Max
Seven o’clock. Dinner with the heirs at Elenmoor—the weight of it had sat in my chest like a swallowed stone all day.
A room with four alphas alone would set anyone’s teeth on edge, make them want to bow or bolt, especially when the heirs didn’t bother to leash their power.
But their power wasn’t my concern. What kept me on edge was simpler: I was back at the base, having picked up where things left off with Nikolai, and now I had to sit across from the other three and pretend nothing was going on.
I’d kissed Aelindor. Had climbed into Caspian’s lap and flirted with him at that bar Bryn kept raving about.
I’d wanted to come clean with Aelindor about all of it, the tangle I’d let myself slide into with each of them behind the others’ backs. But then Lady Vaelith had walked into our private training, and there hadn’t been a better moment since.
Of course there isn’t, the demon said, a chuckle riding under the words. There’s never a better time.
I ignored it.
I’d told Frost I could skate to Elenmoor on my own. I knew every alley in the compound by now. He insisted on driving me anyway.
I wore the clothes Nikolai had bought me.
Soft, dark, well-cut. I’d only ever seen clothes like that on other people.
I’d flushed when he handed them over at his penthouse, told him that he didn’t need to give me anything, that I already had more than I’d ever owned.
In the mine I’d had two sets of rags to my name. As a cadet, I felt rich.
“Providing for you is a privilege,” Nikolai had said, kissing my jawline, sending a pleasant shiver down my skull. “You’ll have to get used to having nice things, Max.”
I’d pressed the clothes to my face in my bunk after the other cadets fell asleep. They smelled clean and felt softer than anything I’d ever touched.
The other cadets all had extra clothes, even dresses, beyond uniforms and casuals. I wouldn’t spend my stipend on looking pretty. Powder and lipstick struck me as a waste, the way the other women spent their pay. The men spent theirs on drinks and dates.
Mine would feed and clothe Missy. And when we got the other kids out of Crimson Ridge, the rest of my allowance would go to them. That was what money was for.
We passed the academy block and the training field, then the commercial row at the heart of the compound, and kept going north.
Further out, the packed road gave way to old stone, the high outer wall running along one side while the forest closed in on the other.
The banners of the four houses hung slack from the ramparts in the evening air.
Out here, near the Fae quarters, the noise of the fortress fell away until I could hear the tires on stone and not much else, and the cold off the trees found its way through the window glass.
Then Elenmoor came into view, pale against the treeline. It carried a stillness the rest of the compound didn’t have—the quiet weight of ages in the stone and the forest, as if the place had stood there long before the fortress grew up around it.
Caspian shot out the front door before the jeep had fully stopped, all that restless wolf energy rolling off him.
“I’ve got her from here, Major,” he said, already at my door.
“Of course, Your Highness.” Frost nodded.
Caspian held my hand and pulled me inside the mansion. His grip ran warm, like banked coals, and the heat of it climbed my arm, solid and pleasant.
The prince led me through a wide entrance hall, pale floors, tall windows, a hush so complete it pressed against my ears, then up a curving staircase and along an upper corridor until we stopped before a set of ivory doors.
Aelindor’s suite. I felt the other heirs inside before Caspian’s hand reached the door, bright points in the matrix of my head, powerful and magnetic. My pulse climbed into my throat. Something pulled me forward to meet them, coiling low and humming in my belly.
“Easy, lioness. I can see how nervous you are,” Caspian said.
I frowned at him.
He grinned. “You’ve got a tell.”
“I don’t have a tell.”
“Want to know what it is?”
“Not taking the bait,” I said automatically. Years of practice resisting the demon had made it reflexive.
Caspian laughed and pressed a kiss to the tip of my nose. “Cute.”
I flushed. “No one’s ever called me cute.”
“There it is.” He grinned wider, and just like that, my shoulders relaxed. “Come on. It’s just dinner. Like the one at the outpost.”
He pushed the door open, and the foyer reached out and took me.
Their scents came first, layered and unmistakable, each its own thread.
Aelindor: pine and winter turning to spring.
Nikolai: wood and dark spice. Caspian was already wrapped around me, warmth and wild green earth.
And under it all, banked low, was Drakken and his dragon-heat with a hint of brimstone.
The back of my throat went dry the way it did near an open forge. Their voices threaded together, three different tempos, and then trailed off.
All four powerful alpha males packed into one room. It should have set every survival instinct I had screaming to run. Instead, something in me purred, traitorous and sure, like I was coming in out of the cold.
Yet I couldn’t help wondering whether Drakken would walk out on me the way he had at the outpost. What he’d pulled in the library still made me seethe every time it crossed my mind. The man was an asshole who grated on my nerves at every turn and enjoyed every second of it.
The smell of food cut through my thoughts and my mouth flooded before I could stop it.
My stomach gave a low, embarrassing growl, and Caspian let out a chuckle.
I made myself stand still and take the place in instead of bolting for the table like the half-starved savage some part of me would always be.
This was Aelindor’s home, and it told me so much about him. The Fae prince didn’t care for luxury. He didn’t need to show off or impress anyone. He was pure-blooded immortal royalty.
I might have been born a miner, but the demon in me had taste, and it approved of this room: everything spare and deliberate, pale wood and clean stone, a few rare things set out where they could breathe and nothing crowded against them.
Through the window, a walled garden held the last of the season, late blossoms going amber at the edges, a stone path running off into the dark of the trees.
“Max is here!” Caspian announced.
Captain Obvious. The others had already felt me, the way I’d felt them. An unseen cord ran from my sternum to each of them and pulled, gentle and absolute.
The dining room was spacious, low-lit by Stormglass lamps. A long table of pale wood ran down the center, set for five. Plain good plates, simple silver laid clean, a line of candles burning down the middle. Five chairs. One empty, kept for me, between Aelindor and Nikolai.
Caspian still had my hand as he walked me in, and every eye in the room dropped to where our hands were linked.
Heat crawled up my neck. I didn’t pull away.
I was comfortable being put on the spot, but I wouldn’t reject any of them in front of the others, except Drakken, and it wasn’t in me to humiliate him outside this circle either.
So I left my hand where it was and let them make of it what they would.
Aelindor smiled at me. Nikolai scowled at Caspian. Drakken glanced at me once, then went back to ignoring me. The best I could hope for.
Caspian started around to pull out my chair, but Aelindor and Nikolai were already rising. Aelindor gestured for Nikolai to sit; the vampire prince obliged without a word. Then Aelindor drew out my chair and held it, a total gentleman.
“How was your day, Max?” Aelindor asked.
“Good, sir—Aelindor.” I caught the slip. “And yours?”
“Busy.” He took his seat. “I’m glad you came. Nothing fancy. Just a family dinner.”
Family.
The word knocked against something I kept locked down tight, and my pulse stumbled over itself. No one had used that word for me since the mine, and even then, it had meant Missy after my parents died.
“Just as I told Max earlier,” Caspian said, dropping into the seat beside Drakken. He gave his companion a look. “Hey, dragon. How’s the progress?”
Drakken scowled, knowing it was bait and unable to resist anyway. “What progress?”
“Closing the gap between you and me. Long road, though. I’m a ten.”
Drakken cut a look at me. I studied my plate and pretended not to follow.
“Keep telling yourself that, wolf,” Drakken said. “It’s cheaper than therapy.”
Nikolai’s gaze moved between them, not quite catching the thread. Aelindor exhaled slowly. The bickering had to wear on him too, even after centuries of practiced patience, honed long before any of them were born.
None of them had touched the food. They were waiting for me. Four heirs, the men who held a kingdom together, and a mine rat who’d clawed her way out of a slave shaft, and they sat there and waited. It undid me a little, every time.
Comfort food crowded the table: brisket soft enough to fall apart under a fork, roast chicken with the skin crisped dark, baked potatoes split and steaming, mixed vegetables, a deep tureen of French onion soup.
And chocolate. My favorite, a luxury for the entire continent.
Missy would have lost her mind over a single bite.
The thought opened a small crack in my chest.
From what I knew of them, the heirs never went in for feasts or delicacies, except the chocolate, and that was for me.
Mostly they ate what the officers and soldiers ate, though it tasted better here.
Aelindor kept a private chef. I figured the Fae prince was a picky eater.
The other three had been born into wartime.
He hadn’t. He’d known real luxury before the Q-bomb unmade his world, and immortals didn’t adapt easily.
He held on to small pieces of that old life and indulged himself a little more than the rest.
“Dig in, Max,” Nikolai said. “Don’t wait for us.”