Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 80

The palace still hums with the celebration’s warmth. Lanterns gutter low, the scent of winter roses and wine lingering in the corridors.

I spent hours thinking of that mysterious figure in the hall, who was that person, if he was a person at all, and what shall we do with it next? By the end of the evening, I feel more exhausted than happy for my brother.

The twins are asleep under guard. For the first time in weeks, the weight on my chest eases. Malik closes our chamber door and turns the lock.

“I drew you a bath,” he says, unfastening his formal jacket. “The water should still be warm.”

“You did… what?”

“Water, heat, soap — the concept shouldn’t be this surprising.”

“Forgive me if I need a moment to reconcile the man who dismantled Seraphine’s intelligence network and the man who just prepared bathwater for his mate.”

The corner of his scarred mouth lifts. “I contain multitudes. Are you getting in, or should I draft a formal invitation with the royal seal?”

“Keep talking like that and I’ll make you Commander of Bathwater. Very prestigious title.”

“I’d still outrank every lord in that council chamber.”

The bath is steaming, fragrant with pine oil. I sink in with a sound that borders on indecent, and the heat seeps into muscles I’ve been clenching for days.

Malik sits on the stone edge, rolls his sleeves to his elbows, and cups water over my hair.

His fingers work through the wet strands slowly, carefully, tracing my scalp with the same focused attention he gives battlefield strategy. Except here, the only thing he’s dismantling is me.

“You’re trembling,” he says, his thumb finding the curve behind my ear.

He pours another palmful of warm water over my crown, and it runs down my temples, my jaw, the column of my throat. His eyes follow the path of every drop. “When was the last time you let someone take care of you?”

“You do that every day, Malik.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.” His hands still in my hair. “When was the last time you let yourself be soft without guilt?”

I can’t answer. He nods as if that silence confirms something he already suspected.

“So tonight, you let me. No queenly protests and no insisting you’re fine.”

“Are you giving your queen an order, Commander?”

“I’m asking the woman I love to let me carry her for one evening.”

He finishes with my hair, his fingers trailing down the nape of my neck, following my spine beneath the water until my breath catches.

He wraps me in linen warmed by the fire and lifts me against his chest — effortless, the kind of strength that has become simply part of him.

He lays me on the bed and kneels over me, and the look on his face makes something in my chest crack open.

No walls. No calculation. Just hunger tempered by tenderness so fierce it makes my eyes sting.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he says, his mouth against the hollow of my throat, and I can feel the vibration of his voice against my pulse.

“If you stop, I’ll have you court-martialed.”

“Noted. Any other orders, Your Majesty?”

“Take your time. We don’t have a crisis to interrupt us for once, and I refuse to waste it.”

His laugh is low and warm against my skin. “As my queen commands.”

He starts at my collarbone — slow, deliberate kisses pressed into the ridge of bone, moving downward with the patience of a man who has decided that time no longer applies.

His hand moves through my hair. His breathing shifts — the way it does when he’s choosing between comfort and truth.

“I need to tell you something. I kept it from you tonight because I wanted to give you at least one evening without the world crashing in. But you’ve never wanted comfort at the cost of honesty.”

“What happened?”

“Varek. My best intelligence contact tracking the Broken Crown cells at the southern border. Found dead this morning. His body was arranged deliberately — arms crossed over his chest, the Crown’s symbol painted on his skin in his own blood.”

The cold floods through me. “They knew he was yours.”

“They neutralized him and turned his corpse into a message. That takes discipline, resources, and counter-intelligence.”

“How long have you known?”

“The report came at midday. I buried it until tonight because you deserved the wedding, and Damon deserved his sister being present instead of spiraling.”

“Don’t protect me from information, Malik. Not about anything that threatens our children! The Order isn’t dissolving…”

“They are hunting back, and they’ve made it clear they consider our children the objective worth killing for.”

I press my forehead against his chest. The warmth he spent all evening building inside me is still there — buried deeper now, beneath the cold, but unextinguished.

“We stop waiting,” I say, and my voice sounds hard in the dark. “We find whoever is holding them together, and we end them before they reach our children.”

His arms tighten, pulling me against him until there’s no space left between his skin and mine. “Starting tomorrow, I rebuild the network from scratch. But tonight, I’m holding my mate, and it’s just you and me.”

Outside, the palace sleeps in the afterglow of a wedding. Inside this room, two persons hold each other in the dark, memorizing the warmth before the cold rushes in.