Chapter 47: Kael Got Banished For Me. I Feel Partially Responsible! 2
Neve looked at the nearest fire and kept his face completely still. He was trying not to get caught laughing at the rejection.
Kael turned back to him like the previous thirty seconds had not happened. "Where were we?"
"I’m not entirely sure," Neve said.
Behind Kael, Isabella was a colour that was difficult to describe but was somewhere in the purple family. She looked at Neve once, the look containing a significant amount of information about how she felt about the last thirty seconds, and walked away.
Neve watched her go.
Kael caught his chin and turned his face back.
"The festival ends at dawn," Kael said. "When everyone goes back to their tribe—" he paused ",—I won’t be going back."
Neve looked at him. "You’re staying for the winter?"
"I’m staying indefinitely." He said it the way he said everything, like the decision was already settled and the conversation was just informing the other party. "My father wanted me to take a mate from the wolf tribe. I told him I had someone in mind." He tilted his head slightly. "He disagreed. Strongly."
Neve kept looking at him.
"Kael."
"Mm."
"Were you banished?"
"Something similar to banished," Kael said, without any particular distress about it.
"Because of me."
"Because of my choice," he said. "Which involves you. Yes."
Neve rubbed his face with both hands.
A wolf prince had declined a mate arrangement from his own father and been effectively exiled from his royal home because of Neve, who had known him for just one day and had been unconscious for part of it. He looked up and checked the number above Kael’s head.
{Kael — 40%}
It had gone up from thirty-eight and two per cent was added from a hug and a walk.
He would have told Kael to return to the wolf tribe and say yes to what his father wanted from him, but he knew that was not going to happen. He was going to be Neve’s. The system knew it, the world knew it, the forty per cent climbing toward a hundred confirmed it. There was no universe in which Kael ended up anywhere other than on the list of ten.
But that was not the immediate problem.
The immediate problem was that Kael was apparently moving in.
"Well, you can’t just move in," Neve said.
"I’m not going to impose," Kael said. "I’ll build my own space. I just need to be near you."
"You need to talk to Cael first."
Kael’s expression flickered once. "Does he have to know—"
"Kael."
"He’s going to make it complicated."
"He deserves to know," Neve said. "Talk to him. If he agrees to the arrangement, then we’ll figure out the rest."
Kael looked at him for a moment. The expression of someone calculating whether the instruction could be navigated around.
"Fine," he said.
He lifted Neve’s hand and pressed his mouth to the back of it. His eyes stayed on Neve’s face while he did it.
"Find me before it gets too late tonight," he said. Then he turned and walked back into the festival crowd, wine in hand, hair disappearing between bodies.
Neve stood there and looked at the back of his own hand.
Very soon, he was going to be with two men with nearly the same name.
He thought about calling one and both answering, and a small sound came out of him that was not quite a laugh but was related to one.
’This is going to be a whole hell of comedy!’
He shook himself and started walking.
.
.
It took two beastmen from other tribes and ten minutes of navigating the festival to find the leopard tribe’s position.
They were at the entrance to the village territory, not at the centre of the festival grounds. Neve arrived and looked at the setup... the chief, Soren, with the chief’s bead around his neck, Cael, Gideon, the senior tribe members arranged in welcome formation.
"You found us," Cael said, and smiled. Small, real, the one that changed his face.
"I did," Neve said. He looked around. "Why are you all the way out here? Aren’t we supposed to be down there?" He pointed toward the main festival area.
Soren, who was the new chief now, with the bead at his throat making it official, looked up, and the expression of someone who had been chief for less than a day and was already comfortable with the responsibility sat on his face naturally.
"Every hosting tribe stays at their territory entrance," he said. "It welcomes arriving guests and shows we trust them in our space. Being down there—" he gestured where Neve had pointed "—would suggest we’re watching them. Managing them. That’s an insult."
Neve nodded. That made sense. He filed it.
Cael was already moving toward him. He touched Neve’s hair once, the way he did when he was checking something without wanting to look like he was checking.
"You should sit," he said. "You’ve been walking around, even while preparing the soup."
Neve walked around the table and found a spot and was about to sit when something happened.
The bond mark on his neck went warm.
Not the usual warmth. Something sharper and more present. He touched it with two fingers and felt it pulse faintly under his fingertips, a rhythm that wasn’t his heartbeat.
His face went warm.
"Are you alright?" Cael was already close, reading his expression.
Neve looked up. Looked past the entrance. Past the gathered beastmen at the edge of the festival. At the treeline beyond.
Something was coming.
He could feel it in the mark the way you felt a change in weather before it arrived... not seeing it yet, just knowing it was there and moving closer.
"I think he’s here," Neve said.
"Who?" Soren asked.
Neve looked at him. At the new chief of the leopard tribe, Cael beside him, Gideon slightly behind, the whole entrance party arranged and waiting.
"The dragon king," Neve said.