LOGINThe Alpha Enforcer of Tyrheim stood in front of Lachlan's desk with his hands clasped behind his back, and a muscle ticking in his jaw.“The quartermaster is dead, Your Majesty.” He delivered the news like a sharp blade cutting through meat. Malaki was not a man who lingered over bad news, and he knew stalling wouldn’t grant him any favour with the Lycan King either.“How?” Lachlan asked without looking away from the spread of reports on his desk. That was the only information he had managed to get out of the prisoner he’d brought back to the palace before the prisoner died.“He was found in his bed yesterday. The garrison physician says a cough went to rot in his lungs.” Malaki’s mouth thinned as he spoke. “His household claimed he wasn’t in perfect health the week before. I had two of my men watching his movements prior to his death and there was no report of an ailment.”Lachlan leaned back in his chair, his fingers slowly tapping on the table. “So, someone killed him,” Lachlan mut
Lachlan had walked into that room with a dozen questions lined up in his mind, every one of them a variation of what are you hiding from me, and every one of them fell away the moment the Omega collapsed into his arms.He simply tightened his hold, one hand spread between Evren’s shoulder blades, the other cradling the back of his head as the Omega cried into his chest.The way Evren’s fingers had twisted into the back of his shirt when the Omega said, “I missed you.” Lachlan believed him for the most part, because Evren held him as if he was afraid the Alpha might dissolve if he let go. But there was something else threaded through it, something Lachlan felt through the resonance humming between them that neither of them could see. He had only been gone this morning, and Evren saying he missed him felt amiss given how closed off the Omega had been in the past weeks.‘This sorrow,’ Sirius murmured, stirring behind Lachlan’s mind. ‘This isn’t longing. There is something, but it isn’t
By 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 Evren couldn't point to the single day it became a cage rather than a courtesy. At first, an extra attendant was assigned to walk with him to the gardens. Lachlan had said it was because he was worried about Evren's health. The Omega had started looking even more frail. Lachlan had found Evren had been secretly procuring medicine from the Royal physician staff. Still, the Omega never told him what for. Despite wanting to punish the beta Lachlan had learned about, the Lycan King refrained upon finding out they were mostly potions for headaches. As weeks passed, the distance between them grew, and Lachlan became even more possessive. Evren knew the king no longer believed him whenever he claimed he was fine, despite his deteriorating health. Lachlan no longer trusted the Omega’s words and for
By the fifth morning, Lachlan had stopped pretending he hadn't noticed a change in Evren. The change had begun small enough that he could almost talk himself out of it. The omega had refused Lachlan’s offer to get him the royal physician, yet his health hadn’t improved. Somehow Evren lied it away and Lachlan could no longer pretend he didn’t notice. Since his arrival, the Lycan King had tried to set a pattern between them, making sure dinner with the Omega was no longer something that happened on occasion. Lachlan had started making it a habit to wrap up whatever royal business he had before late evening so he could be back in his private palace in time for dinner with Evren. The Lycan King had hoped this would show the omega that he truly cared and that he wanted to make things right between them. The moment they had shared before Lachlan’s trip had been the King deemed special. Yet, ever since returning, it seemed Evren had withdrawn even more, and Lachlan could feel the Omega sl
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







