DRAKENFELL — QUEEN’S CHAMBERS

Frail was not a word that had ever been associated with Bellatrix Drakenfell. The wet rag on Bellatrix’s forehead was doing absolutely nothing for her head, but it was working overtime for the visual.

Dexmon entered the chambers, then froze.

Bellatrix opened her eyes slowly, groggily, blinking against the dim light.

“Dexmon? Is that you?” she called, as if she were emerging from a fog.

Who the fuck else would it be? She had sent for him. Specifically. Had she forgotten?

He shook his head once, coming out of the daze. “Yes, mother. It’s me.”

He closed the distance and took the chair next to her bedside.

She grabbed his hand.

Dex went still. His mother was holding his goddamn hand. Physical affection from Bellatrix was rare enough to be classified as a natural phenomenon. Like a solar eclipse. You knew it was possible, you’d heard reports of it happening, but experiencing it in person was disorienting as fuck and you weren’t entirely sure it was real while it was occurring.

He gave her hand a squeeze. Then pulled his hand back because the squeeze had used up his entire reserve of maternal physical contact and the reserve was small and the replenishing took years.

“Alaric said you fainted and are having chest pains,” Dexmon said. “But you sent him away.”

Sending away the Master Healer after a fainting episode was the behavior of a woman who was too proud to be examined. Dexmon knew his mother.

“Oh, yes, dear.” She sipped from a tea cup that was on her nightstand. “I am healthy as a horse and he has far more important patients to attend to. The man looked exhausted. I refuse to be the reason Alaric misses his afternoon whiskey.”

“You fainted in the grand hall.”

“I am aware of where I fainted, Dexmon. I was there.”

The door opened. Tiberon Drakenfell entered without knocking, because Tiberon Drakenfell had never knocked on a door in his life and was not going to start with his wife’s chambers regardless of the divorce papers on his desk.

He looked cross, like he had run out of shelf space for the bullshit. He had carried this woman to her bed an hour ago and was now back in her room for the second time, which was two more times than he had entered this room in the last calendar year. She kept that math to herself.

Alaric entered behind him. The Master Healer’s expression was the expression of a man who had been sent away by a patient and summoned back by a king and whose professional dignity was hanging by a thread that the patient kept cutting.

“Alaric will examine you,” Tiberon ordered. “Fully. Now. You will allow it.”

“I told him I was fine.”

“I am telling you he will examine you. The difference between your telling and mine is that mine is happening.”

Bellatrix sipped her tea and said nothing else.

Was that a white flag? Dex had never seen her surrender that fast. The fever might actually be fucking real.

Alaric moved to her bedside. His hands lit gold, hovering above her, then he scanned. Chest. Lungs. Heart. Blood pressure. Magical signature. Neurological function.

Dex and Tiberon did not leave. They stood there like two very large, very unimpressed security features, ensuring the queen could not send the healer away a second time.

Alaric withdrew a vial and drew blood from her arm.

He frowned.

The frown was real. The data did not match his expectations, and the mismatch was the kind that produced professional concern rather than professional dismissal.

“You are running a temperature, Your Grace,” he said. “Wolves running a fever is always a bad sign. Your body is fighting something my scan is unable to identify, and the inability is what concerns me.”

“Am I?” She set her tea down. “I feel perfectly fine. Really, Alaric. I just need rest. And perhaps something stronger than tea.” She looked at the three men standing around her bed. “A woman faints once and suddenly she has three men in her bedroom. If I had known that was all it took, I would have fainted years ago.”

Three men. Zero laughs. The room absorbed the joke and rejected it. Dex was lost. Tiberon was buffering. Alaric was calculating how unprofessional it would be to sedate a patient for comedy.

“Noted. Remind me to faint in front of women next time. They at least pretend to laugh,” she commented.

Silence.

Dexmon and Tiberon had identical frowns on their faces, both standing with their arms crossed. The resemblance had never been more apparent. Alaric continued working as if she had said nothing.

“I will run the blood work tonight,” Alaric said, packing the vial. “Full panel. I want to see what the fever is responding to. In the meantime, bed rest. Fluids. If the chest pains return, you send for me immediately, and you do not send me away when I arrive.”

“Of course, Alaric.”

“I mean it, Your Grace. Immediately.”

“I said of course.”

Alaric turned to exit. Tiberon followed without acknowledging his wife, the bed, or any of the traditional husband obligations that usually appear during illness. The void where those obligations should have been was doing excellent dramatic work.

Bellatrix watched Tiberon leave and something pained flickered behind her eyes. It was so fast that Dexmon wasn’t sure if he had imagined it.

The door closed behind them. Without the king and the healer as buffers, Dex was alone with the version of his mother that he had only seen a few times in his life and he didn’t know what to do with that.

“Dexmon.”

“Yeah.”

The ’yeah’ was the most casual word Dex had ever used with his mother and surprised both of them.

“Can you do something for me?”

Dex went still. Requests from Bellatrix were never just requests and usually cost more than advertised. The previous favor he’d done for his mother was pretending his engagement to Agnes Viremont was still real for political reasons. The encore had been his actual fated mate getting poisoned.

Every instinct Dex had, Alpha, prince, and son, fired simultaneously. The Alpha said: assess the threat. The prince said: evaluate the political cost. The son said: she’s your mother and she’s in bed with a rag on her face, just fucking hear her out.