The silence lasted two days.
Kristen threw himself into wedding preparations with a ferocity that surprised everyone, himself most of all.
He showed up to every fitting on time.
He reviewed fabric swatches and floral arrangements and seating charts with the kind of grim determination most people reserved for battle plans.
When the wedding coordinator—a thin, nervous vampire with spectacles and a perpetually harried expression—asked him whether he preferred ivory or cream table linens, Kristen stared at her for exactly three seconds and said, “They’re the same color.” They were infact not the same color.
He chose ivory out of spite.
He didn’t eat in the shared living room.
He took his meals in the library, or the garden, or once, memorably, standing up in the kitchen while the staff pretended he wasn’t there.
He didn’t speak to Julian.
Julian didn’t speak to him.
They orbited each other in the vast marble halls of the east wing like binary stars locked in a decaying orbit—close enough to feel each other’s gravity, too far apart to collide.
At night, Kristen slept facing the window, his back to Julian’s side of the bed.
Julian didn’t reach for him.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t do anything but lie there in the dark, cold and silent as the grave he’d been standing in when this whole mess began.
Sometimes Kristen woke in the small hours of the morning and listened for the sound of Julian’s breathing—a habit he’d developed in the first week, when he was still afraid of what the vampire might do to him in the dark—and heard nothing.
Lying in the bed beside him Kristen had never felt more alone.
‘This is stupid,’ his wolf said on the second night, as Kristen stared at the sliver of moonlight cutting across the ceiling.
‘You’re both being stupid.’
I’m not the one who refused to believe him.
‘You’re the one who told him you’d handle things yourself and then did nothing when someone kissed you.’
Kristen closed his eyes.
Whose side are you on?
‘Yours.
Always yours.
But being on your side means telling you when you’re being stubborn, and you’re being stubborn.
He’s not the enemy here.
His father is.’
Julian’s father, Kristen thought, was the reason they were all in this mess.
Jonathon Vance, with his cold eyes and his colder hands, pulling strings from whatever shadowy throne he occupied.
The wedding was his production.
His pack, seated in the front rows like hostages dressed up as honored guests—that was his touch, too.
A reminder that no one in this alliance was free.
Not Kristen.
Not Julian.
Not anyone.
The summons arrived on the third morning.
Kristen found it by accident.
He’d been walking past Julian’s study, when he saw the envelope on the floor just inside the door.
It must have been slid underneath while Julian was out.
The paper was heavy, cream-colored, embossed with the Vance crest in dark red ink.
The seal was already broken, the envelope discarded, the letter itself presumably on Julian’s desk.
But the fragments Kristen could read through the torn edge were enough to make his stomach drop.
…your presence is required at the earliest convenience…
…the matter of the Vane incident shall be addressed…
…disappointment in your handling of the situation…
Disappointment.
From Jonathon Vance.
Kristen didn’t need to read the rest of the letter to know what that meant.
He had a hunch what happened to the things Jonathon was disappointed in.
They ended up in graveyards with browning lilies and worn-away names.
He stepped away from the door before Julian could find him there, but the words followed him through the rest of the morning.
Julian didn’t mention the summons at breakfast—not that they were speaking to each other.
Kristen saw the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw was set a little tighter than usual.
Whatever was in the rest of that letter was bad.
The overheard fragment came that afternoon.
Kristen had been heading to another fitting—the final alterations on the formal jacket, or something equally tedious—when he heard Julian’s voice through the closed door of his study.
Not the flat, controlled voice he used for coven business.
Something sharper, more urgent, with an edge that Kristen had never heard before.
“…understood perfectly, Father, but the situation is contained.
Marcus has been dismissed. Get faster updates on g.com.
There’s no need for further—”
A pause.
Julian was on the phone.
Kristen knew he should keep walking.
He didn’t.
“With respect, the council has no jurisdiction over my household.
Kristen is my responsibility, not theirs.
If Celeste has concerns, she can bring them to me directly instead of—”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
When Julian spoke again, his voice was quieter.
Harder.
“I’m aware of the precedent.
I’m aware of what happened last time.
You don’t need to remind me.”
Last time.
The words hit Kristen like a physical blow.
Last time meant Julian’s father had taken someone Julian loved and destroyed them, and now he was reminding Julian that he could do it again.
Kristen’s wolf stirred uneasily.
‘He’s afraid.’
I know.
‘No.
Listen.
Not angry.
Afraid.
Can’t you hear it?’
Kristen could.
Underneath the controlled tone, underneath the careful words, Julian’s voice was strained in a way Kristen had never heard before.
Not the exhaustion or cold fury he was used to.
Fear.
Genuine, bone-deep fear, the kind of fear that lived in the space between what you loved and what you stood to lose.
“…I understand.
Yes.
I’ll be there by nightfall.”
The call ended.
Kristen heard the soft click of a receiver being set down, then silence.
He stood in the hallway for a long moment, his heart pounding, his mind racing.
Julian was being summoned to his father’s seat—an in person summoning.
And whatever was waiting for him there, it was bad enough that Julian Vance, who had faced down a room full of hostile werewolves without flinching, was afraid.
Kristen didn’t knock on the door.
He didn’t go inside.
He walked to his fitting and stood on the raised platform, did everything the trailer asked of him, but he didn’t actually retain a single word the man said.
The unprecedented kindness came later that evening.
Kristen had skipped dinner.
He’d been doing that more often lately—not out of protest, but because the thought of sitting alone in the library again, with a plate of food he didn’t want made the walls feel like they were closing in.
He was sprawled across the emerald velvet sofa in the living room, staring at the ceiling, when one of the silent human staff members appeared with a tray.
“I didn’t ask for anything,” Kristen said.
The staff member—a young woman with tired eyes and a neat uniform—set the tray on the low table.
“The prince asked the kitchen to prepare this for you.
He mentioned it was a favorite.”
Kristen looked at the tray.
Grilled meat, roasted vegetables, a small dish of honey-glazed pastries that looked almost exactly like the ones his mother used to make for pack gatherings.
The kind of food he hadn’t eaten since he left Ironbound.
The kind of food he’d mentioned once in passing, during that first breakfast when Julian had asked him what he missed most about home.
Julian had been listening.
Julian had remembered.
His wolf was quiet, but he could feel its attention, its watchfulness.
Waiting to see what he would do.
He ate the pastries first.
They were still warm.
Julian left for his father’s seat without explanation.
Kristen only knew because he was still awake when the door to the master suite opened, just past midnight, and Julian stood silhouetted in the doorway.
He was dressed in formal black, his long coat sweeping past his knees, his dark hair swept back from his face.
For a long moment, he simply stood there, looking at Kristen’s still form in the bed.
Kristen didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t let his breathing change.
“I’ll be gone for a day,” Julian said quietly.
“Maybe two.
The staff will see to anything you need.
If there’s an emergency—” He stopped.
In the darkness, Kristen could just make out the faint movement of his throat as he swallowed.
“If there’s an emergency, Celeste has instructions to contact me.
She’ll be at the estate by morning.”
A pause.
Julian seemed to be waiting for something—a response, an acknowledgment, some sign that Kristen was listening.
Kristen gave him nothing.
“The wedding arrangements will continue in my absence.
My father’s coordinator has everything she needs.
You won’t have to do anything except show up at the fittings.” Another pause.
“I know you hate them.
It’s almost over.”
Almost over.
The wedding, maybe.
But whatever was happening between them—the cold war, the silence, the fragile, unspoken thing that had cracked open in the graveyard and shattered in the garden—that didn’t feel almost over.
That felt like it was just beginning.
Julian lingered in the doorway for a moment longer.
Then he turned to leave.
“Julian.”
The name left Kristen’s mouth before he’d made the conscious decision to speak.
Julian stopped.
Didn’t turn around.
But he stopped.
Kristen didn’t know what he wanted to say.
He didn’t know what he was allowed to say.
The words crowded his throat— I would never kiss him, I’m sorry you’re afraid, I’m sorry your father is a monster, I’m sorry, I’m sorry about everything — but none of them felt right.
None of them felt like enough.
“Be careful,” he said finally.
It came out quieter than he’d intended.
Softer.
Julian didn’t respond.
He stood there for one heartbeat, two, his back to Kristen, his hand resting on the doorframe.
Then he walked out, and the door clicked shut behind him, and Kristen was alone in the dark with the taste of honey pastries still on his tongue and a fear he didn’t want to name coiled cold and heavy in his chest.
‘You’re afraid for him,’ his wolf said.
It wasn’t a question.
Yes, Kristen thought.
He was.
He was afraid for the monster, the man who trapped him, the man who’s cold and hot at the same time.
He was afraid for the man who kept fresh flowers on a dead woman’s grave and remembered what kind of pastries he liked and stood in doorways in the middle of the night, waiting for something Kristen didn’t know how to give.
He was afraid Julian wasn’t coming back.
The thought should have felt like freedom.
It didn’t.
It felt like the first cold winds of a storm he couldn’t see coming, the kind of storm that swept through and left nothing standing in its wake.
And Kristen lay awake until dawn, staring at the empty space on the other side of the bed, listening for footsteps that never came.
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