Aldrien had been hoping for a quiet morning.
He should have known better by now.
Evangeline arrived before he’d even finished eating, announcing that Hazel clearly needed a best-friend day, and Aldrien understood almost immediately that this was going to be worse than any council meeting he’d ever sat through.
She dragged him through what felt like half of Hazel’s entire world.
Errands he didn’t understand the purpose of.
A visit to someone Hazel had apparently promised help to weeks ago, which meant Aldrien had to improvise an entire conversation about a favor he knew nothing about.
Lunch, where Evangeline spent most of the meal discussing people Aldrien had never heard of as though he should know exactly who they were and why their business mattered.
Somewhere in the middle of it, a social obligation appeared out of nowhere, and everyone in the room expected Hazel to already know the details of some ongoing dispute between two families he could barely keep straight.
Evangeline kept glancing at him strangely throughout all of it.
“You’ve been acting weird lately,” she finally said, over the third cup of tea he didn’t actually want.
He tried, as best he could, to sound like Hazel.
“Marriage.”
Evangeline’s eyes narrowed.
“Marriage didn’t make you talk like a man.”
He froze completely, scrambling for something to say that wouldn’t make it worse, and settled on a vague laugh that fooled absolutely no one.
Evangeline let it go, mostly, though she kept studying him for the rest of the afternoon like she was waiting for him to slip again.
While Aldrien suffered through an entire day of Hazel’s social obligations, Hazel was somewhere across the territory drowning in his.
The council had been particularly difficult that morning, one disagreement bleeding into another before she’d even had the chance to sit down properly.
A warrior needed a decision made about reassignment that couldn’t wait.
The border report came in worse than expected, with more movement along the eastern line than anyone wanted to see.
Someone demanded an immediate ruling on a matter she barely understood the history of, and right behind that, someone else openly questioned whether the Alpha’s judgment could be trusted given how erratic he’d apparently seemed lately.
Wystan wasn’t around nearly as much as she needed him to be, pulled into his own set of problems, which meant she was handling most of it without anyone to lean on.
By the time the sun started going down, she was completely wrung out, every decision she’d made that day sitting on her chest like a physical weight.
She was angry, though not at anyone in particular.
She was finally understanding, in a way she hadn’t fully grasped even after her first day in his position, exactly what his life actually cost him every single day.
Aldrien arrived home first, dropping onto the nearest chair the moment he crossed the threshold, utterly exhausted from an entire day of trying to be someone he clearly wasn’t cut out to imitate.
Hazel came in not long after, looking just as wrecked as he felt.
They looked at each other across the room.
Neither one had the energy left for their usual teasing.
“Your job is terrible,” Hazel finally said.
“Your life is exhausting,” Aldrien shot back, immediate and without thinking it through.
She stared at him.
“Excuse me?”
And there it was.
“You heard me,” he said.
“You complain constantly about smiling at people and remembering names, but you have no idea what it’s like to have an entire room waiting on you to make a decision that could actually ruin someone’s life if you get it wrong.”
“I have no idea?” Hazel’s voice climbed.
“I spent the entire day being questioned by your council because apparently you’ve been acting erratic, and I had to invent an explanation on the spot, while you got to spend your afternoon eating lunch with Evangeline!”
“You think that was relaxing? I nearly gave us away twice because I don’t know the first thing about whatever favor you promised some woman I’ve never met!”
“Maybe if you’d bothered paying attention to my life before all of this happened, you’d know!”
“Maybe if you weren’t so impossible to predict, none of this would have happened at all!”
The words hung there for a second before either of them realized where they’d landed.
Hazel’s expression shifted, sharper now.
“This happened because you couldn’t control yourself during the ritual,” she snapped.
“Because I couldn’t control myself?” His voice rose to match hers.
“You were practically challenging the moon itself, standing there radiating hatred at me the whole time.”
“Because you were standing there looking like you wanted to murder me!”
“I did!”
Silence dropped hard and fast after that, both of them breathing like they’d just come off a training field instead of an argument.
“Maybe that’s why we’re stuck like this,” Hazel said, quieter now but no less furious.
“Maybe you caused it,” Aldrien said.
“Maybe you did.”
“Maybe we both did, and neither of us wants to admit it!”
“I’m trapped in your body because of you!” Hazel shouted, loud enough that neither of them heard the knock at the door until it came a second time.
Neither of them noticed it then either.
The door opened anyway.
Wystan stepped inside, mid-sentence about something he’d clearly intended to discuss, and stopped completely at the sight in front of him.
He looked at Hazel, standing there in Aldrien’s body with fury written all over an expression Wystan had never once seen the Alpha wear.
Then he looked at Aldrien, standing across from her in Hazel’s body, equally furious, equally out of breath.
Aldrien froze.
Hazel froze.
Wystan’s gaze moved between them again, slower this time, like he was replaying the sentence he’d just walked in on and trying to make it fit anything reasonable.
Nobody said a word for a long moment.
“…Would either of you like to explain that?” Wystan finally asked.
Aldrien opened his mouth.
Nothing useful came out.
Wystan kept staring at both of them, something dawning behind his eyes that looked like the slow collapse of every assumption he’d made over the past several days.
“I knew something was wrong,” he said, mostly to himself.
A pause.
“I did not think this was what was wrong.”