From the doorway, Arit leaned and watched him with narrowed eyes.
A clock ticked somewhere, but time did not pass, not for Nick. He kicked a mahogany bench engraved in an overwrought style that might’ve been fashionable a century ago, but Nick sincerely doubted it. “I hate waiting,” he finally admitted. “I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire life. To mate a stranger to strengthen a doomed crown as a boy. For rescue after we were captured. To see if my wounds would end me while we fled or if my survival would be discovered in the years after.” He exhaled a choppy breath, fought to relax his taut muscles. “For the tribes to finally recognize how thoroughly the revolution had failed them.”
“And to properly bury the mother, father, brothers, and sisters you mourned no less fiercely for the necessity of hiding your grief.” Arit stood, pushing away from the doorjamb he’d propped himself against. “Is that why you cut your hair and kept it closely shorn? As the traditional mourning sigil? It was,” he said, voice low with wonder.
“Short hair helped me blend into the population in the lands of men.” Nick jerked his shoulder in grudging acknowledgment. “Mom and Dad would’ve made me chop it off before we reached the safety of the border if my hair hadn’t been cut already.”
Stumbling a step forward, his mate stared at him. “You did cut your hair. For them and their memory.”
“You’re such a romantic.” In Nick’s gut, acid roiled, sick and merciless. “Our killers took our hair as trophies. Even Elba’s—and she was hardly more than a baby, her hair more fuzz than fur.” As though absorbing the blow anew, Nick flinched. “Dad saw it. He told me what the rebels did to debase and desecrate us.” He reached for the locket at his throat, his hand covering it, as though he could protect Elba any more now than he could then. “You wanted to know about my necklace, its importance to me and why I refuse to ever be without it.”
Pale, features pinched, Arit slowly nodded. “I did.”
Swallowing the knot of anxiety lodged in his throat, Nick clutched the locket tightly in his grasp. “When Paul Goode dug me from the ground, he pried free a ringlet of my sister’s hair clenched in my fingers.”
When Nick glanced up, Arit had snapped his eyes shut. Arit’s tall frame stiffened, like cordwood. “The locket…”
Nausea searing his throat, Nick tightened his grasp on his necklace, ignoring the cheap metal cutting into his palm. “The wispy golden hair my dad saved for me was all I had left of her.” His eyes burned, tears he refused to shed wetly gathering. “Of them.
“It isn’t scheduled in the capitol’s precious itinerary, but when the funeral pyre is lit and I’ve finally fulfilled my oath to my sister, I’ll set down my burden by adding the locket to the fire.” The wounded noise slipping from Arit ate at the control Nick had carried inside him since he was a wounded eight-year-old. He stared at his mate, Nick’s gaze beseeching him. “Until I do, I cannot and won’t let go of the little I have of them. Her memory is with me, always.” He gulped, tapping the locket against his temple. “They beg me, every day, to make the horror and needlessness of their murders right. To earn the life I’ve been given.”
As though Arit couldn’t stand his separation from Nick a moment more, he marched to Nick and pulled him into his embrace. Nick looped his arms around his mate’s waist and shivered at the heat and strength of Arit pressing into him. Nick didn’t cry. He never cried, not since he’d woken with a shattered body, freezing with Paul Goode in the high passes of the Urals. Tears were wasted. Useless. Hysterical sobbing wouldn’t have brought his murdered family back to him or lessen the peril he’d faced every moment since he’d lost everything and everyone he’d ever cared about.
Hanging on to Arit felt amazing, though. As much as he’d loved his adopted parents, they were humans Nick had accepted were ultimately his responsibility to protect. His dad had saved him. If Paul Goode hadn’t dragged him from his shallow grave, Nick would have perished. Both Rosalind and Paul had also done everything in their power to keep Nick safe as he grew from a whelp to an adult, but Nick was born the son of an emperor. He realized what risks he took and what he owed the ones who shared those dangers alongside him.
Everything.
He owed the Goodes everything. Sacrificing to secure their protection was the least Nick could offer his human parents.
For the first time in his wretched existence, he could lean on someone strong enough to shoulder his burdens with him, though. Physically, Arit was as fragile as the Ural mountain range from which he came—as solid and unmovable as granite. Tribal blood pumped as hot and strong in Arit’s veins as it ran inside Nick. When disaster came—and Nick was too much of a realist to deny disaster would inevitably come for him—Arit would fight at Nick’s side. He’d fight until his last breath for Nick, their future, and any children they made together. Arit was fearless, undaunted by who Nick was or what he would become. Arit was Nick’s equal in every way.
Gratitude filling the shattered cracks and empty spaces inside him, Nick angled his jaw to brush his lips over Arit’s stubbled cheek.
Arms slung around Nick’s shoulders, Arit tipped his mouth to claim Nick’s chaste kiss, but when Nick parted his lips to deepen it, Arit edged back. Eyes glimmering with concern, his mate glanced at the chapel’s arched doorway. “C’mon,” Arit said, guiding Nick toward the hallway outside. “Does your jacket have a hood? Put it up.”
Brows beetling, Nick yanked the hood of his cloak over his head and joined his mate staring down the eerily vacant corridor of the transept. Dignitaries, support staff, security, church personnel, and cleaning staff bustled in the distance where the southern wing met the nave nearest the Hall of Kings and continued on past barricades where the northern wing crumbled in indifferent neglect.
Arit removed one arm from Nick’s shoulders to flip up the collar of his leather coat. “No one cares about or will notice me,” he said, withdrawing a knit hat from a pocket. He jammed it on his head. “They’re on alert, desperate for their first glimpse of you. Pull the drawstring of the hood tight.”
“There isn’t a cord.” Nick blinked at him. “Benjic’s tailor designed the cloak. The hood is decorative, not genuinely functional.”
“Of course it is. City shifters…” Arit grimaced. “Fine. Hunch your shoulders. Try to appear shorter. Inconspicuous.”
“Seriously?” Nick glowered. “If you’re thinking about sneaking away, the media—”
“—are busy in the Hall of Kings with Benjic, arguing over camera placement for their live feeds.” Arit tugged Nick forward by Nick’s arm. “With the chaos of the elders and political elites arriving, now is probably our best shot of slipping past security. If we wait until the crowd thins, we’ll be too late.”