"Serena, no, this is not what you think, I was asleep. Baby, look at me."

Serena looked at him, hand shaking over her mouth.

"I don’t want to make this awkward," Guinevere said. "But he finished twice."

Dex’s entire body went rigid. "I did NOT."

"The sheets tell a different story, Dexmon." Guinevere looked at Serena. "He’s vigorous. You should be proud. I am."

"She’s lying."

"Am I? Where are your pants, Dexmon?"

"You have them. Give me my pants. Now."

"Exactly." Guinevere tilted her head, exposing the side of her neck toward Serena. There was a red mark there. "He was a little rough, but we cuddled after. Adorable. Does he do that with you too, or is that just an us thing?"

"That is NOT a mark," Dex said. "I did not touch her. Serena, I did not touch her."

"He talks in his sleep, by the way. He kept saying I’m sorry. Did you two fight?"

"How do you.... Serena, she’s lying."

She touched the crescent moon pendant at her throat and smiled at Serena. "He also gave me this. Said Finnick gave it to him or something for you, but he wanted to give it to me instead as a token. I thought it was sweet. Don’t you think?"

Serena looked at the pendant, tears falling. Then she turned and ran.

"Serena."

Dex moved.

The sheet did not come with him. He made it one step before remembering this, spun back, ripped a tunic off the back of the nearest chair, yanked it over his head as he hit the doorway, grabbed the trousers Guinevere had set down on the mattress, and was attempting to pull them on.

Guinevere grabbed onto his naked form before his pants were pulled up. He ignored her.

Aegon: She is trying to mark our butt cheek. HURRY!

"Serena, wait."

She did not wait.

She ran the way she ran when she did not want to be caught, which was at speeds that no one in this castle except him and Finnick could match.

Aegon: Faster.

Dex: I’m going.

Aegon: FASTER.

He rounded the first corner and caught her scent, with tears.

"Serena, stop. Please."

He heard her boots round the stair landing two corridors ahead, and then he heard nothing, which was worse.

Dex: Serena. Baby. Please.

Nothing.

The sudden absence of her scent meant a portal had taken her, and the direction of the draft coming down the stair meant the portal had been going west.

He stopped running, one hand braced against the wall of the corridor, breathing through the specific hollow that opened in his chest when the matebond went quiet on her end. The connection was still there.

Aegon: Go after her.

Dex: I need a portal.

Aegon: RUN. SHE’S COMING AFTER US.

He turned.

Guinevere was coming down the corridor behind him at a dead sprint.

"Dexmon, darling, you are making this harder than it needs to be, I have a whole Chapter to show you."

She was still nude. She was still wearing the circlet. The crescent-moon pendant was bouncing against her breasts with every stride.

Her hair was everywhere.

Two Shadowclaw guards were posted at the corridor intersection.

They did not react.

One of them was looking at the ceiling. The other had developed, in the last ninety seconds, an intense interest in the state of his left boot. Neither of them acknowledged, by any movement of the face or body, that the Alpha King’s cousin had just sprinted past them wearing a decorative household object and nothing else.

Dex stared at them.

Aegon: Are you fucking kidding me? They don’t see the nude woman.

Dex opened his mouth. He closed it.

She lunged for him, fangs extended. He moved out of the way in a blur. The guards were looking anywhere but the naked woman.

He turned, because Guinevere was now closing the distance.

At which point the door at the end of the corridor opened, and Finnick Shadowclaw walked out.

Fin was dressed. He had the flat, burning expression of an Alpha whose mate was in acute distress and was not responding to any of his mindlinks.

He had crossed three corridors at speed, following the thread of her grief, and he had arrived at the scene approximately ninety seconds after she had portaled out of it.

Guinevere threw herself against the nearest wall with a thud that was, Dex realized in real time, rehearsed. Her hand flew to her own throat. Her breath came in a short, choked little gasp that a lesser audience might have mistaken for a woman recovering from an ordeal. She slid halfway down the wall in a controlled descent.

Dex stared at her.

"Finnick. Oh, Finnick. Thank the gods. He was going to mark me," she said, her voice trembling. "He pulled me into the bed. He would not let me leave. I tried, Finnick, I tried, but he is so much stronger, and his wolf was, oh gods, his wolf was—"

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

"I am sorry I did not come to you sooner, cousin, I was frightened, I did not want to cause a diplomatic—"

"She has been chasing me around your guest suite making cat noises."

"He is lying, Finnick, you can see he is lying, look at him, he cannot even fasten his own trousers."

Dex looked down. His trousers were, in fact, on backwards.

Aegon: This is the lowest moment of our life.

Dex: I am aware.

Aegon: I want to be very clear that I will remember this.

"Finnick. I swear to every god. She got into my bed at three in the morning. I woke up, I screamed, she has chased me around the suite, and she tried to bite my neck while making noises I am not going to describe because I would like to sleep again at some point in my life."

Fin looked at him.

Dex heard the sentence he had just produced out loud, in a hallway, to a foreign Alpha King. "I know how that sounds."

Fin’s eyes moved back to Guinevere. "Again, Guinevere?"

"Again?"

"Again," Fin confirmed, teeth gritted.

"What do you mean again?"

"I mean she has done this before."

"TO WHOM."

"We are not doing this in the corridor."

"Shadowclaw, I am asking you a direct question."

"And I am telling you, Drakenfell, that we are not doing this in the corridor."

A guard, with the precise timing of a man who had been waiting all morning for his professional moment, stepped forward and held out a folded infantry tunic. Fin took it without looking. He tossed it over his shoulder at Guinevere, underhand, without turning.

"Put that on. Now."

"Finnick, this is unnecessary, I can explain everything if we could simply—" 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"COVER YOURSELF."

"Fine. Relax. Gods. It’s not like you’ve never seen me naked. Both of you. And the guards." She pulled the tunic over her head with the aggrieved sigh of a woman being asked to sit at the children’s table at a wedding. It hit her mid-thigh. The circlet was still on, pendant visible at the open collar.

Fin saw it.

His entire face stopped moving.

"Guinevere."

"Mm."

"Where did you get that necklace." Rhetorical.

"Oh, this?" She fingered the pendant with a casualness that was, Dex realized in real time, pathological. "It was one of Garrett’s old ones."

"No it wasn’t. Because Serena took that necklace off and put it on my nightstand. She told me, specifically, that it had belonged to her mother and she never takes it off."

The corridor went quiet.

Dex’s stomach dropped.

He had seen the pendant, and he had registered it as Serena’s. He had not registered it as her mother’s, because he had not known, because it had never come up. The specific grief that had come through the matebond twenty minutes ago, restructured itself in his head into a wound he could now actually identify.

Her mother’s necklace.

Aegon: Kill this bitch.

Fin’s voice had dropped into the register he used when he was deciding whether to still be civil.

"Guinevere. You went into my chambers and you stole it."

Guinevere waved a hand.

"Figure of speech."

"That is not a figure of speech."

"Well, technically, you could argue—"

"You stole Serena Frostborne’s late mother’s necklace from my chambers and then wore it nude into the bed of a foreign prince who was her mate."

"When you say it like that."

Dex turned very slowly in place. He looked at Fin. He looked at Guinevere. He looked back at Fin. He felt, for the first time in his life, a profound and unfamiliar emotion, which was the relief of being in a family that was, by any measurable standard, significantly less deranged than somebody else’s.

Aegon: I thought our family was fucked.

Dexmon: My mother never stole another girl’s necklace that belonged to her dead mother.

"I was trying to apologize," Guinevere whined.

Dex’s head turned towards her. "In my bed."

"Well, yes, eventually, but the initial intent was—"

"Explain to me, Guinevere, in what universe, apologizing to a woman for tormenting her involves getting nude in her mate’s bed, stealing her mother’s necklace, attempting to mark her mate twice, and showing up to the apology with a binder."

"What do you mean she tormented?" Dex clipped.

"Read the Knotty Omega."

"What in the gods’ names is a Knotty Omega."

A different guard, the one who had earlier developed an interest in his left boot, stepped forward with a rolled-up periodical in his hand. He held it out to Guinevere without making eye contact with anyone. Guinevere took it, unrolled it, and thrust it into Dex’s stomach hard enough to make him grunt.

Dex looked down.

"Guinevere," Fin said slowly. "Why do you have it."

"I have a subscription."

"Why does the guard have one?"

The guard, who had gone very still, said nothing.

Fin closed his eyes.

"Dexmon." Guinevere clapped her hands when she said his name. "Focus. Page fourteen."

Dex, against every instinct he had, flipped to page fourteen, where he saw Serena’s name. He was going to read this. But not here in front of her. He looked up.

She was watching him with a smug expression.

"You, Dexmon, live under a rock. Viper’s Kiss. And now this. I am beginning to worry about the bloodline. Let’s hope our sons inherit my intelligence."

Aegon: I am going to eat her.

At the far end of the corridor, Aeron was walking towards them with a folio under one arm. He stopped walking.

"Aeron," Dex said. "Portal. Drakenfell. Now."

Aeron, who had served Finnick Shadowclaw for eleven years and had learned, in that time, to read a room, set his folio down on a side table without breaking eye contact with Dex, raised one hand, and cut a seam in the air. Gold light bled through. The portal widened into a doorway.

Dex moved.

He was through it before the edges had finished stabilizing.

Guinevere moved too.

"Oh no you don’t," Fin snarled, and lunged.

His hand closed on air.

She had judged the distance and ducked under his arm.

The portal collapsed behind her with a soft pop. Fin stood in the empty corridor. His hand was still open. He looked at his open hand.

"Aeron."

"Your Majesty."

"Open it back up."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The portal reopened.

Fin ran through.