Werewolves
Catalina
Yuki’s note came on her personal stationery, handwritten.
New quarters assigned. Eastern wing, third floor. Move at your convenience. Y.
I read it twice, mostly because the first time the words refused to assemble in the correct order. New quarters. Eastern wing. Move. Convenience. That last one almost made me laugh.
Rhain had been asleep beside me until ten minutes ago. Criminally peaceful sleep. Offensive sleep. Sleep where a person closed his eyes and simply left consciousness, like that was a normal and available service offered to everyone.
Dominic had come off protective watch at six and gone to sleep in the small enforcer room across the hall, because apparently he also belonged to the category of people whose bodies accepted instructions. Mine did not.
Sleep would not come for me. I had lain down, tried breathing, counted backward, then forward, then considered whether numbers were part of the problem.
Nothing. I stayed exactly where I was, awake inside a body that had decided rest was a trap.
Ninety-six hours awake did strange things to language. At some point, words stopped being tools and became objects someone had left too far across the room.
My hands were not steady, and my pulse beat too fast at my temple, sharp enough that I could count it without trying. One hundred and ten, give or take. The room kept arriving at me a fraction late.
I sat up, and the room slid sideways before reconsidering and coming back.
Rhain turned his head when I moved. His hand had been resting against my hip in the same slow, steady pressure he had used for the last few days. Touch as an anchor.
“What is it?”
“Yuki moved us.”
His brows lifted slightly. “Moved us.”
“New quarters. Eastern wing, third floor.”
“Now?”
“Before lunch, apparently.” I held up the card. “She says eastern wing like that means something.”
“It does.”
“Good something or Ashenmere something?”
His thumb brushed my hip. “Both.”
“Unhelpful.”
“Accurate.”
“Rhain.”
His expression softened, just enough to make the room feel less tilted. “Eastern wing, third floor, means privacy. Distance from the council chamber. Distance from the public corridors. A suite, likely. One with an antechamber large enough for Graves to guard without sleeping in a broom closet.”
“That sounds thoughtful.”
“It is.”
“And?”
“And Yuki does very little for only one reason.”
There it was. I looked back at the note. Move at your convenience.
Convenience, my ass.
* * *
Rhain and Dominic walked beside me.
The eastern wing was older than the one we had left.
Stone showed in the lower courses instead of plaster, and the wood floors had darkened to the color of the beams overhead.
The air smelled faintly of wax and woodsmoke from one of the old stoves that had probably been heating the building for a hundred and twenty winters.
The new quarters were at the end of the third-floor gallery, where the corridor narrowed and the traffic thinned to almost nothing. A brass key was already waiting in the door.
Rhain unlocked it, and the three of us went in.
The suite opened into a small entry hall, then a sitting room with a stone fireplace and enough space for a handful of people to gather casually. Beyond it, a bedroom door stood open.
The bed inside was wide, unmade, and very obviously new. Three pillows had been stacked at the headboard.
I stared at it for half a second too long. “Subtle,” I said.
Rhain’s mouth curved as he chuckled.
Dominic closed the door behind us and turned the lock from the inside. His shoulders eased one degree when the bolt slid home.
Then he crossed to the window first, because Dominic would inspect a nursery for sniper sightlines if given half a chance.
He checked the frame, the latch, the angle to the gallery below, then moved through the sitting room with the same quiet efficiency, measuring the doorways, the walls, the distance between the bed and the outer room.
I watched him find the shape of the suite before I did. Not just larger quarters. Correct quarters.
Enough space for Dominic to be inside without standing over the bed.
Enough separation for Rhain’s bond not to press directly against his.
Enough shared air that neither channel had to stretch through a door, a corridor, and several centuries of people pretending bodies were less complicated than law.
Yuki had not moved me into safer quarters.
She had moved us somewhere the bond could breathe.
Dominic reached the outer door just as the knock came. One soft. Two firm.
He looked back, not asking permission exactly, but giving me the chance to object.
I nodded.
He unlocked the door and opened it. Yuki stood on the other side, hands folded, expression composed. Her gaze moved past Dominic to me.
“A word with you, Catalina,” she said. “In the corridor, please.”
Rhain glanced back at me. Do you want me?
I shook my head.
He nodded. He stepped aside.
I came to the door, stepped past Dominic into the corridor and let the door close behind me.
Yuki walked four paces down the corridor to the alcove at the gallery end.
She did not look at me when she began. “Your pulse is too high and you have the pallor people get near the end of the fourth day when the body has stopped asking politely and begun making formal complaints.”
I waited. All of that was true. None of it explained why Yuki had pulled me into an alcove to say it.
Yuki folded her hands in front of her, the movement too controlled to pass for calm.
“There is something I have to tell you,” she said, “and we do not, as a rule, tell humans.”
“That sentence always improves a morning.”
Her mouth moved, almost but not quite a smile.
“No,” she said. “It generally ruins one.”
She looked past me toward the gallery window.
“I watched a woman die slowly of the thing your body is doing right now in this corridor,” she said. “I was younger. I was less powerful. I told myself there were rules.”
Her jaw tightened. “I have since developed a less generous opinion of rules.”
Yuki looked back at me then, expression flat. “The bond runs through you,” she said. “You carry both marks. That makes you the center channel. When the channel opens and the three bodies remain separate, the channel runs hot.”
“In plain English.”
“Elevated heart rate. Tremor. Sleep refusal. Dream bleed. A persistent sense of vigilance the mind will explain however it can.”
I swallowed.
“The body holds it,” she said, “until all three of you are together.”
“In the same room?”
“In the same room, yes. But not merely occupying air.”
I stared at her.
For the first time since I had known her, Yuki Ashenmere looked openly uncomfortable. “Dragons are private creatures,” she said. “Absurdly private. We would rather let civilization collapse than have one direct conversation about mating mechanics before breakfast.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“Yes. It is a cultural failing that we have cherished for centuries.”
Despite myself, a laugh tried to surface. Yuki’s expression did not move.
“The first mate, in this case Dominic, usually tells the human,” she said. “Quietly. Privately. Before the body reaches this point.”
“Dominic doesn’t know.”
“No.”
“Rhain?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because they are young, male, and dragon enough to assume the body will explain itself when necessary.”
She drew one careful breath. “The protocol is older than both of them. Older than me. It is not written because dragons do not write down what they are embarrassed to admit they need. It is passed in whispers.”
My hands were cold. “So what happens if I ignore it?”
Yuki looked at me directly. “At first? What is happening now.”
I swallowed. “And after that?”
“The bond starts trying to solve the problem without your consent.”
“Skip to what it does to me.”
“Fever. Pain under the marks. The sensation of being pulled in two directions while your body keeps insisting it can stand in the middle forever. The marks start fighting for priority. The body becomes the contested ground. It’s what you’ve heard of as bond strain.”
I looked down at my shaking hands and hated that she could see it.
“The answer?” I said.
“The body needs both bites at once before the channel can settle,” Yuki said.
I looked at the floor. There were several possible replies. All of them would have embarrassed both of us.
It could be worse, I supposed. I could have four mates.
Yuki watched my face for one second too long, then gave a short nod, as if something in my silence had satisfied whatever duty had brought her into this corridor.
Then she turned and walked down the corridor without looking back.
I stayed in the alcove for ten seconds. Maybe twelve. Long enough for the words to stop being only words and become the shape of what I had to carry back into the room.
Same room. Same bed. My body as the contested ground.
* * *
Dominic didn’t say anything when he opened the door for me.
Rhain was on his feet by the window. He had been watching the door.
Rhain crossed the room before I had taken two steps. “Catalina.”
“Yes.”
“Sit.”
I sat.
The mark at the right of my throat pulled deep. The mark at the left answered. Dominic felt it from across the room. His shoulders shifted, and then he was moving too, quiet and direct, closing the distance without crowding me.
Rhain knelt in front of me, both hands settling at my knees. He had chosen a height I could meet without lifting my head.
Dominic stopped at my side. Not hovering, just present.
“What did she say?” Rhain asked.
I tried to make a sentence and failed.
“Catalina,” Dominic said.
His voice was lower than Rhain’s. Less question. More anchor.
I looked from one of them to the other. My face went hot.
“I can only say this once,” I said, which was logistics, not drama. I did not have enough dignity available for a second pass.
Rhain’s hands tightened at my knees.