Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Gregor couldn’t sleep.
He lay on his back in the narrow bed, staring at the ceiling, his right hand resting on his chest. He could still feel it.
The impact, the heat, the way Fergal’s body had arched into the blows like it was something he’d been waiting for.
The sounds he’d made—those small, shattered moans—played on a loop in Gregor’s head, and no amount of discipline could silence them.
At four in the morning, he gave up on sleep and went through his routine with mechanical precision.
Shower—cold. Shave. Four identical dark shirts in the wardrobe—he chose one without looking.
Pants. Boots. Dagger on the belt, gun in the holster.
The same uniform he’d worn every day for nearly two centuries, armor in everything but name.
He caught sight of his right hand as he buttoned his shirt and stopped.
The palm was unmarked, unremarkable. The hand of a soldier, scarred and calloused from centuries of service.
No evidence of what it had done last night.
So how could he feel it so deeply, replaying every moment in his head like a movie?
He finished buttoning and left his quarters before the silence could swallow him.
The plan was simple. Today’s lesson would be Section Sixteen of the Code—the regulations governing inter-clan trade disputes, a topic so monumentally boring that it left zero room for personal conversation, loaded questions, or any of the other weapons in Fergal’s increasingly sophisticated arsenal.
Gregor would deliver the material with professional detachment.
Fergal would receive it with appropriate academic engagement.
They would not discuss yesterday. They would not reference the training room.
They would move forward as tutor and student, as they should’ve remained all along.
He arrived at the library forty minutes early because being the first one in the room was a tactical advantage he refused to concede. He built up the fire, prepared Fergal’s coffee in a green mug, and laid out his materials with the geometric precision of a man arranging a defensive perimeter.
By the time Fergal arrived, Gregor was seated, composed, and fortified behind enough professional detachment to withstand a siege.
Fergal walked in and dropped into his chair with his usual graceless ease. “Morning.”
“Good morning, Your Highness.”
No loaded look. No reference to yesterday. No lingering glance at Gregor’s hands. Fergal picked up the green mug, took a sip, and raised his eyebrows at the materials spread across the table. “Trade disputes? You really know how to show a man a good time.”
“Section Sixteen is foundational to understanding—”
“Inter-clan economic relationships and their impact on alliance stability. I know. I’ve read ahead.” Fergal pulled the Codex toward him and flipped to the relevant section. “Walk me through the arbitration framework. I have questions about the evidentiary standards.”
And just like that, they were in it. The lesson.
The work. The rhythmic back-and-forth that had been the backbone of their relationship for over a decade.
Fergal was sharp, engaged, and—infuriatingly—completely normal.
He challenged Gregor’s interpretations with his usual intellectual ferocity, citing precedents Gregor hadn’t expected him to know, asking questions that revealed how deeply he’d studied the material on his own time.
No provocations. No loaded questions. No lingering glances or deliberate invasions of personal space.
Fergal had become the perfect student—attentive, respectful, engaged.
It was maddening. Because Fergal’s restraint wasn’t a surrender.
Gregor had spent enough years studying military strategy to recognize a tactical retreat when he saw one.
The brat had learned patience from Gregor himself—the irony of which was absolutely not lost on him—and was deploying it with devastating effectiveness.
Gregor should’ve been relieved. This was exactly what he’d wanted—a return to professional normalcy, a clear signal that Fergal understood the boundary and was willing to respect it.
Yet he was anything but relieved.
He was, if he were brutally honest with himself, unsettled by the absence of what he’d braced himself against. Like a soldier who’d dug trenches and mounted defenses only to find the opposing army had packed up and gone home.
The silence where the attack should’ve been was somehow louder than any assault.
Without Fergal pressing against the walls, they had nothing to resist. And Gregor discovered, to his horror, that walls built to withstand siege were utterly useless against the quiet, patient gravity of a man simply being there.
Worse, Fergal was being brilliant. Not performatively brilliant, not look-at-me brilliant, but genuinely, deeply brilliant in the way that had always made Gregor proud and was now making him something else entirely.
The way Fergal’s mind worked—taking complex legal frameworks apart and reassembling them into something clearer, finding connections between clauses that scholars twice his age had missed—was the very quality that had first made Gregor see him as more than a student.
Forty minutes in, they were deep in a debate about whether the trade arbitration framework could be applied to non-economic disputes when the library door burst open.
Gregor was on his feet with his hand on his dagger before the door had finished swinging. An omega stumbled in—Valerie, the head of the household staff. The state of her stopped Gregor’s tactical assessment cold.
Her lip was split. Blood trailed from the corner of her mouth to her chin, bright against her pale skin.
Her left eye was already swelling shut, the skin around it darkening to a deep, ugly purple.
She was shaking so hard her teeth chattered, and the front of her uniform was torn at the collar, exposing the raw red marks of fingers that had gripped and twisted.
“Help,” she whispered, then her knees buckled.
Fergal caught her before Gregor could move. One second, the prince was behind the table, and the next, he was at the door, his arms around the omega, easing her to the floor with a gentleness that stood in stark contrast to the fury blazing in his eyes.
“Valerie. You’re safe now.” Fergal’s voice was steady, warm, the voice of someone who had practiced being calm for other people’s benefit. He looked up at Gregor. “Water. And send for a nurse.”
Gregor moved. He filled a glass from the pitcher on the side table and handed it to Fergal, then stepped into the corridor and flagged down a passing servant with instructions to bring one of the clan’s nurses immediately.
When he returned, Fergal had helped Valerie into a chair and was kneeling beside her, holding the glass while she drank with trembling hands.
“Who did this?” Fergal asked. His tone was gentle, but the undercurrent was steel.
Valerie shook her head, fresh tears spilling from her one functional eye. “I can’t… Please, Your Highness, I can’t—”
“You’re safe,” Fergal repeated. “No one is going to hurt you again. Not while I’m here. But I need to know who did this so I can make sure of that.”
The omega looked at Fergal, then at Gregor, then back at Fergal. Something in the prince’s expression must have reached her because she swallowed hard and whispered a name. “Duncan.”
Gregor’s blood went cold. He kept his expression neutral thanks to decades of practice, but inside, alarms were firing on every frequency.
Duncan. One of the king’s advisors. A man Gregor had been watching for months, cataloging small inconsistencies and unexplained behaviors that individually meant nothing but collectively formed a pattern he didn’t like.
Fergal’s jaw tightened, but his voice remained gentle. “Tell me what happened.”
The story came out in fragments—Duncan cornering her in the supply corridor, demanding she “show proper respect” when she failed to bow deeply enough, the backhand that had split her lip, the grab at her collar when she tried to run, the punch when she screamed.
She’d gotten away only because another servant had come around the corner, spooking Duncan into releasing her.
Gregor listened while cataloging every detail. The location—the supply corridor was one of the compound’s blind spots, a stretch without windows or regular foot traffic. Duncan had chosen it deliberately. This wasn’t a man losing his temper. It was calculated intimidation.
Fergal listened too, and Gregor watched him do it.
Watched the way he kept his body language open and non-threatening despite the rage Gregor could see simmering beneath the surface.
Watched him ask careful, specific questions—Had this happened before?
Had Duncan threatened others? Had she reported it?
—with the methodical precision of someone building a case.
The nurse arrived, an older omega named Brigid, who took one look at Valerie and shot Fergal a grim nod. Fergal squeezed Valerie’s hand. “Brigid is going to take care of you. I’m going to take care of this. And, Valerie?” He waited until her eye met his. “You did the right thing coming here.”
After Brigid led Valerie away, the library was quiet. Fergal stood in the center of the room, his fists at his sides, the firelight catching the hard set of his jaw. He looked nothing like the young man who’d been cheerfully dismantling trade arbitration clauses twenty minutes ago.
“I’m going to see my father,” he said, his voice flat with controlled fury. “Duncan answers to him, so this needs to go through the king first. Even though I already know what he’ll say.”
“What will he say?”
“That Duncan is a valuable advisor. That Valerie probably provoked him. That omegas need to learn their place.” The bitterness in Fergal’s voice cut like a blade. “The same thing he always says.”
“And if your father does nothing?”