Chapter 177: His Rooms

Arik carried Liam out of Marin’s office without using ether.

The corridor had already been cleared.

No one spoke as he passed.

The guards along the diplomatic palace walls lowered their eyes, not because they had been ordered to, but because there was something in the way Arik held Liam that made looking directly at them feel like trespassing. Liam’s head rested against Arik’s shoulder, his face pale and still, the monitoring seal beneath his collarbone pulsing faintly beneath the open edge of his shirt.

The second injection had taken him under completely.

His body was still fighting. Arik could feel it through the bond: the slow contraction of inflamed channels, the aching pull around the places Felix’s poison had tried to knot itself, the exhausted rhythm of a body that had been forced to endure too much and was now obeying medicine because consciousness had finally lost the argument.

Liam did not stir.

The doors to his bedroom opened before he reached them.

Arik stepped inside and stopped.

For the first time since Liam had been carried out of Marin’s office, something other than immediate medical concern moved through him.

Liam had never been here.

Arik realized it with a strange, quiet violence.

Since coming to Wrohan, he had spent most of their time in Liam’s suite instead. The guest suite prepared for him. Neutral ground. Liam’s borrowed space. A place where Arik could enter without making Liam feel swallowed by his authority, his title, his guards, his empire, his past.

He had done it deliberately.

He had told himself it was restraint.

Respect.

Patience.

Yet now, standing in the center of his own bedroom with Liam asleep in his arms, Arik looked at the bed, the dark sheets, the heavy curtains, the low amber lights, and understood with a force that struck somewhere beneath his ribs that Liam should have been here long before this.

Arik crossed the room and lowered him onto the bed with careful hands.

One arm stayed beneath Liam’s shoulders until his head settled properly against the pillow. The other adjusted the blanket beneath him so nothing pulled at the monitoring seals. Liam’s breathing remained slow and shallow from exhaustion but clear, exactly as Marin had said.

Arik repeated the words silently because they were the only things keeping the rest of him from turning back toward Canmore Manor and tearing the eastern wing out of the world by its foundations.

He released Liam only when he was certain the mattress supported him fully.

Even then, he did not move far.

Liam’s clothes still carried the faintest trace of Felix’s poison, despite the antidote, despite the pheromone shield, and despite the medical seals Marin had placed over the vulnerable channels. The residue was not dangerous now, not in the way it had been in that room beneath Goliath’s portrait, but Arik could smell it.

His jaw tightened.

He removed Liam’s shoes first, slowly, setting them aside at the foot of the bed. Then his jacket. Then the shirt, opening each button with hands that had broken Felix’s wrist without effort and now moved as if a mistake in pressure might bruise Liam’s skin.

The blood beneath Liam’s nose had been cleaned, but faint red marks remained at his collar and along the edge of the fabric where his breathing had hitched during the antidote. Arik folded the contaminated clothes into a sealed ward-cloth bag and placed it on the chair beside the bed for Marin to inspect later.

Only then did he open his wardrobe.

His sleeping clothes were too large for Liam.

He gave out a long breath and chose the softest set he owned.

A dark shirt, loose enough not to press against the monitoring seal beneath Liam’s collarbone. Comfortable trousers with a drawstring that could be adjusted. Clean, warm, carrying Arik’s scent because everything in these rooms did.

He dressed Liam carefully.

He supported his neck when he lifted him. Slid one sleeve over his arm. Then the other. Paused when Liam’s breathing changed, waiting until it settled again before continuing. He kept the collar loose, the sleeves pushed slightly back, the waistband light.

Liam did not wake.

His brow drew together once, faintly, as the shirt brushed the irritated skin near his throat.

Arik stopped immediately.

Through the bond, pain flared weakly.

Not sharp enough to wake him.

Enough to make Arik’s vision bleach gold at the edges.

He forced himself still.

Then lowered his pheromones around Liam in a steadier layer, warm and familiar, until the small crease between Liam’s brows eased.

Only then did Arik continue.

When Liam was dressed, Arik drew the blanket over him.

The monitor beside the bed glowed softly. Marin’s seals pulsed in a slow rhythm, mapping breath, pulse, channel activity, and bond strain. All stable.

For now.

Arik lowered himself over Liam.

He braced one hand beside the pillow, careful not to disturb the seals, and bent until his lips touched Liam’s forehead.

A kiss.

Soft.

Almost a prayer, if Arik had believed in gods that deserved one.

He stayed there.

His eyes closed.

The bond opened beneath his focus, narrow and careful, not enough to wake Liam, only enough to feel.

Pain remained.

Muted by the stabilizer. Buried under sleep. Present all the same.

Liam’s channels were bruised gold and slow heat, his lungs clear but strained, his body heavy with the second injection and the effort of repairing what Felix’s poison had tried to ruin. Beneath it all was exhaustion so complete Arik could feel the shape of it like a tide. It pulled Liam deeper with each breath, away from words, away from anger, away from the portrait and the revelation and the room where Felix had smiled beneath the face of a dead emperor.

Arik stayed with him through it.

One breath.

Then another.

Then another.

Only when Liam’s rhythm remained even did Arik lift his head.

Arik stood beside the bed and looked down at Liam one last time.

The sight struck him again.

Arik reached out and touched two fingers lightly to the side of Liam’s sleeping face.

"I am here," he said, too quietly for anyone awake to hear.

Then he straightened.

The bedroom wards shifted before he spoke, responding to the change in him.

"No one enters without Marin," Arik ordered.

The wards brightened once in acceptance.

Arik turned and walked out of the bedroom, pulling the heavy double doors shut behind him with a soft, final click.

The quiet on the other side felt wrong.

Liam was behind those doors, asleep because medicine had dragged him under and his body was still fighting Felix’s poison. Arik could feel him through the bond, faint but steady, his breathing clear, his channels inflamed but stable.

Alive.

That was the only reason the diplomatic palace was still standing.

Stanford and Mezos were waiting in the adjoining sitting room.

Stanford stood rigidly near the center of the room, his posture locked into the unforgiving lines of a soldier waiting for judgment. His face was pale, though not from fear. Stanford had coordinated the security. He had been on the ground. He had watched Felix arrive. He had watched Liam step into the car.

And Felix had still taken him.

Arik did not ask for a report.

He moved.

The transition from stillness to violence was instantaneous.

One moment, Arik stood by the bedroom doors.

The next, his hand was around Stanford’s throat.

The impact drove Stanford backward into the reinforced wall hard enough for the warded paneling to crack beneath his shoulders. A sharp, splintering sound cut through the sitting room, followed by the groan of protective arrays struggling to absorb the force.

Stanford’s boots left the floor.

His hands came up instinctively to grip Arik’s wrist.

He did not fight.

He simply hung there, jaw tight, eyes open, accepting the punishment as if it had been written into the outcome from the beginning.

Frost crawled from Arik’s fingers across Stanford’s collar, over the dark fabric of his uniform, up the side of his throat.

"You let him get in the car," Arik said, voice low and quiet.

Stanford’s lips parted. No excuse came out. Barely any air did.

"Your Highness—"

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