Chapter 702: Hyran’s Pew Of Eternal Suffering

Hyran Thornfell was stuck between two grown-ass men who were both making sounds that belonged in a bathing chamber with the water running.

To his left, Dexmon was grunting. Full constipated face. To his right, Gavriel was giving birth.

Hyran caught Hale’s eye. Hale looked away so fast he nearly pulled a muscle. Seat swap denied. No take-backs. Someone had to be in between this testosterone sandwich and apparently that was him. Wonderful. Truly. A once-in-a-lifetime seating opportunity.

Both ends of the sandwich were having a moment.

Dexmon was mid-crisis when the pieces started snapping together. Realization bombs hit in sequence, each a middle finger. Realization. Worse realization. Another completely fucked one.

To start with, she was the only woman here. In a den of Alphas. At an emergency war summit. The last time she attended one of these, she almost died. Literally, Viremont had choked her. The memory hit him like a horse kick. What the hell was she thinking?

She was here because she had been crowned. There was no other possible explanation. That was the only answer.

Dexmon had known it was coming. Hell, he had told Serena he would attend the ceremony. Knowing it and seeing it were two different things. One was a fact he’d processed. The other was a fist to his sternum. And both Fin and Serena had decided that he did not need to be informed. How long had they been hiding this?

He didn’t know what made him more angry. The fact she didn’t tell him about it or the fact she was parading it now in front of every Alpha in Skardos.

Possessiveness flooded him so fast it bypassed thought. She was Drakenfell. She was his.

No. Fin would not have approved this. He was absent. That meant something had happened. Fin was hurt. This was Shadowclaw protocol because she was their Crown Luna. That was the only explanation for this. And Serena hadn’t thought to send word.

Did she think he wouldn’t want to know? Was she avoiding him because she was crowned or because of Gavriel?

Rage and dominance and jealousy hit him at the same time, tangled together so tight he couldn’t separate them. A three-way collision with no clear target because the solution was ripping that cloak off her and putting her on his lap for the remainder of this council session.

Dexmon jack-in-the-boxed out of his seat, fists clenched, wolf surging. His nostrils flared and his breathing came through his teeth.

Aegon: Let. Me. Out.

Every gaze in the chamber started to ping-pong between the Crown Prince of Drakenfell, who had stood up like his seat was on fire, and Serena, who hadn’t spared him a single glance. The room was processing this. The room was failing.

Tiberon turned his head. One look. The look had a success rate of one hundred percent. It had worked when Dexmon was five. It was working now. Some things did not change with age or rank.

Dexmon closed his eyes, pushing Aegon back. Then he sat down the way a volcano sits down next to a small village. His jaw was locked so hard the tendon in his neck stood out. His wolf slammed against his chest again.

She wouldn’t look at him. She had walked past Drakenfell’s section without a glance. His gut was screaming at him to cross the chamber and do something stupid. His discipline had him pinned in place like a hostage. The discipline was ahead by half an inch and losing ground every second he kept looking at her.

Aegon: Get her.

Dexmon: No.

Aegon: Get. Her.

Dexmon tore his attention away from her, placing it onto Aeron, who seemed perfectly at ease with this arrangement. That bastard.

Aegon: The mage has information on our mate that we don’t have. We fix that now.

Dexmon: I can’t interrogate Aeron Lancaster in the middle of a war council.

Aegon: After the war council?

Dexmon: After the war council.

Aegon: Promise?

Dexmon: Promise.

His wolf had just made him pinky-swear to interrogate a Master Mage. Dexmon’s life had reached a new category of absurd and the category did not have a name yet.

On the other side of the testosterone sandwich, Gavriel was having his own crisis.

The second she walked in, his green magic sensed her state and surged. It did this automatically with her, and Gavriel cosigned it every time without hesitation. Right now, she needed it badly. He could feel her energy was low. She was injured. And her pink magic was at one percent.

But the moment his green reached her, she rejected it like slamming a door closed. Gavriel blinked, stunned, unaware that she could do that. New information. Terrible information.

He understood she didn’t want to glow green right now. But frankly, he didn’t give a damn. She would survive.

He pushed harder. At least that’s what he thought he was doing. His magic did what it wanted. No luck.

Full lock, deadbolt, and a chair wedged under the handle from the inside while her magic flipped him off through the peephole.

She was rejecting it. She had never rejected anything he had tried to give her. Was she trying to hide her state from him? She didn’t do that. She told him every damn thing. What the hell was this shit? It pissed him off.

He had gone from concerned to confused to cosmically, categorically, colossally pissed in under two minutes, which was a new land speed record for a man who usually processed anger at the pace of a golden retriever processing that the ball had been a setup.

Gavriel’s hands gripped his knees. His green magic and wolf were both pacing like caged animals. His body wanted to cross the chamber. His body was being overruled by the part of his brain that understood politics and the part of his brain that understood that adding a Gamma to the mix would add another complication to an already fucked situation.

Fucked was underselling it. The situation had layers. A fucked onion.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, the part that still produced humor in crisis situations congratulated itself on the metaphor. The rest of his mind told that part to shut up.