Her hand, almost completely swallowed by Kaelith’s much larger one, burned as she pulled him through the castle.
Well.
Pulled was probably the wrong word.
Kaelith followed willingly. Eagerly, even.
But the situation was so absurd that Mirabelle practically stord ahead of him to avoid looking at him.
Okay.
More accurately, to avoid him looking at her.
Her heart hamred against her throat. Her skin tingled from how thoroughly her blood had decided to abandon all reason.
Unfortunately, the weather was not on her side. The evening was warm.
Normally, a cool breeze seed to drift endlessly through the halls of Luchsenstein.
Tonight it did absolutely nothing to help.
If anything, it only reminded her how hot she felt. Almost feverish.
A thin sheen of sweat covered her skin.
’Pull yourself together.
How many tis have you had sex?’
She attempted to regain control of herself.
It worked for approximately three seconds.
’It’s just that most of those tis happened spontaneously...
And weren’t initiated by ...
Oh God.’
The realization did not help.
At all.
It suddenly occurred to her that she wasn’t nearly the great seductress she had imagined herself to be while planning this.
In fact, she had absolutely no idea what she was doing.
In her previous life she had preferred a very specific type of man.
The dominant CEO type.
The kind who took charge.
The kind who made decisions.
The kind who allowed her to stop carrying responsibility for a few hours.
After spending her days giving orders in offices and on construction sites, that had always felt like a luxury.
’Why did I sohow forget that I have no idea how to do this?’
With every passing second, Mirabelle grew more nervous.
Kaelith, anwhile, beca calr.
At first he hadn’t been able to process what had happened.
The mont he spoke his vow, it had felt as though soone had shifted the entire world.
As though reality itself had quietly rearranged its priorities.
Everything pointed in one direction now.
Toward Mirabelle.
He always knew where she was.
Even now, several steps ahead of him, he could feel her presence with unnatural clarity.
He could sense the rough shape of her emotions.
The nervous excitent.
The determination.
The uncertainty she was trying so desperately to hide.
And beneath it all, sothing inside his chest pulled toward her.
Constantly.
Relentlessly.
Like a river seeking the sea.
Like a compass finding north.
Like gravity.
He had heard mated males talk about the pull before.
The bond.
The invisible force connecting partners.
He had never understood it.
Never truly believed their descriptions.
Now he realized they had all failed to explain it properly.
The sensation wasn’t a chain.
It wasn’t an instinct.
It wasn’t even an emotion.
It felt like finding a missing piece of himself and suddenly realizing he had been incomplete his entire life.
Her scent lingered everywhere.
Warm honey.
Vanilla.
Amber in sunlight.
Every breath carried traces of her.
Every heartbeat seed to answer hers.
His world had not beco smaller.
It had beco centered.
Then she had appeared in front of him and taken his hand.
And he genuinely had no idea why.
He was self-aware enough to understand that he had the worst odds of becoming First Mate.
His cultivation was lower than Silas’. At best he stood equal to Lucien.
His family lacked the influence of either rival.
Mirabelle didn’t know about his ability. And even if she did, he feared it might frighten her.
Silas possessed overwhelming power. The perfect protector. The ideal First Mate for a ruling family.
Lucien was brilliant. Strategic.
Connected to one of the most powerful territories in the Berghaim.
Kaelith was neither of those things.
With every step they took, the conclusion seed more obvious.
She probably intended to tell him exactly that.
That she had chosen him as a partner. Just not as her first.
It was the only explanation that made sense.
He still didn’t understand why she had asked him to co.
Yet he had followed without hesitation.
Because fulfilling her wishes was now his responsibility. And because he refused to make things difficult for her.
He would never burden her with guilt.
Would never resent her choice.
Quietly, he thanked the Beast Goddess.
Simply for allowing him to exist in the sa world as Mirabelle.
For giving him the chance to stand at her side.
For allowing him to love a female as extraordinary as her.
It was already more than he had ever dared dream of.
Ironically, Mirabelle had spent those sa three days reaching a very different conclusion.
While Kaelith had been quietly preparing himself to accept whatever choice she made, Mirabelle had been trying to determine which of the three males she trusted enough to place beside her first.
Not whether she wanted all three. That answer had co surprisingly quickly.
No.
The difficult question had been who should co first.
Silas had been the easiest to eliminate. Not because she wanted him less. If anything, that was part of the problem.
Everything about the panther felt intense. Instinctive. Dangerous.
His presence pulled at sothing primal inside her. Sothing that wanted to stop thinking and simply follow feeling.
Which was exactly why he frightened her.
Silas was dominant.
Possessive.
Territorial.
Most of the ti she liked that. Sotis far more than she should.
But she was standing at the edge of an entirely new path.
A confrontational one.
A path nobody in the Beast World had walked before.
A future nobody would have ever expected from the old Mirabelle.
She couldn’t afford to place herself in a position where instinct dictated her decisions.
And then there was Zasar.
The panther had connections to the Queen. He had sworn loyalty to her, as every warrior had.
That was a variable she couldn’t predict. After all, what was a vow worth when tested against reality?
Mirabelle believed the panther cared for her.
She believed he would choose her.
Yet she still didn’t fully understand where his relationship with the royal family truly began and ended.
And that made him dangerous.
Yes, he had shown her ti and ti again that he was willing to stand at her side.
But doubt remained.
And doubt alone was enough reason not to hand him the most powerful position among her partners.
Nor could she forget how quickly his temper could flare when his emotions got the better of him.
Silas would be a powerful ally.
But he was still a risk.
One she wasn’t prepared to take first.
Then there was Lucien.
That decision had been far more difficult.
The fox had surprised her repeatedly.
He was intelligent.
Thoughtful.
Capable of challenging her ideas without turning every disagreent into a battle.
More than once she had caught herself imagining what ruling beside him might look like.
The problem was that she still knew him less than the other two.
Yes, they had already shared monts of intimacy. But the circumstances surrounding those monts had been anything but normal.
Too much had happened too quickly.
And unlike the others, choosing Lucien first wouldn’t simply affect her.
It would affect two territories.
Two ruling families.
Two Duchesses.
It would send a ssage whether she intended it or not. One she wasn’t yet ready to send.
Both Queens would see it as an affront.
Eventually she might choose that path.
Perhaps even soon.
But not today.
Not while she was still finding her footing.
Not while Luchsenstein was still vulnerable.
She wasn’t strong enough yet.
That left Kaelith.
The male who sohow made the most sense.
And the least.
On the surface he was reckless.
Provocative.
Annoying.
Entirely too comfortable creating problems for everyone around him.
Yet the longer she had known him, the more she had noticed what existed beneath all of that.
Kaelith thought before he acted far more often than people realized.
He watched.
Observed.
Adapted.
And perhaps most importantly —
he knew how to handle the others when he chose to.
Silas tolerated him.
Lucien respected him.
Which was honestly close enough to a miracle.
Then there was the fact that he had never once hidden where his loyalty lay.
Not with Zasar. Not with his Queen. Not even with his family.
Every action he had taken since arriving in Luchsenstein had pointed in the sa direction.
Toward her.
If forced to choose, Kaelith would choose Mirabelle. She had no doubt about that.
And certainty was a valuable thing.
Especially for soone planning to change the world.
Yet none of those reasons were why she ultimately chose him. Those were rely the logical argunts.
The ones she could explain.
The ones she could defend.
The real reason was far simpler.
When she looked at Silas, she felt desire.
When she looked at Lucien, she felt temptation.
When she looked at Kaelith...
she felt ho.
Not safety.
Not comfort.
Sothing deeper. A strange familiarity she couldn’t explain. A connection that seed to exist beneath words.
Beneath attraction.
Beneath reason.
She trusted him.
Not because he had earned it.
Not because he deserved it.
But because so stubborn part of her heart had already made that decision long ago.
And in the end, she had chosen to listen.
But right now, her heart was babbling such incoherent nonsense that she no longer knew what to think, say, or do.
She was an absolute ss.
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