I followed.
The camp was small.
A fire banked low, a cot near the stream, supplies stacked under a makeshift canopy. And three men arranged around the clearing in positions that told me everything about the past two days.
Lucian sat against a tree with his back straight and his jaw set, wearing an expression that said he would die before admitting he couldn’t stand up. The wound on his chest was bandaged but the gray tinge to his skin hadn’t faded.
My stomach dropped. I’d done that. The guilt had been eating at me since that morning and seeing the damage up close made it worse.
His storm-gray eyes found me the moment I stepped into the firelight and the relief in them was so raw it almost knocked me sideways.
Solomon stood at the perimeter, arms crossed, already scanning the forest behind me to confirm I hadn’t been followed. His gaze swept me once. When it settled on my stomach, his jaw tightened.
But there was a difference in him. A looseness in his shoulders I’d never seen before. The permanent tension in his spine had eased by a fraction. Maybe it has to do with his father being alive.
Percival sat against an oak tree with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. No grin or wave, which was weird. He wasn’t bounding toward me with a joke and an invasion of my personal space. He looked up when I arrived and raised a hand.
It was wrong. The two of them had switched. Solomon had lightened and Percival had gone dark, and the reversal unsettled me in a way I couldn’t name.
What happened to them when I was gone?
“You look terrible,” I said to Lucian. Because I needed words and those were the first ones that felt honest.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re gray. Literally gray.”
“I’ve survived worse.”
“Name one time.”
“I was stabbed by my own mate with a silver blade in front of an audience. That was recent.”
The words landed between us. Delivered with the dry humor of a man who’d had two days to process the irony and had apparently decided to weaponize it.
“Low blow,” I said.
“Just the truth.”
“Can you stand?”
His eyes narrowed. The challenge registered exactly the way I’d intended it to, and Lucian braced his hand against the tree and pushed himself upright. He made it, barely. A tremor ran through his arms that he couldn’t hide and the bandage on his chest darkened at the edges.
“Sit down, you stubborn idiot.”
“You asked if I could stand. I can stand.”
“And now you’re bleeding. Sit.”
“I’m the king. I don’t take orders from...”
“Sit down, Your Majesty, or I will put you down myself and we both know how that ended last time.”
He sat. The ghost of a smirk crossed his face and vanished, and beneath the bravado I caught the guilt.
The king should be leading, not leaning against trees. He should be planning the assault, not letting his pack members and a pregnant woman do the work.
The crown was crushing him and the wound was proof that even kings bled.
