Chapter 276: Chapter 276: You deserved better

Thomas exhaled once, slow and controlled.

Sylvia reached for her glass again. "Anyway. That was my one useful statement. Now we can return to safer topics, like how I keep adding dominants as friends, and all of you suffer from love as if it’s a competitive sport."

Thomas looked at her over the rim of his glass. "That is your safer topic?"

"It is safer than sealed-folder consequences, Andrea’s emotional tax fraud, and Dean trying to relocate his wedding anxiety into an infected beast zone."

"I’m not sure suffering from love is less dangerous."

"It is when I’m not the one doing it." Sylvia took a sip, then pointed at him with the glass. "Dean suffers loudly. Arion suffers like a man who thinks staring intensely counts as communication. Nero suffers like he’s plotting the annexation of a person’s free will."

Thomas’s mouth curved faintly. "That sounds like Nero."

"You know him well enough to confirm?"

"Unfortunately."

"Oh." Sylvia leaned forward with sudden interest. "That sounded personal."

Thomas gave her a calm look. "Nero makes everything personal eventually. It’s one of his strategies."

"See? This is what I mean. Dominants. Love. Suffering. Strategy meetings where normal people would just send a text."

"Nero does not suffer from love."

Sylvia stared at him.

Thomas held her gaze for approximately three seconds before realizing the answer had come too quickly.

Sylvia’s smile spread slowly. "Oh, that was terrible."

"It was accurate."

"It was defensive."

"It was a correction."

"It was a man stepping in front of a bullet for Nero of Saha’s emotional dignity, which is horrifying because I am not sure he has any."

Thomas laughed.

Not the small, careful laugh from earlier. Not the tired breath he had allowed himself when the first glass of wine softened the worst edge of the evening. This one slipped out before he could stop it, low and warm, his shoulders easing back against the chair as amusement finally broke through the discipline wrapped around him.

Sylvia stopped breathing for half a second.

That was inconvenient.

Deeply inconvenient.

Thomas Lancaster was already objectively too much of a person for most rooms. Seven feet tall, broad-shouldered, and calm in that dangerous way disciplined men become when strength is not something they need to prove. His short brown hair had dried into soft waves at the front, and the amber light from the parlor lamps caught along the line of his jaw, warming the tiredness in his face instead of sharpening it.

But laughing?

That was unfair.

His whole face changed when he laughed. The solemn restraint loosened. The exhaustion did not vanish, but it stepped back enough for something gentler to show through. His soft brown eyes warmed properly for the first time since she had nearly drowned in twelve inches of decorative water, and Sylvia had the deeply alarming thought that he probably used to laugh like that often before someone beautiful and cold taught him to ration it.

Absolutely not, Sylvia told herself.

No.

She was not doing this.

She had come to Alamina because Dean needed a friend, Arion had too much money and too few practical limits, and the beast season had finally ended, so betas were no longer forbidden from approaching anything more dangerous than palace tea. She had not come here to experience sudden romantic damage at the hands of a tragic dominant alpha with an excellent body and a laugh that could destabilize a weaker woman.

Unfortunately, Sylvia was apparently a weaker woman.

Thomas’s laughter faded slowly, and he looked at her with faint curiosity. "What?"

"Nothing."

"That was too fast."

"I’m tired."

"You were tired before."

"Now I’m tired with new information."

His mouth curved again, smaller this time but still dangerous.

Sylvia took a larger sip of wine than was dignified.

Thomas noticed.

Of course he noticed. Apparently everyone in this palace noticed everything. It was becoming oppressive.

"You are staring," he said.

"I am assessing whether your face is legally allowed to do that."

His brows rose. "Laugh?"

"Yes. It seems excessive."

For a moment, he simply looked at her.

Then he smiled again, slower, warmer, and Sylvia realized with horror that she had made the situation worse for herself.

"I will try to be less excessive," Thomas said.

"Don’t," she replied immediately.

Then froze.

Thomas’s eyes softened with amusement.

Sylvia set the glass down. "I mean, do whatever you want. This is a free empire. Probably. I haven’t read the full constitution."

"It has some restrictions."

"Yes, well, none of them should involve your laugh. That would be bad legislation."

The silence that followed was not awkward.

That was the problem.

It settled between them lightly, touched with the first strange shimmer of something neither of them had invited properly. Not heat. Not pheromones. Sylvia was beta. What passed through the room had nothing to do with biology and everything to do with wine and exhaustion and honesty and the dangerous discovery that someone’s laugh could make a terrible day tilt unexpectadly towards bearable.

Thomas looked at her as if he had noticed the shift too.

Sylvia cleared her throat. "Anyway. Nero suffers from love."

Thomas leaned back, still watching her. "You are determined to return to that."

"It is safer than discussing your face."

"My face?"

"Do not become difficult. You know what you did."

"I laughed."

"Exactly."

He looked down at his glass, and the smile lingered despite him. "Nero does suffer, yes."

Sylvia pointed at him triumphantly. "There. Growth."

"But I suspect he would call it strategy."

"All men suffering from love call it strategy."

"Dean?"

"Dean calls it inconvenience and then arranges his entire life around the person."

Thomas’s smile deepened. "That sounds accurate."

"And you?" Sylvia asked before she could stop herself.

The question landed more softly than she intended.

Thomas looked at her for a long moment, and the warmth in his face quieted, not vanishing entirely, but folding itself around something bruised.

"I called it patience," he said.

Sylvia’s chest tightened.

’Oh,’ she thought. ’That is worse than the laugh.’

She should not be falling.

Not even a little.

Not for a dominant alpha from Rohan who had a wounded heart, a terrible almost-mate, battlefield consequences waiting in sealed reports, and likely a mother and a queen prepared to dismantle him administratively for the sake of his own survival.

She should absolutely not be falling.

Sylvia picked up her glass again and said, with great dignity, "Then we drink to new vocabulary."

Thomas’s eyes returned to hers. "And what should I call it now?"

"Evidence."

He tilted his head.

She lifted her glass. "That you deserved better."

Thomas went still.

This time, the silence was not light.

It was careful.

Then Thomas touched his glass gently to hers, the sound small and clear in the blue parlor.

"To evidence," he said.

Sylvia smiled despite herself.

And because the universe had a bad sense of humor, his answering smile was devastating.