Serena had rehearsed the apology six times in her head. Every version sounded like a lie. The seventh version, the one she actually said out loud, sounded worse.

"I’m sorry I didn’t say the full truth. I was looking to find help when I was pulled into the war room," Serena said immediately.

Tiberon regarded her for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice held no warmth.

"Noted."

One word that said a thousand and absolutely gutted her.

Serena didn’t let the tears fall until he was out of the room.

✦✦✦

Tiberon was halfway down the corridor when he mindlinked his Gamma.

Tiberon: Sterling. Go check on Serena in Dexmon’s quarters. That’s an order.

The pause on the other end lasted two seconds. Tiberon could hear the resistance in the silence, the specific hesitation of a man who knew that walking into that room was going to cost him something he couldn’t name.

Gav: On my way.

✦✦✦

Gavriel Sterling stood outside the door to Dexmon’s quarters for four seconds. He counted them.

One. For the part of him that wanted to turn around.

Two. For the part that knew he wouldn’t.

Three. For the part that was already composing the version of himself he needed to be when he walked through that door. The version without the confession. The version without the kiss. The version that was a Gamma checking on his Alpha’s mate, and nothing more.

Four. For the part of him that knew, with the quiet certainty of a man who had been lying to himself for months, that version didn’t exist.

He knocked.

"Come in." Her voice was thin. Scraped clean of everything but exhaustion.

He opened the door.

Dex was on the bed, out cold. Serena was sitting in a chair beside him, her legs pulled up, her arms wrapped around her knees, her chin resting on top. She looked smaller than he’d ever seen her, which was saying something for a woman who already looked like a strong wind would carry her over a wall.

Her eyes were red. Dry, but red. The kind of red that came from a body that had wrung itself out and had nothing left to offer.

"Tiberon sent me," he said, closing the door behind him. "His words were ’go check on Serena,’ which is Tiberon for ’she’s falling apart and I can’t be the one to fix it.’"

The corner of her mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Close enough.

Gav crossed the room and dropped into the chair next to hers. He didn’t look at Dex. He couldn’t. Looking at Dex meant looking at the man who had trusted him, the man whose mate he had kissed, the man who was lying unconscious while Gav sat three feet from the woman they both loved and pretended the architecture of this arrangement was sustainable.

"How bad is it?" he asked, keeping his voice light. Casual. The voice he used when things were catastrophic and he needed everyone in the room to believe they weren’t.

"Alaric says he’s stable. Hyran says his consciousness is ’displaced.’"

"Displaced. That’s a Hyran word. Very clinical. Very unhelpful."

She huffed. The sound was exhausted and involuntary, and Gav counted it as a win.

"So your mate is off on a vacation in his own head and left you here to deal with the fallout. Typical Drakenfell behavior. The man is unconscious and still making you do all the work."

She laughed. It was small and broken and wrong, and it collapsed into a sound that was closer to a sob, and then she pressed her face into her knees and her shoulders shook.

Gav’s hand was on her back before his brain registered the movement. He rubbed a slow circle between her shoulder blades, steady and grounding, the way he had done a dozen times before in hallways and corridors and floors where she had fallen apart and he had been the one to hold the pieces.

"Hey." His voice dropped. Warm. Steady. Real. "He’s going to wake up. Dex has survived his father’s fist, my fist, Viper’s Kiss, dark magic, and your cooking. He can survive a nap."

She lifted her head. "I’ve never cooked for him."

"Exactly. He has so much to live for."

She laughed again, and this time it was real, watery and cracked but real, and the sound of it hit Gav in a place he had been trying very hard to keep locked.

She leaned into him. Her forehead pressed against his shoulder, and her body went heavy with the particular weight of a person who had been holding themselves upright for too long and had finally found something solid to rest against.

Gav’s arm came around her shoulders. He pulled her closer, tucking her against his side, his chin resting on top of her head. He could smell her. Forest and moonlight and something golden underneath that he had never been able to name and had never stopped trying to.

He held her while she cried. Quietly. The silent kind, where the body shakes but the sound stays trapped behind clenched teeth, because she had already been loud enough tonight and the walls were thin and the castle had ears.

His hand moved through her hair in slow, measured passes, and he kept his breathing even because if his breathing changed, she would feel it, and if she felt it, she would know that holding her was simultaneously the best and worst thing he had done all day.

After a while, she pulled back. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and looked at him with an expression that was too open, too unguarded, too close to something neither of them could afford.

"Gav." She swallowed. "I’m sorry for how everything turned out."

He knew what she was saying. What she was really saying, underneath the diplomacy and the careful word choice and the way she held his eyes like she was memorizing his face in case this was the last time she could look at him like this.

"You deserve everything, Gav. And I want you to have it," she continued, her voice cracking on the name but holding. "I am so happy for you. Finding your fated mate is what you deserve."

The words landed in his chest and detonated.

He smiled. It was a good one. He’d been practicing to make his face say one thing while his chest said another.

"I know." He kept his voice light. Easy. The voice of a man who had everything figured out. "And look, about the, the whole confession and the kiss and all of that." He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the ceiling because looking at her meant she would see the truth and the truth was a weapon he refused to use. "That was heightened emotions. We were in a temple, the ancestors were being dramatic. My brain short-circuited. I was an idiot."

Rook: You are lying.

Gav: I know.

Rook: This is the worst lie you have ever told, and you once told Dexmon you didn’t drink the last of his whiskey.

Gav: Shut up.

"You weren’t being an idiot," she said quietly, and the way she said it almost broke him, because it was gentle, and her gentleness was the thing he loved most about her and the thing that made this hardest.

"I was absolutely being an idiot. Classic Gav. Big moment, says something stupid, makes everything weird. We’re fine." He forced a grin. "You’re my best friend. That’s what you’ve always been since I found you. And that’s what I want. The other stuff was adrenaline. An intense moment. That’s it."

The lie came out clean. Polished. Delivered with the specific confidence of a man who had been rehearsing this speech since the war room and had finally found an audience.

She believed him, because she wanted to believe him, because believing him was the only way this worked. The alternative was admitting that the pull between them was real and alive and going nowhere, and neither of them could afford that admission.

"Okay," she whispered.

Rook: It is never going to be enough and you know it.

Gav didn’t respond to his wolf. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Gentle. Firm. Final.

"Get some sleep. I’ll be around if you need me."

He stood. Walked to the door. Paused with his hand on the frame.

He did not turn around or let himself see the expression on her face, because seeing it would have meant staying, and staying would have meant telling the truth, and the truth would have burned down everything he was trying to protect.

"Goodnight, Frostborne. Or I guess Drakenfell. You should hyphen it."

"Goodnight, Sterling."

He closed the door, leaned his back against the wall, and pressed both hands flat against his thighs.

Rook: You are crying.

Gav: No I am standing in a corridor with a medical condition called allergies.

Rook: You do not have allergies.

Gav: I do now.

He stood there for a long time. Then he pushed off the wall, wiped his face with his sleeve, and walked toward the guest wing where Guinevere Ashford was in custody, waiting behind a locked door with a fated matebond he hadn’t asked for.

Two guards stood outside Guinevere Ashford’s door, positioned with the specific posture of men who had been given a simple assignment and had spent the last three hours reclassifying it as hazardous duty.

"Has she been quiet?" Gav asked.

The guards exchanged a glance.