Chapter 415 The Case Of The Suspicious Beta Luna

DRAKENFELL — BETA QUARTERS

Hale Ironholt was a simple man.

He loved his mate. He loved his dragon. He loved his job. He loved breakfast. The hierarchy was firm, the hierarchy was functional, and the hierarchy had never once required revision because the four pillars of Hale Ironholt’s existence were stable and cooperative and had coexisted peacefully for the duration of his adult life.

Until two days ago, when one of the pillars started acting weird.

It was Elara. The mate pillar. The pillar that was supposed to be the most stable of the four, given that it was built on a fated matebond and reinforced by the kind of love that made other couples look like acquaintances.

She was hiding something.

Hale knew this with the same certainty he knew his own name, because Hale Ironholt’s observational skills were the most underrated asset in Drakenfell’s military infrastructure, and the observational skills were currently aimed at his mate with the focused precision of a man who had noticed a pattern and was following the pattern to its source.

The evidence was as follows.

Exhibit A: The Visits.

Elara had visited Gavriel Sterling’s chambers four times in the last two days. Four visits. Each one between fifteen and twenty-five minutes. Each one while Gav was unconscious, which meant the visits were unreciprocated, which meant Elara was going to a comatose man’s room and spending meaningful amounts of time there for a reason she had chosen to keep from her mate.

Hale had clocked the first visit as concern. Elara and Gav were friends. Friends visited friends in comas. That was normal behavior performed by normal people with normal emotional attachments.

The second visit received the same classification. Still concern. Still normal.

The third visit was where the classification started to wobble, because the third visit lasted twenty-five minutes and Elara came back from it with a flush on her neck and an energy that Hale’s matebond registered as guilt, and guilt after visiting a comatose man’s bedroom was a data point that did not fit the concern model.

The fourth visit was this morning. She had gone before dawn. She had returned before Hale’s alarm, which meant she was timing the visits to avoid detection, and timing visits to avoid detection was surveillance evasion, and surveillance evasion was the behavior of a person with a secret, and Hale was now fully in the weeds.

Exhibit B: The Flinching.

Gavriel’s name had come up in conversation three times since the coma began. Each time, Elara flinched. The flinch was micro, invisible to anyone who did not share a matebond with Elara Vaelor, but Hale shared a matebond with Elara Vaelor, and the matebond registered the flinch as a spike of anxiety that was sharp, brief, and identical all three times.

People flinched at names for two reasons. Guilt or feelings.

Hale’s jaw tightened.

Exhibit C: The Bandage.

On her third visit, Elara had returned with a gauze wrapper in her pocket. Hale had seen it when she emptied her pockets before bed, and Elara had crumpled it quickly and thrown it away with the speed of a woman disposing of evidence, and the disposal was fast enough to be suspicious and slow enough that Hale saw the gauze before it hit the waste bin.

She was changing Gav’s bandage.

The bandage on Gav’s shoulder. The bandage that the healers were supposed to be changing. The bandage that Elara had apparently decided required her personal attention at five in the morning while her mate was asleep and the healers were available and the bandage was technically the medical staff’s responsibility.

Hale sat in the chair by the fire. Avalon was on the arm of the chair, chewing a strip of dried meat with the languid contentment of a dragon who was unaware that his human’s world was quietly imploding.

The evidence pointed in a direction Hale did not want to look.

Elara and Gavriel had history. The history was friendship, deep and genuine, forged in shared adversity and reinforced by mutual loyalty to Serena. They had survived Orosia together. They had fought together. They had a closeness that Hale had always respected because the closeness was platonic and the platonic nature of it was obvious.

Until it was less obvious.

Hale ran the math again.

Visits to his room while he was unconscious. Guilt spikes on the matebond. Flinching at his name. Personally changing his bandage. Timing the visits to avoid Hale.

Hale Ironholt arrived at a conclusion.

The conclusion was wrong. The conclusion was spectacularly, catastrophically, monumentally wrong in a way that would eventually become clear and would eventually be very funny to everyone involved except Hale, who would never find it funny because the twenty-four hours he spent sitting with the wrong conclusion were going to be the worst twenty-four hours of his life.

But the conclusion felt airtight, and airtight conclusions were the most dangerous kind, because they convinced you to stop looking.

Elara had feelings for Gavriel Sterling.

Hale’s chest compressed. The compression was physical, real, carrying the specific weight of a man whose mate was in love with his best friend and whose best friend was in a coma and whose matebond was confirming every spike of guilt that accompanied every visit and the spikes were guilt because Elara knew the feelings were wrong and was carrying them anyway.

It made sense. Horrible, devastating, architectural sense. Gavriel was charming. Gavriel was funny. Gavriel was the kind of man who said things that made women laugh and made men reconsider their own personalities. Gavriel had been there for Elara during crises that Hale had been absent for, imprisoned for, deployed for. While Hale was chained to a wall in Orosia, Gavriel was beside Elara, protecting her, supporting her, being present in the specific way that Hale was incapable of being present because Hale was in a dungeon.

Of course she had feelings.

“Avalon.”

The dragon looked up from his meat.

“Am I overthinking this?”

Avalon tilted his head. The tilt was sympathetic, carrying the specific expression of a creature that understood the question was rhetorical and was choosing to provide emotional support rather than intellectual engagement.

“You’re right,” Hale said to a dragon who had communicated nothing. “I am overthinking this. She loves me. I know she loves me. I can feel it through the matebond. The love is constant. The love has never wavered.”

The love had never wavered. This was true.

Hale’s hand found Avalon’s head. He stroked the scales absentmindedly, and the stroking was more for Hale than for Avalon, and Avalon knew this and permitted it because the dragon understood that his human was suffering and suffering required tactile comfort.

The door opened. Elara walked in.

Her stride was the stride from two days ago: automatic, distracted, eyes on a middle distance that suggested her mind was in a different room. She walked past Hale. Past Avalon.

“El.”

She startled. “Gods, Hale. You scared me.”