Chapter 238: Fated To Watch
What came next should have been a love story. And it was. That was the cruelest part.
The memory shifted leaving Dexmon standing in a courtyard at sunset.
Asher stood in the courtyard outside Natalia’s guest quarters, holding a bouquet of roses. His hair was wet, his clothes were clean, and there was a bruise forming along his jaw that he wasn’t hiding.
She opened the door and startled, not expecting to see him there. Her eyes were puffy and she was clearly trying to hide that she’d been crying.
"I’m sorry, Natalia. You came here brave enough to meet a stranger and I made you uncomfortable."
She didn’t say anything or take the flowers.
"My father didn’t send me here," he added. "I wanted to come here and tell you that the man you saw today isn’t who I am. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I am asking for it anyways. Give me a chance, to show you the kind of man I am. I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it."
✦✦✦
The days bled together in rapid succession.
Asher had flowers delivered to Natalia’s quarters every morning. He asked the castle herbalist which ones had meaning, then ignored every recommendation and picked whichever ones he thought were prettiest, because Asher Valerion had never followed an expert’s advice when his own instincts were louder.
By the fourth day, he started leaving notes with them.
I know the first impression was catastrophic. Give me a second one. I promise the ceiling won’t move.
You laughed yesterday when I tripped on the terrace step. I’ve been thinking about that sound ever since. I’ll trip again if it helps.
I asked Ronan if I was being too much. He said yes. I’m choosing to interpret that as encouragement.
✦✦✦
Three weeks later, Asher took Natalia to the dragon fields.
Ronan was there because Ronan was always there, positioned at the edge of the formation with his arms behind his back and his expression arranged into something that resembled composure.
If you looked closely, you’d see the tendons in his forearms standing out like bridge cables, and the way his breathing changed every time the wind carried her scent.
Asher was explaining dragon breeds to Natalia with enthusiasm. He was animated, gesturing wildly, nearly walking into a juvenile dragon’s tail twice. His smile was so bright it changed the geometry of his face.
Ronan hadn’t seen that smile in years.
The last time Asher had smiled with that much of himself, they were fifteen, running through these marble halls with a stolen crown and a rogue goat, and the world was still a place where the worst thing that could happen was a month of dragon pit duty.
Natalia asked a question about wing structure. Asher answered it wrong. Ronan corrected him from across the field without thinking, the words leaving his mouth before his brain could intercept them.
She looked at him, and everything inside him detonated.
Her brows drew together. The same expression she’d worn the day they met. Confusion laced with recognition, the quiet awareness of a chord being struck in a key she couldn’t name. She studied him for three seconds, maybe four, and Ronan held perfectly still because if he moved, if he breathed, if he let a single crack show, Asher would see it.
Asher would see, and Asher would understand, and understanding would destroy something between them that had survived orphanhood and war and grief and every ugly thing the world had thrown at two boys who had nothing except each other.
So Ronan looked away first. He always did.
"Ronan knows more about wing aerodynamics than I do," Asher admitted, oblivious. "He’s the boring one."
"I’m the literate one," Ronan corrected, and his voice was steady, and his face was calm, and nobody would have guessed that behind his ribs, his wolf was howling.
✦✦✦
"The library," Asher said, dropping into the chair across from Ronan with the energy of a man who had just conquered a small nation. "Ronan. The library. Genius. She lit up. I’ve never seen her face do that before."
"I’m glad it worked," Ronan said.
"Worked? She talked to me for three hours. Three. She hasn’t given me three consecutive minutes since the chicken incident, and yesterday she gave me three hours. In a row. Voluntarily."
Ronan nodded. He didn’t mention that he’d felt her homesickness through their matebond for days. That it had kept him awake, this quiet ache radiating from three corridors away, the particular loneliness of being surrounded by strangers away from home.
He didn’t mention that he’d watched her from across the courtyard, tucked into a bench with a book she’d brought from home, her fingers turning pages the way some people reach for prayer.
He’d known the library would work because he knew what she needed.
"How did you even think of it?" Asher asked, genuinely curious.
"You said she was quiet. Quiet people like rooms where silence is the point."
"That’s... actually profound."
"It’s obvious."
"What else should I do?" Asher leaned forward, grinning. "You clearly understand her better than I do."
The sentence landed between them like a lit fuse neither of them could see. Asher meant it as a compliment. A brother asking a brother for help winning the woman he loved.
Ronan heard it for what it was. A door he could never walk through, handed to him by the only person who would never know it existed.
"Bring her a new book every day and tea when you visit," Ronan answered. "She drinks it without sugar."
"How do you know she drinks it without sugar?"
"I pay attention."
Asher pointed at him. "This is why you’re invaluable. I’d be lost without you."
"You would," Ronan agreed, and his voice was steady, and his hands were still, and behind his ribs his wolf was pressing so hard against his chest that breathing felt like a negotiation.
Asher was happier than Ronan had ever seen him. Asher, who had lost his childhood to politics. Asher, who had shouldered a crown’s worth of weight since he was old enough to hold a sword. Asher, who had taken in an orphaned nine-year-old and never once made him feel like charity.
Asher was happy. And Ronan would swallow ground glass before he took that from him.
✦✦✦
The worst night came without warning.
Ronan was crossing the terrace when he heard them.
Laughter first. Natalia’s, which was rare enough that the sound of it stopped him mid-stride the way a blade at his throat would have. Then Asher’s, layered over hers, low and warm and genuine.
They were sitting on the stone bench beneath the wisteria, shoulders touching. Asher was telling a story, his hands moving, his eyes locked on her face with an intensity that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with worship. He was looking at her the way believers looked at altars.
Natalia’s guard was down. Her posture had softened. She was leaning toward him, just slightly, the unconscious gravity of trust. Her green eyes held his face, and there was warmth in them. The beginning of something. The first green shoot breaking through soil that had been frozen for a long time.
Ronan watched her fall for his brother in real time.
He felt it happen through a pull he couldn’t explain, a frequency he was tuned to that he would never be able to turn off. He felt her walls lower. Felt the precise moment her resistance shifted from "I will tolerate this" to "I might want this." Felt the careful, fragile architecture of affection being built, beam by beam, in a direction that led to Asher and away from him.
His vision blurred.
He turned and walked back inside. He made it to his quarters, locked the door, and sat on the edge of the bed.
His wolf let out a sound that wasn’t a growl and wasn’t a whimper. It was the noise an animal makes when it understands it is being caged by the person it trusts most, and it cannot fight back because it loves them too much to bite.
Ronan pressed his palms into his thighs. His breathing was controlled. His chest was a crematorium. His eyes were dry and flashing between hazel and gold.
"I’m sorry, Xeon. I am not taking this from him. He loves her."
Outside, through the stone walls, carried on a breeze he would never be able to outrun, he heard Natalia laugh again.
The memory dissolved leaving Dexmon Drakenfell in white silence, tears streaming down his face.
The weight of it settled into him like lead poured into bone.
✦✦✦
Then the dark shifted, and the scent of wine and oil lamps hit him, and Dexmon knew before he opened his eyes that this memory was going to haunt him.
He saw himself at eighteen first.
Asher wore black robes trimmed in gold thread and rested one hand on the small of Natalia’s back with the quiet possessiveness of a man who had fought for and earned every inch.
His chin was lifted and he moved through the room like the floor was his and every person in it was borrowing space.
Natalia was on his arm. Her white hair caught the firelight and turned gold. Deep green silk traced her frame and she wore it the way she wore everything: like she was doing the garment a favor by putting it on.
She was stunning.
He watched himself lean down and whisper in her ear. Watched her try to suppress a smile and fail. Watched his own hand press tighter against her back, a reflex, a claim, a man saying mine in the only language he trusted more than words.
There was an unmistakable mate mark on her neck. They were happy.
It hit Dexmon like a fist.
Ronan stood at the far end of the banquet hall, positioned near a column with a drink he hadn’t touched. His posture was flawless. His expression was exactly what it needed to be.
But the cost of what this was doing to him lived in the hollows under his eyes.
The herald announced the next arrival.
Dexmon watched Asher turn, barely interested, the way he turned for every announcement that wasn’t Natalia.
A woman walked in.
Dark hair, hazel eyes, draped in red silk. She moved through the doorway like she was the center of every room she’d ever entered and saw no reason why this one should be different.
Odette Fallborne.
Asher’s grip on Natalia’s arm went rigid. Natalia turned her head. So did everyone else.
Odette looked at Natalia, then at Asher.
His jaw was clenched. His knuckles white around the glass in his other hand.
Natalia blinked a few times, not understanding. "Ash?"
He didn’t answer, locked on Odette, like something ancient and dangerous had just walked into the room.
Then Asher did something he had never done with her before. He physically stumbled back a step, as if hit with an invisible force.
"No," he breathed.
Dexmon heard the word at the exact same time as the younger version of him.
Mate.
