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“And it’s not… romantic,” she said carefully, trying not to let her time in the human world cloud her judgment. Political alliances like the one he was describing weren’t unheard of in the more traditional families she’d encountered, though these days, most couples she met were soulmates, not political allies. Especially shifter couples. Feeling a little awkward with the language, she pressed on. “I mean, I care deeply for you, Conrad. You’re a close friend and confidant.”
He smiled, his expression remote as always. “That’s all it needs to be.”
“Then—why not?” She shrugged, forcing down the thought that had been seething furiously in her mind since the moment she’d spat wine all over Conrad’s desk. “Let’s do it. Let’s get married.”
As tired as she’d been when she’d fallen into bed after that marathon conversation, sleep had still taken a long time to find her. She just couldn’t get Seth out of her mind.
And to her dismay, that particular problem only got worse as the planning got underway. She’d woken late on the first day of her engagement, certain of exactly one thing—if they were going to throw a royal wedding, the wolves were going to be present. She didn’t care if it turned every single subject of the kingdom against her for life… she wasn’t taking no for an answer. And when she put this to Conrad, he was more than willing to accommodate her. Something told her that he’d been expecting this to be a condition of the wedding going ahead.
It was the right thing to do, she knew that. Still, anxiety gnawed at her more and more as the days went past and she tried to figure out how she was going to go about getting an invitation to them. Her instinct was to go herself, in person—to march right up to Seth’s door to apologize for what had happened last time, and then… well, the treacherous voice in the back of her mind had a few ideas about what would ideally happen next, but she set those ideas firmly aside. Seth had made it clear, when he’d left the palace without so much as a note, that whatever it was that had been between them was over. She was almost certainly thinking about it more than he was, right?
She couldn’t go in person, though. That felt wrong. So after extensive consultation with Conrad, and a few of his advisors—all of whom managed to be even more stuffy and hostile about the wolves than she’d ever dreamed possible—she settled on a method. A long letter of apology, and a formal invitation for a delegation of wolves to attend the royal wedding. The letter would make it clear that the invitation was an expression of peace and goodwill… and, she insisted, an offer of more transparent communication and cooperation between their people.
The letter, in the end, took twice as long as the rest of the wedding planning put together. It was a welcome distraction from the gnawing in her belly, the grim suspicion that marrying Conrad was a terrible mistake—whenever those thoughts became too loud to ignore, she’d pick up the most recent draft of the letter to the wolves and lose herself in revisions. By the time they’d finished with the thing, a month had passed… and the wedding plans were all but complete. Lana was exhausted but content. It felt like she’d consulted with just about every dragon in the cavern about the letter, and maybe even moved the needle there, just fractionally, towards a warming of relations with them.
Having them at the wedding, of course, was going to be a different question entirely. With the letter sent, she immediately began fretting about what might go wrong during their visit.
“They may not even come,” Conrad pointed out gently. They were two weeks out from the wedding—he’d advised against a long engagement—and there had been more than a few late nights in his offices. Lana felt a little uncomfortable around the Prince these days, something she was trying to ignore. He was her closest friend here, and she valued his advice and insight highly. But she was having trouble accepting the idea of him being her husband… and even more frustrating, every time she tried to think the matter through, she got tangled up in thoughts of Seth, of the time they’d spent together… “Lana?”
“Sorry.” She exhaled, rubbing her forehead. “Long day.”
“Long month.” He hesitated. She’d gotten good at guessing when he had something he wanted to say. “You’re worried about the wolves.”
“Aren’t you? This could be war.”
“Your worries go deeper than that.”
She sat up straight, searching his cool expression suspiciously. Did he know something? She hadn’t told a soul about the true extent of her relationship with Seth… but then again, the palace was full of ears and eyes. It wasn’t unthinkable that someone might have seen something. “What are you saying?”
Conrad looked at her for a long moment… then dropped her gaze, an odd sadness in his expression, just for a moment. “I am at your service,” he said finally. “I hope as a friend as well as an advisor. You bear a heavy burden, for more reasons than one. If you ever need to divest some of that burden, even just by talking it through…” A half-smile. “I’m a dragon, after all. We’re very good at keeping secrets.”
For a moment, she considered it. Spilling her guts—telling him everything about the last few months, about meeting Seth, about the way it had felt when he’d held her in his arms… about how she couldn’t stop thinking about him, even now, about how the thought of seeing him again at the wedding was simultaneously the best and worst thought imaginable… but there was something about the lingering sadness in Conrad’s eyes that stopped her. She knew, on some level, that he wanted this to be more than it was. They weren’t soulmates… but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t some imbalance, here, in how they felt about each other. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Conrad… she just didn’t want to hurt him.
And so she went to bed, her secret still burning a hole through her chest.
Word reached them the next day from the Plateau. The wolves had sent a delegate to inform them that they would accept the invitation to the royal wedding, as well as the diplomatic meetings laid out in the letter. Lana held her breath as the messenger relayed the wolves’ response, desperately wanting him to skip ahead to who would be attending… and finally, her heart leaped into her mouth when it was confirmed. The Alpha would be in attendance personally, with a contingent of his closest advisors.
“This shows great trust from the wolves,” she forced herself to say, her voice echoing imperiously through the throne room. “We will see to it that their gesture of goodwill is returned tenfold.”
It was all she could do to keep her focus for the rest of the meeting. All she wanted to do was throw herself onto her bed and scream into her pillow. Seth was coming—he was coming back here to the Palace, he was going to be here again, right in front of her, in the flesh… finally, she could make him understand how sorry she was for what had happened, explain that she’d just assumed he’d be at her coronation, that she hadn’t meant to insult him, to leave him out…
Great, she thought faintly, her excitement cooling almost immediately. She could say all of that… and then she could marry another man right in front of him. What an exciting reunion this was going to be. Good going, Lana.
Still… it was better than not seeing him at all. And despite the mixed feelings that were bubbling in her, Lana found herself genuinely looking forward to the wedding. It was hard not to get caught up in the excitement of her subjects as the day approached—Conrad really hadn’t been kidding when he told her this would be a popular decision. When she went out among her people, she was getting real, genuine smiles from subjects who’d previously only nodded to her. And Conrad’s quiet support for the warming of relations with the wolves had gone a long way to shifting popular opinion there, too. The dragons were still a little anxious about the prospect of having wolves at the wedding, but she could sense a tiny bit of curiosity building among them, too. It would certainly be a talking point, that was for sure. And while the public perception of visiting dignitaries as a novelty wasn’t exactly ideal, Lana would take it over outright hostility any day.
The wolves arrived the day before the wedding. Lana pretended she hadn’t been counting down the minutes when she heard that they’d been spotted on the Plateau. She’d seen to their accommodations herself, selecting a cluster of particularly well-appointed rooms in the Palace, close to the building’s facade, with windows offering views of the cavern. One of the rooms had once been hers, but she’d had her things moved from it a few days after the coronation. There had been too many memories associated with that room, and with that bed…
No, her new quarters were deep in the palace. Rather close, actually, to the old passageway that Seth and his wolves must have used to make their quick exit. When she rose in the morning, she’d linger in the passageway for a few moments, imagining she could hear the distant sounds of the forest from just around the bend. Somehow, it made her feel a little better about how far away she was from Seth…
And then, of course, once he was actually there, she was too much of a coward to go and see him. Conrad stopped by her quarters to let her know the wolves had arrived, and she feigned ignorance, too embarrassed to tell him that she’d already heard… and had promptly fled to her room to hide from them.
“I was on my way to offer them an official welcome to the Palace,” Conrad said, his blue eyes curious. “Will you accompany me?”
Lana felt a cold weight settle like lead in her stomach, picturing the scene. The wolves—had she heard there were a full dozen of them in attendance?—standing awkwardly in the entrance hall, Seth among them. Then Conrad and Lana making their appearance. Together. She sat down hard on the bed, fighting back the sudden, unfamiliar feeling of tears prickling at the backs of her eyelids.
“Lana? Are you alright?”
“Just tired,” she said, too quickly, her voice hoarse. “I, um, I’ll skip the official greeting, if that’s okay? Tell them I’m—I don’t know. Tell them something. We’ll have an official dinner or something later, I don’t…” She trailed off.
