Morning sunlight spilled through the windows.

Silas had slept.

Technically.

Whether the experience qualified as rest remained debatable.

The room was quiet.

Far too quiet.

He sat alone before the open balcony doors, watching the shadows retreat from the courtyards below as the morning sun claimed the castle.

Normally, silence had never bothered him. He had spent years cultivating alone, training alone, carrying responsibilities alone.

Today, however, the silence felt oppressive.

The morning air drifting through the open window carried the scent of warming stone and distant fire.

His gaze rested on the brightening horizon beyond the railing.

He should have been pleased. Objectively speaking, nothing had gone wrong.

Mirabelle had accepted him. She had chosen him as one of her mates. The future he wanted still existed.

And yet...

His jaw tightened.

The shadows beneath his chair darkened. A thin tendril appeared from nowhere and wrapped around one of the chair legs.

Something sharp twisted inside his chest.

Silas found himself confronting a reality he did not particularly like.

He had not been chosen first.

The realization irritated him far more than it should. His entire life, he had stood at the front.

As the strongest son of the royal family.

As a prince of Zasar.

As someone whose cultivation eclipsed most people around him.

Whenever there had been a position to claim, a title to earn, or a challenge to overcome, he had simply reached out and taken it.

Not because it had been handed to him.

Because he had been capable of it.

Because he had worked for it.

Because he deserved it.

Yet somehow, despite all of that, Mirabelle had looked at the three of them and chosen Kaelith.

The thought should have angered him. At first it did.

Now...

Strangely, it didn’t. Not completely.

Because the more he replayed the last days in his mind, the more he found himself arriving at the same irritating conclusion.

It made sense.

This realization was almost insulting.

Kaelith had chosen Mirabelle long before she chose him.

The foolish hyena had abandoned caution, political considerations, common sense, and self-preservation the moment he laid eyes on her.

Silas could admit that now. Perhaps that had been what she needed.

Someone who would never hesitate.

Someone whose loyalty did not require analysis.

His ears flattened slightly. The thought tasted unpleasant.

Still true.

Silas exhaled slowly. The scent of polished wood and old books lingered in the room.

No matter how much he disliked it, Mirabelle had not made an emotional decision. She rarely did.

If she had chosen Kaelith first, then she had reasons.

Reasons he simply hadn’t seen.

Yet even knowing that did little to calm the restless energy beneath his skin.

The bond didn’t help either.

The newly formed connection stretched across the territory between them.

Distance weakened it. Muted it.

Prevented him from sensing details.

But some emotions were simply too strong to hide.

The panther closed his eyes.

There.

Warmth.

Contentment.

Happiness.

The sensations drifted through the bond in faint waves.

Soft.

Pleasant.

And beneath them something else.

Something that immediately made every muscle in his body tense.

Pleasure.

His eyes opened. A growl rumbled low in his throat. The sound seemed unnaturally loud.

Of course.

He didn’t need to be a genius to understand what was happening.

Mirabelle was with Kaelith.

The realization sent a surge of possessiveness through him.

Instantly, he crushed it.

The shadows disagreed.

Dark tendrils stirred along the floorboards.

One coiled around the leg of his chair.

Another wrapped lazily around his ankle.

A third rose from the darkness beside him and gave his shoulder what could only be described as a sympathetic pat.

Silas stared at it.

The shadow patted him again.

"You are not helping."

The tendril drooped.

A moment later it slid down his arm and wrapped around his wrist instead, as though attempting consolation through physical contact.

Ridiculous.

His cultivation technique was not supposed to have opinions.

He gathered himself.

Such envious feelings were pointless.

Pathetic.

Every Beast male grew up knowing his future mate would likely have multiple partners. It was normal. Expected.

Necessary.

He understood that.

Accepted it.

Supported it.

None of that changed the fact that feeling it was significantly less enjoyable than discussing it in theory.

His mind betrayed him. Fragments of memory surfaced.

Mirabelle pressed against him.

Mirabelle’s scent of vanilla and cinnamon.

The honey on her lips.

The warmth of her skin.

The heat between them.

The instinctive hunger that had nearly overwhelmed both of them.

The memory alone was enough to make his blood run hotter. His grip tightened on the armrest.

Then, against his will, his imagination supplied the rest.

Kaelith touching her.

Kissing her.

Hearing the sounds she made.

The growl that escaped him this time was louder.

A crack appeared in the wooden armrest beneath his hand. The warm scent of splintered wood immediately filled the air.

Silas stared at the damage.

Then sighed.

Slowly.

Deeply.

A nearby shadow immediately gathered the splinters. As if trying to hide the evidence.

The situation was absurd.

He was a prince.

A warrior.

One of the most powerful cultivators of his generation.

And currently he was sitting alone, breaking furniture because his mate was happy.

His ears twitched. Somewhere outside, a bird called.

A reluctant smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

Mirabelle would probably find that hilarious.

The thought somehow made him feel worse.

And better.

Which, unfortunately, seemed to summarize his entire relationship with her.

A shadow tendril brushed against his fingers.

Silas glanced down at it.

That, too, had become more common.

His affinity had always obeyed him.

Recently, however, it seemed to have developed opinions.

The change had begun shortly after meeting Mirabelle. Since the bond, it had become impossible to ignore.

Another wave of warmth drifted through the connection.

Satisfaction.

Contentment.

The kind that made it abundantly clear Mirabelle’s morning had started significantly better than his.

Silas closed his eyes.

Then immediately regretted doing so.

Several corridors away, another male was discovering that concentration had become remarkably difficult.

Lucien sat in one of the large armchairs near the fireplace.

The room assigned to him by the Duchess was beautiful. Comfortably so.

Warm green fabrics softened the stone walls. Copper accents gleamed in the firelight, woven throughout the room in subtle details. The handles of cabinets. The frame of a mirror. Decorative inlays in the wooden shelves lining one wall.

Large potted plants occupied several corners, their leaves reaching toward the open balcony doors.

The scent of pine drifted inside with the morning breeze.

Outside, insects sang in the gardens below.

Inside, the fireplace crackled softly.

The fire wasn’t necessary. The morning was warm enough. Lucien simply liked the sound. He always had.

There was something calming about it.

Predictable.

Orderly.

Unlike the thoughts currently occupying his mind.

The book resting open on his lap hadn’t been turned in nearly twenty minutes.

His eyes occasionally moved across the page. His brain absorbed none of it.

Eventually, he sighed and closed it.

The gesture felt like admitting defeat.

His thoughts returned immediately to the same subject they had been circling all night.

Mirabelle.

The fox leaned his head against the back of the chair.

If he was being honest with himself, he had never expected to become her First Mate.

Not truly.

The risks had simply been too great.

For Luchsenstein.

For Rotwald.

For both territories.

If Mirabelle had chosen him, he wouldn’t have accepted.

He suspected he would have spent the following week trying to convince her to reconsider.

The realization left a bitter taste in his mouth.

It felt strangely close to betrayal.

Not of himself.

Of her.

Because a part of him would always want to stand at her side.

Yet an even larger part wanted her to succeed. And choosing him first would have made that success significantly more difficult.

Mirabelle understood politics too well not to see it.

Which was why Lucien had known from the beginning she wouldn’t choose him.

Not yet.

The fox’s gaze drifted toward the dancing flames.

The real surprise had been Kaelith.

Not because the hyena was unworthy.

Far from it.

Lucien respected him.

Trusted him.

Perhaps more than the fool realized.

Still...

Silas had seemed the more obvious choice.

A prince of Zasar.

One of the strongest cultivators of their generation.

A male whose influence was difficult to measure because nobody outside the royal family truly understood where his authority began and ended.

The advantages alone were staggering.

The dangers equally so.

Lucien found himself wondering how the Queen of Zasar would react once she learned that one of her sons had become a mate...

But not the First Mate.

A small smile tugged at his lips. That conversation would likely be entertaining.

Then the bond stirred.

His smile vanished.

Warmth drifted through the connection.

Excitement.

Happiness.

A feeling of deep satisfaction.

Lucien closed his eyes. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

There was no need to guess what was happening. The bond made that painfully obvious.

His tail twitched.

A strange mixture of emotions settled inside him.

Jealousy.

Relief.

Affection.

Desire.

The combination was remarkably inconvenient.

The fox exhaled slowly.

He should have been focusing on diplomacy.

On trade agreements.

On future alliances.

Instead, he found himself wondering what exactly Kaelith was doing at that moment.

A thought he immediately regretted.

Unfortunately, regretting it did not stop his imagination.

Nor did it stop the warmth spreading through his chest. Or the possessive instinct quietly reminding him that eventually his turn would come.

Lucien stared into the fire for a long moment.

Then a small smile appeared.

If there was one thing he had learned about Mirabelle, it was that brute force rarely worked.

Persuasion, however...

The fox’s smile deepened.

Yes.

He would need a plan.