— • —
Riley
It had been a few days, and Caelan had been groveling every minute of them.
It started with the gifts.
The first morning, I woke up to find a velvet box on the pillow beside me. Inside: a pair of earrings set with moonstones that glowed faintly in the light. Beautiful. Expensive. Absolutely unnecessary.
“Caelan, you didn’t have to-”
“I wanted to.”
The next day: a cashmere shawl so impossibly soft I wanted to wrap myself in it and never leave. The day after: a leather-bound journal with my initials embossed in gold. Then: a collection ofrare first-edition romance novels I’d mentioned wanting once, in passing, weeks ago.
He’d remembered.
I stared at them, stunned. “How did you even get these? We’re in Lytopia.”
He just smiled mysteriously. “I have my ways.”
I didn’t want to know what favors he’d called in, what strings he’d pulled, what interdimensional nonsense he’d arranged to get me books from the human world. I decided not to ask. Some questions were better left unanswered.
Then came the more creative gifts.
A tiny sculpture of a white wolf, carved from some kind of glowing crystal. A music box that played a lullaby I vaguely remembered from childhood, though how he’d found it, I had no idea. A crown made entirely of woven wildflowers that he presented to me with such earnest sincerity that I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was absurd.
I wore it for an hour anyway. His smile was worth the woodland fairy princess aesthetic.
But the gifts were just the beginning.
Caelan discovered acts of service.
“I made breakfast,” he announced one morning, presenting me with a tray of... I wasn’t sure what to call it. It was supposed to be eggs, I thought. Maybe. They were a concerning shade of brown.
“Did you... cook this?”
“I’ve been taking classes.” He said it casually, completely matter-of-fact. “Since I first arrived in Lytopia. The castle chef has been teaching me. I’m getting better.”
The eggs were edible. Barely. But he looked so proud of himself, standing there with that hopeful expression, that I ate every bite and asked for seconds.
His face lit up. Worth the indigestion.
By day three, his cooking had improved dramatically. Apparently, werewolf princes were fast learners when properly motivated, and daily lessons were paying off. The pancakes were actually good. The eggs were recognizable as eggs. Progress.
Then he started doing my laundry.
My actual laundry. He carried my clothes to the wash house, scrubbed them by hand because he didn’t trust the servants to do it properly, and hung them to dry near the fire so they’d be warm when I put them on.
“You know there are people whose job it is to do this,” I pointed out.
“I know.” He folded a dress with careful precision. “But I wanted to.”
There it was again. That phrase. I wanted to. Taking care of me wasn’t an obligation or a performance. He actually desired to do it.
It was weakening my resolve. Significantly.
One morning, I woke at dawn to strange sounds: thumping, scraping, the occasional muttered curse.
