In fifty years, lords would still be telling stories about the Unity Gala. Not one of them would know what happened behind the war room doors.

Maddox sat at the head of the table with Guinevere against his chest. The last time he’d put her in his lap she’d been blushing. The upgrade was devastating.

Every person who entered that room saw the same image. An apex predator was holding an unconscious woman like a stuffed animal he was worried he broke.

He checked her pulse beneath her jaw. Sixty-two beats per minute. Same as ten seconds ago.

Ryker leaned back in a chair, arms crossed, observing.

"She passed out the first time too."

The sentence landed in the room like a grenade with a bow on it.

Maddox’s head lifted. The glare he sent across the table could have stripped paint off a warship and then sunk the warship for good measure.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean."

Ryker raised both hands, palms out. "Just trying to put your mind at ease, Commander."

"My mind is at ease." His thumb pressed her pulse again. "I’m at ease. I’m completely at ease. Everyone in this room should be as at ease as I am."

He was aware of how that sounded. He was choosing to ignore it. His dragon was pacing behind his ribs with the energy of a caged animal that had been told the cage was for its own good and had rejected the premise entirely.

I still cannot feel her. Why can I not feel her. We mark her again tonight.

Kael poured four whiskeys from a bottle he had no business knowing the location of. Two slid across the table to Ryker and Sterling. The fourth stopped in front of Maddox. He stared at the glass. The glass stared back.

Kael dropped into a chair and took a sip of his. A bruise was blooming across his left cheekbone in shades of violet and green. His eyes found Guinevere’s limp form and stayed there.

Blair sat beside Griffin.

"Am I invisible?" she snapped. "Chain around my neck. Trying to rescue a glowing woman from the lords and my brother. Four whiskeys went out and zero came to me."

Kael poured a fifth without standing, slid it across the wood, and leaned back in his chair like the war room was his living room and Maddox’s whiskey was his personal collection.

"I was saving yours for last."

"Why."

"Because you deserve a full glass. Theirs were rushed." He gestured at the three glasses that were exactly as full as hers.

Blair looked at them. Looked at hers. Drank it anyway.

Jaxon and Lux entered last. A glance passed between them. The kind that says we both know something this room doesn’t.

Lux sat. She placed both hands flat on the table. Her wine glass was absent for the second time tonight. Jaxon took the chair beside her. His shirt was still buttoned wrong.

The room settled. Silence filled every corner and pressed against every wall.

Maddox looked at the chalk circles still on the table. "Let’s start with why you told my mate to stay away from me."

Every person in the room heard it and every person in the room suddenly found the far wall fascinating. Ryker exhaled. Long. Controlled. The exhale of a man who had been carrying a weight he was about to set down and understood the noise it would make when it hit the floor.

"Maddox, there are things we can and cannot tell you. You have a literal bomb glued to your brain, and we do not know what will or will not set it off. We had no idea whether the matebond would trigger it."

"So you admit it. She is my mate."

Ryker raised both hands and looked at Lux. "I am out of my depth on the medical side. I do not know what I can and cannot say without tripping the thing in your head, so I am going to let the two experts take over before I accidentally lobotomize my king in a war room."

Jaxon shot Ryker a look that communicated, with surgical clarity, that the handoff was unwelcome, poorly timed, and deeply appreciated in the way a man appreciates being thrown a live grenade while sitting down.

"I don’t give a flying fuck about the dark magic in my brain. Everyone in this room is going to answer me, and I will take my chances."

Four mouths opened, objections loading. Ryker’s, Sterling’s, Kael’s, Blair’s.

"Don’t bother." Maddox’s voice was low and dangerous. "Five days. My Keep. My mate. My people lying to my face. We’re done with that. Whoever has a problem with it can leave their rank on the table on the way out."

Silence. The productive kind.

"Let’s try this again," Maddox continued. "Is she my mate?"

"Yes," Blair replied before anyone else had to.

Every person at the table leaned forward, eyes on Maddox, waiting.

Nothing happened.

Maddox waited them out, then took a sip of his whiskey while they watched. "If I explode, I’ll let you know. Why was she not brought to me immediately?"

"Because you choked her," Kael answered flatly.

The words hit the center of Maddox’s chest. The room went airless. His dragon thrashed so hard he felt scales ripple under his skin for half a second.

"Why would I choke her?" His voice was deadly quiet.

"Because dark magic made you hostile towards her. She fell asleep holding icepacks to you and you woke up and grabbed her neck in front of us," Ryker answered, not softening it. "Lux removed that layer of dark magic. Your memories didn’t return, but you stopped trying to kill her."

Maddox closed his eyes, ice flooding every vein, pooling in his chest, filling the spaces where rage had been a second ago with something worse. The image arrived without permission: his hands around the same throat his lips had just been kissing.

He opened his eyes. His face gave the room nothing.

He could not help her if he fell apart. He could not protect her if he collapsed into guilt that served no one. He could not be the man she needed if he stopped being the king long enough to feel the full weight of what he had just learned. So he filed it. Behind a door he would open later, alone, when the cost of opening it would only be his.

Later would hurt. He was counting on it.

"When that was removed," Ryker continued, "we had to update you on three weeks of military operations and sovereign governance. You are king of Velkaris first. I made that call." He sat forward. "I am your sworn right hand. That was my decision. I floated the idea of a mate to you and you said you would annul it."

Maddox’s eyes widened. "That was you joking around. You were laughing when you said it. Are you serious?"

"Dead serious, Commander."

"So I am married. Right now."

"Yes." Ryker reached into his suit pocket and pulled a ring from the inner fold, then slid it across the table to Maddox.

Maddox looked at the gold ring. His dragon rumbled.

Ours. That has our scale.

He picked it up. The second his fingers closed around the metal, it blazed gold, light pouring between his knuckles, and the warmth that traveled up his arm and into his chest was the warmth of something returning to where it belonged.

Every eye in the room went to his bare finger, then back to the ring. Waiting. He could feel the weight of their expectation pressing against him. Every single one of them wanted to see him put it on.

He pocketed it.

Petty? Absolutely. This room full of liars could watch him wear it when he decided they deserved to see it.

His dragon snarled in fury.

We wear it. Claim her in front of them. Let them watch what belongs to us.

His fingers twitched toward his pocket, but he held back ignoring the beast.

They would suffer longer. It would happen on his terms and in his time, and his time was currently allocated to making everyone in this room as uncomfortable as he had been for the last five days.

Lux cut through the silence.

"The biggest obstacle we had was the Mirrorlock, Commander. It took a few days to identify the structure. Inside every Mirrorlock is a failsafe that protects the caster’s original goal."

"Failsafes can activate if the host becomes aware of the failsafe itself," Jaxon added. "Trip it and the options range from coma to cognitive destruction to full takeover. We never confirmed what the trigger was. The matebond was blocked. She was the variable. We made the call."

Lux met his eyes. The exchange between them lasted two full seconds, and Maddox watched the entire negotiation happen in silence. Two experts arriving at a conclusion they didn’t want to deliver, each one waiting for the other to go first.

Lux spoke first. She always went first. It was why he was going to hire her regardless of what she counter-offered.

"Do you feel a matebond with her?"

Maddox’s blood ran cold.

"No."

"That is interesting. We assumed she was the trigger because it was blocked. You marked her tonight and you’re fine. But it’s still blocked." She let that sit. "Which means we were either right for the wrong reasons, or wrong entirely. I don’t know which yet, and I don’t like either option."