Chapter 183  Whiskey At Nine & Goodbye At Ten

One hour. That’s what the wards gave her.

Serena booked it through the corridors, stopping outside of Dex’s quarters.

She knocked once.

No answer.

Fifty-eight minutes left.

“Dex?”

She pushed the door open.

He was sitting in front of the fire with a glass of whiskey, shirtless, the amber liquid catching the light. It was nine in the morning. The bottle on the table beside him was missing a third of its contents, and for an Alpha’s metabolism, that was an achievement that required commitment.

He hadn’t slept. She could see it in the bruised hollows under his eyes, in the way his shoulders sat too low, in the stillness of a man who had stopped moving because he didn’t trust himself to start again.

His wounds from the fortress were half-healed. The gash along his ribs still held a faint black edge where dark magic had cauterized wrong. Bruises layered over bruises, old ones yellowing beneath fresh ones that hadn’t decided on a color yet.

“If you’re a dream, I’m going to be furious, Serena.” His voice was rough, the edges of her name softened by whiskey in a way that told her this wasn’t his first glass or his third.

He stood. The chair scraped back, and he moved towards her with the unsteady urgency of a man who had been sitting still for hours and forgot his body had limits.

She caught him. Her arms went around him and his weight hit her and she held it, all of it, every pound of exhaustion and grief and whiskey-soaked fury.

He buried his face in her neck and nuzzled, and she winced because the bruises from being marked were still there. But she didn’t care. The bruises could scream all they wanted. Dex was in her arms and he was alive and she was not letting go because her neck hurt.

A sob broke out of her that she’d been carrying since the moment she saw him bloody and chained in that fortress.

It wasn’t a quiet sob. It was the kind that came from the chest, the kind that had been sitting behind her ribs for hours, waiting for the one person it belonged to. She pressed her face into his shoulder and let it come, her body shaking against his, because she had channeled fire and ice and pink magic into him from across a continent and none of it had cost her as much as seeing him hurt.

She led him to the bed, pulling him down, planning on taking care of him. But he got on top of her, one arm bracing his weight, the other cradling the side of her face, and kissed her.

His mouth tasted like whiskey and salt and desperation. The kiss was messy, graceless, the kind of kiss that doesn’t care about technique because technique implies thinking and neither of them was doing that. He kissed her like he was trying to crawl inside the feeling of her being alive and stay there permanently.

“I love you, Dex,” she said against his mouth.

He stopped.

His forehead dropped to hers. He inhaled once, hard, and she felt him swallow.

“I love you so much, baby.”

Then he exhaled, long and shaking, and pulled a blanket up over both of them.

He didn’t try to take her clothes off or push for more. Instead, he wrapped himself around her like she was the last good thing in the world.

She didn’t have it in her to tell him she had to leave. The words existed somewhere in her mind, filed under ’things that are true and terrible,’ and she refused to open that drawer. Not right now.

He fell asleep in under three minutes. The time it takes to boil water.

For an Alpha who hadn’t slept in what she suspected was over thirty hours, who had been tortured, freed, flown on a dragon, arrived at a blood ritual, fought Fin, and then apparently decided whiskey was the answer, three minutes was generous. His body had been running on rage and adrenaline, and the moment she was in his arms, both decided they were off duty.

His breathing deepened. His grip didn’t loosen, even unconscious. His arm stayed locked around her waist, his face pressed into her hair, and she could feel through their matebond the exact moment his mind finally let go. The sharp edges of his pain blurred, smoothing into something that wasn’t peace but was close enough.

She lay there for ten minutes. Memorizing his breathing. The weight of him. The way his fingers twitched once against her hip in his sleep to make sure she was there. Even his subconscious had trust issues. Fair, given the circumstances.

Then she began the extraction.

Sliding out of Dexmon Drakenfell’s arms without waking him was the most delicate operation she had ever performed, and she’d escaped slavery, stormed two throne rooms, and channeled storm dragon energy underwater.

She moved in increments. An inch at a time. Holding her breath. Monitoring his breathing with the focus of a woman disarming a bomb that happened to be six-foot-four and emotionally volatile.

His arm shifted. She froze.

He mumbled something into the pillow that sounded like her name, then settled deeper into the mattress without opening his eyes.

He must have been exhausted. Under any other circumstance, he would’ve woken the second her warmth left his side. But his body had hit a wall, and even his wolf wasn’t fighting it.

She stood beside the bed, looking down at him.

He looked younger in his sleep. The tension gone from his jaw, the sharpness smoothed out of his features. He looked like the twenty-four-year-old he actually was, instead of the commander and prince and Dragon King Incarnate the world demanded.

She got him water first, setting it on the table beside the bed where the whiskey had been. Then she mindlinked, Mary, an omega she trusted.

Serena:Mary, are you in the kitchen?

Mary:

Yes, Princess. What can I get you?
Serena:Can you bring a tray to Prince Dexmon’s quarters? He hasn’t eaten.

Mary:Of course. I’ll have it there in ten minutes.

She mindlinked Alaric next.

Serena:Alaric. Do you have healing tonics that can be left for Dex? He has wounds that haven’t fully closed. Dark magic residue along the edges.

Alaric:You’re describing his injuries to me like I haven’t already assessed him. I left three vials on his desk last night. He clearly didn’t take them.

Of course he didn’t.

Serena:Can you send more?

Alaric:I’ll have them there within the hour. And Serena.

Serena:Yes?

Alaric:Drink water. Your voice still sounds like gravel through a mindlink, which I didn’t think was possible.

She almost smiled.

She found the vials on his desk, exactly where Alaric said they’d be, untouched and gathering dust with the indifference of objects that had been deliberately ignored. She moved them to the bedside table, next to the water, arranged so he’d see them the moment he opened his eyes.

She looked at him one more time.

Her ribs felt too small for her heart from the thought of him waking up to an empty bed. Because that was apparently the only way the universe knew how to write their story.

She leaned down. Pressed her lips to his forehead. A kiss that said goodbye and I’ll be back and I’m sorry all at once.

“I love you, Dex,” she whispered.

Tears fell before she could stop them. Two. Then three. One landed on his forehead and she wiped it away with her thumb, gentle, praying it didn’t wake him.

He stirred. Didn’t open his eyes. But his hand reached out, fingers closing around empty air where she had been.

She stepped back. Pressed her hand over her mouth, holding in the sob that wanted to follow, because if she made one more sound she was going to crawl back into that bed and let the wards be damned.

She didn’t.

She pulled her cloak tighter and left his quarters.

The cloak did nothing. Cloaks don’t fix the kind of cold that comes from walking away from the person who makes you warm. She pulled it tighter anyway because her hands needed something to do that wasn’t turning around.

Behind her, Dex’s eyes opened. He stared at the ceiling for three seconds. Then at the empty bed. Then at the water on the nightstand that hadn’t been there before, and the tonics she’d moved, and the indent on the pillow where her head had been. He stood up, pulled on a shirt, and walked to the door.

Dexmon:Serena, where are you?

Nothing.