Claimed by the Beastly Lycan King

Chapter Ten: The Portrait Woman

POV: Kaelira

I was out of bed before I fully remembered waking up.

The birthmark, that was the only thought in my head, pressing against everything else like it had been there all night waiting for me to pay attention to it.

Nessa was arranging my breakfast tray when I walked past her toward the door, still in my nightgown.

"My lady," she said carefully, "you have not eaten, and you are not dressed. The King's wing is three corridors away."

"I know where it is," I said.

"You cannot walk to the King's private wing in your nightgown my lady."

"Watch me," .

She made a sound behind me like a woman whose heart was giving up entirely, but I was already in the corridor.

The guards outside Ronan's study looked at me, we looked at each other, and wisely said nothing as I pushed the door open.

Ronan was at his desk, already dressed, already working, because apparently the man did not believe in slow mornings. He looked up when I walked in, and his eyes dropped to my nightgown for exactly one second before moving back to my face.

"Kaelira." He said.

"I need to show you something," I said, crossing to his desk and pulling my collar aside before he could respond, showing him the crescent- shaped birthmark on my left collarbone. "Lyriana has this exact mark in the portrait, same shape, same position, tell me what that means."

He looked at the mark.

Then he put his pen down very slowly, pushed his chair back, and sat there with his elbows on his knees staring at the floor between us like a man who had just watched a wall he built very carefully start to c***k.

"Sit down," he said.

"I am fine standing."

"Kaelira, please sit down." He said it again, but something in his voice made me sit.

He rubbed both hands over his face, exhaled slowly, and looked up at me with an expression I had not seen on him before, not anger, not possession, just a tired and genuine kind of dread.

"Lyriana was the last confirmed carrier of the ancient Luna bloodline," he said, "when she died, the palace declared the line extinct and sealed every record connected to her, my grandfather's order, nobody questioned it."

"Why would your grandfather seal records about a dead woman?"

"Because she did not die of fever," he said flatly, "she was removed, and he did not want anyone asking why."

The word removed sat between us like something cold.

"My mother," I said carefully, "you know something about my mother."

He met my eyes, "Your mother was a direct descendant of Lyriana's line, which means you were never an omega, Kaelira, that was a lie. Your blood is older than anything in this palace, older than my own bloodline, and the people who raised you knew exactly what you were but chose to hide it from you."

I heard every word clearly.

I sat with them for a moment, turning them over, and felt something settle in my chest that was not grief exactly, more like the particular exhaustion of a person who has just had the last piece of a very old puzzle drop into place.

Every person who raised me had stolen something from me. Not just comfort or kindness, they had stolen my identity, my power, my right to know what I was.

"Say something," Ronan said quietly.

"I am thinking."

"You look like you are deciding whether to burn something down," he said.

"I am thinking about that too," I said, and something moved at the corner of his mouth.

Then a knock came at the door.

"Your Majesty," Nessa's voice came through the wood, slightly desperate, "breakfast is getting cold, and Lady Kaelira has not eaten. I thought perhaps"

"No," Ronan said, without looking up.

There was silence from the other side of the door, then careful footsteps retreating.

I looked at him, "You did not even let her finish."

"She was going to ask me to send you back to your room."

"Were you going to?" I asked.

"No." He said.

We looked at each other for a moment, and I felt the strange, cautious thing between us shift slightly, like two people who had been standing on opposite sides of a room both taking one small step toward the middle without quite meaning to.

"Your father," I said. "What was he like?"

The question came out before I planned it, and I watched something move across his face quickly.

"Where did that come from?"

"You know everything terrible about my family," I said, "it seems fair."

Then he was quiet for long enough that I thought he would not answer, then he leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.

"He was the kind of man who loved things by destroying them," he said. "My mother tried to leave him once, during a full moon when his beast was high, he caught her in the courtyard."

He stopped, jaw tight, "I was nine, I watched from the upper gallery, nobody came."

The room was very quiet.

"I swore after that I would never be him," he said. " Then you arrived, and within days I was grabbing men by the throat and locking doors, following you through corridors, and I look in the mirror sometimes, but I genuinely cannot tell the difference."

"You are not him."

He looked at me.

"You stopped," I said simply, "he never did, you already told me that, so stop comparing yourself to a man you are nothing like."

Suddenly, there was another knock.

"Your Majesty," Nessa again, more determined this time, "I have brought fresh tea, and I really must insist that Lady Kaelira"

"Nessa," Ronan said patiently, "go away."

There was a very long pause.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Then I pressed my lips together hard to stop from laughing and caught Ronan watching me with something warm and almost surprised in his expression, like he had forgotten what it felt like to almost smile before noon.

That night, I dreamed of Lyriana.

She stood in front of a tall mirror, her back turned to me. Her black hair loosened down her back, then she turned slowly and opened her mouth like she had something urgent to say, something she had been waiting a very long time to tell me.

I woke up gasping before the words came out.

The room was dark and completely silent. So I lay there catching my breath, and then I looked down at my hands lying on top of the blanket.

They were glowing soft silver in the dark, both of them were steady, quiet and unmistakably real.