Chapter 383 Sit, Avalon. Sit. Good Boy. No. No Don’t—

DRAKENFELL — BETA QUARTERS

Hale Ironholt was teaching his dragon to sit.

Avalon was the size of a large dog and had approximately one percent of a dog’s interest in following instructions. The baby dragon was perched on the arm of a chair that was visibly failing under his weight, his obsidian scales catching the firelight, his tail wrapped around the chair leg in a configuration that suggested he was comfortable and intended to remain comfortable regardless of whatever the enormous man in front of him was doing with his hands.

“Sit,” Hale said.

Avalon tilted his head. The tilt was inquisitive, alert, carrying the particular expression of an intelligent creature that understood the word perfectly and was choosing to evaluate its merit before responding.

“Sit, Avalon. Sit.”

Avalon remained standing on the chair arm. His wings shifted once, a micro-adjustment that could have been compliance-adjacent or could have been a stretch. The ambiguity was deliberate. Hale was certain of it.

“Good boy.”

Avalon preened.

“That wasn’t a good boy. You didn’t sit. I said good boy preemptively to encourage the behavior, and you accepted the praise without delivering the result. That is fraud, Avalon.”

Avalon chirped. The chirp was bright, musical, and carried the particular energy of a creature that had found a loophole in the reward system and intended to exploit it.

Hale produced a strip of dried meat from his pocket. Held it up. “Sit.”

Avalon sat. Immediately. As if he had understood the command the entire time and had been waiting for the negotiation to include compensation.

“There it is.” Hale gave him the meat. “You are manipulating me, and I respect it, but I need you to know that I see it happening.”

Avalon ate the meat and chirped for another piece. The dragon knew which one of them was going to win this dynamic long-term.

The chamber door opened.

Elara walked in. Her stride was automatic, her body navigating the familiar room without conscious direction, her eyes fixed on a middle distance that suggested her mind was three rooms away processing something her body had left behind.

She didn’t see Hale. She didn’t see Avalon. She walked past both of them toward the dressing room, distracted.

“El.”

She jumped. The jump was full-body, startled, the kind of flinch that happened when a person forgot they shared a room with a man the size of a wardrobe and a dragon the size of a retriever.

“Gods, Hale.” Her hand went to her chest. “When did you get here?”

“I live here. I have lived here for several years. Avalon and I have been in this room for an hour. He learned to sit. It took bribery, but we got there.”

Avalon chirped in confirmation.

Elara looked at the dragon. Looked at Hale. Looked at the strip of meat in his hand.

“What’s wrong?” Hale asked.

The question was simple. Hale Ironholt asked simple questions because simple questions were harder to dodge than complex ones.

“Nothing,” Elara replied immediately.

Hale looked at her. The look lasted three seconds. In those three seconds, the Beta of Drakenfell, whose primary reputation was physical and whose secondary reputation was humorous and whose actual capability was the sharpest observational instinct in the keep, read his mate’s face the way he read every situation: completely, literally, and with zero tolerance for the gap between what was said and what was meant.

He let it go. Because Elara would tell him when she was ready, and pressuring her before she was ready had a success rate of zero.

“Okay,” he said. “Avalon learned a trick. Would you like to see it?”

The tension in Elara’s shoulders released by one degree. “Show me.”

Hale turned to Avalon. “Sit.”

Avalon looked at Hale. Looked at his empty hand. Looked back at Hale.

Did absolutely nothing.

“He requires payment,” Hale explained. “We are in a transactional relationship.”

Elara’s mouth twitched. The twitch was the first genuine expression her face had produced since she walked through the door, and Hale considered it as a win.

✦✦✦

DRAKENFELL — BELLATRIX’S PARLOR

“A DIVORCE.”

The word hit the parlor walls that had been absorbing Bellatrix Drakenfell’s fury for thirty years.

Her omega attendant, a young woman named Petra whose primary qualification for the position was the ability to maintain a neutral expression during sustained emotional bombardment, stood beside the vanity holding a tray of untouched tea and wearing the face of a woman who was being paid to listen and was earning every coin.

“He wants a divorce.” Bellatrix paced. The pacing was architectural, covering the room in a pattern that maximized the dramatic value of each turn. “Still. After everything. After thirty years of holding this court together with my bare hands. After raising his heir, a child he produced with another woman and handed to me like a parcel, and I took that parcel and I loved that parcel and I turned that parcel into the Crown Prince of Drakenfell, and this is my reward.”

She turned. Looked up at Petra. “If you repeat that, I will ruin you so thoroughly your grandchildren will feel it. I obviously gave birth to Dexmon. I was there. I remember it vividly. The pain. The screaming. The physician told me I was very brave.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

“A divorce, Petra. He looked me in the eye and said ’watch me.’ Watch me. As if I am a spectator. As if I have been sitting in a chair for three decades watching him rule and contributing nothing.”

“Your Majesty—”

“I negotiated the Thornfell trade agreement alone, while he was on campaign.”

“Your Majesty, the tea is—”

“I do not want tea, Petra. I want wine. I also want Tiberon to say thank you. Is that so hard to ask?”

Petra said nothing as she poured wine. Petra had learned, in her first week of employment, that the questions Bellatrix asked were rhetorical, and the answers Bellatrix wanted were the ones she was already providing to herself, and the safest contribution an attendant could make was to hold the tea and nod at the right moments.

“And the affair.” Bellatrix stopped pacing. “He brings up the affair. As if he is the wronged party. As if a woman who has been emotionally starved for thirty years seeking warmth from the only person in this castle who looked at her with something resembling interest is comparable to a man who fathered a child with his fated mate and asked his wife to raise it.”

Petra extended the glass. Bellatrix took it the way a drowning woman takes a rope, drained it in a single swallow that would have horrified the vineyard that produced it.

“He wants a war? Fine. He’ll get one. I have been fighting one for thirty years. The difference is that I have been fighting it silently, with a smile, from a chair he thinks is decorative. If he wants it loud, I will give him loud. And when the dust settles, the chair will still be there, and I will still be in it, and the crown will still be on my head, because Bellatrix Drakenfell does not lose.”