เข้าสู่ระบบBy the time the month turned over, there were two guardsmen posted outside Evren's door instead of one, and neither of them met his eyes anymore when he passed.It had happened slowly enough that he couldn't point to the single day it became a cage rather than a courtesy. First it was an extra attendant assigned to walk with him to the gardens. Lachlan had said it wasn't because he was worried about Evren's health.He knew what it was, even if Lachlan didn't. He'd watched it building in him for weeks, the way Lachlan's hand found the small of his back a little too often now, a little too firmly, the way he asked where are you going in a tone that tried for casual and landed somewhere closer to demand. Some nameless fear had taken root in him the day he rode home and hadn't managed to shake it since, and rather than examine it, he had simply built walls around the thing he was afraid of losing, brick by well-meaning brick, and called it love the whole time he was doing it.It probably
By the third morning, Lachlan had stopped pretending he hadn't noticed.It began small enough that he could almost talk himself out of it — Evren declining to walk with him to the gardens, claiming a headache; a held-back laugh at breakfast that used to come easy and now seemed to require effort, like something dredged up rather than felt. Lachlan reached for his hand across the table and Evren let him take it, but a half-second too late, the pause just long enough to register before it was covered over.By midday it was harder to explain away. Evren found reasons to leave rooms Lachlan entered — a message that needed answering, a dress fitting that could surely have waited, a sudden interest in the state of the linen stores that no one, least of all Evren, had ever shown before. When Lachlan sat beside him during the afternoon petitions, close enough that their shoulders brushed, Evren shifted a careful few inches away, as if the contact cost him something he couldn't afford to spend
Two days had passed since the homecoming dinner, and it was over a set of tax rolls from eastern shires that Lachlan felt it.One moment the Alpha king had too much on his table, ink drying at the tip of his quill, the voice of the servant who brought his tea echoing in the room as he departed, a map slapped across Lachlan’s table, one he’d open to check for something his second-command had mentioned in his recent letter, and the next minute something reached into Lachlan’s chest and wrenched hard.Lachlan didn’t have the words to describe what he felt because it wasn’t necessarily pain, but there was an urgency behind the wrenching in his chest that shot to his heart and straight through his entire body.His chair scraped back, his body moving to stand up abruptly before Lachlan had even decided it was what he needed to do. The action almost knocked the chair over, his quill dropping from his hands and rolling off the desk unnoticed.Sirius had also felt what the king felt, and the Ly
The low and dull cramping started sometime after midnight. It was small enough at first to mistake for the same unsettled ache that had been living in Evren’s stomach for days.By the time dawn was creeping through the gap in the window drapes, it was no longer something Evren could simply ignore. It had woken him up from his sleep. And for a moment, Evren lay very still, one hand pressed flat against his abdomen as he wondered if the pain would ease but then he felt the first true, unmistakable warmth of blood traveling down his legs. His eyes flew open, and he managed to scramble out of bed.The thing he had waited for over almost a week, the one thing he had begun to fear would never come, had finally made its way out. Evren should have felt relief because this was what he wanted. He had asked for this, hadn’t he? Even engineered it with several bottles and several brews of yarrow root.But now, that feeling wasn’t there. What he felt instead as he made his way to the bathroom with
The nausea came again, faint and easy enough to ignore for the better part of the first two days.Evren noticed it mostly in the mornings. It was a low, unsettled roll in his stomach that faded by midday. If he didn’t already know he was pregnant, he might’ve blamed it on something he ate, except he knew he was pregnant and he knew that was the cause of his nausea.He has spent the better part of the past few days sleeping, better than he could remember sleeping in his entire life. He didn’t need to ask why the exhaustion in his bones weren’t easing, or why it took so much effort to stand on his feet.He’d taken the medicine he got from the Physician. What Evren didn’t understand was why these symptoms still persisted.Evren had taken the contents of the first bottle a day later than the Physician had instructed, because Lachlan had held him to sleep that night. And sneaking into the bathroom would’ve been suspicious.The Omega had breathed a sigh of relief when Lachlan told him abou
The need for the trip to Aldermane came the morning after. Lachlan hadn’t expected it. He’d shared a bath with Evren, after an unexpected evening. Neither of them talked about things that they needed to address.On the better part, Evren had gotten the pleasure he wanted, his mind had calmed and Lachlan had gotten more than pleasure out of it too. Being able to satisfy Evren, without needing to fuck the Omega had tickled something in Lachlan.And that image of Evren… Lachlan shook his head, deciding not to think about that when he was miles away from home. This time, he made sure to inform Evren of his trip and the possible days he would be away.The last time he left the palace without informing the Omega, the result had led them to a Cold War of almost a month. Lachlan wasn’t going to jeopardise what little of the reconciliation they just had. If he could call it that.The journey to Aldermane took the better part of two days, and Lachlan spent most of both telling himself this woul







