Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Fergal did not have the patience for this.
For weeks, he’d sought Gregor out again and again, testing, prodding, poking, but the walls around him were higher than ever.
They were like a goddamned castle at this point, one of those medieval fortresses with a moat around it, steel-enforced gates, and guards armed to the teeth on every turret.
He couldn’t get through. Oh, he still caught glimpses from time to time, these micro-moments where he slipped through, but then the walls came back up and he was back at square one. Fuck that. It was time to try something else.
He’d have to try his gift. No, not the one Gregor knew about—the one everyone knew about—but the other one. The gift that thrilled and terrified him in equal measure.
His dragon was light blue, so he was an influencer.
Not the gift he’d been hoping for—red would not only have been much cooler but would have also offered him much better chances of survival—but whatever.
He’d played around with it, and it had been fun to influence people’s moods and emotions and even actions, once he’d gotten the hang of it.
What he hadn’t counted on was that he seemed to have been given another gift, one that had shocked the hell out of him the first time he’d inadvertently used it.
The thoughts had streamed into his head like they were his own, and he’d been so startled he’d tripped and would’ve slammed straight into a wall if Gregor hadn’t caught him.
It had been a servant, an omega named Tiffany, whose constant offers to share his bed couldn’t have been more blatant if she’d worn a sign around her neck announcing them.
She’d been mopping the floors, looking up and smiling at him as he walked by.
He’d carelessly thrown out his influencer magic to see if he could make her spill the bucket of water.
Childish, yes, but he’d take his fun where he could find it.
Instead, he’d slipped into her mind so completely that he’d been in her head.
In her thoughts. One moment, he’d been in his own head, coming up with the stupid idea of making her spill that water, and the next, he’d been in hers, looking at himself with eyes of lust and thoughts of becoming the next dragon princess.
Her heat was soon, and if she could seduce the prince and get pregnant, she would—
He’d tripped, and the fall had yanked him out of her head.
She’d never even known, as far as he could tell.
Since then, he’d practiced—though carefully, never using it for too long and never on people with the gift of magic, as they might pick up on it—and was now able to distinguish between his gifts.
The influencer thing came naturally, but the mind-reading took more effort.
Though his father’s stuffy advisor Brennan had been laughably easy.
A subtle nudge and the man’s carefully constructed mask of indifference had crumbled, revealing a seething jealousy toward the younger advisors that Fergal had always suspected but never confirmed.
The guards at the east gate were even simpler—loyal, bored, vaguely horny.
He could’ve known that without using his influencer gift, but it had been good practice.
His father had been a tougher nut to crack, especially because Fergal didn’t want the man to even suspect he had a gift so rare that Fergal hadn’t been able to find a mention of it in the last two hundred years.
But after some careful testing, Fergal had found his way into his father’s mind. It had not been pretty.
He’d never tried it on Gregor. He hadn’t dared to.
The man was too perceptive, too trained to notice anything being different from the usual.
But he wasn’t getting anywhere with everything else he’d tried, so he had to attempt this.
He’d have to be sneaky as a snake, sliding into Gregor’s mind slowly and subtly.
Hopefully, he’d be able to find out what was going on because Gregor was hiding something. Fergal wasn’t sure what it was, but the man had a secret. One that he’d kept for many, many years. And today, Fergal intended to find out what it was.
He strode through the stone corridors of the compound, his boots echoing against the polished wooden floors.
Outside, the Canadian winter raged with its usual brutality—snow falling in endless curtains of white, the wind a constant howl that had been the soundtrack of his entire life. He barely noticed it anymore.
What he did notice was the restlessness thrumming under his skin, an electric buzz that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with what was waiting for him in the library. Who was waiting for him.
He turned the corner and pushed open the heavy oak door.
Gregor was already there. The man was incapable of being late, as if punctuality were a moral imperative rather than a social courtesy.
He was in his leather seat, a cup of steaming tea in front of him.
Next to Fergal’s chair, a white mug of coffee stood waiting for him. White. Gregor was tired then.
Gregor didn’t look up when Fergal entered, and he took the opportunity to look at him the way he only allowed himself when Gregor’s attention was elsewhere.
The silver-black hair cropped close to his skull, more silver revealed by the library’s lamplight.
The broad shoulders that strained against his simple dark shirt, the sleeves rolled to the forearms in a way that should not have been as distracting as it was.
The strong jaw, slightly crooked nose—broken at least once that Fergal knew of—and a thin scar that traced a pale line from his cheekbone to just below his left ear.
That neatly trimmed beard that framed his strong jaw so perfectly.
His hands held the book with a gentleness that seemed impossible given their size, thick fingers turning pages with surprising delicacy.
Now Gregor did look up, and Fergal snapped his gaze to the nearest bookshelf as if he’d been studying the spines with great interest.
“Your Highness.”
“Gregor,” he said, dropping into the chair across from him with calculated carelessness, throwing one leg over the armrest. “What thrilling topic have you prepared for me today? The history of grain tariffs? The proper formatting of a trade agreement?”
The faintest twitch at the corner of Gregor’s mouth.
Gregor didn’t smile, not really, not the way other people did.
But Fergal had become an expert at reading the micro-expressions that passed across that weathered face, and that twitch was the equivalent of a belly laugh from anyone else.
“The Dragon Code. Sections fourteen through twenty-two. Honor, alliances, and the obligations therein.”
“Another page turner,” Fergal deadpanned, but they both knew he didn’t mean it. He lived for this shit as much as Gregor did.
The Code was personal for Gregor. He’d left the Murphy clan because of it, because they’d violated it so thoroughly that a principled man couldn’t stomach staying.
Fergal had pieced together that story over years of careful observation, not because Gregor had ever volunteered it.
Getting personal information out of the man was like pulling teeth from a dragon—dangerous and possibly deadly.
Gregor began the lesson with his usual methodical precision, walking through the historical context of the alliance obligations—how dragon clans had, since the earliest days, been bound by mutual-aid pacts that superseded individual clan interests.
His voice was deep and steady, the kind of voice that could make even the driest material sound like it mattered.
Which it did, but it was hard to concentrate on thirteenth-century alliance structures when the man teaching them had forearms like that.
Focus. He needed to focus. Not on forearms. On the plan.
When Gregor was deep into an explanation of how the Code handled betrayal between allied clans—the obligations of the wronged party, the reparations required, the conditions under which an alliance could be dissolved—Fergal interrupted him.
“So what happens when the betrayal isn’t between clans but within one? ”
Gregor’s steel-gray eyes lifted from the text. “Clarify.”
“A clan member who breaks the Code, who does something dishonorable. Not against another clan, but against his own. What are the obligations then?”
“The Code addresses internal disputes in section thirty-one—”
“I’m not asking about section thirty-one. I’m asking what you think.”
Another micro-twitch. This one wasn’t amusement but wariness. He knew damn well what Fergal was hinting at. “My personal opinion isn’t relevant to your education, Your Highness.”
“It’s relevant to me.”
Gregor held his gaze for a beat too long, then looked down at the book. “Internal betrayal is addressed through the clan’s own justice system, overseen by the king. The Code provides guidelines, but ultimately, the king decides.”
“And if the king is the one who’s dishonorable?”
The temperature in the room shifted. “Then it falls to those around him to act according to their conscience and the Code.”
“Is that what you did?” Fergal asked, his voice softer now. “When you left the Murphys?”
Gregor’s jaw tightened. A muscle feathered along the line of it, visible even beneath the stubble. “We’ve discussed my history before, Your Highness. It’s not today’s lesson.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about today’s lesson,” Fergal murmured.
Before he could stop himself, before the rational part of his brain could intervene, he reached out with his ability.
Delicately, like sliding his fingers across the surface of still water, barely disturbing it.
He sent warmth toward Gregor, a gentle, questioning touch of his magic against the edges of Gregor’s consciousness.
He wasn’t trying to read his thoughts. He just wanted to feel what was underneath. Just a glimpse behind the wall.
For half a heartbeat, he felt something. A rush of emotion so powerful it nearly knocked the breath out of him—heat and anguish and something fierce and aching that he couldn’t name—
“Don’t.”
One word, spoken as quietly as a blade sliding from its sheath. Gregor hadn’t moved, hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t shifted his posture, but the air between them had turned to ice. Those steel-gray eyes were locked on Fergal with an intensity that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Fergal pulled his magic back like yanking his hand from a flame.
His heart was hammering. He wasn’t afraid of Gregor, had never been afraid of Gregor, but the flicker he’d felt in that fraction of a second before the wall slammed down had been so fierce, so vast. And so carefully contained that Fergal realized he’d only scratched the surface. “I’m—”
“We’re done for today.” Gregor closed the Codex with a soft, deliberate thud. His movements were too controlled. He was angry, but Fergal would’ve never realized that if he hadn’t been studying him for years now.
“Gregor—”
“Same time tomorrow. And, Your Highness?” Gregor paused at the door, his back to Fergal. The broad expanse of it seemed to carry a weight that had nothing to do with muscle. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Gregor left, closing the door behind him with a click that sounded like a lock turning.
Fergal sat in the empty library, the echo of those parting words ringing in his ears like a bell struck once and left to resonate. His hands were trembling, his heart still racing.
What had happened? He replayed the moment when he’d touched Gregor’s mind with a nudge of his magic, gentle as a whisper.
Then the brief, blinding rush of what he’d found.
And then Gregor had pulled up that wall—massive, ancient, built from years of discipline and reinforced by something darker.
Something that tasted like guilt and grief and felt like a locked door at the end of a long, dark corridor.
Fergal had expected to find attraction, proof of what he suspected Gregor felt for him.
But this? This was something else entirely.
Something that went far deeper than desire and was wrapped in so many layers of pain and secrecy that Fergal couldn’t even begin to untangle it. What was Gregor hiding?
The question wasn’t new. Fergal had been wondering for years, though he’d never voiced it aloud.
Like, who the hell would he even tell? His father was too busy being king—and a jackass, but that was neither here nor there—and his mom and Peter were dead.
No, sad as it was, Gregor was the closest thing Fergal had to a friend, and he could hardly talk to the man himself about the questions he had.
So he’d asked himself, silently, privately.
What was Gregor hiding? Was it something that had happened when he’d been with the Murphys?
Gregor’s calm exterior was too perfect. No one was that controlled naturally.
Everyone always raved about Gregor’s discipline, but it was that same rigid regimen that made the man clamp down so hard on whatever was happening inside him.
And now Fergal had proof. He’d touched the edge of whatever was locked inside that fortress of a man, and it had been overwhelming.
Anguish. Heat. And that fierce, aching emotion he couldn’t name but had made his own chest constrict in response, as if his heart recognized it even when his mind couldn’t.
Gregor had felt his nudge immediately. That in itself was remarkable.
Fergal’s father hadn’t noticed. Brennan hadn’t noticed.
The guards, the servants, the advisors—none of them had felt even a whisper of his ability when he’d tested it.
But Gregor had caught it in half a heartbeat, like a man who’d been waiting for exactly that kind of intrusion.
Like a man who knew what it felt like because he’d encountered it before.
He must’ve learned that at the Murphys, who took their magical training more seriously than any other clan. Gregor would’ve learned to recognize and resist that kind of magic during the decades he’d spent with them.
But recognizing it and reacting the way he had were two very different things. Gregor could’ve just blocked Fergal’s attempt and been done with it. Instead, he’d not only pulled up those high and mighty walls, but he’d been angry. Furious.
Which meant there was something to find.
Fergal stood in the center of the library, the lamplight casting long shadows across the floor. He wasn’t going to stop. If anything, today had reinforced his feeling that the real Gregor, the one behind the professional mask, the military posture, the “Your Highness,
and the careful distance was worth finding. Was worth fighting for.
And Fergal had never once in his life backed down from a fight.