CH 9 - Simon

SIMON POV I stayed where I was long after she walked past me.I told myself it was discipline. That it was training. That it was the diplomat’s role, the ambassador’s mask, the weight of the identity I was wearing that kept my feet rooted to the stone floor instead of following her up the stairs, grabbing her wrist, demanding answers she didn’t owe me and I wasn’t entitled to. That was the lie. The truth was simpler and uglier: if I moved, I wasn’t sure I’d stop. So I stood there, jaw clenched hard enough to ache, fists tight at my sides, every muscle in my body coiled like it was waiting for permission that would never come, and I watched Lily disappear into the palace that would never deserve her. She smelled different up close. Stronger. Fuller. Warmer. Untamed in a way that hit straight to my spine, and I hated myself for it because when she stepped past me I couldn’t help the sharp inhale, filling my lungs with her floral scent like I was starving for it. I even closed my eyes for half a second, just long enough to commit the mistake. That was all it took. This girl — no, this woman — shattered the carefully constructed walls I’d spent eight years building inside my head with one look and one breath. Maddox surged so hard against my ribs that my breath stuttered, my vision sharpening at the edges as instinct slammed into restraint. I was one heartbeat away from blowing my cover, one breath away from letting myself be arrested, one step from triggering the biggest diplomatic disaster in werewolf history. Mine to protect. Mine to keep safe. The rest of the thought came unbidden, dangerous enough that I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, forcing my hands to relax one finger at a time, forcing every claw back where it belonged. She hadn’t looked afraid.That was the part that crawled under my skin and stayed there, digging in until I couldn’t tell where the discomfort ended and something else began. If she’d been tense, guarded, visibly uncomfortable with the male who had just driven her back to the palace in that ridiculous car, I would have known exactly what to do with that information. Fear was clean. Fear was simple. Fear was a line I could cross without hesitation. Fear would have justified the violence that rose in me the moment his hand closed around hers. Fear would have given me permission. But she hadn’t been afraid. She’d been flustered. Embarrassed. Amused. Maybe even happy. And that scared the hell out of me. Because happiness meant choice, and choice meant I no longer knew where I stood. The way she’d waved at him replayed in my head on a relentless loop — not a bow, not a carefully drilled gesture of courtly grace, just a small, awkward movement like she didn’t quite know how to exist in that moment. Human. Unpolished. Real. The way he’d taken her hand. The way his fingers had wrapped around hers with casual certainty, like touching her was already allowed, like her body was a thing he could claim space around without consequence. For a split second, I’d imagined ripping his hand away. Not shoving him back. Not posturing. Just a clean, brutal motion — fingers snapping, tendons tearing, bone breaking under my grip — fast enough that he wouldn’t even have time to scream before he understood he’d made a fatal mistake. The image came uninvited, sharp and efficient, and the worst part was how natural it felt. How easy. That was when the fear turned inward. What the f**k was wrong with me? The way he’d lifted her hand. The way he’d kissed her knuckles like it meant something, like it was intimate instead of invasive, like he had any right to put his mouth on her skin. He had not. Only her mate had. Maybe. The thought hit hard enough that Maddox surged, teeth bared inside my head, a low, furious snarl vibrating through my chest. Then he’d said it. -My future wife.- Maddox didn’t just growl — he bared his teeth in challenge, every instinct screaming defiance. 'Over my dead body,' he snapped in my mind. I agreed. The possessiveness that ripped through me in that moment was violent and sudden, so sharp it stole the air from my lungs. I had to brace myself to keep from stepping forward, to keep from tearing the ambassador’s disguise off my skin and reminding that fae bastard exactly how fragile he was. Future wife my ass. Not without her choosing. Not without her wanting it. Not without me knowing she was safe. Ifshe had recoiled — if she had shown even a flicker of fear in her eyes — I wouldn’t be standing here forcing my claws to stay buried. I would have moved. I would have taken her. I would have accepted the war. But she hadn’t been afraid. Which meant I had to wait. And waiting, with Maddox pacing and snarling inside me, felt like holding a blade against my own throat and trusting myself not to press harder. I turned away from the entrance before restraint fractured completely, before protection tipped into possession in a way I might not be able to come back from. Because the most unsettling truth of all was this: I wasn’t sure when that line had moved. Or whether it had ever been where I thought it was. The servants bowed as I passed, murmuring respectful greetings I barely registered. I acknowledged them out of habit, a shallow nod, my attention already elsewhere, already fractured. I don’t remember reaching my assigned chambers. I only remember the door closing behind me and the sudden, suffocating quiet that followed. I crossed the room in three long strides and threw the window open hard enough that the latch rattled. Cold air slammed into my face, sharp and biting, and I leaned forward instinctively, bracing my hands against the stone sill as if the night itself might push back. I dragged in lungfuls of freezing air, deep and rough, like it might douse the heat crawling under my skin.It didn’t. Maddox was pacing inside me, restless and furious, his agitation bleeding straight into my bones. ‘She let him touch her.’ The thought wasn’t his alone. It echoed between us, ugly and persistent. “She’s not yours,” I muttered under my breath, not sure who I was warning anymore. ‘She’s ours to protect’. That distinction had always mattered. It was the line I’d built everything on. Protection, not possession. Safety, not claim. Or at least, that’s what I’d told myself for eight years. I pressed my forehead against the cold stone and shut my eyes, but the darkness only dragged the memories up faster, sharper, like my mind had been waiting for an excuse to unleash them. A little girl clinging to my shirt like it was the only thing anchoring her to the world. “You’re safe,” I’d told her. “I’ve got you.” “I’ll take care of you.” I’d meant every word. I still did. But safety had never meant ownership. Protection didn’t require proximity. That belief had been the only thing that allowed me to hand her back to the Queen without tearing the realm apart. I’d repeated it to myself until it stopped sounding like a lie and started sounding like truth. Returning her had been the right thing to do. It had to be. Standing there now, Lily’s scent still clinging to my lungs, another male’s intention stamped all over her evening, I finally admitted the truth. I hadn’t let go because I couldn’t. And now the pull was different. Stronger. Sharper. This wasn’t memory resurfacing or guilt refusing to fade. This was something else entirely, something that had been coiled tight under the surface for years, waiting for proximity to tear it open. Every instinct screamed to find her, to put my hands on her shoulders, to force her to look at me and answer the only question that mattered. ‘Did you choose this?’ The idea that she might not have — that she might have been maneuvered, cornered, pressured into compliance — lit something vicious in me. I straightened abruptly, tearing myself away from the window as the thought took full shape. If Lily was being pushed into this marriage because the court needed optics, because the Queen needed reassurance, because the nobles needed to feel comfortable crowning a princess they’d already decided was fragile, then none of this was about her happiness or her safety. It was about control. And control was something I did not tolerate when it came to her. I paced the room, tension bleeding into movement because standing still felt impossible, my thoughts colliding faster the more I tried to pin them down. Eight years. Eight years of distance. Eight years of restraint. Eight years of telling myself that the fact she never left my mind meant nothing more than unfinished business and old scars that hadn’t healed properly. But trauma didn’t feel like this.This felt like recognition. The pull hadn’t weakened with time the way it should have. It had sharpened, narrowed, focused, like something that had been waiting for the right moment to snap into place. The closer I was to her, the harder it became to pretend she was just a responsibility. Maddox went still at the thought, his attention locking in with mine in a way that sent a slow, dangerous shiver down my spine. ‘She’s changed,’ he rumbled. “So have we,” I answered quietly.“She’s not a child anymore,” I said, the words tasting unfamiliar and heavy. No. She was a woman now. A woman who smiled at another male. Who stood on palace steps in the snow and waved like she didn’t quite fit the role the world had decided for her. A woman who might already be being shaped into something she never asked to become. The thought of her bound — truly bound — to someone who saw her as a solution instead of a person made my vision darken at the edges. Samuel Grint. Younger son. Not the one originally intended for her, if the whispers were accurate. That alone meant something had shifted behind the scenes. He was confident. Intentional. Comfortable claiming space around her.Not sloppy. Not cruel. Which made him more dangerous, not less. A man like that didn’t pursue a crown without calculation. He might want Lily — genuinely — but wanting her didn’t exclude wanting what came with her. And Lily, for all her strength, had been raised in a court that taught compliance as virtue. I exhaled slowly, forcing the tension back down into something I could control. Tomorrow, I would start pulling threads. Tomorrow, I would learn whether Lily had chosen freely or been cornered into obedience. Tomorrow, I would know, for sure, if this insane feeling in my chest, growing each passing second and strong enough to have my stomach in a vice, was the final game of a mischievous goddess. But tonight, I would stay exactly where I was — behind the mask, inside the role, walking a line that was growing thinner by the second. I closed the window and turned back toward the room, the palace settling into silence around me as if nothing was wrong. Everything was different. And I was done pretending otherwise.