Chapter 70 Percival
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Percival
I woke up with my hand on her ankle for no reason I could explain.
Mira was still asleep at the center of the bedroll. Solomon’s arm across her ribs, hand on her stomach. Lucian’s face in her hair, arm draped over her waist. My palm wrapped around her ankle, thumb on the tendon, bond vibrating through the contact.
The enforcer and the king were unconsciously cuddling a sleeping woman, and I was guarding her feet. Solid contribution, Percival. Really pulling my weight.
After the verdict last night, Solomon had radioed Wyatt. Briefly mentioning that Mira had to stay for recovery. Wyatt would cover her absence at the compound. An extended reconnaissance rotation logged in the system, buying her hours before anyone asked questions.
Wyatt had agreed immediately, probably because the alternative was Solomon’s voice getting quieter, and when Solomon’s voice got quieter, people’s life expectancy shortened.
By midnight tonight, she needed to be back inside those walls.
I untangled myself from the pile and started on breakfast.
Twenty minutes later, Mira emerged from the den wrapped in Solomon’s jacket, hair a disaster, eyes half-closed, moving with cautious shuffle.
“Morning, love.”
“Mmph.”
“Eloquent.” I guided her to the flat stone beside the fire and set the plate in front of her. Berries on the left because she always reached for those first, dried apple sliced into strips, nuts arranged at the top.
She blinked at the plate. Then at me.
“Did you arrange these by sweetness?”
I looked at the fruit. Berries, apple, nuts. Descending order. My hands had just done it.
“No. That’s just how they came out of the container.”
“Percival, they are in a gradient.”
“Eat your breakfast.”
She ate. Her mouth closed around a berry and my brain short-circuited because I could picture those lips wrapped around my length while her eyes looked up at me and now she was sitting in morning light with jacket slipping off one shoulder, exposing the claiming mark, and my cock was getting ideas that were entirely inappropriate for breakfast.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I adjusted my sitting position and thought about tactical formations.
Solomon materialized at the supply station, grinding prenatal herbs similar to his father.
“Her next dose isn’t for six hours,” I said.
“I’m preparing it in advance.”
“Six hours in advance?”
“Yes. I don’t see any problem with that.”
Mira watched him grind. “Solomon, are you making me tea already for a dose I take at noon?”
“The preparation requires attention. Rushed execution compromises the compound’s efficacy.”
“You’ve been making this tea for weeks. You could do it blindfolded.”
The mortar scraped. His jaw twitched. “Eat your breakfast, Mira.”
“Everyone keeps telling me to eat my breakfast.”
She ate another berry. Her tongue caught the juice on her lower lip and Solomon’s hands stalled on the mortar for half a second.
Just long enough for me to catch. His silver eyes tracked the movement of her mouth, lingered on the wet sheen left behind, before jerking back to the herbs with the discipline of a man fighting the memory of what that mouth had done to him last night.
I grinned. The enforcer was not as composed as he wanted everyone to believe.
Lucian appeared carrying boots. New ones from Voss’s shipment, relaced and adjusted. He set them beside Mira’s bare feet.
“What are those?” Mira asked.
“Boots.”
“I can see they’re boots. Where did mine go?”
“Your boots were a hazard. These are replacements.” He crouched and positioned the left one at her foot’s angle. “Try them.”
“You got me new shoes?”
“I addressed a tactical deficiency.”
“Lucian.” She looked up at him from her stone seat, and the softness in her mismatched eyes made his jaw clench in the way I’d learned meant he was holding back words. “Thank you.”
He held her gaze for two seconds too long. His fingers were still on the boot near her ankle, and the proximity to her bare skin made the bond channel pulse with a warmth that had nothing to do with footwear.
“Try them on,” he said. Quieter now. And stayed crouching while she slid her bandaged foot into the boot, his hand steadying her calf, thumb brushing the inside of her knee where the skin was softest, where his mouth had been eight hours ago.
The touch lasted one second longer than assistance required and his eyes darkened in a way that made the temperature around them shift.
Mira’s breath caught, barely. But the sound carried. Solomon caught it too. And Lucian definitely caught it because his thumb didn’t move.
The three of us were going to be useless today.
***
At the portal staging area, Her Highness Rheda supervised the prisoner transport while Mira walked over in her new boots. The three of us tracked her crossing the clearing with synchronized attention.
Annora and Giselle were loaded onto the formation. Bound, gagged, hollow-eyed. Mira watched them pass, hand on her stomach.
Rheda pulled Mira into a full embrace. “You come back. You come back with my grandchildren, okay?”
“I promise.”
She pointed at the three of us. “If anything happens to her, I won’t be as merciful as the Barrows.”
“We get it. Goodbye, Mother,” Lucian said. For the second time in two days.
Formation moved north. A crackle of energy, a pulse of light, and the clearing emptied.
Midmorning brought Wyatt’s follow-up radio check. Solomon handled it again, standing over the radio with his arms crossed while Wyatt confirmed the cover was holding.
“How much longer can you stretch it?”
“Maybe a couple more hours until evening if I fudge the overnight logs.”
Solomon’s voice dropped to the register that made seasoned soldiers reconsider their career choices. “If Thiago questions her absence and you fail to provide convincing cover, I will find you, Wyatt.”
Lucian leaned over Solomon’s shoulder. “Add extra hours. She returns tonight. Not before.”
The radio went quiet. Then: “Copy.”
Mira appeared behind them. “Did you two just threaten Wyatt?”
“We clarified expectations,” Solomon said.
“I could hear his voice shaking from across the clearing.”
She threw a berry at Solomon’s head. He caught it without looking and ate it.
Late afternoon, our wolves came out.
Solomon shifted first, dropping to all fours mid-stride, his gray wolf padding toward the den where Mira sat reading documents. He circled her twice, pressed his muzzle against her belly, and lay down with his body curved around her, enclosing her completely.
Lucian’s black wolf emerged from the tree line carrying a rabbit. Fresh kill, deposited at Mira’s feet. He sat back on his haunches, watching with amber eyes, waiting.
“Did you just... bring me a dead animal?”
The black wolf’s tail twitched once. A dignified acknowledgement.
“Lucian, I can’t eat a raw rabbit.”
The wolf pushed it closer with his nose. Solomon’s gray wolf huffed judgment from behind her.
“Are you two having a disagreement about my dietary preferences? In wolf form? While I’m sitting right here?”
The black wolf picked up the rabbit and carried it to Farmon, who looked down at the offering and sighed. “He wants me to cook it for you.”
My shift hit without warning. Brown fur, four legs, and an overwhelming compulsion to press my body against my mate. I trotted to the den, nudged my muzzle under her arm until her hand landed on my head. She scratched behind my ear and every coherent thought I’d ever had dissolved.
“Three wolves,” she murmured. Solomon warm against her back. Lucian settling at her feet, massive head resting on her ankle. “You guys are cute in this form. It actually makes me feel lighter. Better.”
Her voice went soft. The underneath of it carried the warmth she reserved for moments when she let herself feel safe.
“You’re ridiculous,” she whispered. “All three of you.”
My tail wagged, involuntary.
And Mira sat in the center of three wolves with her hands on her belly and her eyes closed. Peace on her face that had been absent for weeks.
The wolves shifted back eventually. Farmon served the rabbit, and Mira ate every bite while Lucian watched with the restrained satisfaction of a provider whose offering had been accepted.
Farmon caught my arm while I was reaching for my shirt.
“You’re courting her,” he said.
“We’re just spending the day and helping her recover.”
“You arranged fruits during breakfast, built a fire calibrated to the temperature that makes her shoulders drop. Solomon ground supplements six hours early. Your king requisitioned new boots and just hunted a rabbit in wolf form and delivered it to her feet.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And you shifted without deciding to. Lycan courtship behavior. Instinctual, amplified after a threat to mate or offspring. You probably had no idea you were doing any of it.”
I looked at the fire. At the plate still sitting by the den, the new boots on Mira’s feet, and the rabbit bones on Farmon’s station.
“So we’ve all been doing mating dances all day and nobody told us?”
“I’m telling you now. You’re welcome.”
She caught me following her to the stream afterward.
“Percy. You were at the stream twenty minutes ago.”
“I’m hydrating. There’s a difference between hydrating and hovering.”
She turned and the afternoon light caught her face and the bump pressed against my forearm when she stepped closer and my body went stupid.
Full system failure. Every thought evacuated my brain except the memory of last night, her delicious taste in my tongue, the sounds she made when I hit that spot, the way her nails raked my skin hard enough to leave marks I could still feel.
“Percy.” Her voice dropped. “You’re staring.”
“You’re beautiful. Standing in direct sunlight while carrying our children. Staring is a reasonable response.”
The blush crept down her neck toward the claiming mark and my wolf tracked the color with an intensity that made my fists clench at my sides.
“Stop looking at me that way.”
“What way?”
“The way that makes me want to drag you behind the supply crates.”
My brain went blank. Then restarted and went blank again.
“That,” I managed, “is a very dangerous thing to say to a man who’s been involuntarily courting you all morning.”
She smiled. The one that was just for me. Saved for moments when the sass dropped and the real Mira peeked through.
Then she walked away.
Deliberately. Hips swaying by a fraction more than necessary. And I stood at the stream with my fists clenched and my cock straining and the absolute certainty that this woman would destroy me and I’d thank her for it.
Sunset came soon. I hated that time passed.
Compound maps reviewed one final time. Farmon administered the last supplement round. By night, she needed to be back inside those walls.
But night was hours away.
The den settled into warmth. Mira at the center, Solomon’s arm across her ribs, Lucian at her back, my hand finding her ankle again because apparently that was my thing now.
“I should stay awake,” she murmured. “I need to leave tonight.”
“We’ll wake you,” Solomon said.
“Promise?”
“I have never failed to wake you.”
“You’ve also never failed to make it weird by watching me sleep first.”
“I was monitoring you.”
“Creepy observation.”
“Sleep, Mira.”
Her breathing evened out within minutes. The babies pulsed beneath Solomon’s palm. The bond coursed through four bodies in a rhythm that matched the heartbeats underneath.
I pressed my thumb against her ankle tendon. The same spot I’d woken up holding this morning. Courting behavior, Farmon said.
Maybe. Or maybe it was just this. The four of us in a den, holding on to each other because tomorrow everything would change and tonight was all we had left.
My eyes closed. Just for a second, just to rest them.
The den went quiet in a comfortable silence.