Chapter 214: Understaffed

Arik looked at him.

The heat in his gaze made Liam’s thoughts scatter for one humiliating second.

Then Arik said, very quietly, "Wanting too much while you are still recovering."

The room went still.

Liam looked down first.

His anger softened at the edges, not gone, not forgiven, but struck by the awful tenderness of Arik burning himself down for fear of asking too much from him.

"You idiot," Liam whispered and handed him the syringe.

Arik took it, removed the seal with steady fingers that only trembled at the end, and pressed it against the inside of his arm. The ward on the syringe flared once, reading his pulse, ether density, hormonal surge, and whatever else Marin had decided to monitor with tyrannical thoroughness.

Before he pushed the dose in, Liam said, "What if you didn’t?"

Arik stopped.

His eyes lifted.

Liam’s face had gone very red, which he chose to blame on Arik’s body temperature and absolutely nothing else.

"What if," Liam said, then had to clear his throat because the first version of the sentence apparently intended to die in humiliation, "you did not take it?"

Arik’s pupils widened.

"Liam."

"You are in rut. I am your mate."

"You are recovering."

"I am aware. Several people have made that their full-time profession."

Arik’s jaw tightened, but his gaze dropped to Liam’s throat, to the point where the mark rested hidden beneath soft fabric, to the pulse beating too fast there.

"That is not an answer," Liam added, because if he stopped speaking, he might become aware of what he was saying and flee into the bathroom permanently.

Arik gave a low, helpless laugh.

Then he grinned.

It was not his usual dashing smile.

It was darker, fevered, edged with hunger, and so much restraint that Liam suddenly understood, with devastating clarity, why Agaron had survived generations of people making terrible decisions around the Lyon bloodline.

"You propose that," Arik said, voice rough, "while handing me a suppressant?"

"I am a complex person."

Arik’s grin deepened for one dangerous second, and then, without looking away from Liam, he pressed the syringe fully into his arm.

The medicine went in.

Liam stared.

Arik’s head fell back against the headboard, eyes closing, throat working as the dose hit his system. His hand clenched around the empty syringe hard enough that the ward stamp cracked and vanished in a flicker of blue.

"You took it," Liam said.

Arik opened his eyes again.

The heat had not vanished. It still moved through him, under his skin, in the depth of his breathing, in the way his gaze fastened on Liam like hunger given a name.

But control returned by degrees.

Brutal, practiced control.

"If you were healthy," Arik said, "I would have taken that offer before guilt, reason, politics, or prayer had time to form a committee."

Liam’s mouth went dry.

"Oh."

Arik’s smile turned faintly pained. "Yes. Oh."

"That is... honest."

"You asked for honesty."

"I may regret that as a general policy."

"You often do."

Liam looked at the black case, then at Arik’s flushed face, then at the hand Arik had deliberately kept away from him. "How bad is it?"

"The rut?"

"Yes."

"Days."

"I know days. My heat took days."

Arik’s expression changed with the brutal carefulness of a man who had held Liam through heat and refused every easy cruelty the world had once made available to him.

Liam remembered it too.

Fragments, mostly. Heat did not leave clean memories behind. It left flashes: Arik’s voice low and steady, Arik’s hands keeping him from hurting himself, Arik telling him to sleep, drink, breathe, and wait. Arik refusing to give orders when Liam would have obeyed anything. Anything. His mind had gone soft and desperate and almost absent in places, stripped down to instinct, touch, the need to be held and answered.

Arik could have used that.

He had not.

That memory sat between them now, sharp enough to hurt.

Liam looked away first. "Mine is not... constant. Bursts of sex, then sleep. Then more heat. Then more sleep. Then me apparently trying to negotiate with water because drinking it was an insult."

Arik’s mouth twitched. "You told the glass it lacked academic rigor."

"That sounds like slander."

"It is documented."

For half a second, the room almost felt normal.

Then Liam looked back at Arik’s flushed skin, the damp hair at his temple, the rigid line of control across his shoulders, and the almost painful focus in his eyes.

"But yours is not like that," Liam said.

Arik’s silence answered before his words did.

"No," he said. "Not like that."

"How is it?"

Arik’s gaze held his.

"Continuous."

Liam blinked.

"Continuous," he repeated, because the word needed to be inspected for structural damage.

"Yes, each day is more intense than the other."

Liam sat very still.

His mind, traitorous engineer that it was, began building a model.

It did not like the model.

"You said before," Liam said slowly, "that you had consorts in Agaron."

Arik went still.

Not guilty, exactly. Careful.

"Yes."

Liam waved one hand, irritated by the caution. "You told me. I knew you had a life before me. I am not twelve, Arik."

The prince studied him. "It does not bother you?"

"No."

Perhaps there had been a moment, very early, when the idea had sat unpleasantly at the edge of his mind, but it had never been the wound. Arik had not betrayed him by existing before him. Liam had far more serious complaints, many of which involved ancient emperors, Felix, partial truths, political abductions, and being denied proper access to Gate files.

"But," Liam continued, looking at him with growing horror, "now I am realizing those consorts were not a social detail. They were infrastructure."

Arik stared.

Then his mouth twitched.

"Do not laugh," Liam warned.

Arik’s shoulders shook once.

Liam pointed at him. "You had a system."

"I had arrangements."

"You had a staffing solution."

Arik closed his eyes.

The sound that escaped him was not quite a laugh.

Liam’s horror deepened. "Do not make that face. This is not romantic. This is a workload assessment."

Arik opened his eyes again, and despite the fever, despite the suppressant beginning to drag his rut back behind locked teeth, there was warmth there now.

"You are my mate," he said, painfully warm.

"Yes, and apparently also an entire department."

That broke him.

Arik laughed.

Rough, low, exhausted, and still fevered, but real enough that Liam felt it vibrate through the bed. He reached for Liam slowly, giving him every chance to refuse, but Liam did not. He allowed himself to be pulled back into Arik’s arms, muttering darkly as he settled against a chest still too hot to be medically polite.

"This is not funny," Liam said.

"It is a little funny."

"It is a future administrative crisis."

"I will reduce expectations."

"You are in rut, Arik. Your expectations are biological terrorism."

Arik laughed again, quieter this time, into Liam’s hair.

"I am still angry." Liam said, his fingers closing on Arik’s shirt.

"I know."

"And you are still taking the injections."

"I assumed."

"And when I am healthy, we are having an extremely serious discussion about rut logistics, mate expectations, medical limits, and the fact that I refuse to discover after marriage that I accidentally accepted the workload of several highly trained professionals."

Arik’s mouth brushed his temple, not quite a kiss until Liam failed to move away from him.

"Several?" he murmured.

Liam pinched his side.

Arik, disgracefully, laughed again.

"I hate you," Liam muttered.

"No, you don’t."

"I hate your endocrine system."

"That is fair."

"And your historical staffing model."

"That has been discontinued."

The black case sat open beside them, syringes resting in their fitted foam like Marin’s judgment made physical. The room remained too warm. Arik’s rut still burned beneath the suppressant, forced back for a few hours by medicine, discipline, and a man who had chosen restraint over relief because Liam was not fully healed.

Liam pressed his face against Arik’s shoulder and let himself remember one thing clearly from his own heat.

Arik’s voice, refusing to command him.

The memory loosened something inside him.

Not forgiveness yet, but trust, wounded and stubborn, breathing again.

"You should have told me sooner," Liam said quietly.

Arik’s hand settled at his back, broad and hot and careful. "Yes."

Liam exhaled.

"Four hours until the next dose?"

"Yes."

"I am keeping the case."

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