Chapter 365: Two Mates In Time-Out

Once upon a time there were two idiots sent away into a hall, and both were coping like professionals, which is to say, not at all.

Nicholas Shadowfell had left because his mate had asked him to, and he was now regretting it, fighting his wolf and all of his instincts. He wanted his mate. He wanted to leave this goddamn Keep. And he especially wanted to deck a dragon named Maddox across the face.

So he turned on his heel and made his way back to the Dragon King’s chambers. The guards knew him by now. Nobody stopped him or thought twice.

When he rounded the corner, he saw the other dragon he was pissed at.

Kael Ashenvale was sitting on the floor with his back against the stone wall. Legs stretched out across the corridor. Eyes closed. Arms crossed over his chest. The posture of a man who had been sitting there since he stormed out and hadn’t moved a single inch because moving required a destination and he didn’t have one.

Nicholas stopped.

Kael opened one eye. "You look like shit."

"You’re on the floor."

"Observant. That’s why you’re a king, Shadowfell."

Nicholas stared at him. Kael stared back with the one open eye. Two men who should have been enemies finding each other in a hallway at the worst possible hour, united by the singular experience of being kicked out of the same room by the same woman.

"Move," Nicholas said.

"Can’t. My legs have unionized. They’re demanding better working conditions and a shorter commute."

"I’m going in there."

"The hell you are." Kael’s second eye opened. "She told us both to leave. So sit your royal ass on this floor and suffer like a goddamn adult."

"I’m done sitting. I’m done waiting. I’m done standing in hallways while my mate is behind a door with a man who just—"

"He hit her. His fist was aimed at YOUR jaw and she walked into it. I was there."

The words landed on Nicholas like a wrecking ball swung at point-blank range. Every muscle in his body locked simultaneously. His wolf didn’t surge. It erupted, slamming against his ribs with the singular, blinding fury of an animal that had just been told the one thing that would permanently remove the leash.

He moved toward the door.

Kael was off the floor so fast the transition from sitting to standing didn’t have a middle. His hand hit Nicholas’s chest and his boots slid three inches across the stone because stopping a wolf king at full speed was not as easy as Kael thought it would be.

"Get your hand off my chest, Ashenvale."

"Get your emotions off my hallway."

"It’s not your hallway."

"I was here first. Squatter’s rights. Emotional jurisdiction. Pick one."

"MOVE, Ashenvale. I won’t ask twice."

"She asked us to leave," Kael gritted. "Both of us. She looked at you and said please and you walked out because she asked. If you go in there right now, you undo every second of trust she just gave you."

"He HIT her."

"No shit. We just stated that."

Nicholas’s chest was heaving. His wolf was making a sound behind his ribs that didn’t belong in a hallway.

The admission sat between them.

Nicholas looked at Kael. Really looked. Past the armor of sarcasm and the performance of indifference and the carefully curated persona of a man who treated vulnerability like a communicable disease. Underneath all of it was a man who had also felt Guinevere’s head hit stone and was also standing in this hallway because she had asked him to leave and he had and the leaving was eating him alive.

"She chose to stay with him," Kael continued. "She pulled him behind her. She stepped between him and us. You felt the same thing I felt. She wasn’t afraid of Maddox. She was afraid of what we would do to him."

"I’m still going to do it."

"Then you will prove her right."

Nicholas heard it. Recognized it was correct.

His wolf receded by one degree. Then another. He leaned his weight against the wall and slid down it until his ass hit the stone. The posture of a king who had just been defeated by a woman’s request and was surrendering to a hallway.

Kael slid down the opposite wall and resumed his original position. Legs stretched. Arms crossed. Two men. Same corridor. Same woman. Same bruise they had both felt through connections that couldn’t be turned off.

"This is pathetic," Nicholas stated.

"This is rock bottom. I’ve been here before. The trick is to stop digging."

"You’re giving me advice."

"I’m giving me advice. You’re eavesdropping."

The silence that followed lasted a full minute. A long minute. The kind of minute that happens between men who have nothing left to perform for and are too exhausted to rebuild the walls that just came down.

Nicholas broke it.

"What were you and Maddox referring to earlier, when you said you were covering something up? I thought it was about her marking me." His eyes were on Kael. Direct. No buildup. No political framing. The question of a man who had been assembling pieces from three kingdoms and was missing the one that tied them together.

"Yeah, no. The marking bit was news to me." Kael’s jaw shifted by a fraction. "And that’s a big question for a hallway."

"Small hallway. Big question. Answer it."

"She is being hunted by their Kingsguard, and they aren’t being gentle about it. Because she is accused of something but I don’t have the full picture."

"Yes you do, Ashenvale," Nicholas said flatly.

"Okay I do. The last thing she needs is more people believing it."

"Believing what?"

"Use your imagination, Shadowfell."

The sentence hung between them like smoke. Kael wasn’t going to say the words attempted regicide in a hallway where any passing guard could hear it because he wasn’t a fucking amateur, and he thought the wolf king was smart enough to fill in the blanks without a damn crayon.

He was incorrect.

That was the opposite of what the wolf king had thought.

The wolf king genuinely was wondering if this was about trespassing or if she had done something offensive on accident because he could not see his mate doing anything remotely worthy of this reaction.

He leaned his head back against the stone. His wolf was still pacing, but the pace had slowed from frantic to measured, the gait of an animal that had recognized the cage was made of something it couldn’t break.

"I’m taking her back with me to Shadowfell tonight."

Kael let out a laugh. Short. Humorless. The kind of laugh that comes out of a man who has heard the worst possible suggestion and is too tired to be polite about it.

"Over my dead body."

"That can be arranged, Ashenvale."