The worst part of loving soone who belonged to another man wasn’t the jealousy. That he understood. It was the sound of her crying alone behind a locked door running water because she didn’t want anyone to hear.
She had thought to turn it on, which ant she had done this before, which ant this was a system she had built for grief, and that was the thing he was never going to recover from.
His wolf said break the door. He split the difference and knocked.
"Guinevere? It’s Nicholas."
The water ran. No answer. The crying went silent, but Nicholas could still feel it through their matebond. Her breathing was stuck in a loop her body couldn’t break.
His hand found the handle. Locked. The wolf was howling but the decision to break it down belonged to the man, and the man would choose her every ti.
One hit. Shoulder first. The door folded inward and the lock exploded out of the fra.
She was on the floor, her back against the stone wall. Knees pulled to her chest. Hands pressed over her face. Her hair hung around her shoulders in white waves that caught the light and threw it back in gold.
His heart cracked open in a way that was going to require surgery to close.
He moved. Two strides. His hands found her arms and he pulled her up off the wet stone and into his chest in one motion. She collapsed against him, her face pressing into his shirt.
"Breathe, Guinevere." His arms locked around her. "It’s okay. I’m here."
She tried. The first inhale shuddered. The second caught halfway. The third made it to her lungs and ca back out as a sob that vibrated through his chest and settled into his ribs.
His wolf went quiet for the first ti in hours because she was against his chest and his arms were around her and his wolf recognized this as the correct state of the universe.
He pressed his lips to the top of her head without thinking and didn’t let go even after her breathing settled.
When he did, it was only with one arm so he could turn off the faucets. His other arm stayed wrapped around her.
The silence that followed was enormous and tender in a way silence had no right to be.
Gently, he lifted her onto the counter.
"Let see." He took her right hand and turned it over carefully, unwinding the ruined bandage with steady fingers. The cuts across her palm were deep, running from the base of her fingers to her wrist in clean lines.
His expression darkened imdiately when he saw them. He knew she had been gushing blood, but he hadn’t realized how deep these were, even for wolf healing.
"Hang on, Guinevere."
In the cabinets, he found linen, salve, and a shallow bowl. He filled it with clean water and guided her hands in.
She let him. A hiccup broke through. Then another.
He dried her right hand with a clean cloth and began wrapping it with fresh linen, his fingers moving with the careful precision of a man who had dressed field wounds before and was applying every ounce of that skill to a woman’s palm.
"I showed you how to hold a blade correctly," he said, his voice light, his eyes on the wrapping. "Forty-five degree angle. You had it."
A hiccup.
"And you went out there and caught one with both hands on the wrong end. Open palms on the edge." He secured the linen and moved to her left hand, unwinding the soaked bandage with the sa steady focus. "I admire the commitnt. The execution needs work."
A sound ca out of her that lived sowhere between a hiccup and a laugh. Small. Broken. But it existed, and Nicholas collected it like a coin.
"I also hear you already know how to fight with dual blades." He wrapped the left hand, his thumb pressing the linen flat against her palm. "Which ans you were faking in the corridors to get my attention." He looked up at her through his lashes. "It worked."
The laugh that ca out of her was real this ti. Wet and fractured and brief, but real.
"I d-don’t." Her voice was hoarse. "They caught on fire and I copied a move I saw my brother do."
"And yet." Nicholas finished the wrapping and held her bandaged hand for one second longer than was dically necessary. "I think you’re giving yourself far less credit than you deserve."
He released her hand. His eyes moved to the bruises on her neck.
The faded ones were healing. Wolf biology was pulling them back, the yellows and greens of marks that were hours old, receding into skin that was trying to repair itself. Her body healed fast.
The fresh ones were healing too, slower, still vivid against the gold-tinted white of her skin. The shape of the hand was clear.
"You get into another fight?"
She shook her head.
The motion was small. A single movent of her chin, left to right. She didn’t look at him when she did it.
The answer sat between them with the weight of sothing neither of them was going to say out loud.
Nicholas’s jaw worked once. His amber eyes stayed on the bruises for three seconds longer than a man who was going to let it go. Then he lifted his gaze to her face and the expression he found there, the exhaustion and the hurt and the quiet, devastated acceptance of a woman who had been choked by the man she loved and was processing it as sothing she probably deserved, rearranged sothing in his chest that he was never going to be able to put back.
He stood. Reached into the cabinet again and ca back with a cold cloth. He pressed it against the side of her neck with a gentleness that contradicted the size of his hands and the fury building behind his ribs.
"Hold this here." His voice was steady. "The swelling will go down faster with cold."
She took the cloth from him. Her fingers brushed his. The matebond sparked between them, a jolt that ran from her hand to his chest and settled sowhere warm.
He didn’t pull away.
"Thank you, Nicholas." Her voice was barely above a whisper.
He studied her. Despite everything, she was looking at him with gratitude. The most confusing thing about this woman was how genuine she was. He knew she felt gratitude because it flowed into him through their matebond.
Without breaking eye contact, he lifted her right hand and pressed his lips to her bandaged palm, then held it there.
Her eyes filled again. One tear fell. He caught it with his thumb, his palm resting against her jaw for a second longer than the task required.
"I’ll be in the sitting room. Take as long as you need."
He held her gaze for one more breath. Then he let go of her face the way he let go of everything involving this woman: slowly, reluctantly, and only because staying would have crossed the last line he was still pretending to respect.
Then he stepped back, and walked towards the door. Opened it. Stopped.
"Guinevere."
She looked up.
"Anyone who puts their hands on you in my presence will lose them. That includes kings."
He closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with the steam and the silence and the cold cloth against her throat and a sentence that lived sowhere behind her ribs in a place she was going to have to deal with eventually but was choosing, for right now, to let sit.
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