Chapter 10 Kael
KAEL
The scent hit me like a second heartbeat.
One moment I was standing in the middle of the Solas Valentine Gala in a custom tux, watching Amara process the fact that her baker was a prince. The next, every hair on my body stood up and my dragon slammed against my chest so hard and I nearly lost a step.
Her heat.
It smelled early and intense as my nostrils flared pulling it into my lungs. Of course, it was also absolutely unmistakable to every Alpha in this room that Amara was going into heat on the ballroom floor.
I felt it the second it rolled off her skin, that sweet lavender deepening into something headier, something that bypassed every rational thought I possessed and spoke directly to the most primal part of me. My dragon didn't whisper this time.
It roared, mine. Protect. Now.
I had maybe thirty seconds before this became a problem.
I scanned the room without moving my head.
Three Alphas within twenty feet had already stiffened, their attention sharpening in that particular way that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.
One of them, a broad-shouldered man I vaguely recognized from some business sector, had already taken a step in our direction.
Not happening.
I shifted my body, angling myself between Amara and the room, and let my dragon bleed into my eyes just enough to be seen. Just enough to communicate the single, non-negotiable message.
Back the fuck off.
The broad-shouldered Alpha stopped walking and looked at me for exactly one second. Then he turned and went in another direction entirely.
Smart man.
"Kael." Amara's voice was small and frightened against my ear. Her fingers had curled into my tux jacket and she was trembling, whether from the heat or from embarrassment or from sheer overwhelm I couldn't tell. Probably all three. "I can't... this can't be happening right now."
"I have you," I said quietly. "Stay close to me."
I felt him before I saw him.
Colin’s wimp ass.
He materialized out of the crowd to my left, his jaw set with the particular expression of a man who had mistaken past access for current relevance. His eyes were on Amara, and something about the way he said her name, soft and familiar like he had any right to it, made my dragon bare its teeth.
"Amara, hey, are you okay? What’s…”
He looked at me and stopped talking.
I didn't growl and I didn't move. I simply looked at him with the full, unhurried weight of every single thing I was.
A dragon who had found his fated match. An Alpha at the outer edge of his patience and a man who knew exactly what Colin had taken from her and exactly how little he deserved to be standing in her vicinity right now.
Colin took one step back and then another. Finally he turned around and walked away without finishing his sentence.
From somewhere behind us came Lila's voice, sharp and carrying over the elegant murmur of the crowd. I didn't have to look to know exactly what expression was on her face.
"A prince," she said, the words dropping out of her like something had knocked them loose. "She ends up with a prince. I stole her boyfriend and all I got was a tennis coach."
Colin said nothing because there was nothing to say.
My brother Caspian appeared at my right shoulder like he'd been waiting for exactly this moment, which knowing Caspian, he probably had been.
"How bad?" he asked quietly.
"Bad enough," I said. "I need to get her out of here."
He nodded once. "I'll run interference. Ryker's already on the south side. Damon's with Mother."
The crowd seemed to part as we moved, whether from Caspian's quiet authority or from something they sensed rolling off me I didn't particularly care.
Amara was pressed into my side, her face turned into my jacket, her breathing shallow and rapid.
I kept my arm locked around her and moved us steadily toward the side corridor that led away from the main ballroom.
My mother was waiting in the corridor.
Of course she is, I thought smiling on the inside. My mother had been this way my entire life, intuitive.
Celestine Solas, in her emerald gown, stood just beyond the ballroom doors with the calm, capable expression of a woman who had spent decades managing crises far larger than this one.
She took one look at Amara and then looked at me, and everything that needed to be communicated passed between us in about half a second.
"Your old bedroom," she said quietly. "I had it opened this morning. I had a feeling."
"Mom…”
"I'm your mother, Kael. I had a feeling." She repeated and stepped forward and touched Amara's face gently, just briefly, with the kind of warmth that my mother extended so naturally it never felt like an intrusion. "You're safe, sweetheart. I promise."
Amara made a small sound against my jacket that I felt more than heard.
My old childhood bedroom was at the far end of the east wing, removed from the noise of the gala by several long corridors and a set of heavy double doors.
It was a room I hadn't spent significant time in since I'd opened the bakery and gotten my own studio apartment, but walking through the door felt like stepping back into something familiar and steady.
The furniture was the same and the smells were the same.
Hints of old wood and something faintly sweet, like the memory of baking had followed me even here.
I got Amara inside and sat her on the edge of the bed and then did the only thing my instincts would allow me to do.
I started building.
It wasn't a conscious decision. My hands just moved, gathering everything soft within reach.
The heavy blankets from the bed. The throw from the armchair by the window.
I even pulled my tux jacket off and added it to the pile, then turned to the wardrobe in the corner where my old things had lived undisturbed for years.
Old clothes mostly, things I'd forgotten about entirely.
I moved to my closet and went to the back of the top shelf and pulled down three old cardigans, soft and worn. They were exactly the kind of thing I never wore anymore but had apparently never been able to throw away.
I pulled them out without thinking and added them to the nest.
My hands found a stack of books on the bedside table, volumes I'd accumulated over years of living in this room. I gathered them too, tucking them into the edges of the nest, giving it shape and weight and something that felt like her.
My fingers closed around something at the bottom of the stack and I noted that it was a tattered paperback, its spine cracked from years of reading, its cover soft with age.
Pride and Prejudice.
I set it in the center of the nest without examining why it felt right and turned back to Amara.
She was watching me from the edge of the bed, her eyes glassy with heat but aware enough to take in what I'd built. Something moved across her face that I couldn't fully read. It was a look of softness and wondering.
"Come here," I said gently.
She let me help her into the nest, and the sound she made when the softness closed around her, when she pulled one of the old cardigans against her chest and tucked it under her chin, was the kind of sound that rearranged something permanently inside me.
"You have cardigans," she said softly, her voice slightly delirious.
"I have cardigans," I confirmed.
I settled on the floor beside the nest, my back against the bed frame, close enough that she could reach me if she needed to but not so close that I was crowding her.
Every instinct I had was screaming at me to climb in beside her, to wrap myself around her, to press my face into her hair and let my scent cover her completely.
I stayed on the floor.
"Kael," she said after a moment, her voice small.
"I'm here."
She bit at her bottom lip, “I’m so embarrassed."
"Don't be."
One of her brows softly raised, “I just had a heat episode in the middle of your family's Valentine gala."
"You did," I said. "And you're handling it with considerably more dignity than most people would."
She made a sound that was almost a laugh, almost.
Her hand appeared over the edge of the nest, reaching down toward me. I took it without hesitation, lacing my fingers through hers, and felt her exhale slowly.
"I'm still wanna be angry at you," she said. "About the other thing."
"I know," I said. "You're allowed to be, if you want to.”
She grinned, “I just wanted you to know I hadn't forgotten."
"I wouldn't expect anything less from you."
Her fingers tightened around mine and felt my dragon finally, finally begin to settle and almost purr. She was here and she was safe holding my hand.
Everything else could wait.