Fated to the Lycan king

Chapter 7

I had been asleep for approximately forty minutes when the knock came.

Not Caelan's knock. Too polite for that. Too brief.

I pushed myself up from the bed and crossed the room and opened the door.

Two maids stood in the corridor. Both of them holding something between them with the careful hands of people transporting something that mattered. One of them dipped her head.

"From his lordship," she said. "For dinner this evening. You are expected in the dining hall at the eighth hour."

She held it out.

I took it.

And stood there.

The dress was deep green. Not the green of something trying to be noticed the green of something that did not need to try. The fabric moved when I held it like it was already in the process of doing something. The neckline was structured in a way that would sit at my collarbones and the cut of it, even on the hanger, told me exactly what it would do to my silhouette when I put it on. Simple in the way that things are simple when they have been made by someone who understood that the right construction needed nothing added to it.

There was gold at the edges. Not much. Just enough.

I looked at it for a long moment.

"His lordship chose this," I said.

"Yes my lady," the maid said.

I looked at it for one more moment.

Then I took it and closed the door.

I stood in front of the mirror an hour later and did not recognize myself immediately.

Not because I looked wrong. Because I looked like a version of myself that had always been there and had simply been waiting for the right circumstances to show up.

The dress did exactly what the cut had promised. The green against my skin did something I had not expected. The gold at the edges caught the candlelight in the room and held it. I stood there and looked at my own reflection and felt something I had not felt once since the beach and the council chamber and the portal and all the days that had followed.

Powerful.

I felt powerful.

I pushed my hair behind my ear and looked at myself for one more moment.

Then I picked up the small bag the maids had left and went to find the dining hall.

I found Lucas and Yara in the corridor outside their rooms.

Yara looked at me and stopped walking.

"The dress," she said.

"I know," I said.

"He chose that," she said.

"I know," I said.

"Rhea," she said.

"I know," I said. "Don't."

She looked at me for one more second with that expression and then fell into step beside me and said nothing else about it which was the kindest thing she could have done.

Lucas looked at the dress and then looked at the ceiling briefly and then looked back at me. "You look incredible," he said simply.

"Thank you," I said.

"He is going to lose his mind," Yara said quietly. Not to me. Just observationally. To the corridor in general.

"Yara," I said.

"I didn't say anything," she said.

A servant showed us to the dining hall.

It was large in the way everything in this palace was large not wastefully, but with the specific proportions of a space that had been designed to hold important things and knew it. A table that ran the length of the room. Candles everywhere. The smell of food that had been made by people who took it seriously.

Caelan was already seated.

He was at the far end of the table and he was not doing anything in particular not speaking, not gesturing, not performing anything. Just sitting. And somehow in a room that contained Damon in his careful warmth and a table set with the specific deliberateness of a king's dining hall, Caelan was the most magnetic thing in it.

He looked more like a king sitting at someone else's table than Damon looked sitting at his own.

I noticed that and filed it and kept walking.

There was a woman seated close to him on his left. Beautiful in a way that was immediately apparent and immediately intentional. Dark hair. A dress that had also been chosen carefully. She was leaning slightly toward him with the ease of someone who had decided proximity was her right and was not currently being told otherwise.

On Damon's left sat a woman who had the specific stillness of someone who had learned a very long time ago that stillness was safer than expression. Pale. Composed. Eyes that moved across the room and landed on me and stayed there for a moment longer than courtesy required.

Beside her a girl younger, maybe seventeen, watching everything with the open curiosity of someone who had not yet learned to hide their interest.

Caelan looked up when we entered.

His eyes found me immediately.

They moved over the dress once. Just once. And then came back to my face and something in them shifted in a way that made the back of my neck warm before I had crossed half the room.

He looked at the woman beside him.

"Move to the next seat," he said.

Not unkindly. Not harshly. Just simply. The way you say something when the outcome was never in question.

The woman's expression moved through something quickly before she controlled it. Her eyes went to me briefly one fast assessment and then she stood and moved one seat down with the specific grace of someone performing composure they did not fully feel.

I sat down beside him.

He said nothing. He did not need to.

Damon rose from his seat and smiled his warm convincing smile across the table.

"Rhea," he said. "You look wonderful. Asveron suits you already." He gestured to his left. "My wife Mireille."

Mireille looked at me. Her expression was composed. Her eyes were not.

"Welcome," she said. The word was correct. The tone was something else entirely.

"And my daughter Nadia." Damon put his hand briefly on the younger girl's shoulder. Nadia looked at me with open curiosity and smiled and the smile was genuine in the uncomplicated way that very young people's smiles sometimes still are.

"Hello," I said.

"And you have already displaced my sister," Damon said lightly, nodding toward the woman who had moved seats. A laugh in his voice. Warm. Easy.

The woman looked up.

"Calista," she said to me. And her smile was different from everyone else's at this table. Unguarded. Real. "I apologize for being in your seat. I did not know you were coming tonight or I would have..."

"It is fine," I said.

"It is genuinely not a problem," she said. And then she looked at Caelan beside me with something in her face that was simply happiness. Uncomplicated and real. "I have been talking his ear off since he sat down. He has been very patient."

"I have not," Caelan said.

Calista laughed. An actual laugh. And something in Caelan's face when she laughed was different from every expression I had seen on it in any room so far. Not warm exactly. But not the wall either. Something in between that belonged specifically to this person at this table.

I looked at my plate and noted that and said nothing.

The food was extraordinary.

I was in the middle of acknowledging this privately when Caelan leaned slightly toward me.

"You look beautiful in that dress," he said. Low enough that it was only for me. "I cannot wait to see what it is hiding."

I choked.

Caelan picked up my glass and held it toward me with the expression of a man who had said nothing.

"Are you all right," he said. Completely innocent. Completely. "Is the food too spicy."

I took the glass from him and looked at him and he looked back at me with those eyes that were doing the patient certain thing and the completely innocent thing simultaneously and somehow managing both.

"I am fine," I said. "Thank you."

"Of course," he said. And turned back to his food.

My heart was going somewhere it had no business going.

Across the table Mireille was watching me with those composed eyes that were not composed underneath. I picked up my fork and focused on the food and reminded myself to breathe at regular intervals.

Calista had resumed talking. She was, as advertised, a talker. She moved between topics with the energy of someone who had stored things up for a very long time and now had the person she wanted to tell them to back in the room. Something about the east wing being renovated three years ago. Something about a horse she had acquired. Something about a festival in the lower city that Caelan had apparently always attended before and she wanted to know if he remembered the year that.

A hand landed on my thigh.

Under the table. Beneath the green fabric. Warm and certain and completely deliberate.

I knew whose hand it was before I looked. I did not look. I kept my eyes on Calista and my face doing something I hoped resembled normal and tried to remember how eating worked.

Calista kept talking.

Caelan kept facing her with the expression of a man who was fully engaged in the conversation.

His hand did not move.

Then it did.

Slowly. Upward. And wherever it moved my skin responded before I could tell it not to warmth spreading outward from every point of contact, that specific burning that was not pain and not comfort and was something my body had apparently decided to prioritize over every other piece of information it was receiving.

I picked up my water.

Put it down.

Picked up my fork.

"Are you okay?" Yara's voice from across the table.

Everyone turned.

Including Caelan.

He looked at me with those innocent eyes and his hand moved higher and I was going to actually die at this dinner table in a beautiful green dress in a palace in Asveron and nobody would ever know the real cause.

"I am fine," I said. My voice came out slightly breathless. "I think I am just tired from the travel. The past few days." I set my fork down. "I am going to go rest. I am sorry."

I stood.

Caelan's hand withdrew. Slowly. Like it was considering not withdrawing. Like the decision took a moment.

I looked at him.

He looked back at me.

And smiled.

I turned and walked out of the dining hall and did not look back and my heart was going so hard I could feel it in places that had nothing to do with my chest.

I closed my room door behind me and pressed my back against it and stayed there for a moment.

The room was quiet. The candles were lit someone had been in while I was at dinner. The bed was turned down. Everything exactly as it should be in a palace that took care of its own.

I pushed off the door and crossed to the bed and sat on the edge of it and put my face in my hands.

I thought about his hand on my thigh. About the upward movement of it. About the burning that had followed every inch of that movement across my skin. About standing up on legs that had needed a significant amount of convincing to cooperate.

I lay back on the bed.

The ceiling of this room was painted. I had not noticed that earlier. Figures moving across it in the candlelight, half visible, doing things I could not fully make out from this angle.

I stared at them and thought about a hand under a table and a smile that had been just for me and tried to locate the version of myself that had gotten on a bus to Valeria for a long weekend.

She was very far away.

The door opened.

I sat up.

Caelan stood in the doorway.

He looked at me on the bed with the candlelight on the green dress and his eyes did the thing they had done when I walked into the dining hall. That single sweep and then back to my face and whatever was in them was not the patient certain thing right now. It was something with more heat in it than patience.

He came in and closed the door.

"You left," he said.

"I was tired," I said.

"You were not tired," he said.

I looked at him. "You know what you did."

"What did I do," he said.

"You know what you did," I said again.

He crossed the room slowly and stopped in front of me and looked down at me sitting on the edge of the bed and tilted his head slightly.

"You mean this," he said.

He put his hand on my shoulder.

I looked at his hand on my shoulder and looked back up at him.

"I touch you all the time," he said. His voice was low. "You have not run away from a meal before."

"You know that is not what I mean," I said.

"Like this," he said.

His hand moved from my shoulder down my arm slowly and I watched it move and told myself I was not going to react and reacted immediately anyway, that warmth following his touch across my skin like it had been waiting for the contact.

"You know what I mean," I said. My voice came out quieter than I intended.

He crouched down in front of me so we were level and looked at my face.

"Tell me," he said.

I looked at him. At the face from the statue. At the eyes that had found me in every room I had been in since the beach. At the thing in them right now that was not patience.

"At the table," I said. "When you... when your hand..." I stopped. Looked away. "You know."

He said nothing for a moment.

Then his hand found my thigh. Over the dress. In exactly the place it had been under the table at dinner.

"Here," he said.

I did not answer.

"Did it bother you," he said.

"You know it didn't," I said. To the wall.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Look at me," he said.

I looked at him.

The fire in his eyes had gotten closer to the surface.

"I will not do anything you do not want," he said. Simply. Clearly. Like it was the most important thing he had said to me since the beach and needed to be heard without anything around it. "If you tell me to stop I will stop. Whatever happens tonight is yours to decide."

I looked at him.

He looked back.

His hand on my thigh was still. Warm. Present.

"Okay," I said quietly.

He held my gaze for one more moment.

Then he moved closer and his other hand came up to my face and his thumb moved across my cheekbone slowly and I felt that touch go through me from the point of contact downward and my eyes closed before I told them to.

His lips brushed mine.

Not a kiss yet. Just the edge of one. Just enough contact to tell me what was coming and give me every chance to decide against it.

I did not decide against it.

His mouth met mine properly and the kiss was nothing like I expected and exactly like I expected both at once. Hot and unhurried. Deep in the way that things are deep when the person doing them has decided to take their time and means it. I felt it from my mouth downward through my entire chest and further than that and I made a sound I was not going to think about later and his hand on my face moved into my hair and the other hand on my thigh pressed slightly and I was drinking sweet wine and drowning in it at the same time.

My hands found his chest.

Not to push him away.

My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt and I felt the solid warmth of him beneath it and some distant part of my brain supplied the extremely unhelpful information that this was exactly what it had been imagining in the carriage and then that part of my brain went quiet because there was nothing left in me that was capable of thinking about anything except what his mouth was doing.

He kissed me like he had been waiting for it. Like he had been patient about a very specific thing for a very long time and was done being patient about it and was making that clear without saying a single word.

My sensitive areas were not being quiet about any of this. My body had opinions. Loud, specific, insistent opinions about what should happen next and it was communicating them without my permission in ways I could not ignore no matter how hard I tried.

I was not trying very hard.

His mouth moved from my lips to my jaw and then to my neck and I tipped my head back and stopped pretending I had any control over what my body was doing.

Then he stopped.

Not abruptly. Slowly. His mouth leaving my neck gradually. His forehead coming to rest against mine. His breathing not entirely steady.

I opened my eyes.

He was looking at me from an inch away and the fire in his eyes was right at the surface now. Right there, burning, and the effort of holding it where it was was visible in the set of his jaw and the stillness of the rest of him.

He wanted more.

I could see it. I could feel it in the tension of him this close. I could feel it in the way his hands had stilled completely the control that required.

And my body.

My body was not being quiet. My body was making its position extremely clear, every nerve and every sensitized inch of it, and the argument it was making was a very good argument and I could feel exactly how good it was and it was taking everything I had to not simply agree with it.

But.

I was not ready.

I knew I was not ready. Not because I didn't want it, I was done lying to myself about whether I wanted it. But because wanting something and being ready for what it meant were two different things and I knew the difference and I was going to honor it.

I put my hand on his chest.

Not pulling him closer. Not pushing him away. Just my hand on his chest between us.

He felt it immediately.

He pulled back slightly and looked at my face and read it the way he read everything completely and without missing anything.

"Not tonight," I said quietly.

He looked at me for a long moment.

Something moved through his face. The fire did not go anywhere. It was still there, right at the surface. But something else moved through it that I had not seen before. Something that looked like it might be respect.

"Okay," he said.

He pressed his lips to my forehead once.

Then he stood.

I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him and my body staged one final protest that I was not going to listen to.

He looked at me from where he was standing and the fire was still in his eyes and I knew he could see everything my body was doing whether I acknowledged it or not.

"Sleep," he said.

"You are giving me instructions in my own room," I said.

"Our room," he said.

I opened my mouth.

"Sleep, Rhea," he said. And the almost smile was back. The one that was almost fond and almost amused and something else that I was getting better at reading and still did not have a complete word for.

He turned and walked to the other side of the bed.

And got in.

I looked at him.

"You are not going to your room," I said.

"I am in my room," he said. He lay back and looked at the ceiling.

I looked at the ceiling too from where I was sitting on the edge of the bed.

Then I lay down.

On my side. Facing away from him.

The bed shifted as he turned. His arm came around my waist and pulled me back against him the way it had in Valeria and the warmth of him was everywhere immediately and every nerve that had been on high alert a few minutes ago registered the contact and made their feelings known.

I pressed my lips together and stared at the wall.

"Goodnight Rhea," he said against my hair.

I said nothing.

My heart was going in three directions at once.

"Goodnight," I said finally. Quietly. To the wall.

I stared at the wall.

My body was still not being quiet.

I told it firmly that it had lost the vote tonight and it was going to have to accept that.

It accepted it the way it always accepted things.

Loudly. And without grace.

I closed my eyes.