Aurelia: We look good.

Serena grinned and shook her head.

Serena: We look damn good.

Aurelia: Mate will rip this tonight.

Serena: He absolutely will NOT rip this tonight. I won’t let him.

Aurelia: The slit makes it easier for him. He won’t even have to try. One pull. Gone.

Serena: Stop analyzing the structural vulnerabilities of my dress.

Aurelia: Good luck with stopping him.

She stepped into the heels. Of course the heels fit and matched. Of course every goddamn detail was perfect, because Finnick Shadowclaw did not do things halfway.

Aurelia:Mate brings us to a big party.

Serena:He is not. This is casual.

The door to their chambers opened.

Finnick Shadowclaw entered in formal dress, dark jacket, sapphire accents at the collar and cuffs, his hair pushed back, and his jaw clean.

Gods, he looked good. Unfairly good. Aggressively good.

His eyes found hers.

He stopped.

Fin had no words. His body halted two steps past the threshold the way a body halts when the brain receives information that exceeds its processing capacity.

The double doors closed behind him.

Finnick Shadowclaw, a man whose verbal precision was a professional asset, whose negotiations were legendary, whose ability to construct sentences under pressure had ended wars, was standing in his own doorway looking at a woman in a sapphire dress with his mouth slightly open and his vocabulary entirely offline.

Serena’s face flushed. The flush climbed her neck and hit her cheeks, the involuntary response of being looked at by a man whose gaze carried a weight she could feel on her skin.

She grinned. “I love it so much.”

The words were genuine. She loved the dress. She loved the man who gave it to her. The two facts were inseparable and she was letting both of them show on her face because hiding them required energy she was choosing to spend elsewhere.

Fin’s grin matched hers. Slow. Wide. His gift had been a success.

The grin undid her more than the dress, more than the jewels, more than the necklace case in his hands. Because the grin was the real Fin. The one underneath the negotiations and the command voice and the Alpha authority. The one who lit up because she was happy, and whose happiness was contingent on hers, and whose entire evening had been engineered around the single goal of putting that look on her face.

He did not speak. The silence was the compliment, because Finnick Shadowclaw’s silence meant his words had failed him, and his words failing him meant the thing he was looking at had exceeded the language, and the exceeding was the highest praise he could offer.

He reached into his jacket. Pulled out a velvet case. A second, smaller case followed.

He opened the first.

A diamond necklace. The stones were set in gold, delicate, each diamond catching the firelight from a different angle, the setting designed to sit against a collarbone and draw the eye downward along a neckline that the sapphire dress had already framed to devastating effect.

He opened the second.

Earrings. Gold. Dangling. Each carrying a large sapphire at its center, surrounded by diamonds that caught the light and scattered it, matching the necklace and matching the dress. It matched so well it was almost as if he had planned this ensemble before his casual invitation an hour ago.

Serena’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Oh my gosh.”

Her voice came out muffled behind her fingers. Her eyes were wide, bright, carrying the specific shine that preceded tears she was trying to prevent because she had already done her makeup and the makeup was at stake and the stakes were cosmetic and she was losing the battle regardless.

The necklace and earrings were entirely too beautiful. Every piece of jewelry in those cases was carrying a price tag that she could feel in her chest without seeing a number, because Serena Frostborne had grown up in a royal household before the fall and she knew what craftsmanship at this level cost.

“For me?” Her eyes were red now. The makeup was in danger.

Fin closed the distance. His hand found her jaw, tilting her face up, his thumb catching the tear that had escaped before she could stop it.

“For you, baby.”

She looked up at him through wet eyes and the gratitude in her chest was so large it hurt to hold. Partly for the necklace and earrings, but more for him, the man.

He turned her gently. His fingers gathered her white hair, lifting it from her neck, and the necklace settled against her collarbone with the cool weight of diamonds meeting skin. His fingers worked the clasp with a steadiness that said he had practiced this in his mind and was executing the practice with precision.

The clasp closed. His lips found her collarbone, pressing a kiss against the skin just below the necklace, and the kiss was warm and deliberate and carrying a possessiveness that had nothing to do with territory and everything to do with the woman wearing his colors and his jewels in his castle.

His mouth on her skin, his arms around her body, his colors on her dress, his jewels on her neck. The totality of it pressed against something in her chest that she didn’t have a name for.

He pulled her back against his chest. His arms wrapped around her from behind, his chin finding the top of her head. He was absolutely looking at their reflection in the mirror and finding the reflection satisfying and her face was absolutely blushing at that.

A knock on the chamber door.

Fin did not release her. His arms stayed. His chin stayed. The knock was an interruption and the interruption was going to have to accommodate the embrace because the embrace was taking priority.

Whoever was on the other side of that door was about to walk in on the Alpha King of Shadowclaw wrapped around his mate in front of a mirror, and the Alpha King did not care, and the mate was too busy blushing to care, and the person knocking was going to have to adjust their expectations for this interaction immediately.

“Come in,” Fin called.