Chapter 66: Tonight, You’re Just Mine

Naya returned to their quarters expecting to find Ronan buried in reports from the ceremonial run. Instead, she stopped in the doorway, taking in the sitting room cleared of paperwork, dinner already laid out beside the open balcony doors.

“What happened to the King who claimed he couldn’t spare an evening?”

Ronan poured her a drink. “He was overruled.”

“By whom?”

He looked at her. “An exceptionally demanding woman.”

Naya laughed and crossed to the table, finding a simple meal, nothing like the formal dinners she’d grown used to, chosen instead from the food served at the morning’s celebration. She recognized the roasted venison and spiced vegetables immediately, the same dish she’d mentioned enjoying only hours earlier.

The small detail touched her more than any elaborate gift could have.

Ronan pulled out her chair before settling across from her, and for once there were no council members waiting outside, no urgent decisions demanding attention, no one asking her to prove she belonged. He’d deliberately carved out this space for them.

They’d barely started eating when Naya caught herself asking about the ceremonial schedule for the following morning.

Ronan set down his fork. “You’ve broken the rules already.”

“That was one question.”

“One question becomes five. Five becomes a council meeting.”

She tried not to laugh, failing halfway through.

“Our agreement,” he reminded her. “Unless something genuinely urgent happens, tonight belongs to us.”

“Fine,” she said. “What are we supposed to discuss instead?”

“Anything that has nothing to do with being King.”

She considered the challenge. “What were you like as a child?”

He looked immediately suspicious. “Why?”

“Because I’ve heard stories about Kael, and I refuse to believe you were born looking permanently displeased.”

“I was a perfectly well-behaved child,” Ronan said.

She stared at him until he finally cracked, several seconds later, admitting that Kael had once convinced him to climb onto the palace roof to retrieve a lost kite, then abandoned him there the moment their father appeared below.

Naya laughed so hard she had to set down her drink.

He offered another story shortly after, this one about Kael stealing food from the kitchens and successfully blaming him for it, told with the dry, long-suffering patience of someone who’d been collecting grievances for years.

“Did he ever get punished?” Naya asked.

“Rarely.”

“Why not?”

“Because he always looked innocent.”

“He still does,” Naya said, grinning.

“Exactly. It’s a longstanding problem.”

The laughter softened gradually into something quieter. Naya asked whether he’d always known he would become King.

“Succession was never simply a title waiting for me,” Ronan said. “I was trained to make decisions that affected entire packs. Mistakes could cost lives.” He said it plainly, without seeking sympathy, simply letting her see a little more of the boy who’d grown into the man she’d married.

“I sometimes wonder who I might have become,” Naya admitted, “if my family hadn’t treated me like Elara’s replacement.”

Ronan didn’t pretend to have an answer for that. “I want to know that woman too,” he said instead. “The one who existed before everything was decided for her.”

The promise settled warmly in her chest. He wasn’t asking her to become someone else. He was giving her room to find out who she actually was.

They moved out to the balcony once dinner finished, Naya resting against the railing while Ronan stood beside her, his arm settling around her waist.

“Sometimes I still expect this to disappear,” she admitted. “The moment I relax.”

She wasn’t asking him to promise nothing bad would happen. She knew better than that.

“For a long time,” Ronan said after a quiet moment, “I thought of the future as a list of responsibilities. Protecting the kingdom. Preserving peace. Making sure no one could hurt me the way Seraphine’s death did.” He paused. “I stopped imagining what I might want for myself.”

“And now?” she asked.

“Now I find myself wondering what you’ll want to do tomorrow.”

“That sounds terribly romantic,” she said, smiling.

“I’m working on it.”

She leaned into him, touched by the honesty underneath the awkward delivery.

Ronan turned toward her and brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek, studying her face without moving closer, giving her space to decide.

“Can I kiss you?”

“You’re asking your own wife?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever happened to the man who gave orders?”

“He’s learning that you don’t respond well to them.”

She laughed quietly, then took hold of his shirt and pulled him closer herself. “You can kiss me, Ronan.”

He did, the kiss beginning slow, no audience and nothing to prove. She rose onto her toes, her hands finding his shoulders, and he drew her into his arms, pausing each time she shifted closer so she could set the pace herself. She kissed him again before he had the chance to ask whether she wanted him to continue.

His restraint didn’t feel like distance anymore. It felt like attention, like he was learning the difference between wanting her and assuming he had any right to her simply because he did.

When they finally paused, Naya rested her forehead against his. “You know,” she whispered, “you’ve become much harder to hate.”

“Good,” he murmured, brushing his thumb across her cheek. “I was getting tired of trying to convince you otherwise.”

She kissed him again, smiling against his mouth.

The kiss deepened from there, teasing giving way to something quieter, more charged. “I want you close,” Ronan said against her hair. “Not because you’re my wife by law. Not because I need to prove our marriage is real.” He paused. “Because I’ve started missing you even when you’re in the next room.”

“I look for you in crowded rooms,” Naya admitted, “before I remember I don’t have to anymore.”

The confession surprised them both, settling into the quiet space between them without either one rushing to fill it with anything bigger. Naya took his hand and led him away from the balcony, the door closing behind them and leaving the rest of the palace outside.

Later, she lay beside him, comfortably tucked against his side, his fingers tracing idle patterns over her hand while they talked about nothing important at all. The ceremonial run. Lyra’s questionable definition of winning. Whether Kael could survive a single day without irritating his older brother.

“I want another evening like this,” Naya said.

Ronan kissed her hair. “Then we’ll have another.”

She looked up at him, searching for the qualification that used to follow every promise he’d ever made her.

It didn’t come.

He drew her closer instead, and she settled against him without the familiar need to stay alert for whatever demand might follow. For the first time in longer than she could remember, Naya let herself drift toward sleep beside him, secure in the knowledge that wanting a future with Ronan didn’t require surrendering herself to get it.