Fated to the Lycan king

Chapter 4

Rhea Pov

I was still staring.

I needed to stop staring. My brain had sent the instruction. My eyes had not received it.

He reached for the waistband of his trousers and I spun around so fast I nearly walked into the wall.

"What are you doing," I said. To the wall.

"Getting ready for bed," he said. Behind me. Completely unbothered.

"You said that already," I said. "About the shirt. And now you are—" I stopped. "Are you taking off your trousers."

Silence.

"Would that be a problem," he said.

"Yes," I said. "That would be a significant problem. That would be the largest problem in a night that has had a very high number of problems."

More silence.

"You can turn around," he said.

"I am fine here," I said.

"Rhea."

"I said I am fine."

"Turn around," he said.

I turned around.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed. Trousers still on. Looking at me with that expression that had been the same since the beach — patient and certain and not remotely worried about how any of this was going to go.

I looked at his chest for half a second before I found something interesting on the ceiling.

"You can sleep on the floor," I said. "Or the chair. Or the corridor."

"Come here," he said.

"No," I said.

"You are exhausted," he said.

"I am aware of what I am," I said. I pushed my hair behind my ear and looked at the wall. "I am not getting in that bed while you are in it."

He stood up.

I took a step back. My back hit the wall.

He crossed the room and stopped in front of me and I was looking up at him and the warmth coming off him at this distance was doing things my body had not asked permission to do.

"You have two options," he said. Low. Just for me. "The bed. Or I carry you to the bed."

I stared at him. "Those are not two options. Those are the same option with different levels of my dignity intact."

The corner of his mouth moved.

"Fine," I said. Because my legs were doing something unsteady and the wall was the only thing helping with that. "Fine. But you are staying on your side."

"Of course," he said.

I pushed off the wall and walked to the bed and got in on the very edge of my side and pulled the blanket up to my chin and stared at the ceiling.

He got in beside me.

The mattress shifted with his weight and my whole body tensed.

He was warm. Even at distance. The warmth of him reached across the space between us without needing contact to make itself known.

The room was dark and quiet.

"Unless," he said, into the dark, "you want something else."

I closed my eyes. "Go to sleep."

"I can give you something else," he said. Low and almost a smile. "If the bed is not enough."

"The bed is plenty," I said. "It is more than enough. Go to sleep."

A pause.

"You are very talkative," he said.

"Go to sleep," I said.

Then his arm came around my waist.

Every thought I had dropped out of my head at once.

He pulled me toward him slowly. Giving me every second to object. His warmth hit me at full contact — his chest against my back and his arm settling around me — and where we touched there were sparks. Warm and electric and moving outward from every point of contact and completely outside anything I could control.

My heart went somewhere it had no business being.

"I said your side," I managed.

"You are on your side," he said. Against the top of my head.

"You are on my side," I said.

"Mm," he said.

I lay there rigid. Heart going. Sparks still moving through every point of contact like my body was having a conversation with his that nobody had consulted me about.

"Sleep Rhea," he said.

The sparks settled into something warmer and steadier. His breathing slowed behind me. The warmth of him was everywhere and my body which had been running on adrenaline since the beach made a unilateral decision without asking me.

It gave up.

The rigidity left my muscles one by one. My heart slowed from somewhere impossible back toward something almost normal. His arm around me stopped being something I was fighting and became something that was simply there.

The last thing I was aware of was his warmth.

Then nothing.

I woke up warm.

That was the first thing. Before my eyes opened. Before my brain arrived. Just warmth everywhere and the weight of not being alone.

Then my brain caught up.

I was in the center of the bed.

Not the edge. Not my side. The center. And I was facing him and my hand was on his chest and at some point in the night every decision I had made about where I was going to sleep had been quietly overruled by my body.

I lay very still.

His breathing was slow and even.

I looked at my hand on his chest. At the specific fact of it. At the complete betrayal it represented.

I moved it slowly. Slid it back and held it against my own chest like I was returning something that had gone somewhere it shouldn't.

He didn't move.

I sat up slowly. Pushed my hair out of my face with both hands and pressed my palms against my cheeks and looked at the wall.

Not great. Was the answer. Not great at all.

On the table beside the bed was food. Something warm with a cloth over it.

I looked at it. Then at him. He was looking at the ceiling.

"You were awake," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"How long," I said.

"A while," he said.

I pressed my lips together. Looked at my hands in my lap. At the hand that had been on his chest. I turned it over once and put it back down.

"Thank you," I said. For the food. Because my mother raised me correctly even if the universe had not.

He said nothing.

I ate. He lay there looking at the ceiling and gave me the privacy of someone who understood that being watched eating was not something anyone wanted. I ate everything and was not sorry about it.

When I finished I pushed my hair behind my ear and looked at the window.

The Valerian morning outside. Normal town doing normal things.

"I was in the middle of the bed," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"That was not where I started," I said.

"No," he said.

I looked at the window. He looked at the ceiling.

"I am not going to talk about it," I said.

"I know," he said.

Outside a bird landed on the windowsill looked in for a moment and left. I watched it go.

"What happens today," I said.

He sat up.

He came back in the early afternoon.

I was on the windowsill looking at the streets below when the door opened. I turned and he was there and my body registered him before my eyes confirmed him which remained consistently inconvenient.

I turned back to the window.

"How were your things," I said.

"Done," he said.

I heard him pull the chair from the table and sit down.

Below a woman was arguing with a market vendor about the price of something. The vendor was shaking his head. She put her hand on her hip. Normal. Completely normal. I wanted to be her so badly it was almost funny.

"Are you going to look at me," he said.

"I am looking at the view," I said.

"Rhea."

I turned around.

He was sitting with his forearms on his knees looking at me with that expression I was starting to understand was simply his face.

I pushed my hair behind my ear. "Tell me what is actually happening. Not the version designed to stop me panicking. The real version."

He told me.

Not everything. I could feel the edges of what he was leaving out. But more than before. A man on the throne who had taken it through betrayal eighty three years ago. Consolidating power ever since. Someone inside this building feeding him information until this morning.

"Inside this building," I said. "Someone in there was telling him things."

"Yes," he said.

"About me," I said.

"Possibly," he said.

I looked at my hands in my lap. Turned them over once. Put them back down. "So he knows I am here."

"He suspects," Caelan said. "By now he likely knows."

I sat with that.

"What happens to me specifically," I said. "In all of this."

"You stay close," he said.

"Define close," I said.

"Within reach," he said.

"I don't like that definition," I said.

"I know," he said.

"And the bond," I said. "What it actually does to me. Why my body has been—" I stopped. Started again. "Since I crossed into this region. The pull. The sparks. The way you walk into a room and I know before I see you." I looked up at him. "What is that."

He held my gaze.

"Recognition," he said. "Not compulsion. Your body knows what it is even when your mind hasn't accepted it. The bond does not create feeling. It shows you what is already there."

I stared at him. "That is worse than if it had been compulsion."

Something moved in his expression. "Yes," he said. "I imagine it is."

"Because if it was compulsion I could dismiss it," I said. "But if it was already there—" I stopped. Pressed my lips together. Looked at the ceiling.

"Yes," he said. Quietly.

I looked back at him. "Were you scared," I said. "When you surfaced. When you found me."

He went very still.

Not the controlled stillness. Something different. Something that had not been in any version of his face across any conversation we had had.

"Yes," he said. Finally. Like the word had needed finding.

The room was quiet.

I had not expected that. From his expression I was not sure he had expected to say it either. He looked at his hands for a moment — one brief downward glance — and then back at me.

"I am not going to just accept this," I said quietly. "Whatever the bond does I am a person and I make my own decisions."

"I know," he said. And then: "I enjoy a good chase Rhea."

The arrogance of it after what he had just said was so complete that I laughed. Real and slightly disbelieving. He watched it happen with something in his face that was not quite the almost smile. Something warmer than that.

I turned back to the window before he could see whatever was happening on my face.

"You are going to have to try very hard," I said. To the glass.

"I know," he said. And I could hear the shape of it in his voice and I was not going to turn around to confirm it.

Anya brought them the next morning.

I heard Yara's voice in the corridor before the door opened and I was off the bed before I had decided to move.

Yara came through fast and I met her in the middle of the room and she held on with both arms and neither of us said anything for a long moment.

"You are okay," she said finally.

"I am okay," I said. "Are you hurt. Did anyone—"

"We are fine." She pulled back and looked at my face carefully. Her eyes moved past me to the bed. To the two pillows that had both clearly been used. Back to me.

She pushed her hair off her face slowly and looked at me with an expression I was not going to address right now.

"Don't," I said.

"I did not say anything," she said.

Lucas came through the door and put both hands on my face the way he always did and looked at me.

"You are okay," he said.

"I am okay," I said.

He pulled me into a hug that lasted longer than usual and I pressed my face into his shoulder and let myself have the thirty seconds of it.

Anya came through the door last.

"We need to discuss arrangements," she said. "We can have your friends escorted safely out of Valeria by morning."

I looked at Lucas and Yara.

"Good," I said. "That is what needs to happen."

"Absolutely not," Yara said.

I turned to her. "Yara."

"No," she said. Simply. Like the matter was closed.

"You don't understand what is—"

"You have been taken by a supernatural being and are being kept in a secret building in a witches village," Yara said. "I understand perfectly. I am not leaving."

"I need you somewhere safe—"

"I am safe here," she said.

"You don't know that," I said.

"Neither do you," she said.

I looked at Lucas. "Tell her."

Lucas looked at me. Then at Yara. Then back at me. He pressed his lips together briefly.

"I am also not leaving," he said.

"Lucas—"

"Riri." He looked at me. "We are not leaving you here alone."

I looked at Anya. She had the expression of someone who had encountered an obstacle she had not scheduled for.

The door opened.

Caelan stood in it.

He looked at Lucas and Yara. Lucas went still in the careful way he went still when he was assessing something. Yara looked at Caelan directly and without much concern for whether he appreciated it.

"No," Caelan said. To Anya. Flat. Final.

"We are not asking," Yara said.

Caelan looked at her.

Yara looked back.

I had seen him look at a room full of supernatural beings and empty it of sound. Yara met his gaze and put her hands on her knees and did not look away.

"They are humans with no abilities in a location that is about to become considerably less safe," Caelan said.

"She is also human," Yara said. "And you are keeping her here."

"That is different," Caelan said.

"How," Yara said.

A moment.

"Please," I said. Quietly. Looking at him. Just that one word.

He looked at me.

The room held its breath.

"They stay," he said. To Anya. Like it had been his decision from the beginning.

Anya closed her eyes briefly. "I will have rooms prepared."

Caelan looked at me for one more moment and walked out.

Yara looked at me.

"Don't," I said.

"I was going to say you are welcome," she said.

Lucas was looking at the door Caelan had walked out of. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at me.

"Tell us everything," he said. "From the beginning."

I sat down on the bed between them.

Yara got her sketchbook and held it in her lap without opening it. Lucas angled himself toward me.

So I told them.

From the pull on the bus. The ocean. The bracelet burning. The statue's smile. The drowning and the light coming from my hands. The beach and him walking out of the water and the word he said before he knew he was going to say it. The sparks. Waking up in the center of the bed with my hand on his chest.

I told them all of it.

Yara turned her pencil over in her fingers slowly the whole time. End to end. End to end. Not drawing anything.

Lucas listened with his elbows on his knees and when I got to the part about waking up with my hand on his chest he looked at the ceiling briefly and then back at me.

When I finished the room was quiet for a moment.

"The sparks," Yara said.

"I knew you were going to say that," I said.

"What did they feel like," she said.

"Yara—"

"Warm," Lucas said quietly.

We both looked at him.

"You said warm," he said. "When you were describing being close to him. You said you didn't expect him to be warm."

"That was a physical observation," I said. "Not a—"

"Riri," he said. He looked at me carefully. "It is okay. Whatever you feel. Whatever your body is doing that your brain hasn't caught up to yet." He held my gaze. "It is okay."

I pressed my lips together and looked at the window.

"I don't know what is the bond and what is actually me," I said quietly. "I don't know how to separate them."

"Maybe they are the same thing," Yara said softly. "Maybe the bond is you. Maybe it has always been you and you just didn't know what it was pointing at yet."

I looked at her.

Nobody said anything.

Outside the Valerian afternoon kept going. Ordinary and unhurried and completely indifferent to the fact that I was sitting on a bed in a secret building trying to work out where I ended and something ancient and inevitable began.