DRAKENFELL — GAMMA QUARTERS

Elara walked into Gavriel’s chambers first, giving herself a half-second head start. She was running a one-woman goddamn intelligence operation in a Gamma’s quarters, and her only assets were a bandage, a blanket, and the ability to lie.

Bandage. In place. White gauze. Clean. Covering the golden mark that Serena had left on Gavriel’s shoulder during the blood healing, a mark that Elara had discovered, buried, and was guarding.

The room was dim. Fire low. Gav was in his bed, breathing steadily, color returned, the dark veins gone. Dex’s whiskey glasses from several nights ago were still on the nightstand because nobody had cleaned them and nobody was going to clean them because the glasses had become furniture at this point.

Clear. Room was clear. No glowing. No surprises. The bandage was secure.

Serena entered behind her.

Dex entered behind Serena.

Elara positioned herself between the bed and both of them. She had been running interference in this room for days at a professional level.

“He looks better,” Serena said, moving toward the bed.

She reached for Gav’s hand.

Elara’s entire cardiovascular system seized.

“WAIT.”

Serena froze. Her hand was six inches from Gavriel’s. Six inches from skin-to-skin contact that would produce sparks, or a glow, or a matebond sensation, or some combination of all three that would blow the lid off a secret Elara had been maintaining through sheer willpower and creative lying.

Serena looked at her. “What?”

Elara’s brain produced seventeen possible explanations in one second and rejected sixteen of them. The seventeenth was terrible, but the seventeenth was all she had.

“Alaric said minimal contact. He is in a healing coma. Physical contact can disrupt the integration.”

This was a lie. Alaric had said no such thing. Alaric had said the coma would lift when it lifted and contact was irrelevant. But Alaric was in his study, and Alaric’s study was down the hall, and Alaric was never going to hear this lie unless Serena asked him directly, and Serena asking Alaric directly was a scenario Elara was going to prevent with her life.

Serena pulled her hand back. “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

Of course she didn’t know that. Nobody knew that. It wasn’t real. Elara kept that bit to herself.

“New protocol,” Elara explained. “Alaric updated it this morning.”

Dex was already past both of them.

Elara’s head snapped towards him. Son of a bitch. She had been focused on Serena’s hand and Dex had crossed the room on his own.

He was standing beside the bed. Looking down at Gav’s face. His expression was carrying the specific weight of a man who had come to this room the other night with whiskey and a speech he had delivered to an unconscious body, and the weight of that night was still present.

His hand found Gav’s arm.

Gold light erupted from the contact point.

The glow was immediate, bright, blooming outward from where Dex’s fingers met Gav’s skin in a warm, pulsing luminance that lit the dim chamber like a sunrise had been compressed into a six-inch radius. Dex’s hand glowed. Gav’s arm glowed. The gold was the exact same gold that had appeared when Dex had touched Gav the other night, the same phenomenon Hyran had observed from the doorway, the same light whose source and meaning Elara knew and Dex did not.

Behind Dex, three feet away, facing the window, Serena’s skin began to shimmer.

A faint golden light traced beneath the surface of her arms, her neck, the exposed skin above her training suit collar. The shimmer was soft, reflexive. She was glowing behind Dex’s back.

Elara was looking at Serena the way a bomb technician looks at a timer.

Three seconds on the clock. Serena’s shimmer was building. Dex’s glow was holding. Gav’s arm was lit up like a lantern, and the bandage on his shoulder was six inches from the light and the bandage was the only thing between this room and total annihilation.

Could that shimmer be a coincidence? Because Serena was mated to Dex. Nothing to do with Gav.

Elara weighed it.

No. Fuck no. Serena would want to touch Gav to see if it happened for her too.

Her options were: do nothing and watch the secret detonate in real time, or commit an act of physical aggression against the Crown Prince of Drakenfell.

Elara moved.

She grabbed a thick blanket from the ottoman at the foot of the bed, shoved Dex sideways with her hip, and threw the blanket over Gavriel’s entire body. Full-coverage. Smother-fire urgency.

The blanket landed. Heavy. Total. Covering Gav from chin to feet, including the arm Dex had been touching, including the shoulder with the bandage, including every square inch of exposed skin that could glow, shimmer, or produce evidence.

The gold light vanished. Dex’s hand was holding blanket instead of skin. Serena’s shimmer faded behind them, the sympathetic glow dying with the contact it was responding to.

Dex staggered sideways from the hip check. He looked at Elara with the expression of a man who had been assaulted by a Beta Luna with a blanket.

“What the hell, Elara?”

“He was cold.” Elara was already tucking the blanket around Gav’s body. “Feel how cold this room is. The fire is low. He is in a coma, Dex. His body temperature regulation is compromised. Alaric’s orders.”

“I was touching his arm.”

“You were touching a comatose man’s exposed arm in a cold room without a blanket. His body is healing. Temperature matters.”

She tucked the left side. Tucked the right. Pulled the blanket so tight around Gav’s shoulders that the man looked vacuum-sealed. The bandage was buried under three layers of wool and invisible to anyone who was not willing to excavate.

Dex looked at the blanket. Looked at Elara. Looked at the fire, which was low but was producing adequate heat and whose adequacy was contradicting Elara’s assessment. He opened his mouth.

“I didn’t realize that. We should make sure it’s warm in here moving forward,” Serena said from the window, because Serena trusted Elara implicitly and Elara’s word was scripture and the scripture said blanket.

Dex closed his mouth.

Thank fuck for Serena’s trust. Thank fuck for blind, unconditional, scripture-level trust that accepted fabricated medical protocols without a single follow-up question.

Elara let out a long breath. She had just prevented a catastrophe with a wool blanket and a hip check and was operating at a heart rate that would have concerned a cardiologist.

Gav was wrapped so tight he looked like a burial preparation with a pulse. If he woke up right now, he wouldn’t be able to move his arms, and Elara was fine with that.

Close call number one. Survived.