Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Gregor stood in the center of his quarters with his hands braced against the back of a chair, breathing as if he’d just run a mile in full armor.
Over three centuries of discipline, of iron-willed control, of keeping every wayward thought and dangerous impulse locked in the vault where it belonged, and a young prince with a messy bun and a smart mouth had nearly cracked the whole thing open in under a second. Pathetic.
He paced the length of his room—twelve steps one way, twelve the other.
It was a small space, decorated sparsely.
A single bed with military corners, a wooden desk with a reading lamp, a wardrobe containing four identical dark shirts and three pairs of pants, a weapons rack on the wall holding his ceremonial sword and two daggers.
No decorations. No photographs. No personal touches beyond the books on his nightstand.
A soldier’s room. His home was the library, where he spent time with Fergal, and his workshop, where he found peace of mind. This was merely where he slept.
He stopped pacing and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
He could still feel the ghost of Fergal’s magic brushing against his mind.
The Murphy influencers had been aggressive and invasive, all blunt force and domination.
Fergal’s touch had been…warm. Curious. Like fingertips trailing across the surface of his skin, searching for an opening with a gentleness that made it infinitely more dangerous than any attack.
His dragon had stirred. That was the part that terrified Gregor most. Not defensively, not the way it should have when another dragon’s magic probed his consciousness.
It had responded by leaning toward the warmth.
Like it had recognized something in Fergal’s magical signature and reached for it like a man reaching for a fire in the dead of winter.
Gregor didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t want to find out.
He stripped off his shirt and walked into the bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his face.
The shock of it helped—marginally. He caught his reflection in the mirror and studied it with clinical detachment.
Steel-gray eyes, a little bloodshot from lack of sleep.
Mostly silver hair that had been dark once, centuries ago, before the weight of what he carried had leeched the color from it.
The scar on his cheek was a souvenir from a Murphy alpha who’d tried to stop him from leaving.
The crooked nose, broken twice—once in training, once by a door he hadn’t seen in the dark while carrying a body he—
Door. Shut. Deadbolt. Now.
He dried his face and pulled on a clean shirt. Evening patrol wouldn’t start for another hour, but he needed to move, needed to put physical distance between himself and what had happened in that library. Standing still left too much room for thinking, and nothing good could come from that.
He’d arrived at the Fitzgerald compound nearly two centuries ago with absolutely nothing.
Not even the clothes on his back. The Murphys had tried to stop him—first by reasoning with him, then by sheer violence—but he’d managed to escape by shifting and taking off.
He’d always been the fastest dragon among them, and he’d simply used his speed to get away.
What he’d witnessed—the new breeding program, the first forced matings, the omegas stripped of choice and dignity, the casual cruelty rebranded as tradition—had been more than he could swallow.
He’d tried to stay, had tried to tell himself it wasn’t his business, that clan politics were above his station, that his duty was to follow orders and keep his head down.
But there was a line, and the Murphys hadn’t just crossed it—they’d burned it down and salted the earth where it had stood.
King Lorcan had taken him in without hesitation.
For all his faults and weaknesses—and the man had many, though Gregor would never say that aloud—the king had welcomed him and given him purpose when his whole life had been in disarray.
First as a tutor to the crown prince, then as a tutor to Fergal, all while serving on the royal guard as well—a position of trust, of honor.
The Fitzgeralds had saved his life, and Gregor had spent every day since repaying that debt with the only currency he had: absolute loyalty and unwavering service.
He’d tutored Peter first. The crown prince and King Lorcan’s pride and heir.
Gregor sat on the edge of his bed and let himself think about Peter for exactly five seconds—the maximum he ever allowed.
A bright boy who’d grown into a cold young man.
Intelligent but lacking empathy. Ambitious in ways that had made Gregor’s skin crawl.
And then the tournament at the Murphy compound had taken place, and Peter had come home with fire in his eyes and praise on his lips for the very practices that had driven Gregor away.
Five seconds. Done. Door shut.
What mattered now was Fergal, who’d been nothing short of a miracle, born thirty-two years and countless failed clutches after Peter, when everyone had given up hope that the queen would ever produce a spare.
The moment Gregor had first seen that squirming, furious hatchling—all sharp claws and sharper lungs—something had rearranged itself inside his chest. A fierce, irrational certainty that this child was his to protect.
Not the clan’s, not the king’s, not anyone else’s.
His. And when Peter had turned his jealous eyes on his baby brother, Gregor had been there.
Gregor had watched Fergal grow from an energetic hatchling who climbed everything and feared nothing into a sharp-tongued teenager who argued with his tutors, including Gregor, for sport.
He’d watched him devour books like they were meals, master languages in weeks, ask questions that made men three times his age squirm.
He’d watched him stand up to his father—respectfully but immovably—over the treatment of omegas, and had been so proud his chest had ached with it.
And now, everything was at risk.
Gregor pulled on his boots and strapped his dagger to his belt, then double-checked his gun before holstering it.
He didn’t mind his royal guard shifts, especially now.
Anything was better than sitting in this room remembering the warmth of Fergal’s magic and the look in those sharp brown eyes when Gregor had told him to stop.
The compound’s corridors were quiet and Gregor moved through them quickly.
He’d memorized every floorboard, every hinge, every blind corner because his route was the same every night.
East wing first—the royal quarters, where King Lorcan lived and where Fergal’s personal rooms were.
Then the north corridor, past the kitchens and the great hall, down to the armory and the barracks—despite modern times, they had retained their old names, now ingrained in the collective memory of the clan—and out through the east gate to the perimeter.
He exchanged a few words with the sentries and asked about the wards—stable, no fluctuations—and activity beyond the perimeter. A wolverine had been spotted near the north fence, and a herd of caribou had moved through the valley that morning. Otherwise, nothing.
The wind howled, whipping up snow in frantic flurries from the frozen ground.
Gregor preferred it over the silence because when the wind paused, it left behind a stillness so complete it felt like being sealed inside a tomb.
Northern Canada was not for the weak of mind.
Or body. As much as he’d hated the Murphys, Ireland’s climate had been a hell of a lot more agreeable.
Yes, he’d grown tired of the endless rain some springs, but eventually, the sun would shine and everything would be green. He missed all those shades of green.
He stopped at his usual lookout point—a raised platform of packed snow at the compound’s northwest corner that offered a clear view of the valley below.
The aurora borealis danced and rippled across the sky in shimmery streaks of green and violet, so vivid they seemed close enough to touch.
The snowfields glowed faintly beneath them, a landscape of ghostly luminescence stretching to the dark line of the boreal forest and the jagged teeth of the mountains beyond.
Beautiful. Breathtaking, even. And Gregor barely saw any of it because his traitorous mind kept returning to the library.
To the warmth of Fergal’s magic, the way it had slipped past his outer defenses as if they were made of tissue paper rather than two centuries of reinforced steel.
The half-second glimpse Fergal had caught before Gregor slammed everything shut…
How much had he felt? How much had he seen?
If Fergal had gone deeper—even a fraction deeper—he would’ve found things Gregor couldn’t explain away.
The attraction was the least of it, though that alone would be catastrophic.
He’d be removed from his position at minimum, but more likely whipped for it—King Lorcan still appreciated old-fashioned corporal punishments—and Gregor would deserve it.
But underneath the attraction lay something far more dangerous.
Guilt so old it had calcified into something structural, load-bearing.
Remove it, and everything above would collapse.
The guilt connected to a memory Gregor kept behind the heaviest door in his mind—the one with the thickest deadbolts, the one he never opened, the one he checked compulsively to make sure it was sealed.
If Fergal ever opened that door, he wouldn’t find a protector. He’d find a killer.
But wait, how had Fergal gotten in? Gregor froze.
In the turmoil of his thoughts and emotions, it hadn’t registered with him.
Fergal’s mind-to-mind contact hadn’t been that of an influencer.
Gregor had met enough of those over the years to recognize their tactics.
Even if they were subtle, it always felt like you had a change of mind about something or that you were steered in a certain direction.
This had been different. Subtler. Warmer. More like…
Gregor gripped the railing of the lookout platform until his knuckles went white.
It couldn’t be, could it? But what other mind-to-mind abilities were there?
Gregor had only encountered a mind reader once, and that dragon had gone mad when he’d been unable to control his gift. Was that the fate that awaited Fergal?
He was going to push harder now. Gregor knew him too well to expect anything else.
Fergal had never met a locked door he didn’t want to kick open, a mystery he didn’t want to solve, a boundary he didn’t want to test. And now he’d tasted blood—that half-second of raw, unguarded emotion that Gregor had accidentally leaked—and he would come back for more.
Gregor would have to be ready for him.
He released the railing and straightened his posture. He’d have to keep Fergal out. He had no other choice.
He finished his patrol route, verified the ward’s integrity along the southern perimeter, and spoke with the night-shift captain about tomorrow’s training schedule.
Every interaction was professional, efficient, and exactly what was expected of him.
No one who saw him would suspect that anything was wrong.
When he returned to the main building, the corridor outside his quarters was not empty.
Fergal sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his long legs stretched across the hallway.
His black hair was loose, falling past his shoulders in a dark cascade that caught the lamplight.
He wasn’t wearing his usual layered clothing—just a hoodie and sweatpants, the kind of thing you wore to bed, not to sit in a freezing corridor past midnight.
He looked up when Gregor approached, and those sharp brown eyes hit him like a physical force.
Gregor stopped. “Your Highness. It’s late.”
“It is.”
“You should be in bed.”
“Probably.” Fergal didn’t move. He studied Gregor’s face with that unnerving directness that had nothing to do with influencer abilities and everything to do with who he was. “Why are you afraid of me?”
The question landed like a fist to the solar plexus. Gregor kept his expression neutral through sheer force of will. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“You walked out of our session for the first time in five years. You’ve been on patrol for three hours when your route takes ninety minutes. And your hands—” Fergal glanced at them. “They’re still shaking.”
Gregor curled his fingers into fists. Damn the boy’s observational skills. Damn every lesson Gregor had taught him about reading body language and situational awareness. He’d created a monster. Still, he said nothing.
Fergal rose to his feet in one fluid motion. He was shorter than Gregor—five-eleven to Gregor’s six-three—but he stood as if he were the tallest person in any room. “I won’t do it again.”
Gregor wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know what Fergal was referring to. “Good.”
Fergal took a step closer. Then another.
Close enough that Gregor could smell him, something warm and woodsy, underlaid with the ozone scent of a dragon who’d recently used magic.
Close enough that the heat radiating from Fergal’s body cut through the corridor’s perpetual chill.
“One day, I’m going to know everything about you, Gregor.
Every single thing you’re hiding behind that wall. And I won’t use my magic to do it.”
The absolute, unshakable certainty in Fergal’s voice, the same certainty Gregor had watched develop from the time Fergal was a child arguing his case with the conviction of a king, hit Gregor harder than any magic could.
Fergal held his gaze for three eternal heartbeats. Then he turned and walked away, his feet silent on the wooden floor, his loose hair swaying against his back. Gregor watched him until he turned the corner, out of sight. The exhale that rushed out of him was like a tornado.
In his quarters, he sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the ceiling while the aurora borealis painted shifting colors across the frost on his window. Green. Violet. Green again.
I’m going to know everything about you.
And the truly terrifying part—the thing that kept Gregor awake long after the aurora faded and the compound settled into the deep silence of a northern winter night—was not the fear that Fergal might succeed.
It was how badly part of him wanted him to.