standing in the corridor with her sketchbook held against her chest with both arms and her face doing something that hit me before she said a single word.

I looked at her.

"She is not in the room," Yara said. Her voice was not steady. "I came to find her and she is not in the room and I have checked every place I know and she is not anywhere I have looked and I do not know how long she has been gone because I only noticed..."

I was already moving.

Past Yara. Down the corridor. Not running. Something faster than running that was not a decision my body had asked my mind about.

My lycan was not quiet anymore.

My lycan was not anything like quiet.

"Caelan." Draven's voice behind me. He had followed from the roof. "Caelan where..."

"Find her," I said.

My voice came out in a register that made two guards at the end of the corridor drop their heads without knowing why.

"Find her now."