Dade exited the dining hall and stopped when he saw me. “Well?” he said, making an unnecessary show of peering around. “I see no guards.” Then he frowned. “Where is your mate?”

“Saying her goodbyes.”

Dade pondered that with a low whistle. Tucking his hands within his coat pockets, he came to lean against the wall beside me.

“Thank you,” I murmured after too many seconds of tense silence had passed.

Dade stiffened. “I didn’t quite catch that. Could you repeat it?”

I glared at him, and his eyes glinted before he chuckled.

But I truly was thankful, and I hoped he knew that. He certainly did not have to involve himself in matters such as these. If anything, he should have avoided it. He should have done his utmost to punish and be rid of me.

Instead, he’d decided to help my mate and me.

“I suppose I owe you one,” I said, at a loss for what else to say, and crossed my arms and ankles.

“A continued lifetime of servitude should suffice,” he drawled, though we both knew I was destined for as much anyway. He lifted a shoulder, staring at the stairwell ahead, and scratched at the growth on his jaw. “A little birdy might have told me this is merely what friends are supposed to do.”

Slightly alarmed by the warming of my chest, my teeth met. I released them to mutter, “I’m not hugging you.”

He laughed once more.

“And what are we to do about this?” I asked when the silence settled, this time without the earlier tension.

He raised a brow, and I gestured back and forth between us with a flick of my fingers, indicating the issue of Vordane containing two alphas. Dade stared at me with those cold blue eyes, his wolf staring at mine.

But there was no challenge. It was merely an assessment of what he’d always felt simmering beneath the surface of who I allowed people to see.

I let him look, and I didn’t cower. I never had. It seemed Dade now understood that while I would prefer to hide it, and that I would continue to, all that I was wasn’t something I could simply change for him.

Smirking, my so-called friend winked. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He looked straight ahead again. “Just make sure this king holds true to his word. Your legion is positively feral in your absence.”

My lips twitched, but I couldn’t help it. I laughed, too.

THIRTY-FOUR

Aster

Relief was soon met with an onslaught of grief I hadn’t expected to still be capable of feeling.

Not for the king seated in our rooms, staring at the crown he held between his spread knees. My crown.

No longer mine.