Claimed by the Beastly Lycan King

Chapter Twelve: Left Behind

POV: Kaelira

He knocked on my door before the sun came up.

I was already awake, sitting on the edge of my bed listening to the palace move differently around me, quieter and sharper at the same time. There were boots on stone corridors, horses in the courtyard below, low voices giving orders, the particular sound of a place recalculating itself around an absence that had not happened yet.

I opened the door and Ronan stood there in full riding gear, with a dark coat, gloves in one hand, looking like he had not slept either.

"Come in," I said.

He stepped inside and pulled something from his coat pocket, a black ring, simple and dark, holding it out to me on his palm. "If you crush it I will feel it, distance does not matter, I will come."

I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers."How fast?"

"Fast enough."

I slipped it onto my finger without arguing, which clearly surprised him because he went slightly still, like he had prepared for a fight and did not know what to do without one.

We stood in the strange silence that followed and neither of us filled it immediately.

"You will be careful," he said finally, and it came out less like a question and more like something he was telling himself.

"I survived nineteen years with Marissa," I said. "I think I can manage a palace."

Something moved in his face, and then before I registered he had moved at all he closed the space between us and kissed me, rough and urgent and completely honest, one hand coming up to the side of my face, and I stood there for one startled second before I stopped fighting it and kissed him back.

It did not last long.

He pulled back, looked at my face for a moment like he was memorising something, then stepped away and walked to the door without saying a single word about what had just happened.

"Ronan," I said.

He looked back.

I had nothing, no sentence ready, no words that felt right, so I just looked at him standing there in the doorway and he looked at me and then he left.

I went to the window and watched his carriage roll through the gates until it disappeared completely into the dark road beyond, and then I stood there a little longer than necessary just looking at the empty space it left behind.

By the time I got to the morning meal the dining room had already been rearranged.

Selene sat at the head of the table.

My usual seat had been shifted three places down, wedged between two minor noble daughters who looked deeply uncomfortable about the whole situation, and Selene was speaking to the room like a woman who had simply been waiting for the right moment to step into the position she always believed was hers.

I stood at the entrance for a moment taking all of this in.

Then I walked to the head of the table, smiled pleasantly at Selene, and sat down directly beside her in the chair that had clearly been arranged to block access to the head seat, which forced her to either make a scene or move sideways, she moved sideways with a smile so tight it looked painful.

I picked up my fork and started eating.

Selene leaned toward me slightly, still smiling, "I only rearranged things while the King is away, I hope you do not mind, as a guest it must be overwhelming managing all these"

"I am not a guest," I said pleasantly, cutting into my food without looking up.

"Of course," she said, "I only meant"

"I know what you meant," I said, still pleasantly, still not looking at her.

From directly behind my chair came a sound that was definitely not a cough. Nessa standing against the wall with her hands folded and her face completely composed except for her eyes, which were bright with poorly contained delight, and I heard her murmur under her breath so quietly only I could catch it."Good, do not blink, never blink, she hates that."

So, I kept eating.

Selene tried twice more to redirect the table conversation in ways that positioned her as the hosting authority and both times I answered so calmly and so finally that the conversation simply ended, the noble families around us growing visibly uncertain about which direction to face.

By dinner Selene had regrouped, arriving with a rewritten seating arrangement that placed her at the centre of the long table and pushed Kaelira to the far end near the serving entrance.

Lucien arrived, looked at the arrangement, looked at me, then picked up Selene's placement card from the centre seat and moved it four spaces down without a word, setting mine in its place with the same easy calm he did everything.

Selene stared at him.

"The King's mate sits at centre," he said simply, pulling out his own chair, "this is not a new rule."

Selene sat down in silence.

I looked at Lucien across the table and he caught my eye and I felt something warm and grateful move through me before I could stop it, and immediately wished I could take it back because he saw it and his mouth curved in a way that told me he had filed it away somewhere useful.

That night I got ready for bed, and a folded note slid under my door.

I picked it up and read it standing in the middle of my room.

The handwriting was shaky and old, someone who served your mother for eleven years, it said, I know how she really died, come to the old chapel tomorrow night, come alone, I cannot say this inside palace walls.

I sat on the bed slowly.

The black ring sat on my right hand, smooth and warm, one crush away from bringing Ronan back from wherever he was riding right now.

I held the note in my left hand and the ring on my right and sat there for a long time in the quiet.

I knew I should crush it.

I knew I should tell him, let him send guards, handle it properly, do the sensible thing for once in the middle of all this chaos.

I turned the ring around my finger once, then set the note carefully on the bedside table, lay back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling.

I was going to that chapel alone.