My kingdom is my responsibility.
I got bored of politics. That was the truth of it. Two centuries of a kingdom that ran so smoothly it forgot it needed a king, and I’d grown restless. Numb. Walked through a portal because I wanted to feel anything other than the weight of a crown I’d stopped earning.
And while I was pretending to be ordinary, the Order had been experimenting on lycans in a basement forty miles from where I slept.
Fixing it was the minimum.
A rustling in the undergrowth pulled me from the spiral.
My wolf locked on the sound before my brain caught up, and then her scent hit me. Deeper than it used to be. Richer from the pregnancy, layered with the compound’s chemical residue and underneath that, the bond’s frequency at a pitch that made my chest ache and my blood run south simultaneously.
Mira emerged from the drainage tunnel’s exit point and nearly walked into me.
“Jesus.” She stumbled back a step. “What are you doing here?”
“Assessing the route.”
“You’re supposed to be recovering at camp.”
“I am recovering.”
“You’re sweating and you’re gray and you’re half a mile from camp. That’s not recovering. You’re being stubborn.”
“No. Exercise is good for recovery.”
She stared at me. Two days at the compound had stolen the color from her face again. But her spine was straight and the pregnancy had done things to her body that made my wolf lose all capacity for rational thought.
The curve of her stomach through her jacket. The way her hips had widened. The fullness in her chest that hadn’t been there before, straining against her shirt in a way that was going to get me killed if I kept looking.
My mate was growing our children and she’d never been more beautiful, and the possessiveness that rolled through me was total. Blinding.
I wanted to pin her against the nearest tree and put my mouth on every inch of new terrain until she forgot every reason she had to be angry with me.
Instead I stood there. Bleeding. Dignified.
“Solomon told you about Wyatt’s training schedule,” she said, reading my face. “Didn’t he?”
“Solomon provides operational briefings. The content is comprehensive.”
“The content is jealousy. He threw a rock at me with a note about Wyatt. And now you’ve dragged yourself to the perimeter with an open wound because your alpha brain couldn’t handle it.”
My jaw tightened at the name. Every single time.
I don’t really know the man, yes. But still, fuck Wyatt. I almost snarled at that if only Mira wasn’t staring at me.
“My alpha brain functions adequately. It simply has priorities.”
“Your priority should be healing.”
“My priority is you.”
The words landed between us. Too honest for banter. Her expression softened into a vulnerability she rarely let surface.
“Didn’t expect Solomon to be such a tattle,” she muttered.
“Wyatt is a male in proximity to our pregnant mate. That qualifies as a threat to every instinct I possess.” I held her gaze. “I recognize the irrationality. I’m here anyway.”
“All three of you. Completely insane.”
