Chapter 409 --409
The heavy oak door to Elara’s office didn’t just open; it flew back against the wall with a sharp, echoing *crack*.
Mahir stood in the doorway, his chest heaving, his dark beast-kin ears pinned flat against his messy hair in a display of pure, unadulterated fury. His tail was lashing violently behind him, sweeping left and right like a whip. Directly behind him stepped Ken. While Ken wasn’t snarling like Mahir, his usual lazy, arrogant smirk was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, dangerous stillness that made the temperature in the room feel like it had dropped ten degrees.
They had clearly bypassed the guards, Demerti, and every protocol in the palace the moment the rumors from the administrative wing reached their ears.
Elara didn’t even look up from the portfolio she was analyzing. She merely dipped her quill into the inkwell, her hand steady. "You are disrupting the filing system."
"What is this nonsense, Master?!" Mahir barked, his voice dropping into a low, animalistic roar that vibrated through the floorboards. He marched straight to her desk, his large, calloused hands slamming down onto the dark wood, leaning over until he was directly in her line of sight. "The entire palace is talking about it! The servants, the guards, the nobles—everyone is saying you’re picking a husband from the foreign delegations!"
Ken closed the heavy door behind them with a slow, deliberate click, locking it. He didn’t approach the desk with Mahir’s frantic energy. Instead, he stayed back, leaning his broad shoulders against the wood, crossing his arms over his chest. His dark eyes were fixed entirely on the five portraits laid out in a neat row. He was silent, letting Mahir act as the vanguard, but the sheer tension in his posture spoke volumes.
"The rumors are factually accurate," Elara replied, her voice remaining perfectly flat, an anchor of cold logic against Mahir’s heat. "The domestic nobility, in coordination with five neighboring kingdoms, have submitted formal marriage proposals. I am currently evaluating the economic and territorial assets attached to each candidate."
"Evaluating?!" Mahir’s ears twitched violently, his fangs baring slightly as his voice cracked with disbelief. He looked genuinely shocked—the kind of deep, visceral shock that came from a predator realizing its territory was being bargained away. "You’re actually looking at them?! Master, they are trying to force you! They are trying to push you out of your own empire because they’re terrified of you!"
"I am aware of their motives, Mahir," Elara said, finally setting her quill down and looking up at him with her deep, expressionless eyes. "But their fear has inadvertently caused them to offer unprecedented concessions. If I accept the second prince of the Western Kingdom, we secure exclusive maritime trade routes. If I choose the Northern prince, we gain shared access to the iron mines. From a logistical standpoint, the return on investment is substantial."
"I don’t give a damn about iron mines!" Mahir shouted, his tail thumping hard against the side of her desk. His golden eyes were wide, burning with a frantic, protective territorialism. "You don’t need a husband! You don’t need some pretty-faced foreign prince sitting in your space, touching what belongs to us! If the nobles are giving you trouble, let me and Ken handle it. We can clear the ministry by midnight. No signatures, no documents. Just blood."
"Execution without legal justification creates political instability," Elara countered objectively. "A marriage contract creates a fifty-year non-aggression pact. The latter is a more permanent solution."
"And what about us?" Mahir’s voice suddenly dropped, the raw anger twisting into something sharp, desperate, and deeply wounded. He leaned closer, his beast-kin instincts screaming at the thought of another male entering her life. "You told us last night... you told us we were your anchor. You said you didn’t have to calculate around us. Now you’re going to let some noble bastard move into the palace? Share your title? Share your name?"