Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 79

Damon refuses to postpone the wedding. The council suggests it three times in two days. Through the bond, I feel my brother’s patience thinning like ice over a spring river.

“We should discuss the timing, Your Majesty,” Lord Ashworth begins at the morning session. “A king in mourning should observe proper—”

“My father died peacefully, surrounded by those he loved. That is not a tragedy to mourn but a blessing to honor.”

Damon’s voice carries the quiet finality of a man who has already decided. “This wedding celebrates what he built, what he believed in. This realm needs to see its king united, not fractured by grief.”

“The security concerns alone—”

“Are being handled by Commander Frost, whose competence exceeds everyone in this chamber combined. The wedding proceeds.”

Nobody argues after that.

I find Elara in the east corridor the morning of the ceremony, standing beside a window where pale light falls across the stone floor. She’s in a simple linen shift — not yet in her wedding gown — her dark hair loose around her shoulders.

She looks composed, the way Elara always looks, her posture straight, her chin level.

But her hands are trembling. And when she turns at the sound of my footsteps, I catch the sheen of tears she’s trying to will away through sheer discipline.

“Elara.” I close the distance between us. “Is anything wrong?”

She shakes her head, then presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. “It’s nothing. I’m being ridiculous on the one morning I swore I wouldn’t be.”

“You’re shaking and weeping three hours before your wedding.” I take her wrists gently and lower them from her face. “Is it nerves, or something deeper?”

The composure fractures, and beneath it I see the exhaustion of a woman who has spent too long performing certainty she didn’t feel.

“I never thought I’d have this, Kira. I mean, the certainty.” Her voice is raw, stripped of its careful court modulation.

“When the council selected me for Damon, I was a political calculation. I spent months being evaluated like livestock at auction, smiling through assessments that reduced me to breeding potential and diplomatic utility.”

She draws a shaking breath. “And after I was chosen, I spent more months proving I wasn’t another Seraphine. I could feel him watching me, analyzing every gesture, waiting for the mask to slip and reveal the monster underneath.”

“Damon’s distrust was never about you. Seraphine taught him that love was a weapon. Unlearning that was always going to be brutal for whoever came next.”

“I’ve always known that.” Elara’s jaw tightens. “But knowing the reason doesn’t erase the sting, Kira. There were nights I lay awake wondering if he would ever look at me without bracing for betrayal.”

“Does he still brace?”

The grief in her expression dissolves into something I can only describe as wonder.

“Now he looks at me as if I’m something real that he’s allowed to keep.” Her voice breaks. “That still catches me off guard. Every morning I wake beside him and I’m startled that the walls are actually down.”

I pull her into my arms and hold her firmly, without condition. “He chose you, Elara, freely and completely. My brother doesn’t do anything by halves.”

She laughs against my shoulder — wet, shaky, real. “Your entire family is terrifyingly absolute about the people you love.”

“Character flaw. We’re working on it.” I pull back and hold her face in my hands, wiping her tears with my thumbs. “Now go put on that gown and marry my brother before he wears a hole in the floor pacing.”

“Is he doing that, really?”

“I can feel it through the bond. He’s been circling his chambers since dawn like a wolf in a cage.”

She laughs again, brighter this time. “Good, let him be nervous. I spent six months nervous for both of us.”

The ceremony takes place in the great hall at sundown, transformed with cascading white winter roses and candlelight that turns stone walls to amber. Every seat is filled.

Damon stands at the altar in formal black and silver, and the expression on his face stops my breath. Vulnerable, unguarded in a room full of people who could see it.

‘Breathe, Damon,’ I press through the bond.

‘I’m also trying not to collapse in front of the entire court, which requires a level of multitasking I didn’t anticipate.’

‘You’re going to be fine.’

‘I’m going to be married, Kira. I spent years convinced that any woman who loved me was running an operation.’ A pause, raw and vast. ‘She changed that. She changed everything.’

I watch from the reception’s edge, wine warming in my hand, and let myself feel my brother’s joy through the bond without guilt. He and Elara deserve this.

“You’re smiling,” Malik says beside me, his voice low enough for only my ears. “Actual and unguarded. I should document this for the historical record.”

“Careful, Commander. I might start expecting you to dance with me.”

“I would rather face the Broken Crown alone and unarmed.”

“Romantic.”

“Realistic. You’ve seen what happens when I dance. Battlefields have suffered less damage.”

I lean into him, and his arm settles around my waist with the easy certainty of a gesture repeated a thousand times.

That’s when I notice him.

A man at the far edge of the hall, half-shadowed by a column. Tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in the dark attire of a visiting dignitary.

He holds no glass. He speaks to no one. His face is one I’ve never seen — strong-jawed, composed, watching the celebrations with an expression I can’t decipher. Not joy, not calculation, not hostility. Quieter and patient.

His eyes move across the hall with the unhurried precision of a person cataloguing everything he sees.

When his gaze finds mine across the crowd, he holds it for exactly two heartbeats before inclining his head in a gesture of courtesy so perfect it feels rehearsed.

He looks away, and the crowd swallows him whole.