Chapter 14 Solomon
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Solomon
“You’re shutting her out.”
Lucian didn’t answer. He closed his locker with a controlled click that said more than slamming it would have, and reached for his uniform shirt. The firehouse locker room was empty except for the two of us, the rest of the crew already out on the floor running equipment checks.
I watched him button his sleeves. Precise, methodical, every movement designed to communicate that this conversation was not happening.
“Stop doing that.” I leaned against the opposite row of lockers and crossed my arms. “It’s not doing anyone any good.”
He sat on the bench and pulled his boots from the bottom of his locker. Laced them with the same deliberate focus he applied to everything. His brow furrowed, the only crack in the composure, and he tied off the first boot before reaching for the second.
No response. Lucian’s version of refusing to engage was more effective than most people’s shouting.
I’d known this man for my entire life. Fought beside him, bled for him, built a kingdom under his command. I knew the difference between his silences. The tactical silence of a king calculating his next move. The predatory silence before violence.
And the stubborn silence of a man who knew I was right and would rather swallow his own tongue than admit it.
This was the third kind.
He finished lacing his boots and changed the subject. “Do you know who the others were? The ones who followed you two the other day.”
I sighed. Recognized the deflection for what it was but let him have it for now. I pushed off the lockers and stood.
“No. But I’m certain someone else was watching.
” A frown pulled at my mouth, and the memory of that afternoon surfaced.
The ice cream truck, Mira’s laughter, and the sensation of multiple eyes crawling across my skin.
“Their presence was almost invisible. I can’t put a name on what I sensed. This is new.”
Lucian paused. The second boot hovered in his hand, forgotten. I could see his mind working behind his eyes.
“If someone else was helping Hudson,” he said slowly, “that means there are others targeting Mira.” His gaze lifted to mine. “Humans? Or do you think other Lytopian creatures have crossed over in this town?”
I’d been turning that question over for two days.
Our kingdom had been isolated in Lytopia for centuries.
The Burning Years, when our pack was near extinction, had driven Veyndral behind its walls. We’d stayed there while other kingdoms formed alliances and connected with the human world.
But isolation had a cost.
While other kingdoms were adapting, building connections, Veyndral stagnated behind its walls. The council had debated it and tried expeditions. However, nothing really changed much. So when a new portal appeared in the kingdom, Lucian volunteered to deal with it himself this time.
And although some in Lytopia disagreed with our independence, we didn’t have many active enemies. We kept to ourselves. Veyndral was wealthy, self-sufficient, and Lucian ruled it with a steady hand that inspired more loyalty than resentment.
Besides, what I’d felt that afternoon wasn’t exactly supernatural.
The presence had been wrong in a way I couldn’t categorize. Not lycan, not fae, not any of the species I’d encountered across realms. Unnatural, certainly. But supernatural? Not quite.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But I don’t have answers either.”
The admission tasted foul. I was his right-hand man. Answers were my function. Centuries of tracking, interrogation, and threat elimination, and I couldn’t identify who was watching my mate eat ice cream. The failure sat in my gut and rotted.
Lucian stared at me, reading my thoughts clearly. The same with how I can read him.
“I trust your judgment, Solomon. If there’s one person who can track this, I know it’s you.” He stood from the bench, pulling his uniform straight. “You’ve never failed me.”
The words landed with the weight of our shared history. Every mission completed, every threat neutralized. Every ugly task performed in silence so his hands stayed clean. He’d never questioned me, and I’d never given him reason to.
I wouldn’t start now.
“Just tell me when you know.” He moved toward the locker room door, already shifting into Captain Valdris, the cover identity he wore with increasing ease.
“You’ve been taking more shifts.”
He went still. His hand rested on the door frame, and the line of his shoulders tightened.
“Go home.” His voice flattened. “Get Percival here. It’s your rotation to guard her.”
“You came here to take a break from the crown.” I held my ground. “And instead you push yourself into new duties, more hours, more distance.”
His head turned. The glare he leveled at me would have dropped a lesser man to his knees. I’d been on the receiving end of it for centuries. It had stopped working on me somewhere around the second century.
I met his gaze. Alpha to alpha. Enforcer to king. The dynamic between us had always been different from the one he shared with Percy. Percy was loyal and more of a younger brother with unwavering devotion. I was the one who told Lucian the truth even when the truth drew blood.
“Stop being afraid of facing her.” My voice carried no judgment. Just fact. “Mira’s not going to disappear. She’s not going to forget again. We won’t let that happen.”
His eyes softened. Barely. A fracture so small that anyone else would have missed it. He still didn’t say a word. Just turned and walked through the door, and I let him go.
Some truths needed time to settle before a king could acknowledge them.
***
The drive home took twenty minutes.
I used every one of them to catalogue what I knew about the watchers from the bookshop visit, organize it, cross-reference it with everything I’d gathered on Hudson. By the time I pulled into the gravel drive, I had no new answers but a clearer picture of the gaps.
Percy met me at the door with his jacket already on. “Your turn. She’s in a mood.”
“What kind?”
“The kind where she wants to go out and I told her no and she called me a prison warden cerberus with dimples.” He grinned. “I took it as a compliment.”
I watched him jog toward his bike, and turned inside.
The cabin smelled of her, soaked into the furniture and the walls. My wolf instantly pressed against my ribs in recognition.
Home. She made this place smell permanent.
I found her in the kitchen, sitting on the counter with her arms crossed, a storm cloud in leggings and an oversized sweater. Lunchtime, and she most likely hadn’t eaten yet. Perhaps her mood stemmed from that too.
She tracked me as I moved to the fridge, pulled ingredients, and set a pan on the stove. My skin prickled under her attention. Every step I took, her gaze followed, and my body registered each second of it.
“Solomon.”
“Mira.”
“We need to talk.”
“About?”
“About how I seemed to be grounded these days.” She hopped off the counter and followed me as I moved between the fridge and the stove, staying close enough that her scent wrapped around me in waves. “We went out last time and it was fine.”
I set onions on the cutting board and began chopping. Focused on the blade. Not on the way her sweater had slipped off one shoulder, exposing the curve of her collarbone that I always had the urge to trace with my tongue.
“I just want to go out.” She was at my elbow now. Her hip brushed mine as she leaned against the counter. I could feel a jolt straight down to my spine. “Maybe eat at a diner. See people. Breathe air that doesn’t smell of testosterone.”
I moved the onions to the pan. Oil sizzled. So did the nerve endings along my left side where her warmth bled through my shirt.
“And hey.” She followed me to the counter where the peppers waited. Her fingers caught my sleeve, tugging once, and my pulse kicked hard enough that I had to set the knife down. “You promised you’d help rebuild my shop. Remember? ‘I’ll do anything for you.’ Your words.”
She was using my own declaration against me.
I kept my eyes on the cutting board.
The dye in her hair had faded further again. Her lips were rosy from the cold, from biting them, the restless energy that made her chew on her lower lip when she was frustrated.
I wanted to bite it too. Wanted to catch that lip between my teeth and pull until she gasped.
I closed my eyes. Breathed and opened them.
“I told you. It’s dangerous.”
Mira frowned and scoffed. I turned back to the counter for the garlic, and when I turned around, she’d planted herself on the counter directly in front of my cutting board. She shoved the board aside with one hand, forcing my attention from the ingredients to her face.
Her legs dangled off the edge. Her eyes held that stubborn defiance of hers. “Did you switch souls with Lucian?”
Despite myself, a breath of amusement escaped through my nose. She was relentless. A force that couldn’t be reasoned with.
I set the knife down and stepped closer. Mira sat up straighter on the counter but didn’t move back, and I closed the distance until I stood between her knees, my hands braced on the counter on either side of her thighs. My arms caged her in, my face dropped to her level.
Her breath caught. The defiance in her eyes faltered, replaced by awareness.
The specific kind of awareness that made her pupils blow wide and her pulse jump at the base of her throat. My own pulse answered, a hard kick behind my ribs that I refused to let reach my face.
“No,” I said. My voice came out lower than I planned. “But this time, I agree with him.”
Her scent intensified this close. Old books and honey and underneath, that maddening sweetness that made my blood run south.
My gaze dropped to her mouth. The rosy lips she’d been biting. I dragged my eyes back up, and the effort it took settled into my shoulders as physical tension, coiling through every muscle in my arms where they caged her.
“I don’t want to scare you.” Each word was measured. “But I think Hudson has been working with others. That’s what makes him harder to track. And those others...” My eyes met hers. “Put you in more danger than he does alone.”
She didn’t respond or blink.
Mira’s lips parted, and I watched her chest rise and fall with breaths that were coming too fast, too shallow. Her knees had drifted inward, pressing against my hips.
She probably didn’t notice. I noticed.
I noticed everything about her body when it was this close to mine. The flush creeping up her throat. The way her fingers curled around the counter’s edge, knuckles white, holding herself in place when every other part of her was leaning forward.
My hand moved without permission. Rose from the counter, crossed the distance between us, and my thumb found her lower lip. I pressed against the soft skin there, traced the full curve of it, felt the warmth of her breath against my knuckle.
Her mouth trembled under the contact. A tremor so small but I felt it travel through my thumb, down my wrist, and settle low in my gut where it burned.
My touch was possessive and the look in her eyes when my thumb dragged across her mouth told me she understood it perfectly.
Her thighs tightened against my hips. An involuntary squeeze that sent heat flooding through my abdomen, and my free hand gripped the counter hard enough that the wood groaned beneath my fingers.
“I just want you safe.” My voice had dropped to a whisper. “I want you to let us protect you.”
Her gaze held mine.
The kitchen shrank to the space between us, the heat building in the inches separating my chest from hers. Her hand released the counter and landed on my forearm. Fingertips against bare skin.
Every instinct demanded I close the gap, tilt her chin up, and take the mouth my thumb was claiming. My body swayed forward a fraction. Her chin tilted up to meet me. The distance between us thinned to nothing, to a breath, to the width of a decision.
The pot on the stove boiled over.
Water hissed against the burner. The smell of scorched broth filled the kitchen, and the moment shattered into practical reality.
I pulled back. Turned and reached for the stove and killed the heat.
Fucking hell.
My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached. Both hands gripped the edge of the stove, and I stood there, breathing through my nose, staring at the ruined pot while my pulse hammered and my blood refused to cool.
The interruption was some form of mercy. Another second and I wouldn’t have stopped at her mouth. My hands would have been under that sweater, her back against the counter, her legs locked around my waist, and we were nowhere near ready for that. She wasn’t ready.
The trust she’d just given me was new, still warm, still fragile at the edges.
Still, it didn’t make this any less frustrating.
Behind me, Mira exhaled, the sound was unsteady.
I gripped the edge of the stove and counted to five. I was good at restraint. But she was dismantling me faster than I could rebuild.
When I turned back, she was still on the counter. The flush had faded from her cheeks, replaced by a paleness that made my stomach drop.
“You mean to tell me there are others?” Her voice came out smaller. “Others who are out to get me?”
There it was. The fear. The reason I hadn’t wanted to tell her, hadn’t wanted to add another name to the list of things that haunted her sleep.
She’d spent two years being hunted by one man. The idea that the number had multiplied was the kind of information that broke people who’d already been broken too many times.
I crossed back to her and took both her hands in mine. Her fingers were cold, trembling, and I wrapped them in my palms, bringing her knuckles to my mouth.
I kissed them. My lips pressed against each knuckle, a promise written in contact instead of words. Her pulse fluttered beneath my grip, rapid and unsteady, and I felt it echo through my own blood.
“We’ll protect you.” My mouth moved against her skin. “I swear it.”
She stared at me. The fear was still there, sitting behind her eyes, but there was trust blooming.
It wasn’t the fragile, conditional trust she’d given us at the beginning.
This was real.
“I know,” she said.
Her fingers curled around mine. Not pulling away but holding on. She stepped closer, and the distance between us dissolved until her forehead rested against my chest.
The contact buckled through me. My hand released hers and found the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair, and she exhaled against my shirt with a shudder that I felt in my spine.
I held her and let myself have this. The warmth of her body against mine, the steadiness of her breathing as it slowed. The scent of her flooding my lungs until my wolf quieted and my chest ached with a fullness I hadn’t felt in centuries.
She was opening up again. Choosing us.
Choosing to lean into me with the full weight of her trust, and the realization settled into my bones.