Chapter 14 Kael
KAEL
The society pages worked faster than I seemed to be to bake a pastry.
I was standing behind the counter at six thirty on a Monday morning, still warm from the shower at the estate and running on approximately three hours of sleep, eating a honey-ember tart straight off the cooling rack when Marco walked in, took one look at me, and held up his phone.
The headline read: YOUNGEST SOLAS PRINCE CLAIMS MYSTERY OMEGA AT VALENTINE GALA. SCALES SEEN FROM ACROSS BALLROOM.
I took another bite of the tart.
"So," Marco said.
"So," I said.
He stared at me for a long moment. "You actually did it."
"I actually did it."
He looked at the phone again, then back at me, then at the bite mark on my neck that I hadn't bothered to cover, and his expression moved through approximately six different emotions before landing on something that looked dangerously close to tears.
"Marco," I said.
"I'm fine," he said, turning away immediately and tying his apron with unnecessary force. "I'm completely fine. Six months I watched you make those tarts and moon around this bakery like a lost puppy and you're standing there eating one like nothing happened."
"Something happened," I confirmed.
"I can see that." He pointed at my neck without looking at me. "Congratulations, boss."
"Thank you, Marco."
He nodded firmly, still not looking at me, and disappeared into the kitchen. I heard him say something that sounded like finally under his breath and chose not to address it.
The first hour was normal enough.
But the second hour was not. By eight thirty the bakery was fuller than any Monday morning had any right to be.
I noticed it gradually, the way the tables filled faster than usual, the way people lingered longer over their coffees, the way eyes kept drifting to the door with that particular quality of waiting for something specific.
They knew.
Everyone in Fernwood knew about me and Amara.
Word had spread from the society pages to wherever word spread these days, and apparently what people wanted to know was whether the mystery Omega would show up to the bakery of the prince who had claimed her in front of two hundred witnesses at the Solas Valentine Gala.
Marco appeared at my elbow during a brief lull, pretending to wipe down the counter. "You see what's happening out there?"
"Yes," I said.
"They're all waiting for her."
"I know."
"Do you think she'll still come? After everything?"
I looked at the clock above the door.
Seven thirty-eight.
"Yes," I said, without a single doubt in my mind. "She'll come."
Because Amara Brooks had been walking through that door at seven forty-five every single morning for six months and becoming bonded to a dragon prince after a Valentine’s ball was not the kind of thing that changed a routine like hers.
Not on a Monday and not on the first workday back after the world had apparently decided to reorganize itself around the two of us.
She’d would show up, but I knew she would be nervous about it.
Still, she would show up anyway, because that was exactly who she was.
My dragon stirred beneath my ribs, restless and alert.
Marco leaned against the counter beside me, arms crossed, eyes on the door. "You know what's funny?"
"What?"
"She's going to walk in at exactly seven forty-five."
"Yes," I said agree.
Marco’s shit eating grin had me grinning. “Same as always."
"Same as always."
He shook his head slowly. "Two of the most predictable people I have ever met in my entire life."
I didn't argue because he wasn't wrong. Six months of the same morning, the same time, the same order, the same two people finding their way back to the same counter like gravity. The gala and the scales and the bond hadn't changed that. If anything it had just given the routine a name.
At seven forty-four the room seemed to hold its breath.
And at exactly seven forty-five exactly the bell above the door chimed, and every head in the bakery turned.
She was wearing jeans and her own cardigan, the soft cream one I recognized from a hundred Monday mornings just like this one, and she was carrying my old forest green cardigan folded carefully over her arm.
Her leather crossbody bag was on her shoulder.
Her hair was up in its usual bun with a few curls escaping around her face.
Her chin was lifted in that particular way she held it when she was walking into something she'd already decided to face.
She stepped inside and felt the room looking at her and went very still.
I watched it happen in real time. There was a slight stiffening of her shoulders. Her eyes moved carefully across the full tables and registered not just the number of people but the quality of their attention. The way that attention landed on her like something with weight.
Her scent reached me a half second later.
Nerves sharp underneath the lavender, cutting right through the smell of coffee and fresh pastry and the thirty people pretending they weren't staring.
The scales flared hot beneath my skin.
I was already moving around the counter.
"Marco," I said.
"Already on it," he said, stepping into my place before I'd finished saying his name.
I crossed the floor and reached her before she'd taken more than three steps inside. Her eyes found mine immediately, the way they always did, across every distance we'd ever put between us.
"Hi," she said. Carefully even.
"Hi," I said. "Come with me."
I put my hand at the small of her back and guided her past the counter, through the kitchen door and into the small office at the back that barely fit a desk and a filing cabinet and the two of us standing close together.
I pulled the door shut behind us and the noise of the bakery dropped to a muffled hum.
She held out the folded cardigan.
"I came to return this," she said.
"I know," I said, taking it and setting it on the desk without looking at it. "That's not the only reason you came."
She looked at me for a moment, then her shoulders came down.
"They were all staring at me," she said.
I sighed, “I know and I’m sorry.”
She stared up at me, “The bakery is packed. On a Monday morning."
"Marco showed me the society page headline at six thirty," I said. "Youngest Solas prince claims mystery Omega at Valentine gala. Scales visible from across the ballroom." I paused. “It wasn't inaccurate."
She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan and pressed her hand over her face.
The scales were still moving restlessly beneath my skin, responding to every wave of nerves rolling off her. I reached up and wrapped my hand gently around her wrist, drawing her hand away from her face until I could see her eyes.
"Look at me," I said.
She looked at me.
"You walked through that door this morning," I said.
"Seven forty-five. Same as always. Same bag, same cardigan, same coffee you're about to let me make you.
Whatever is happening out there, whatever gets printed or whoever shows up wanting to see if you're real, none of it changes what happens in this bakery. "
"Kael..."
"I'm still your baker," I said. "I was yours before I was anything else to you and I'm still yours now. The rest of it is just noise."
She searched my face the way she always had, quietly and carefully, looking for the thing underneath the words and the scales settled.
Not because the moment was less charged but because I stopped holding anything back.
"Amara," I said. "I need to tell you something I should have said before any of the rest of it happened."
She waited.
"I love you," I said. "Not because of fated match biology.
Not because my dragon recognized you across a ballroom.
I loved you before I had words for any of that, in the only way I knew how at the time, which was getting up before dawn to make sure your favorite pastry was ready when you walked through that door.
" The scales pulsed again warm and steady.
"I loved you every morning you stood at that counter and had no idea I was a prince.
Every time you talked to me like I was just a man and meant it.
Every time you walked out that door and I stood there wishing I'd said more. "
Her eyes were bright.
"You made me chocolate lavender tarts," she said softly.
"I did."
"Because you were already thinking about me."
"I was always thinking about you."
She closed the small distance between us in the cramped little office and kissed me. Soft and sure and entirely hers.
When she pulled back her eyes were still bright but her shoulders were loose and her scent had shifted back to that warm settled lavender that made every restless thing in me go quiet.
"I love you too," she said. "I think it started somewhere around the third honey-ember tart but I wasn't ready to admit it yet."
A laugh moved through my chest low and genuine and I pulled her into me and felt her arms wrap around my waist and her face turn into my shirt.
We stood like that in the cramped little office that smelled like cinnamon and old wood while the bakery hummed with curiosity on the other side of the door.
"Ready to go back out there?" I asked.
She took one steady breath.
"Make me a coffee first," she said. "Black."
"No sugar?"
She tilted her head back and looked up at me with those warm brown eyes that had been quietly rearranging my entire world one morning at a time for six months.
"I live plenty," she said.
I smiled so wide it hurt.
"Yeah," I said. "You do."