Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 78

The hidden passage is sealed with stone and warded by the court’s three remaining mages — the same ones who maintained the barrier magic during Seraphine’s reign.

Malik watches every brick laid, every sigil drawn, trusting no one’s eyes but his own. Then he turns to the broader problem: if one passage exists uncharted, others might too.

He orders a full architectural survey of the lower levels, cross-referenced against original construction blueprints stored in the archives. It will take weeks. We don’t have so much time, but we start anyway.

“The guard rotation is compromised,” Malik says as we stand over the duty roster spread across the war room table.

“Not necessarily by betrayal — by predictability. Anyone watching long enough could map the patterns, identify gaps, time an approach down to the second.”

“So we make it impossible to predict.”

“Rotating cipher.” He pulls a blank parchment toward him, already sketching. “Each day’s assignments are encoded differently. The key changes at midnight, known only to me and one other officer — never the same one twice. No single person sees the full picture.”

“That’s a tremendous amount of coordination to maintain.”

“But it means anyone trying to map our security would need to crack a new cipher every twenty-four hours. By the time they solve yesterday’s pattern, today’s is already obsolete.”

He looks up from the parchment, and the intensity in his dark eyes makes my breath catch even after all these months. “I won’t let them find another way in, Kira.”

“I know.”

He selects the twins’ personal detail himself — four wolves whose histories he knows the way he knows his own scars.

Rowan, who lost her younger sister to rogues and fights with the savagery of someone protecting what she couldn’t protect before. Hale, a former border scout with senses sharp enough to detect a heartbeat change at thirty paces.

Sera, whose tracking skills Malik trained personally. And Connell, the oldest of the four, a wolf who served Malik’s predecessor and transferred his loyalty with the unshakeable commitment of a man who recognizes worthy leadership.

They answer only to Malik. They sleep in shifts outside the nursery door. My children will never be unguarded again.

I watch the detail take their positions that evening — Rowan checking sight lines, Hale testing the air, Sera pacing the perimeter — and something twists inside my chest that has nothing to do with fear.

“I hate this,” I whisper to Malik as we stand in the nursery doorway. Inside, Castiel and Lyra sleep curled toward each other, their tiny hands almost touching.

“They should be growing up with open fields, Malik. Sunshine and mud and the kind of reckless freedom every child deserves. Instead they’ll learn to recognize guard rotations before they learn to walk.”

His arm comes around my shoulders, pulling me against his side. “It won’t be forever.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“No,” he admits, and I love him for the honesty. “But I can promise that every single day, I’ll be working to make it shorter. To build a world where they won’t need four wolves outside their door to sleep safely.”

I lean into him and breathe in cedarwood and frost, and let myself believe it — just for a moment, just long enough for the knot in my chest to loosen one fraction.

Later, after the twins fall asleep and the guards settle into position, Malik and I steal an hour on the balcony overlooking the moonlit gardens.

The palace is quiet the way it only gets past midnight — the deep, exhausted silence of a place holding its breath.

“I do. And almost is exactly why I love you, Kira. Because you’d dream about that cabin every night for the rest of your life, and you’d ache for it, and some mornings you’d wake up with the same grief I felt — but you would never actually walk away. You couldn’t abandon the people who need you, even for the one thing you want most. It’s not in your blood.”

“That doesn’t make me noble. It makes me stubborn.”

“Maybe those are the same thing.” He presses his forehead to mine, and his hands settle on my waist, drawing me closer until the space between us dissolves into shared warmth.

“Or maybe the best people are the ones who choose duty even when they can see exactly what it costs them. Who stay when leaving would be easier and quieter and kinder to themselves.”

I close my eyes and let his words sink into the places where exhaustion and fear have hollowed me out. His lips brush my temple, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth — slow, deliberate, a man savoring what he has.

“We chose each other,” I murmur against his skin. “Underneath all of it — the crowns, the prophecy, the wars… Every morning I wake up beside you, I’m choosing it again.”

His arms tighten around me, and I feel the steady drum of his heartbeat against my chest — the rhythm I’ve fallen asleep to more nights than I can count, the sound that means home in ways the palace walls never have.

We stand there while the moon tracks its arc across the sky, and somewhere behind the nursery door our children sleep under the watch of wolves who would die for them.

The world is closing in. I can feel it — the gathering weight of threats unnamed, enemies unfound, a future that refuses to promise safety.

But tonight, in the circle of his arms, with his heartbeat against mine and the ghost of a timber cabin lingering between us like a prayer, tonight is ours.

I hold onto it the way I hold onto everything worth keeping — fiercely, deliberately, with both hands and no apology.