Chapter 12: Sane

Chapter 12: Chapter 12: Sane

Zion’s wedding was beautiful, although Sebastian noticed very little of it.

He stood beneath the vaulted ceiling of Palatine’s royal chapel in formal black while morning light poured through the high windows and turned the pale stone gold around the edges. White flowers lined the central aisle, musicians played somewhere behind the gathered guests, and the front rows were crowded with enough royalty and old nobility to make the security arrangements alone a small nightmare.

Sebastian concentrated on keeping his pheromones under control.

The pressure behind his eyes had started before dawn and worsened while he dressed. By the time he reached the chapel, the familiar warning had become a steady heat beneath his skin, and now every breath seemed to push against something already strained too far.

His last suppressant had done almost nothing.

Neither had the one before it.

Regardless, he maintained a calm expression.

The fitted ceremonial suit was black with restrained dark-green embroidery along the collar and cuffs, formal enough for the heir of House Fitzgeralt without making him look as though he had been dressed by committee. His hair fell loose to his shoulders, pushed back from his face but otherwise left alone despite Lucas’s likely objections.

Less than an hour earlier, civilians had gathered beyond the palace barriers to watch the royal family arrive. Several children had shouted Sebastian’s name when they recognized him, and he had smiled, waved, and paused long enough for the cameras to catch exactly what everyone expected from him.

Nobody needed to know that ten minutes later he had locked himself inside a side room until the red disappeared from his vision.

The ceremony continued around him.

Diana reached Zion beneath the old Palatine arches and took his hands. Sebastian watched his cousin smile at her with an openness he rarely showed in public and decided, as he had long ago, that whatever else could be said about Diana Este was irrelevant. Zion loved her. That was enough.

The officiant spoke.

Vows followed.

Rings changed hands.

Sebastian stood where he was meant to stand, moved when he was supposed to move, and smiled when everyone else did.

His palms were damp inside his gloves.

His pheromones pressed harder against his control.

If they escaped here, even briefly, every dominant designation in the chapel would notice. Some would answer instinctively. Others would panic. The ceremony would become a security incident before anyone understood what had happened.

Sebastian held everything down by force.

He had been doing that for years.

After the vows came the formal movement of the royal households, an old ceremonial sequence that required each family to cross the front of the chapel in a particular order before the procession moved toward the reception wing.

Palatine first.

Then Saha.

Alamina and Rohan after.

Sebastian stepped aside as instructed.

Nero passed close enough that the sleeve of his purple-and-silver ceremonial mantle nearly brushed Sebastian’s arm.

His pale hair was completely loose, falling down his back beneath the narrow Sahan ceremonial crown. He looked exactly as composed as he had all morning, purple eyes bright beneath the chapel light, expression mild enough that nobody watching would have found anything unusual in the brief glance he gave Sebastian.

Then he spoke quietly.

"How is it to be sane for a moment?"

Nero kept walking.

Sebastian did not.

For several seconds, the chapel continued around him while the meaning of that sentence rearranged the last week inside his head.

He attributed the strange comfort to medication finally taking effect. ℯ

Every time Nero had been near him, the symptoms had weakened, and each time Nero left, they had returned.

Sebastian looked across the chapel.

Nero was several meters away now, speaking to Dean as though nothing had happened.

The realization came slowly enough to be worse.

The suppressants had not suddenly started working.

Nero had been stabilizing him.

Sebastian’s mouth went dry.

He knew Nero could control his pheromones with a precision ordinary dominant alphas could not. He knew they could be suppressed until there was almost no scent, no obvious pressure, no warning that something powerful had entered a room.

Sebastian simply had never considered that Nero could make them subtle enough to feel like relief instead of presence.

His pulse climbed.

Anger came first, followed quickly by humiliation.

Nero had known Sebastian was deteriorating.

Nero had watched him believe the medication was helping and said nothing.

Then, beneath both emotions, something colder settled into place.

If Nero had been holding him together for days, then Sebastian’s condition was worse than he had allowed himself to admit.

Much worse.

A violent pulse of heat moved through his abdomen and climbed into his chest.

Sebastian’s vision flashed red.

He caught himself before his weight shifted enough for anyone nearby to notice.

Someone glanced toward him.

Sebastian smiled automatically.

"I’m fine."

The response came so easily that the man accepted it and turned away.

His body was less cooperative.

The pheromones inside Sebastian surged hard enough that he felt the outer edge of them escape before he forced them back under control. His heartbeat had become heavy rather than fast, each contraction landing painfully beneath his sternum while pressure built through his skull.

He knew these symptoms.

Every dominant alpha did.

Backlash could be managed.

Collapse could sometimes be slowed.

Berserk was different.

Once that line was crossed, there was no pretending control still existed.

Sebastian had always imagined he would recognize the approach long before reaching it.

Apparently Nero had spent the last several days preventing him from seeing how close he already was.

Their eyes met briefly across the chapel.

Nero’s expression did not change.

Sebastian turned away before his own betrayed him.

The ceremony moved naturally into the reception, and the crowd began moving through the palace in polished currents of silk, uniforms, jewels, and carefully managed conversation. Sebastian stayed with the family long enough to congratulate Zion again, acknowledge Diana’s parents, and answer two questions from an Alaminian minister without remembering either of them afterward.

By the time he reached the reception hall, his chest hurt with every breath.

Music filled the room beneath enormous chandeliers while servants moved between guests carrying silver trays of champagne. Light flashed from glass and polished marble. Politicians laughed too loudly. Old nobles drifted between conversations with the same predatory ease they used at summits.

Sebastian lasted eleven minutes.

Then blood filled his mouth.

He swallowed on instinct and immediately regretted it when the metallic taste coated his throat.

He turned away from the ballroom before anyone could notice.

The eastern gallery was quieter, the music reduced to a distant rhythm behind thick walls. Sebastian passed two guards and one member of the palace staff without slowing, his public expression remaining intact until he reached the private marble washroom near the end of the corridor.

He pushed the door open and made it to the sink just before his body collapsed.

Both hands struck the marble.

Blood splattered white porcelain.

The cough tore through him hard enough to pull at his ribs, and by the time it stopped, his breathing had become rough despite every attempt to steady it.

Sebastian stared at the red spreading toward the drain.

His suppressant case was still in his pocket.

He pulled it free and placed it on the counter beside the sink.

For a long moment, he only looked at it.

Useless... Or nearly useless.

Certainly not the thing that had given him those brief hours of clarity during the week.

A bitter laugh escaped him.

"You fucking bastard."

He was not entirely certain whether he meant Nero or himself.

Probably both.

The music from the wedding reached him faintly through the walls.

Sebastian lifted his head toward the mirror.

His face had gone pale beneath the natural olive undertone of his skin. Blood marked the corner of his mouth, and his pupils were blown wide enough to make his green eyes look almost black.

For the first time, the reality was impossible to soften with medical terminology.

He was close.