Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fergal was running on fumes, and he didn’t even know it.
Gregor had been watching the signs accumulate for days now—the tremor in Fergal’s hands when he signed documents, so slight that no one else would notice but as glaring as a signal flare to Gregor.
The dark circles beneath his eyes that became more pronounced each day.
The meals that arrived and sat untouched until Gregor physically moved the plate in front of him and waited until he ate.
The coffee that went cold because Fergal poured it, set it down, and forgot it existed within thirty seconds.
And the sleep. That was the worst of it.
Fergal collapsed into unconsciousness the moment his head touched the pillow—his body demanding what his mind refused to give—but at three in the morning, sometimes two, sometimes four, his breathing would change.
The deep, even rhythm of sleep would fracture into something shallower, quicker, and Gregor would lie in the dark listening to the man beside him think.
Gregor couldn’t fix any of the things Fergal was facing—a murdered father, a stolen crown, enemies embedded in the walls, dark magic gathering around them, and a Dragon Council ten days away that would determine whether a young king survived his first year on the throne. But he could do something else.
He could help him find release.
He found Fergal in the study—where else?
—at half past nine, at the desk he’d occupied since seven that morning.
The remnants of a dinner sat on a tray on the side table, and Gregor noted with satisfaction that the plate that had held mac and cheese was mostly empty.
He’d started having the kitchen prepare Fergal’s favorites.
The simple comfort foods that Fergal was most likely to actually consume.
“Time to stop,” Gregor said from the doorway.
Fergal didn’t look up. “I need to finish the Council seating arrangements.”
“The seating arrangements can wait until morning.”
“And the ward specifications for the Council site need to be—”
“Morning.”
“And I need to—”
Gregor crossed the room, placed his hand flat on the document Fergal was reading, and slid it away from him. Fergal’s pen continued moving for a half-second, drawing a line across the empty desk before his brain caught up with the absence of paper.
He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, the sharp brown dulled by exhaustion, and the reading glasses he still pretended to hate were sitting crookedly on his nose.
He looked young and tired and stubborn, and something behind Gregor’s sternum ached with a fierceness that still caught him off guard after all these weeks.
“What you need is a shower, a cup of tea, and eight hours of sleep. In that order. What you want is to keep working until your body gives out because working means you don’t have to think about anything except the next document, and thinking is the thing you’re avoiding.”
Fergal opened his mouth. Closed it. Took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands—the gesture so achingly familiar that Gregor could have sketched it from memory.
“I hate it when you do that,” Fergal muttered.
“Do what?”
“See right through me. It’s deeply inconvenient.”
“Then stop being transparent.” Gregor picked up the cold coffee mug and the document stack and moved both to the far side of the desk, out of Fergal’s reach. “Shower. Tea. Bed. That’s an order.”
“You can’t give me orders. I’m the king.”
“And yet.” Gregor held the study door open and waited.
Fergal glared at him for three full seconds—a personal record—then pushed back from the desk with the exaggerated reluctance of a man who wanted it known that he was complying under protest. He stood, swayed almost imperceptibly, and Gregor’s hand was on his arm before the sway had fully registered.
“I’m fine,” Fergal said.
“You stood up too fast. Your blood pressure dropped. When did you last drink water?”
“I had coffee.”
“Water, Fergal.”
“Coffee is made with water. It counts.”
Gregor steered him toward the corridor without dignifying that with a response.
Their quarters—and they were theirs now, the fiction of “security arrangement” a running joke neither of them bothered to maintain anymore—were warm when they entered. Gregor had adjusted the heating before his patrol, knowing Fergal ran cold when he was exhausted.
He filled a glass of water from the kitchen and handed it to Fergal, who drank it with the distracted obedience of a man whose energy for resistance had been depleted somewhere around hour fourteen of his workday.
While Fergal showered—a process that took twice as long as usual because Gregor suspected he was standing under the hot water with his eyes closed, letting the heat do what sleep couldn’t—Gregor made tea.
For himself, the usual smoky black blend.
For Fergal, the chamomile that he wouldn’t have voluntarily chosen but that Gregor had been substituting for his evening coffee without fanfare or discussion.
Tiny adjustments to the environment around Fergal, designed to nudge him toward rest without triggering the stubbornness that flared whenever he felt managed.
He’d handled Fergal’s education in a similar manner—presenting information in the right order and creating conditions for discovery rather than forcing conclusions, respecting the intelligence of the student while quietly shaping the curriculum.
He was still managing Fergal, still shaping the conditions of his life, still operating in the background with an authority that Fergal hadn’t explicitly granted and probably wouldn’t appreciate if he fully understood its scope. Was that love? Or was it control dressed up in tenderness?
He loved Fergal. The certainty of it had settled into his bones weeks ago, quiet and immovable, and he’d stopped fighting it the way one stops fighting gravity.
It was simply there, a fundamental force that shaped everything around it.
But love built on a lie was a castle built on sand, and Gregor could feel the foundation shifting every time Fergal looked at him with that absolute trust.
The Peter question from the other night still echoed. I know he wasn’t a good man. Fergal had, based on his own memories, arrived at a conclusion that was true but incomplete. Peter hadn’t been a good man. Peter had been a monster in training who’d tried to murder his baby brother.
And Gregor had killed him.
And Fergal didn’t know.
And every night, when Gregor held Fergal in the dark and breathed him in and felt the steady beat of his heart against his palm, the secret sat between them like a blade neither could see but that Gregor could feel pressing against his ribs.
Fergal emerged from the bathroom in soft pants and one of Gregor’s shirts, which he’d taken to wearing to bed with a possessiveness that sent a complicated tangle of emotions through Gregor every time he saw it.
The shirt was too big—the shoulders drooping, the hem hanging past his hips—and it made Fergal look younger, softer, like a man who’d set down his armor for the night.
“Tea?” Fergal eyed the chamomile with suspicion.
“Drink it.”
“You’ve been switching my coffee for chamomile every night this week.”
“Have I now?”
“You have. I noticed on the second night.”
“And yet you kept drinking it.”
Fergal took the mug and sipped, his mouth twisting at the taste. “It’s growing on me. Slowly. Against my will. Like you.”
The corner of Gregor’s mouth lifted. “Drink your tea and get in bed.”
They settled into their positions, the lamp casting its low, warm glow across the room.
Fergal set his empty mug on the nightstand and lay on his side, facing Gregor.
His eyes were heavy, the shower and the chamomile doing their work, but Gregor could see the thoughts still moving behind them, restless and relentless, refusing to quiet.
“I can hear you thinking,” Gregor said.
“Welcome to my world. My brain doesn’t have an off switch.”
“What’s it stuck on tonight?”
“The Council. Whether the seating arrangements actually matter or if I’m obsessing over details to avoid the bigger picture, which is that I’m going to mingle with dragon kings who’ve been doing this for centuries, and I’ve been doing it for six weeks.
” A pause. “Also, whether the omega welfare reforms will survive while I’m away, or will Brennan gut them the moment I leave the compound. ”
“I’ll have someone trustworthy monitor Brennan.”
“Who? We’re running out of trustworthy people.”
“Valerie.”
Fergal blinked. “Valerie?”
“She’s smart, observant, loyal to you personally, and Brennan underestimates her completely. She won’t have official authority, but she’ll know if he tries to undo your reforms, and she’ll report it.”
The slow smile that spread across Fergal’s face was like watching the sun come out after weeks of gray sky. “That’s actually brilliant.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised that it’s brilliant. I’m surprised that you thought of using an omega in a strategic role. You’re evolving, old man.”
The “old man” earned him a look that would have quelled lesser men, but Fergal absorbed it with the immunity of someone who’d been on the receiving end of Gregor’s disapproval often enough to have developed complete resistance.
Gregor reached over and turned off the lamp. The room dropped into darkness, softened only by the faint glow of the lights along the baseboards—a security measure Gregor had installed their first week, providing just enough ambient light to navigate without fully waking.
In the dark, he could hear Fergal’s breathing. Still too fast. Still too shallow. His mind was still running, still churning through problems and scenarios and the thousand small fears that came with a crown neither of them had wanted.
Gregor shifted closer. His hand found Fergal’s hip in the dark—warm skin where the borrowed shirt had ridden up, the jut of bone beneath his palm. Fergal’s breathing hitched, just slightly, at the contact.