Chapter 8 Kael
KAEL
The Solas Valentine Gala was everything I'd spent the last six months dreading.
However, Laurent had outdone himself with the tux. It was black on black, custom fitted, with a deep burgundy pocket square that my mother had insisted on. Standing in front of the mirror in my private suite at the Solas estate, I barely recognized myself.
It wasn’t Karl, the baker staring back at me.
No. This was Kael Solas, youngest son of the Solas family, dragon prince. The one who'd walked away from all of this to make honey-ember tarts for a librarian who didn't know his last name.
At least, not yet.
"You look like you're going to your own funeral," Ryker said from the doorway, already perfectly assembled in his navy tux, ice-blue eyes bright with amusement.
"Leave him alone," Caspian said from behind him, adjusting his cufflinks in the hallway mirror. "He's nervous."
"I'm not nervous," I said.
They both looked at me.
"I'm terrified," I corrected.
Ryker laughed and clapped me on the shoulder as he passed. "She's going to be fine, little brother. And if she's not, I'll personally find Colin and make his life difficult."
That actually made me smile, just a little.
The ballroom of the Solas estate had been transformed for the occasion.
Deep red roses cascaded from every surface, interspersed with blush peonies and trailing greenery that softened the grandeur of the space.
Hundreds of candles flickered in crystal holders along the tables and window ledges, throwing warm gold light across the room.
The heart-shaped arrangements of white flowers framed the entrance, and sheer rose-colored draping fell from the ceiling like something out of a dream.
My mother had gone all out this year.
The guests were already filling the space when my brothers and I made our entrance. Formal attire everywhere, the soft sound of a string quartet beneath the murmur of conversation. Champagne flutes caught the candlelight. The scent of hothouse roses and expensive perfume layered the air.
I smiled when I needed to and shook hands when required. I said the right things to the right people like I’d been trained to do from birth.
Yet, the entire time, my eyes swept the room, searching for Amara. Searching and waiting.
She still wasn't here yet.
My dragon had been restless since we'd arrived, pacing beneath my skin, so very anxious to see our woman. Every time the doors at the far end of the ballroom opened to admit new guests, my attention snapped toward them like a compass finding north.
Not her. Not her. Not her.
"You need to stop doing that," Damon said quietly, appearing at my elbow with a glass of sparkling water. He'd traded his usual Armani for something equally devastating in charcoal gray, with a blonde woman I didn't recognize on his arm.
"Doing what?" I asked.
"Looking at the door like a dog waiting for its owner to come home."
I took the water from him and said nothing.
He sighed. "Did you tell her?"
"No."
"Kael."
"I know," I mumbled to my brother. "I tried. I went to the library and I tried and she was already so wound up about tonight that I couldn't add to it. I thought I was protecting her."
Damon was quiet for a moment. "And now?"
"And now she's going to walk through those doors and see me up here and I have approximately thirty seconds to get to her before she thinks the worst."
My older brother looked at me with something that might have been sympathy. "Then you'd better be fast."
The string quartet shifted into something softer, more romantic, and the ballroom filled a little more.
My mother moved through the crowd with the effortless grace of someone who had been doing this her entire life, working the room in a deep emerald gown, pausing to speak to guests, her laugh carrying warmth across the space.
A dragon queen if I ever saw one, I thought.
She caught my eye from across the room and gave me a look that said everything.
Be present. Be ready. Tell her.
I nodded once, and then the doors opened again.
My dragon went absolutely still in its pacing, and completely alert.
She was wearing burgundy!
The same deep, rich color I'd tucked into my breast pocket tonight without even realizing why.
The dress was off-the-shoulder, soft fabric flowing over her curves in a way that made everything else in the room disappear.
Her hair was up, dark and silky, with a few soft curls left loose around her face.
Her warm brown skin glowed in the candlelight like she'd been made for exactly this room, this light, this moment.
She walked in beside her mother, her chin lifted, her shoulders set with the particular kind of bravery that only people who are genuinely terrified possess.
My chest cracked open.
She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Her eyes moved across the room the way they always did in the bakery when she was trying not to be noticed. Taking everything in quietly, carefully, from the edges. Lila appeared at her elbow almost immediately, saying something that made Amara's jaw tighten almost imperceptibly.
When it came to this woman, I saw everything it seemed, down to the nervous tremor in her fingers that I saw her shake away. Then the breeze shifted and her scented wafted over to me and I inhaled her deeply.
Through all the roses and perfume and candlewax, through the two hundred bodies filling this space, and through every competing sensation the room could throw at me, I scented her.
Lavender and old books. There even seemed to be something sweeter underneath that had always driven my dragon to the edge of reason. But tonight it was different.
Tonight it hit me like a fist to the sternum. My dragon didn't pace ad it didn't whisper. It stopped completely, drew itself up to its full height inside my chest, and said one thing with absolute, irreversible certainty.
Fated match.
The realization moved through me like a current.
Every nerve ending lighting up at once. Six months of obsession suddenly making a different kind of sense.
The way I'd known her coffee order before she'd told me.
The way her scent had clung to me for hours after she left.
The way my dragon had never once looked at another Omega the way it looked at her.
It wasn't just want.
It had never been just want.
She was mine in the oldest, most fundamental way a dragon could recognize. Fated. Written into stars or some beautiful reason like that.
And she was standing across a crowded ballroom about to find out I'd been lying to her. I set my glass down on the nearest surface and started moving.
Caspian caught my arm as I passed. "Kael."
"I see her," I said.
"I know." He released me. "Go to her.”
I moved through the crowd with more purpose than grace, murmuring apologies when I had to, sidestepping clusters of guests who wanted to stop and talk. My eyes never left her.
She was looking at something across the room, her brow slightly furrowed, that small line forming between her eyebrows the way it did when she was processing something difficult. A woman I assumed was her cousin,Lila said something beside her, and Amara's shoulders pulled inward, just slightly.
I moved faster.
I was ten feet away when she turned.
Her eyes found mine the way they always did in the bakery, like some quiet instinct that neither of us had ever acknowledged out loud. Only this time, they went wide.
She took in the tux, and the setting and then she took in the way every person in this room seemed to know exactly who I was and exactly where I belonged.
I watched the confusion move across her face.
Followed immediately by the beginning of understanding.
I closed the remaining distance between us and stopped just in front of her. Close enough that her scent wrapped around me completely. I was so close that I could see the rapid flutter of her pulse at her throat.
"Amara," I said.
Her voice came out barely above a whisper. "Kael. What..."
"I know," I said quietly. "I owe you an explanation. A real one." I held out my hand, steady, despite everything roaring inside me. "But first, will you dance with me?"