Xeon: The Drakenfell prince is speaking. I would like to bite him.

Fin: This is his house. We play by his rules.

Xeon: He is looking at her. I would like to bite him for that as well.

Fin: Xeon. Enough.

Serena was speaking with Elara and Hale, acting completely fine. But she was absolutely, catastrophically, the opposite of fine.

The last time the three of them shared a room, it ended badly. She remembered. Her body remembered. And her matebond was broadcasting it to both of them.

Fin leaned against a stone column across the room next to Aeron, face giving nothing away. For one terrible second, he was certain she was crying. He looked at her.

She held her composure so convincingly that anyone without a matebond would have believed it entirely.

Fifteen feet away, Dex’s attention forked, half on Tiberon’s mouth forming sentences, half on the woman thirty feet away whose distress was flooding him like cold water through a cracked hull.

His eyes moved from Serena to the far end of the chamber and found Fin already looking back.

Their eyes met.

It was brief. Three seconds, maybe less. But in those three seconds, an understanding passed between two men on opposing sides.

Dex looked away first. Fin exhaled through his nose and uncrossed his arms. It was the most cooperation they’d managed since the fight, and it happened without a single word exchanged.

Members continued filtering out. Aeron lingered near the runes on the far wall, fingers hovering over inscriptions he desperately wanted to trace, his restraint visibly costing him.

Serena turned towards Fin, taking a step, but then froze. She said goodbye to him the last few mornings before leaving for Drakenfell. She was about to train, and it was muscle memory to tell him goodbye. But Dex was right there, and she didn’t want to hurt either of them.

She looked away, turning, sadness crossing her face.

Xeon: She is sad. Fix it.

Fin: I saw.

Xeon: Then why are you still standing here?

Before Fin could move, Gavriel materialized at Serena’s side with the focus of a predator tracking three different animals at once.

"Frostborne. I need to show you something on the scrolls." He tilted his head toward the chamber door. "Shall we?"

He said it like it was nothing. The kind of request that gave her a reason to move, that didn’t require her to say goodbye to anyone.

Serena refocused, and nodded, then moved towards the exit with him. As they passed through the archway, Gav’s hand settled against her lower back, guiding her through the doorway. The gesture of a Gamma who’d been steering this girl through difficult rooms since the week she arrived in Drakenfell.

Fin clocked it. His eyes narrowed on Gavriel’s hand for two full seconds before his expression smoothed back to neutral.

Xeon: The Gamma touched our mate.

Fin: I saw.

Xeon: His hand was on her back. That is not where hands go on women who are not yours.

Fin: I said I saw.

Xeon: You are calm. I do not trust your calm.

Fin: Good.

✦✦✦

They made it halfway down the east wing before the voice found them.

"Quite the morning."

Bellatrix looked from Serena to Gavriel. Then back to Serena. Then to Gavriel again, slower this time, the path she traveled loaded with implication. "How thoughtful of you to spread yourself so evenly among the leadership. Two alphas and a gamma. Add a beta, and you’ll have a full hand."

Serena didn’t bother reacting. Some people weren’t worth the facial muscles.

"Tell me, does Shadowclaw know the Gamma walks you to private rooms, or is this something you do on his days off?"

"Bellatrix." That tone coming from Gavriel was rare, and carried a warning that most people would have heeded.

Bellatrix was not most people.

"Don’t Bellatrix me, Sterling. You’re escorting her through my corridors to your private study. I may be many things, but I am not oblivious." She turned back to Serena. "I’ve seen bitches in heat with more selectivity. At least they make them earn it first."

Serena held Bellatrix’s stare. She’d been insulted by experts. Bellatrix was amateur compared to Guinevere and Agnes. Frankly, she was unimpressed.

"If the Knotty Omega is your primary intelligence source, Your Majesty, I’d recommend diversifying."

"Your mother died before she could see what you’ve become. A mercy from the Moon Goddess." Bellatrix took a step closer, her lips pulling into a tight smile.

"My son thinks you’re his destiny. Shadowclaw thinks you’re his salvation. And now the Gamma thinks you’re his secret. You know what you actually are? You’re a hole they’re all too proud to admit they’re sharing."

Gav’s entire body went rigid. His mouth opened, the response already loaded, already nuclear, the kind of thing that would detonate the corridor and leave nothing standing.

Serena stepped in front of him, putting her body between him and the woman whose bed he’d been in because what Bellatrix was building towards was designed to cut him and Serena knew it.

Gav looked down at her, and almost laughed. Adorable.

"Queen Bellatrix is speaking from assumption, Gav." Her voice was calm, directed over her shoulder at him without breaking eye contact with Bellatrix. "She doesn’t know what she’s talking about."

Bellatrix’s expression hardened, as she processed the positioning, the protection, the implication of a girl who stepped in front of a man twice her size like she was the dangerous one.

"How touching. Defending my sloppy seconds. Rich coming from a pass-around whore dressed up like a princess."

"That’s enough."

Dex stood at the turn of the corridor, Tiberon three steps behind him. His eyes were dark, molten gold bleeding through in a way that said Aegon was close to the surface and in no mood for diplomacy.

Something in Serena’s shoulders released at the sight of him, involuntary.

Dex took in the scene. His mother, positioned for attack. Gav, rigid with suppressed fury behind Serena. Serena, standing between them, chin up, defending a man who didn’t need defending because she thought he did.

He moved grabbing her hand. Then gave his mother a look of pure disgust. Something Dexmon Drakenfell had never done like that. "If you cannot control your mouth, I will control your access. To her. To this wing. To me."

Serena blinked, stunned that Dexmon had spoken to his mother that way.

He kissed her hand.

"Serena." His voice warmed when he said her name. "Onyx is here. Morholt brought him to the field."

She looked away from Bellatrix to Dexmon, composure cracking into a warm unguarded smile she couldn’t smother.

"Onyx is here?"

"It’s his first day training." Dex tilted his head toward the corridor behind him.

"We’ll look at the scrolls later, Frostborne." Gav’s voice had recovered its usual ease, the mask back in place so seamlessly that only Serena and Dex would have known it had ever slipped. "Go collect your dragon child before he destroys government property."

She disappeared down the corridor at a pace that was one degree of restraint away from a full sprint.

Dex watched her go. Then he turned to his mother.

"You are done."

It was two words, and they carried the weight of every conversation he’d had with her about Serena, every warning, every line she’d crossed.

He stepped closer, his voice dropping. "This is your final warning. If you so much as look at her the wrong way again, I will cut you out of my life and hers and you won’t know your grandchildren."

"Dexmon," Tiberon said, voice firm.

Dexmon ignored Tiberon, gold flaring through his irises, his focus locked on his mother.

"Grandchildren?" Bellatrix said the word like it tasted bad. "With her?"

Her chin lifted. "I only want you to be happy, Dexmon. You can’t possibly be fine with sharing her. Get her out or tell her to cut Shadowclaw off."

"No."

Her eyes glittered, but she said nothing else, because even she could read the arithmetic of this moment. The look on his face said the next word out of her mouth could make this conversation exponentially worse.

Dex held her stare for three more seconds. Then he turned and walked after Serena without looking back.

Bellatrix stood in the corridor, spine rigid, watching her son’s back disappear around the corner. Fury and something else lived in her expression, the look of a mother watching her son and throne slip away by a girl who was completely fine with breaking her son’s heart.

Tiberon stood, hands clasped behind his back.

Bellatrix turned to him. Whatever she was about to say died on contact with his stare.

"Discretion." His voice was quiet. "That was the one condition on your hobbies. Discretion."

He took one step closer, closing the distance between them to something intimate and suffocating. "I heard you weaponize it. In a corridor. Against your daughter-in-law. With Sterling standing right there. Sloppy seconds?"

"She provoked me."

"She didn’t. But even if she did, I don’t care." Tiberon’s eyes held hers with the patience of a man who had been married to her for thirty-one years and still found new ways to be disappointed. "You are going to drag that boy into a scandal because you cannot resist using every weapon in your arsenal, regardless of who it destroys. Sterling is Dexmon’s closest ally. He is my Gamma. He is integral to the function of this pack, and you are going to shatter him for the satisfaction of winning an argument in a hallway."

Bellatrix’s throat moved. She did not speak.

"You will correct this," Tiberon continued. "You will ensure that what you implied in this corridor never reaches another ear. And you will remember, clearly, that the information you hold about Sterling is a vulnerability for this family. If it becomes public, it will damage Dexmon’s inner circle, undermine the chain of command, and hand every rival pack on this continent a weapon they did not earn."

He leaned closer. "If I hear you use it again, against Serena or anyone else, I will consider it a deliberate act of sabotage against the Crown. And I will respond accordingly."

He straightened. Turned and walked back towards his study, refusing to waste another syllable more.

Bellatrix stood alone in the corridor, then turned, heels striking stone in the opposite direction, each step refusing to sound like retreat.