Chapter 189: Back to mate.

Arik nodded once and entered.

His bedroom was dim, the heavy curtains drawn over the windows, and the ward-light softened to a muted blue glow. It was not a medical room, though Marin had done his best to turn the space around the bed into something close to one. Monitoring arrays glowed discreetly beside the nightstand, seals pulsed under Liam’s collarbone, and thin silver lines of diagnostic ether traced his breathing in quiet rhythm.

Liam slept at the center of the bed, pale and still beneath the dark blanket, swallowed slightly by Arik’s loose sleeping shirt. The sleeves had been pushed back from his wrists. The collar sat open enough not to disturb Marin’s monitoring seal. His breathing remained even, each rise and fall answered by a soft blue pulse from the ward on his chest.

Kamal stood by the window with a book in one hand, reading beneath the muted glow as if this were a quiet evening and not the aftermath of Felix dragging Liam through a half-century-old grave.

He raised his eyes to Arik.

For half a second, he seemed ready to greet him properly.

Your Highness.

The words were there. Arik saw them form behind Kamal’s eyes, polished by habit, rank, and the modern style of this life.

Then Kamal hesitated.

A low chuckle escaped him, rough at the edges, carrying far too much grief to be amusement.

"Well," Kamal said softly, closing the book with one finger still tucked between the pages, "good to see you back, my lord."

Arik stopped beside the bed.

The title entered the room too gently for how sharply it cut.

"Kamal..." he said warningly.

"I understand." Kamal’s eyes moved between the bed and Arik. "He didn’t wake, but I assumed you already knew. Ladies Enia and Mirelle are safe. Marin checked both of them. They want to see Liam too."

"Not yet."

"I assumed that as well."

Arik looked at him.

Kamal’s mouth curved faintly. "Lady Enia wanted to come immediately. Lady Mirelle convinced her to wait by threatening to tell Lord Liam she had interfered with medical orders."

Despite himself, Arik felt something in his chest loosen by a fraction.

"That would work."

"Apparently, Lord Liam has strong opinions about being managed."

"He has strong opinions about breathing."

"Good," Kamal said.

Arik ignored the ache it left behind and sat carefully on the edge of the bed. He had placed Liam here himself. He remembered the weight of him in his arms, the way his head had rested against Arik’s shoulder, and the sickly trace of Felix’s poison clinging to his old clothes.

Arik reached for him.

The bond warmed the instant their skin touched, and Arik’s lungs remembered how to work.

For several seconds, he did nothing else.

He only sat there, one hand wrapped around Liam’s, watching the faint blue pulse of Marin’s monitoring seal rise and fall with every breath. The ward array had no dramatic alarms, no red warning lines, and no frantic stutter of unstable channels. Marin had left nothing to chance before returning to his medical office to manage Enia, Mirelle, and whatever quiet fury he was currently storing for Arik’s later suffering.

Arik could almost hear him.

You carried him out before I finished thinking everything through.

You threatened three guards with your eyes.

You attacked a Shadow that only did his job, and I had to treat him.

And then, probably worse, in Marin’s calmest voice: Y ou are not too old for me to be disappointed in you.

Arik closed his eyes briefly.

Marin saw him too much like a son for comfort. Marin’s affection had always come dressed as medical authority and moral exhaustion. But it was there, constant and inconvenient, and once Liam was awake and stable, Arik knew Marin would make him regret every reckless decision from the last twelve hours.

Kamal watched him from the window, silent for once.

Arik opened his eyes. "What?"

"I said nothing."

"You are thinking loudly."

"I am old. My thoughts creak."

Arik looked at him flatly.

Kamal closed the book fully and set it on the low table beside the window. "You need to wash."

Arik’s fingers tightened around Liam’s hand.

Kamal’s expression did not change. "You smell like Felix’s suite, old blood, burned wards, and decisions that will upset Marin."

"That last one has a scent?"

"To those of us who have survived long enough, yes."

Inside Arik, Goliath gave the faintest stir of dry amusement.

Arik ignored him.

His thumb brushed once over Liam’s knuckles before he forced himself to release him. The bond cooled at once, not gone but less certain, as if Liam’s sleeping body noticed the absence and disliked it.

Arik stood.

"I will be in the bathroom."

"I know where your bathroom is."

"That was not information. It was a warning."

Kamal’s mouth curved faintly. "I will not steal him from your bed in the six minutes it takes you to remember basic hygiene."

"It will not be six minutes."

"No," Kamal said, eyes moving over him with old, merciless assessment. "It should be twenty. You look like something dragged out of a battlefield and then argued with a haunted portrait."

Arik paused.

"That was specific."

"I am gifted."

Arik gave him one last look, then turned toward the adjoining bathroom.

The doors closed behind him, and for the first time since Liam had been taken, Arik was alone with silence and running water.

The bathroom mirror caught him in fragments.

Black hair disordered from too many hands dragged through it. Golden eyes too bright. Skin pale with the strain of old memories layered over present rage. His clothes still carried the faint trace of Canmore Manor, smoke from burned transport residue, the cold mineral scent of stasis wards, and, beneath all of it, something older.

Goliath.

Arik stared at himself.

"I am still me," he said quietly.

The old presence did not answer at once.

Then, low and dry beneath his ribs. Yes.

Arik exhaled.

It should have felt like victory.

It did not.

It felt like terms signed after a war neither side could afford to loose.

He stripped and stepped beneath the shower.

Hot water struck his shoulders, then ran down his spine, carrying away sweat, old ward dust, splinters, and the last trace of Felix’s rooms. Arik braced one hand against the wall and let his head drop forward. For a few breaths, he allowed himself to feel the exhaustion beneath the rage.

By the time he stepped out, the mirror had fogged.

He dressed in clean sleeping clothes, black and simple, then stood for one more second with his hand on the door.

The bond waited on the other side.

Arik returned to the bedroom.

Kamal had not moved closer to the bed. He stood exactly where Arik had left him, because he understood possessive boundaries better than most men, and because he had survived Goliath, which meant he had learned when not to test a sovereign near a sleeping mate.

"Better," Kamal said.

"Still thinking loudly."

"Then I will leave before I become unbearable."

"You passed that threshold decades ago."

Kamal’s eyes softened, almost imperceptibly. "Yes, my lord."

Arik did not correct him this time.

Kamal inclined his head, took his book, and walked toward the door. Before leaving, he paused.

"Call if his breathing changes. Or yours."

Arik’s mouth tightened. "Mine?"

Kamal looked back. "You are not the only person in that body who remembers pain."

Kamal left, closing the door softly behind him.

Arik stood alone with Liam.

The room seemed to exhale.

He crossed to the bed and lifted the blanket carefully, moving slowly enough not to disturb the monitoring seal or the thin diagnostic lines. Liam did not wake when Arik slid in beside him. He only shifted slightly, a faint crease forming between his brows.

Arik froze.

The bond gave a weak, searching pull.

He lowered himself fully onto the mattress and gathered Liam carefully, drawing him close without pressing against the ward on his chest. Liam’s head settled near Arik’s shoulder. One of his hands curled loosely against Arik’s shirt as if, even unconscious, he had decided this was acceptable and would argue with anyone who questioned it later.

Arik closed his arm around him.

The bond warmed.

Goliath went silent at his back.

Arik closed his eyes, breathing in the clean scent of Liam beneath medicine, exhaustion, and Arik’s own clothes.

"I am here," he whispered again.

This time, Liam’s fingers tightened.

Arik held him through the quiet, through the soft pulse of the monitoring ward, through the distant movement of guards beyond the bedroom doors, and through the old mind standing watch behind his own.

For the first time that night, he stopped fighting sleep.

It came slowly.

Then all at once.

And when it took him, Liam was still in his arms.

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