Fated to the Lycan king

Chapter 6

The carriage was not small.

That was the first thing I noticed. It was genuinely not a small space. There was room for four people comfortably. Room for three people with space between them. Room for two people to sit on opposite sides and maintain a respectable distance that communicated clearly that they were two separate people who had made two separate choices about where to sit.

Caelan had chosen to sit beside me.

Not across from me. Beside me. Close enough that his warmth was already doing what his warmth always did which was register in my body before my brain could weigh in and object.

"There is an entire other seat," I said.

"There is," he agreed.

He did not move.

I looked at the window.

Outside Yara and Lucas were climbing into the carriage behind us. Yara caught my eye through the glass and her expression said several things simultaneously none of which were helpful. Lucas looked at the carriage I was in and looked at Caelan visible through the window beside me and pressed his mouth together and got in after Yara without saying anything.

The carriage started moving.

I kept my eyes on the window and told myself I was handling this. I was in a carriage. It was a normal enclosed moving space. The fact that the person beside me had the warmth of something that had been alive for a very long time and smelled like...

I was handling this.

Asveron opened up around us as we moved through the gates and whatever I had been expecting it was not this.

It was vast. The kind of vast that made you understand immediately that the world you had been living in was a much smaller version of the actual world. Buildings that had been built by someone who intended them to last forever and had apparently been right about that. Streets wide enough that the carriage moved through them easily with room on either side. People stopping to look as we passed not at the carriage, at him the way people look at something they have heard about their entire lives and are now watching happen in front of them in real time.

The light was different here. I didn't know how to explain that. Just that it hit the stone differently and turned everything a shade of gold that didn't exist where I came from.

I had my face almost against the glass.

I felt eyes on me.

I knew whose they were before I turned.

Caelan was watching me with that expression. Patient. Certain. Something underneath both of those things that I was getting better at reading and wished I wasn't.

"Why are you staring at me," I said.

"Just admiring my mate," he said. Simply. Like it was the most reasonable thing. "Is it wrong to stare at what is mine."

My face went warm.

I turned back to the window immediately. "I am not yours."

"Your face says otherwise," he said.

"My face is reacting to the temperature in this carriage," I said. "Which is too warm."

"Is it," he said.

"Yes," I said.

A pause.

"A few days ago," he said, and I could hear the shape of a smile in it, "you were running away from me on a beach. And now you are sitting beside me in a carriage with your face red like a tomato."

I turned to look at him. "I am not sitting beside you by choice. You chose to sit beside me. I chose the window."

"You could have sat across," he said.

"You would have followed," I said.

He said nothing.

Which was confirmation.

I turned back to the window and pushed my hair behind my ear and looked at the city and told myself the warmth in my face was absolutely the temperature in this carriage and nothing else whatsoever.

Outside the buildings got larger as we moved deeper into the capital. Older. The architecture shifting from the practical to something that had been built to communicate power and permanence. The specific confidence of a civilization that had never seriously considered the possibility of its own ending.

"It is beautiful," I said. Before I decided to say it.

"Yes," he said.

I glanced at him. He was not looking at the city.

"You are doing it again," I said.

"I know," he said.

I pressed my lips together and looked at the buildings and gave myself a moment before I said what I actually wanted to say.

"Can I ask you something," I said.

"Yes," he said.

I turned to look at him properly. "Your brother. What was he like. Before."

Something happened in his face.

Small. Controlled. But it happened and I saw it and the temperature in the carriage felt different for a moment.

He looked at the window.

"We were not always what we became," he said. His voice was the same. Unhurried. But something underneath it had shifted in a way I could feel without naming. "He was younger. I was responsible for him the way you are responsible for someone who did not ask to be born into what we were born into." A pause. "Things changed. People change when they want something badly enough and have enough time to convince themselves they deserve it."

"The throne," I said.

"Power," he said. "The throne was just the shape it took."

I looked at him. At the profile. At the jaw. "And the imprisonment. How did they manage it. If you are what you are how did they...."

"Betrayal does not require strength," he said quietly. "It only requires trust."

The words landed in the carriage and stayed there.

I sat with them for a moment.

"Who did you trust," I said.

He looked at me.

Something in his eyes told me that was the question with the longest answer and the one he was least prepared to give in a moving carriage on the way to a palace where the person responsible for most of it was waiting.

"Enough people," he said. "That is all you need to know for now."

"That is not enough," I said. "I am in the middle of this whether I chose to be or not. I think I deserve to..."

"No need to worry your pretty head about it," he said.

I stared at him. "I'm sorry. My pretty head."

"Mm," he said.

"That is extraordinarily condescending," I said. "I am asking a reasonable question and you are..."

His mouth came close to my neck.

Not touching. Just close. And the warmth of his breath moved across my skin in a slow deliberate way that short circuited every thought I had been in the middle of having.

"Instead of filling your head with all of that," he said, low against my neck, his voice dropping to something that was almost private, "let me fill it with the pleasures I would give you."

The warmth of it traveled from my neck downward through my entire body faster than I could object to it and I pressed my thighs together before I knew I was going to and my face went from warm to something significantly past warm and I grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back.

"Don't," I said. My voice came out at a slightly different register than usual.

He leaned back. Looked at me.

That almost smile.

I pushed my hair behind my ear and looked at the window and became very interested in a building we were passing that I had already forgotten the details of by the time I looked at it.

My hands were in my lap and I was not going to think about the warmth that was still moving through my body from a breath against my neck that had not even been a touch.

I was not going to think about it.

I had pushed him back. My hands on his chest. His chest which was...

I looked at the building.

His chest which was solid in a way that my hands had registered very specifically before I pulled them back. Solid in a way that my brain was now providing an extremely unhelpful mental image of without the shirt that was currently covering it and I shut that thought down immediately and looked harder at the building.

When did I start thinking about that.

When did that become something my brain did without asking me.

"You do not need to be shy about your thoughts," he said.

I turned to look at him despite myself.

He was watching me with an expression that told me he had read every single one of those thoughts off my face in real time and had found the experience very enjoyable.

"I belong to you as much as you belong to me," he said. His eyes stayed on mine. "If you want to look I can make it easier for you. I can strip right now if you please."

His hand went to the top button of his shirt.

"Do not," I said. Loudly enough that it was probably audible in the carriage behind us. "Do not do that."

His hand stayed where it was for one moment longer than necessary.

Then it dropped.

The almost smile became something slightly larger than almost.

I turned back to the window with what remained of my dignity and looked at the city and pressed my thighs together again without meaning to and was furious about it and said nothing and he said nothing and the carriage kept moving through Asveron in the gold afternoon light.

The palace appeared at the end of the main avenue.

I forgot about everything else.

It was built from dark stone that caught the light and held it differently from anything we had passed. Towers that went further up than made practical sense. Gates that had been designed by someone who understood that the first impression of a place told you everything about what waited inside.

It said: whatever you are expecting, adjust upward.

"That is your home," I said.

"That is my home," he said.

I looked at it for a long moment.

"It is very large," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"Do you ever get lost," I said.

Something moved in his expression. "Not anymore."

The carriage stopped.

The throne room was the kind of room that made you understand why throne rooms existed.

High ceilings. Light coming in from angles that had been specifically calculated to fall on the throne in a particular way. The throne itself dark stone, not decorated, not gilded. Just old and permanent and exactly where it had always been.

On it sat a man who was not Caelan.

He was older. Silver at his temples. A face that was handsome in a way that had been carefully maintained. And he was smiling when we walked in. Genuinely smiling. The warm open expression of a man receiving family he had missed.

That was the first thing that unsettled me.

He stood. Came down from the throne. Crossed the room toward Caelan with his arms opening and his face doing something that looked exactly like joy and I watched it happen and could not find the performance in it anywhere.

"Brother," he said. And embraced Caelan.

Caelan's arms came up. Brief. Controlled. The embrace of someone who knows what an embrace is supposed to look like.

Damon pulled back and held him by the shoulders and looked at his face with something in his eyes that looked exactly like relief.

"I did not dare hope," he said. "After so long. I did not dare."

I watched his face. I watched it carefully.

"And you must be Rhea." He turned to me and the warmth turned with him like a light finding a new surface. He took my hand and bowed over it with the courtesy of someone who had been practicing courtesy for a very long time. "My brother's mate. You are more than welcome here." He smiled at me. "We must make sure you want for nothing. Asveron takes care of its own."

Its own.

I smiled back. "Thank you."

"We must have rooms prepared immediately," Damon said, turning to the room, his voice carrying easily. "For my brother and his..."

"Don't you think my old room will suffice," Caelan said.

The room went very still.

Damon turned back.

His smile stayed exactly where it was.

For one second it stayed exactly where it was and did not adjust.

Then it did. Then it shifted into something warmer and slightly rueful and entirely convincing and he laughed and shook his head like a man receiving a joke from someone he had always found charming.

"Of course," he said. "Of course. It has always been yours."

But I had seen the second.

I had been watching for it and I had seen it and it sat in my chest now like something with weight.

The two of them stood facing each other in the center of the throne room and the air between them changed.

I felt it before I understood what I was feeling. A pressure. Building. Starting at the base of my throat and moving outward. Around me I heard the small involuntary sounds of people adjusting shifting weight, dropping chins, the physical submission response of lesser wolves to something their bodies could not override no matter how much they wanted to.

Two alpha auras filling the same room.

The room could not comfortably hold both of them and everyone in it was feeling that.

I kept my head up. My body had apparently decided it was not participating in the submission response and I was not going to question that right now.

Damon held it.

He was not weak. Eighty three years of ruling had given him something real and substantial and he was not going to fold easily.

He held it.

And then.

Just slightly. Just one degree. Something in his posture gave in a way that if you had not been watching for it you would have missed entirely.

He covered it immediately. A breath. A shift of his weight. The warm laugh coming back like a door closing over something that had briefly been visible.

"It is good to have you home," he said. Like nothing had happened. Like the room had not just felt what it felt.

Caelan said nothing.

He didn't need to.

I stood beside him and felt his hand find the small of my back briefly and then drop away and I looked at Damon's face still wearing its warmth and thought about that one second.

Damon looked at me at that exact moment.

His eyes moved from my face to the place on my back where Caelan's hand had just been.

Something passed through his expression that was gone before I could fully read it. And then the warmth was back and he was gesturing toward the corridor and talking about dinner and the hour and making everyone comfortable after the journey.

I turned and walked with the others toward the corridor.

At the entrance I glanced back.

Damon was still in the throne room. Standing exactly where we had left him. His warm smile in place. His eyes on Caelan's back as we walked away.

The smile did not reach his eyes from this angle.

It had not reached them the whole time.

I turned back to the corridor and kept walking and said nothing.

My room was at the end of a corridor on the third floor.

Large. High ceiling. A window looking out over the palace grounds and beyond them the city gold in the late light. A bed that had been made by someone who took it seriously.

I sat on the edge of it.

I thought about Damon's eyes at the entrance when we were leaving. About the smile that hadn't reached them from that angle. About we must make sure you want for nothing, Asveron takes care of its own.

I thought about its own and what it meant coming from him specifically.

I thought about Caelan's hand at the small of my back. About his hand over mine in the carriage that I had not moved away from. About a breath against my neck that had not even been a touch and what it had done to my body without asking permission.

I lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling.

A knock at the door.

"Come in," I said.

It was Yara.

She came in and closed the door behind her and crossed the room and lay down beside me and looked at the ceiling without saying anything for a moment.

"His brother," she said finally.

"I know," I said.

"He seemed genuinely..."

"Did you see his eyes when we were leaving," I said.

A pause.

"Yes," she said quietly.

We looked at the ceiling.

"The carriage," she said.

"Yara..."

"You did not move your hand," she said.

I looked at the ceiling.

"I know," I said.

She turned her head to look at me. I kept looking at the ceiling.

"What are you going to do," she said.

I thought about it honestly. About a palace that was not mine and a city made of gold light and a man on a throne wearing warmth like a coat and another man who had said he belonged to me as much as I belonged to him.

"I have absolutely no idea," I said.

Outside the window Asveron settled into its evening and somewhere below us in this palace Damon was still smiling his warm convincing smile and thinking about whatever he had been thinking about when he watched us walk away.

I was going to need to be very careful here.