Chapter 12 Solomon
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Solomon
Mira locked herself in her room for a full day.
I couldn’t blame her. We just told her that we were supernatural creatures and she was cosmically bound to all of us. She’ll definitely need more than twenty-four hours and a locked door to come to terms with this.
She at least came out for meals. Grabbed a plate, filled it without making eye contact, and retreated upstairs. Percy tried to engage her both times. Lucian told him to give her space. I said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
Mira knew what we were now. The rest was up to her.
So I waited.
I was good at waiting.
I have centuries of practice that most beings would never accumulate. I’d waited outside prison cells in Veyndral while traitors decided whether to talk. Or in frozen trenches during the border wars while enemy scouts passed overhead.
Waiting for her to process the fact that I turn into a wolf was, comparatively, manageable.
What wasn’t manageable was the silence.
The absence of her voice in the cabin, the missing sound of her bare feet on the stairs, the gap where her laughter should have been.
The cabin felt wrong without her filling it. Which is weird since we lived in this world with just us for almost a year before we found her.
This morning, Lucian left at five. Captain’s shift.
Wherever he goes, he was just meant to lead.
But it also meant more hours at the station and distance from her.
I could feel the strain of it through the bond, his reluctance to leave when things were so fragile.
Percy followed at six, covering the day rotation.
He’d hesitated at the door, looking back toward the stairs.
“If she comes out...”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Don’t scare her.”
“When have I ever scared her?”
Percy opened his mouth and closed it then he left.
The cabin settled into quiet. I made coffee. Black, strong enough to settle my thoughts. I stood at the counter and let the silence do what silence does best: give me room to think.
Hudson was the problem I could solve, and solving problems was what I did.
The lycan revelation, the mate bond, Mira’s trust... those required patience.
They called me the King’s Blade in Veyndral.
The title wasn’t ceremonial. Centuries of enforcer work had given me the bloodiest hands out of the three of us, bloodier than Lucian’s despite him being the one who wore the crown. That was the point. A king’s hands stayed clean because mine didn’t.
I’d dragged traitors from their beds at midnight, extracted confessions in rooms built specifically to contain screaming, and executed sentences that the court records described in single, sanitized lines.
All of it was duty.
For Mira, I would take pleasure in it.
The thought didn’t disturb me even though it should have.
A man who enjoyed violence was a liability. But when I pictured Hudson’s hands, the ones that left bruises on her arms, that trapped her and struck the woman who was mine, duty evaporated and left behind a desire so pure and savage it rewrote every rule I’d built for myself.
For my king, I killed clean. For my mate, I’d make it last until he begged me for the mercy I’d never give him.
But the human was too elusive, and that fact gnawed at me worse than the rage.
I’d spent weeks tracking him. His scent trail went cold within blocks, every time. No pattern to his movements or trace of the sloppy desperation that defined human stalkers.
Hudson didn’t make mistakes.
He was calculated, methodical. Vanishing in ways that didn’t track with a civilian, even a dangerous one. I’d tracked warlords across the frozen borders of Veyndral who left more evidence than this man.
Either he had training I hadn’t accounted for, or he had help. And whoever was helping him knew how to hide from our senses.
The footsteps above broke my thoughts. Light, careful, testing whether anyone was home.
My hand was already reaching for a second mug before my brain registered the decision. I filled it with coffee, added two sugars, and set it on the counter.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, I was leaning against the kitchen counter with my own mug, watching the doorway.
Mira appeared in a loose dress, dark blue, the neckline sitting low on her collarbones. No contacts this morning. Her heterochromia was out in the open and the sight of her real face hit me the way it always did.
Her copper roots were growing in, stubbornly bright against the dark dye, and her hair was pulled back in a messy knot that exposed the full line of her throat. I tracked the column of it unconsciously.
Her gaze found the second mug on the counter.
“You prepared this?”
“I heard you coming down.”
She paused. Processing. Then the corner of her mouth twitched. “Right. Super hearing.”
Mira crossed to the counter and wrapped both hands around the mug, bringing it to her lips. The first sip made her shoulders drop a fraction.
Silence settled between us comfortably.
Her kind of quiet was different from most people’s. She didn’t fill empty space with noise the way Percy did, didn’t use quiet as a weapon the way Lucian sometimes could. She just existed in it, thinking, processing, and let me exist beside her without demanding anything.
It was my favorite thing about her. One of many.
She stared at me as she drank and I stared back. I knew instantly that she was working up to a question; I could see it forming behind her eyes.
“What’s the difference between a werewolf and a lycan?”
“Werewolves are a human invention,” I said without beating around the bush.
“Cursed. Bound to the full moon. Feral, uncontrollable.” I took a slow sip.
“We’re born, not bitten. We shift at will, retain full awareness in both forms. Our wolf is part of us, not a separate entity fighting for control. ”
She nodded, absorbing it carefully.
“You can shift anytime?”
“Yes.”
“Can you shift now?”
I met her eyes. The question sat between us, neither casual nor demanding. Genuine curiosity wrapped in the careful bravery of a woman testing how far she could push before the ground gave way.
“Do you want me to?”
Her eyes held my gaze for a long beat. A war played out behind her expression, the warring parts of her brain fighting it out in real time. The part that wanted to see, and the part that wasn’t sure she’d survive the seeing.
“Uh, not for now.” She took another sip. “I’m barely accepting the so-called truth.”
I nodded and didn’t push.
Mira played with the handle of her mug, turning it in slow circles on the counter, and I waited again. She was going to ask me one more thing. The real question. I could see it in the tension of her jaw, the way she kept starting a sentence behind her closed lips and stopping.
While she was pondering it, my gaze drifted.
I couldn’t help but notice how the dress hung from her shoulders and the neckline had slipped lower on one side, exposing the swell of her chest where the fabric gaped.
The morning light from the kitchen window caught the smooth skin above the curve of her breast and I tracked the line of it without meaning to.
My throat tightened while my mouth went dry.
She is fucking beautiful.
Mira was curves, warmth, softness, built for the kind of contact my hands ached to give her. I imagined hooking my finger under that strap, pulling it down, watching the fabric slip...
A hand waved in front of my face.
“My face is up here, big guy.”
Every drop of blood in my body rerouted to my ears. I turned toward the sink and reached for the mugs.
“Sorry. What were you asking, again?”
Behind me, I heard her grin. I didn’t need to see it. I could hear it in the shift of her posture, the soft exhale that preceded the words.
“You blush a lot when flustered. Do you know that?”
I turned the faucet on. The water was louder than necessary. “I’ll wash the dishes.”
Her laugh filled the kitchen and it went through me in a wave. Warm, bright, entirely too pleased with herself. This woman, who wore dark clothes and dark hair and hid behind brown contacts, was the brightest thing in any room she walked into and didn’t have a clue.
“I said, can you take me to the site of my bookshop?”
I shut the water off and turned to look at her. She’d pulled herself up on the counter, legs dangling, bare feet swinging.
“You want to go?”
“I just want to check. Maybe there’s more to save besides the journal.” She shrugged, but the casualness was practiced. This mattered to her.
“I also want to breathe fresh air and think. Which means I need someone quiet.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “Can’t ask Percy, he has too much energy. And Lucian will definitely fight me about going out, given that Hudson is still out there.”
She was right about Lucian. He’d lock down the cabin and station himself at the door before he let her walk into town with only one guard. Percy would agree but wouldn’t stop talking long enough to let her think.
But she couldn’t go alone. That much was certain.
The Hudson problem nagged at me, a splinter I couldn’t reach.
Well, at least she actually asked for company instead of insisting to go alone.
“So... will you go with me?” Mira tilted her head.
“Yes.” I set the mug in the drying rack. “Go get dressed and we’ll leave.”
Her face split into a grin so immediate and unguarded that my chest cracked open. She hopped off the counter and was halfway up the stairs before I could blink.
I stood in the empty kitchen and pressed my palm flat against the counter to breathe.
This woman was going to kill me. Not with knives or silver or any of the things that could actually end a lycan. But with radiant smiles, captivating laughter, and her sweet voice.
I need to get myself together.
Mira came back down ten minutes later. Disguise in place. Brown contacts, dark hair loose around her shoulders, a jacket zipped to her chin. She looked smaller when she hid. Compressed, contained, the version of herself she’d built to survive.
I hated it.