Chapter 7 #2
“Surface-level only. I didn’t push deep.
But what I found wasn’t pretty.” He wouldn’t elaborate on that.
Some of what he’d seen in his father’s mind was too personal, too sad, too complicated to share, even with Gregor.
“The point is, I can use it on Duncan. Carefully, in a controlled setting. Find out what he’s hiding, who he’s working for, what he has on my father. ”
“No.”
The refusal was immediate and absolute, spoken with the same tone Gregor had used in the training room when he’d said don’t.
Fergal bristled. “No?”
“It’s too dangerous. If Duncan has Murphy connections, he may have magical training you’re not aware of. Murphy alphas are trained to detect mental intrusion from childhood. If he catches you—”
“He won’t. I’m good at this, Gregor. Better than you think.”
“I don’t doubt your ability. You’re remarkable for even having this gift. I doubt your safety.” Gregor turned to face him fully. “You’re the crown prince. The only heir. If something happens to you—”
“If something happens to me, my father will continue running this clan into the ground, omegas will continue being beaten by men like Duncan, and whatever operation the Murphys are running will succeed. Is that a better outcome?”
Gregor’s jaw clenched, the strategic mind at war with the protective instinct.
“I’m not asking for your permission,” Fergal said, more gently now. “I’m asking for your help. There’s a difference.”
“Is there? Because it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind and you’re informing me of your decision.”
“Fine. Then I’m informing you and asking you to watch my back while I do it. You can either be in the room, ready to intervene if something goes wrong, or I can do it alone. Your choice.”
The look Gregor gave him could’ve stripped paint from the walls. “That’s not a choice, and you know it.”
“I know.” Fergal allowed himself the smallest smile. “So you’ll be there?”
Gregor exhaled through his nose—a sharp, frustrated sound that was the closest thing to a curse Fergal had ever heard from him.
“I’ll be there. But we do this on my terms. I choose the time and place.
You go no deeper than surface thoughts, and you pull out immediately at the first sign of detection. If I say stop, you stop.”
“Agreed.”
“And, Fergal?” Gregor’s voice dropped, shedding its tactical edge for something rawer.
“If this goes wrong—if he catches you—I need you to understand what I will do to protect you. There will be no half-measures. No restraint. I will not let anyone hurt you, and I don’t care what that costs me. Are we clear?”
The ferocity behind those words stole Fergal’s breath.
Not because they were surprising—Gregor had been protecting him since before he could walk—but because for the first time, Gregor wasn’t pretending the protectiveness was professional.
The mask was off. This wasn’t a guard defending his charge.
This was something else entirely, something vast and fierce and barely contained.
“We’re clear,” Fergal said softly.
They stood in silence as the last of the light drained from the sky. The first faint ribbons of the aurora borealis appeared on the northern horizon—pale green, barely visible, like a whisper of color against the darkening canvas.
Fergal shivered. The cold had finally found its way through the adrenaline and the intensity of the conversation, settling into his bones with the patient inevitability of the Canadian climate.
He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, unwilling to show weakness even as his body protested the lack of a jacket.
Without a word, Gregor unzipped his own jacket and draped it over Fergal’s shoulders.
The leather was warm from Gregor’s body heat, heavy with the scent of cedar and steel and something underneath that was just Gregor.
The gesture was simple, practical, the kind of thing anyone might do for someone who was cold.
Except that Gregor had never done it before.
In all the years Fergal had known him, through winters that would freeze a lesser man solid, Gregor had never once breached the physical boundary between them with something as intimate as sharing warmth.
He would’ve told Fergal to go inside. He would’ve said, “You should get a coat, Your Highness.”
Instead, he’d wrapped his own jacket around Fergal’s shoulders with a tenderness that made Fergal’s chest ache.
“Thank you,” Fergal said quietly, pulling the jacket tighter. “Gregor.”
Gregor looked at him. The aurora was strengthening, painting his face in shifting shades of green, and in that light, the silver of his hair and the steel of his eyes took on an otherworldly quality, like a man standing at the intersection of past and present. “You’re welcome,” he said. “Fergal.”
His name. Twice today. Three times if Fergal counted the training room yesterday. After a year of “Your Highness” delivered with military precision, Gregor was saying his name like it was a door he’d decided to stop locking.
Fergal stood next to Gregor in the growing dark, wrapped in his jacket, watching the aurora paint the sky over the mountains, and let the silence say everything neither of them was ready to speak aloud.
Tomorrow, they would plan the scan of Duncan. Tomorrow, they would begin unraveling whatever conspiracy was coiling through the foundations of the Fitzgerald clan. Tomorrow, the real work would begin.
But tonight, standing side by side in the cold with the northern lights above them, Fergal allowed himself to believe that the walls around Gregor’s heart weren’t being torn down. They were being opened. From the inside.
And that was worth more than any victory he could have won by force.