Chapter 366: No, You Cannot Kidnap Her

Kael looked at Nicholas like he was a toddler holding a permanent marker.

"Cute. Very don’t touch my chew toy. Also extremely fucking stupid. Two problems the size of continents. You take her tonight, Maddox declares war before breakfast. And she keeps disappearing into holy goddamn flashlight mode, and I’m the only idiot who can absorb that shit."

"I am getting my mate out of a Keep where she just got backhanded. I’ll have my Master Mage solve the white light issue."

"Your plan is kidnapping the Dragon King’s wife and pretending geopolitics don’t exist. Stunning. Someone get Brennan a sandwich. Did Damon rubber-stamp this, or are we all just winging the apocalypse?"

"Damon doesn’t approve my personal decisions."

"He should. His strategic instincts are better than yours and that’s coming from a dragon, so let that sting for a minute."

Nicholas’s jaw tightened. "Then what? We sit in this hallway forever? She rotates between kings like a shift schedule? Every man gets his allotted hours and we pretend that’s functional?"

"Yes."

The word dropped between them with all the grace of a dead cat on a dinner table.

"Yes," Kael repeated. "That is exactly what we do. Because the alternative is three kingdoms at war, a woman torn apart by men who claim to love her, while whoever took her memories laughs their asses off."

Nicholas stared at him. The insult he had been building died somewhere between his brain and his mouth because the man on the floor across from him was right and being right was the most annoying thing Kael Ashenvale did consistently.

"You’re proposing a rotation," Nicholas said slowly.

"I’m proposing that three men who love the same woman stop trying to own her and start figuring out how to coexist without setting two continents on fire. You have the law. Maddox has a ring. I have—" He paused. "I have whatever the fuck I have, which is currently undefined and I’m choosing to leave it that way until she defines it."

"That’s the least Kael thing you’ve ever said."

"I’m evolving. Against my will. It’s disgusting. If I start journaling, put me down."

Nicholas was quiet. His wolf was circling a thought that the man didn’t want to look at directly because looking at it meant accepting it and accepting it meant sharing and his wolf did not share.

"You’re actually serious about a schedule."

"As a fucking heart attack. Lucky for us, she already puts all three of us through one on a rotating basis. Consistency. Love that for the brand."

Quiet stretched between them. The productive kind. The kind where one strategist brings up a valid point and the other strategist stops talking because he is processing that and the conclusion needs a minute to breathe before someone says something stupid again.

"She wants to go back to Solveil," Nicholas said after a minute.

Kael’s head turned so fast it should’ve made a sound. "She what?"

"In Solveil. We saw these glowing drinks at a bar. She asked if we could go back there someday and try one. We were being chased by the police or I would have gotten her one then."

The news dropped on Kael like hearsay and a punchline. He processed it in stages. Stage one: what. Stage two: WHAT THE FUCK. Stage three: Miss Blushes-If-You-Breathe asked the wolf king out while the law was chasing them.

"She asked YOU on a date while being chased by cops."

"Well when you put it like that. I guess that is a date," Nicholas stated, as if he hadn’t known exactly what he was implying when he said it.

"She also surrendered to the cops for me. Told me to escape through a tavern while she distracted them. She had a five-year prison plan. Community service by year three. Supervised outdoor privileges by year five."

Kael stared at him.

Then something happened that neither man had anticipated. Kael laughed. A real laugh. The kind that starts in the gut and climbs through the chest and comes out of the mouth before the brain can review the decision. His head fell back against the stone and the sound bounced off the corridor walls and came back sounding like two men who had been drowning all night and had just found a pocket of air.

"A five-year prison plan," Kael repeated.

"She had it mapped out."

"Of course she did." He wiped his eyes. "She would have detailed schedules, behavioral milestones, and a petition for early release with supporting documentation."

"She told the commander of their Kingsguard that she was a terrorist."

Kael’s face cycled through she did admit that out loud to the police with witnesses and landed on gods this woman is going to be the death of me. His hand came up to cover his face because the image of Guinevere Lunaris identifying herself as a terrorist to armed law enforcement while Nicholas was behind her, probably mid-heart-attack, mid-prayer, mid-why, was so funny it bypassed every defense he had.

"She told them her runes were contagious and they should wear gloves," Nicholas added.

"Stop. I can’t." Kael was losing it. Properly losing it. The sound was ugly and uncontrolled and belonged to a man who hadn’t laughed like this in years and had forgotten how much it hurt.

Nicholas’s mouth twitched. The twitch grew. The wolf king who had entered this hallway ready to commit murder was now fighting a smile because the woman they were both in love with had apparently treated an international manhunt like a cultural exchange program.

"I got her a glowing fruit," Nicholas added. "She looked at me like I’d handed her a diamond."

Kael’s laughter died by a degree. Something else replaced it. Something quieter and older and heavier.

"She does that," Kael said. "The smallest things wreck her."

The silence that followed was different. The hostility was gone. The territorial posturing was gone. What remained was two men sitting on a stone floor at an hour that had no business existing, sharing pieces of a woman who had given each of them something different and needed all of them in ways she didn’t yet understand.

Kael broke the silence. "She thought I was fucking my brother."

Nicholas’s face went through a journey. "She WHAT?"

"She asked how long Maddox and I had been life partners and cohabitating."