Five words. He used five words to send her out of the room and he hadn’t even watched her go.

I need you to leave.

Now her scent was fading from the air like he’d never deserved it in the first place

He stared at the fire.

Aegon: Her best friend told her to bury it. But she told us anyways because she respected us.

"She kissed him back," Dex said aloud. The words tasted like ash. He finished the glass. Set it down. Poured another.

Her absolute duress continued pouring through their matebond in pulses. When his neck burned, he knew why. It was that rash she occasionally got.

Dexmon: I was harsh there.

Aegon: You were your father there.

Dex stood, putting his whiskey down. He took a steadying breath. Then he moved through the corridor, expecting her to be on the other side. She wasn’t.

"Serena?"

He followed her scent, now laced with salt. The whiskey turned sour in his stomach. He picked up the pace, Alpha speed. But her scent stopped after four corridors.

Dexmon: Serena, where are you?

Nothing.

Dexmon: Baby... I don’t want you to go. That came out wrong. All of it.

Silence.

Elara turned the corner. Saw his face. Exhaled, and walked back the way she came.

He stood in the empty hall. Breathing hard. Her scent just... ended. Like she’d been swallowed by the stone itself.

✦✦✦

The last woman Fin loved lied to him until the day she died. This one walked into his study shaking, told him the worst thing she’d ever done, and waited for the door.

Xeon: It is not mate’s fault.

Fin: She kissed him back.

Xeon: She handed us the worst version of the truth when a lie would have been easier. And she did it expecting we would kick her out.

Fin: Yes. That goes a long way. Doesn’t change the fact.

Xeon: Mate is not like the last one. A kiss is a damn kiss. She didn’t have sex with him.

Fin closed his eyes for a second, pushing the thoughts of his deceased mate to the back of his mind.

Xeon: Don’t overreact. She’s beating herself up for it more than you need to.

Fin: I am not going to over react with her. I have eyes and feel her too.

Fin shoved calm into her through their matebond. She jolted.

"Serena..." Fin said, forcing his voice calm. "Look at me."

She looked up at him, hiccuping.

"You could tell me you killed someone, and I get a shovel." He grabbed her chin gently and kissed her lips. "No. This is not ideal. But you told me the truth, took responsibility, and apologized."

"But your friendship with Gavriel is done," he said. "And I will be speaking with him."

"I understand," she whispered. Trying and failing to stop more tears.

He pressed his lips into her neck that was now rashed past the point of return.

Xeon: Her wolf is whimpering too. I hear it. Fix this.

Without a word, he picked her up, and carried her down the hall, straight into his bathing chamber. He turned on the bath faucet.

He set her on the edge of the stone tub. He unzipped the back of the training suit she was in, and pulled it off of her.

Xeon: Tell her she is safe.

Fin: She knows.

Xeon: Then why is she still shaking.

The neck-rash had spread down to her collarbone, angry red blooming. The sight of it made his jaw lock.

He shrugged out of his own shirt, unbuttoned his pants, and stripped without ceremony.

He stepped into the tub first. The water was almost too hot — the way he liked it, the way she had learned to like it because of him. He held out a hand.

She took it. Her fingers barely closed around his. The grip of a woman who expected to be let go of at any moment, and was already bracing for it. His jaw clenched so hard his molars ached.

He pulled her down gently, settling her between his legs with her back to his chest. His arms came around her waist. He pressed his lips to the crown of her head. Then slowed his own breathing until it was deep and even and impossible to ignore against her back.

"In through your nose, Serena."

She tried. Got halfway. Broke into a hiccup.

"Again."

She tried again. This time she made it. The exhale came out shaking, but it came out.

"Good girl."

He felt her fingers find his forearm under the water and grip it. Not loose this time. Holding on like she’d drift away without something to hold.

Xeon: You are angry at her.

Fin: Yes.

He didn’t speak for a long time after that. He let the water do some of the work. The heat loosened the muscles she had been locking since the portal.

Xeon: Dexmon. She told him and he didn’t react like us.

Fin: His Gamma betrayed him. Do you blame him?

Xeon: For making her cry like this? Yes.

Fin wrapped her in the largest towel in the room. The one that swallowed her whole. Then toweled her hair with a gentleness that would have been unrecognizable to anyone who had seen him interrogate a prisoner three hours prior.

She watched him do it.

"You don’t have to," she whispered.

"I know."

"Fin..."

"I know, Serena."

He pulled the blanket back and set her against the pillows. Climbed in after her.

She did not go to his chest the way she usually did.

His wolf keened.

Xeon: She thinks she doesn’t deserve to be held. That is stupid.

Fin: Yes.

Xeon: Fix it.

Fin didn’t need his wolf to tell him that. He pulled her on top of him fully, and locked his arms around her. Then pressed his lips to her hair.

"I love you so goddamn much, baby."

"I love you too, Fin," she said against him, tears falling on his chest.

Xeon: We kill their Gamma. Then Dexmon. In that order.

It took him pushing calm into her through their matebond twice and over an hour of rubbing her back, for her to finally fall asleep.

Just as he started dreaming and Xeon was running through the forest, Aeron’s voice woke him.

Aeron: Alpha. The Drakenfell prince is here. Is Serena with you?

His eyes snapped open.