"...You good?"

  Fin slowly turned his head, expression blank, hollow, and vaguely murderous.

  "Do I look good to you."

  Jax snorted. "No. You look like you're about to declare war."

  Fin inhaled sharply through his nose — the kind of inhale a man takes when he's restraining himself from breaking furniture.

  "That," he said, voice cold and flat, "was the most excruciating ten minutes of my entire life."

  "You kissed her forehead.Twice."

  Fin's left eye twitched.

  "I know."

  "And you smiled."

  "I KNOW."

  "She thinks you adore her."

  Fin's voice dropped an octave into pure despair.

  "I. KNOW."

  Jax clapped a hand to his shoulder with reverent sympathy.

  "You did beautifully. Really. Oscar-worthy performance. I'm proud of you, buddy."

  Fin glared with the force of a thousand suns.

  "Don't."

  "Oh, I am absolutely going to," Jax said cheerfully. "I will terrorize you with this for years."

  A soft, irritated hum echoed down the hall. Aeron swept into the war room, arms crossed.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  "Well," he said, voice sharp enough to cut steel, "how was everyone's lovely little tea party with the viper queen?"

  Fin closed his eyes in pain. "Aeron. Please."

  Aeron ignored him completely.

  "I'm just asking," he continued, smile thin as a blade. "Did she do that classic tragic sigh? The one where she pretends she's dying of something poetic and Victorian?"

  Jax nodded. "Two of them."

  "Lovely. I spoke with Lisa Rellane again — and shocker — the story has changed for the THIRD TIME."

  He pitched his voice into a ridiculous, airy imitation: "'Oh Aeron, perhaps it was a shadow. Or maybe I dreamed it. Or perhaps I misremembered!'"

  Fin and Jax simultaneously pinched the bridges of their noses.

  Aeron continued pacing like a scholar on the brink of homicide.

  "If that woman lies any harder, she will rip a hole in the fabric of reality. And somehow — SOMEHOW — she believes she can outmaneuver three of the most capable wolves in this kingdom while wearing a nightgown made of DELUSION."

  Aeron rounded on them.

  "You two kept your composure, right?"

  Fin and Jax exchanged a look. A long, incriminating look.

  "He kissed her forehead. Twice." Jax said, smirking.

  Aeron blinked. "...Twice?"

  Fin growled. "I was being polite."

  Aeron dragged a hand down his face. "You deserve a medal. And therapy."

  Jax lifted both hands.

  "I swear — if she breathes near Nova again — I'm committing treason."

  Fin didn't hesitate. "We're committing treason."

  "Yeah, yeah," Jax said. "Team effort."

  Aeron let out a slow exhale, his face settling into the kind of dark amusement that always signaled bad news.

  "I learned something else. Something Nova very conveniently failed to mention to me. Or to anyone."

  "What?" Fin and Jax asked at the same time.

  Aeron's mouth twitched. "The day she was arrested," he continued, tone deceptively calm, "was her birthday."

  Silence hit the room like a held breath.

  "Coincidence, or personal?" Aeron asked. Then deadpan: "I actually don't know. The likelihood of Meredith remembering someone else's birthday seems low."

  Jax's mind raced. Her birthday. How in the hell had he missed that?

  Fin went still for an entirely different reason. Eighteen meant... would she be able to sense their matebond now? His gaze dropped to the stone floor, jaw tightening as his hands curled into fists.

  What was the most painful part of Finric’s "polite" performance?