The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 633

Chapter 633: Disappointment Cuts Deeper

Tristan considered it. "I’ll go with you, actually."

Lucian looked at him. "You just said you weren’t."

"I changed my mind. Someone has to be there to identify the body."

"He’s not going to kill me."

Tristan gave a single nod. "He’s not going to kill you."

"He is going to kill me."

"He is absolutely going to kill you," Tristan agreed.

Tristan leaned back against the wall, crossed his arms, and gave him the exact expression of a spectator settling into a comfortable seat at an arena. "You’re going to be great in there. I believe in you. I’ll be thinking of you. From here."

✦✦✦

AELINDRIS — THE FAE PALACE — THREE MONTHS AFTER THE FIRST SHIFT

Tristan abandoned ship before Lucian entered the study, the room where Atlas conducted the business of being a father when the business required a desk between them.

Lucian had been in this room hundreds of times. For lectures about the honey pastry theft. For conversations about River’s protection that were clinical and brief. For the quiet, steady exchanges that a king had with his sons when the exchanges required walls and privacy and the particular acoustics of a room designed to contain things that shouldn’t leave it.

He had never walked into this room afraid.

He was afraid now. The fear was sitting in his chest the way his wolf sat in his chest, heavy and present and occupying space he needed for breathing. He had rehearsed this conversation eleven times, which was nine more than he’d rehearsed anything in his life, and the rehearsing had accomplished nothing because the rehearsing couldn’t simulate the part that was going to hurt.

Atlas was behind the desk. Reading. The particular posture of a king whose reading was governance and whose governance was reading and whose evening routine involved both in quantities that would have hospitalized a lesser administrator. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

He looked up when Lucian entered. The looking was warm. The warmth was the warmth he’d carried since a corridor and a baby and a decision that had never required discussion.

"Sit down, Lucian."

Lucian sat. The sitting was wrong. His spine was too straight. His hands were too still. His jaw was doing the thing it did when the words behind it were heavy and the heavy was structural rather than emotional, and Atlas, who had been reading this boy’s face since it was the size of his palm, noticed immediately.

"What is it?"

Lucian had planned to build to it. Planned to lay the groundwork, present the reasoning, construct the argument the way he constructed every argument, with foundations and supports and a conclusion that arrived through logic rather than announcement.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify