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“Avenel came into my life completely by surprise,” he went on in an entirely different, softer tone of voice. He brushed the side of Avenel’s face with a smile, and Avenel smiled bashfully at him. “The first night I was here, staying in the palace on Sai’s invitation, Avenel was assigned to serve me. He brought me supper, helped me with a bath, and…and there was an attraction between us. He stayed with me that night.”
“So you took advantage of him right from the start,” Peter said, and edge to his voice.
“It wasn’t like that at all,” Sebald snapped back at him, his sweet mood vanishing. “The attraction was mutual. I asked Avenel if he wanted to stay, I didn’t demand it.”
“He did,” Avenel said, lowering his head shyly. “I wanted to stay.”
“I needed someone to go to Yakutsk with me, and I asked Sai if Avenel could serve me exclusively from that point on,” Sebald continued.
“Oh! Wait!” Lefric sat straighter. “You went to Yakutsk to find your old lover, Barthold, didn’t you? Whatever happened there? Did you find him?”
The interrogation-like mood was immediately broken. Once again, Sebald seemed utterly off-balance.
“I didn’t find him there, no,” Sebald said, suddenly more anxious than I had yet seen him. “Bee, Barthold, has been in Hedeon since the spring. He…he is married. To the woman I was supposed to marry, Premila. They have an infant son, and…and Premila believes she’s pregnant again. But there is trouble between the two of them.”
I sucked in a breath at that, realizing that could be a whole other topic of conversation. I wondered how Sebald had felt when he found out his past love had married his former betrothed. And, hell, how did that all work with Avenel in the picture?
Lefric seemed to have the same questions I had. “What are you going to—”
“We’ll discuss this later,” Peter cut him off. “After Sebald justifies thrusting another man into sexual slavery.”
“Will you stop it,” I hissed quietly, digging my fingertips into Peter’s hip. “You’re making an ass of yourself.”
“I’m trying to advocate for Avenel’s freedom,” Peter growled, glaring at me. “For the freedom of pups everywhere.”
“Avenel doesn’t want his freedom,” Jace argued, as though the exchange I had with Peter was part of the grander conversation. “One look at him and you can see that.”
“No one asked you, Jace,” Peter snapped.
“Avenel doesn’t want his freedom,” Sebald repeated in a quieter voice. “And I didn’t enslave him.”
“But you’ve said he’s your pup,” Peter protested, throwing his arm out toward Avenel. “He’s admitted it.”
Avenel was visibly upset by the conversation. He shrank in on himself and buried his face against Sebald’s neck. Sebald tightened his hold on Avenel and glared at Peter.
“Stop upsetting Avenel,” I told Peter.
“I’m trying to help him,” Peter argued.
“You’re not helping him at all,” I shot back. “You’re trying to force something on him that he doesn’t want, which is exactly what you’re accusing Sebald of doing. So shut up for a second and listen to Sebald explain what happened.”
Peter gaped at me, but I could tell there was something deeper, something that screamed hurt, underneath his ire.
Everyone else was staring at me too. For some reason, that made me suddenly self-conscious about being naked, which was a bizarre reaction, all things considered. Then it occurred to me that my friends didn’t usually see me asserting myself with Peter. We usually saved those sorts of interactions for when it was just the two of us, or just the two of us and Magnus.
Now they knew how forceful I could be with Peter when it was needed, so I decided to carry on that way.
“Tell us how it happened, Sebald,” I said, itching to shift Peter into my arms and hold him steady.
Sebald stared warily at Peter for a long while before continuing.
“I wrote to you and Magnus about how Jorgen Iceblade and Hati and their group were camped outside of Yakutsk,” he said. “Jorgen and Hati have two relatively new pups, Kliment and Nikandr. You saw them when you arrived, at the docks. They were a merchant’s son and a minor nobleman’s son respectively, and both of them lost most of their family in the Dying Winter. They willingly and gratefully became Jorgen and Hati’s pups—” Peter opened his mouth, but Sebald rushed on, “—and they struck up a friendship with Avenel after we were all served lunch. I’ve told you all this before. While I negotiated with Jorgen and Hati, Avenel spoke with them. Apparently, they talked about what it was like to be a pup and what it meant to them.”
Sebald glanced to Avenel again, stroking a hand over the side of Avenel’s face, where he was still mostly hiding against Sebald’s neck.
“When we got back to the palace, Avenel asked to be my pup,” he went on. “He begged me, really. And yes, I felt strange about it at first.” He glanced to Peter again. “I was reluctant, because I knew what you would say, Peter. I knew exactly what you would say. I thought of you, of all the Sons and what we had endured, right from the start.”
He glanced back to Avenel and smiled. “But there’s just something within me that responds to something in Avenel. It’s like we’re two halves of a whole. We balance each other with our natures. We’re still learning what this relationship means to us, but it’s beautiful, and it works for us.”
