Chapter 18

Jaegar

PURE FURY SAW ME THROUGH the first half of the next day. I still couldn’t believe that fate had sent me such a shallow, incompatible mate. Her intentions and desires were clear now. She was exactly what he’d feared she was—a pampered princess, inside and out.

She just wants a damn royal!

And for Theo to offer me the throne, in front of everyone? The way he put me on the spot like that... I hadn’t been prepared at all.

The fucking gall of that kid. Doesn’t he know anything?

My shoulders ached from the rocks I’d spent all day lifting, but it was a great and rewarding feeling to see the wall finally come together. A large part of the external barrier that ran around our kingdom was crumbling, and I’d been put on the team tasked with repairing it. We all still had secret worries about the wolves in the woods, even though they hadn’t been seen for almost thirty years now. Behind me, I heard one of the guys speak, dragging me from my thoughts.

“Your Highness,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

“And you also, Tomas,” Damon’s already familiar voice answered.

I wiped the sweat from my brow on the sleeve of my shirt and turned around to look at the man who’d sired me. He wasn’t wearing his royal rags today. Instead he’d donned a simple gray shirt, trousers, and a coat. He didn’t quite look like he belonged here, but he didn’t look like the king either.

“Jaegar,” he greeted, nodding once, his blue eyes zeroing in on me.

I nodded back. “Hey.”

The men around us seemed to disappear all at once as they made various excuses to look in on other projects, leaving me alone with my father.

I took a sip of water from my canteen, waiting for him to speak. When he didn’t, I cleared my throat and spoke up. “Do you have something to say? Otherwise, I’ve got get back to this.” There were only a few hours of daylight left before the day was over, and I was almost done, albeit I’d gotten to the hardest part of the job.

“I’ll help,” Damon said, pulling off his coat and laying it on the stones to his left.

“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “No need. I’ve got it.”

“You need a second pair of hands to finish the top layer,” the king said, walking up to me. “And don’t act like you don’t. I was building these walls since before you were born, son.”

His words made my heart feel strange, but I shook off the sensation. An able-bodied man had offered to help me. That’s all I needed to focus on. “Fine,” I relented. “Hand me that rock.”

He pointed to a step near the wall. “You get up first, then I’ll hand it to you. We’re going have to work together to get this part done before we lose the light.”

I stared at him for a moment, in awe at this side of him. He was right, of course. I’d struggle to lift the remaining rocks, hefty as they were, above my head high enough to place them on the wall, especially alone. And that immediately made me wonder.

What else has he done in his lifetime? What else do I not know?

“Okay,” I managed to say, then went and stood where he recommended. Then I watched as a man of at least sixty years old, albeit a dragon shifter, squatted down and wrapped his arms around the largest boulder in our vicinity. Before I could even think to tell him not to lift that one, it was done.

Damon heaved the rock up, then walked over to me, placing it into my waiting arms.

I swallowed the groan of pain caused by lifting the fucker of a thing myself. Instead, I went up and lifted the boulder above my head, placing it on the wall regardless of the strain. If my old man could do it, so could I.

Damon handed me the mortar which was a tacky sludge that would securely fill in all the gaps between the rocks.

I applied it over every crack, smoothing it down into the crevices and by the time I was done, he was back with another boulder.

We worked that way for hours, finishing more than double what I’d aimed to get done on this day.

The king—my father—was an incredibly strong man and tenacious as all hell. He didn’t stop, even when I could tell he was sore and tired. He worked like a soldier, a true laborer, unrelenting in— the face of stress and physical torment.

When the sun set over the forest and darkness fell, we stood side by side, panting hard, taking a moment to silently appreciate our hard work and what we’d achieved.

“Do you want to come back to my house?” I asked him, handing him my almost empty canteen of water. “For a drink?”

He nodded, wiping sweat from his brow.

And together we staggered the short distance back to my home.

When we entered, I tried not to feel ashamed of the interior of the house. Vanya had been incredibly uncomfortable here, amongst the peasants.

But Damon walked in and sat down as though he’d been here before, groaning with the strain of the day. “Damn,” he said. “I haven’t worked that hard in a long time.”

I poured us both a glass of water and handed him one. “But you can still do it,” I said to him, lifting my glass in gratitude. “Thanks for the help.”

Damon nodded in acknowledgement.

Then we drank our water in silence as the moments ticked by.

I began to wonder what else I could offer him. “We could get some dinner?” I offered. “I don’t have much here, but I eat at the local most nights.” We had a cheap but good little tavern not far away, and I had a lot of my meals there.

Damon smiled. “Thanks, but Cass wants me home for dinner.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at how absurdly casual he sounded. “You say that like you’re going home to your wife, just like any other normal man.”

Damon frowned at me, his lips twisting. “That’s exactly what it feels like, too. Yes, we have servants, Cass isn’t the one doing the cooking, and my house is bigger than most... but it’s still the same, Jaegar.”

I sat down on the armchair, my muscles protesting at the movement. “You know, I don’t think I’ve worked that hard in years either.” I stretched out my arms, feeling the tight and painful pull of a torn muscle.

“You should come up to the castle,” Damon said. “You could use a long, hot bath.”

“I’m fine here,” I said stubbornly. “I have a bathroom. I’ll have a shower later.” I didn’t have a luxurious tub to luxuriate in of course, but I had all the basic necessities I needed.

Damon nodded slowly but didn’t speak. And he didn’t leave either.

“Did you come to talk about something?” I asked him. “I hope you’re not trying to make me become king after you, because that isn’t on the cards for me. I’m sorry to disappoint.”

Damon chuckled. “Really? Have you checked in with Marienne on that?”

“Oh, well...” And Anthony’s vision flooded back to me of Vanya’s birthing scene, inside the castle’s walls. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. That life isn’t for me. Besides, Anthony said their visions change all the time. It’s not like they’re set in stone.”

Damon sighed. “Jaegar, you don’t have to be king. You don’t even have to live in the castle if you don’t want to. But—”

“But what?” I demanded to know. Why had he bothered to put in a hard day’s labor by my side if he wasn’t going to be straight with me now?

“But you’ll miss out on things if you make that choice.”

I lifted my chin. “Dymitri and Lucian live in town, here, with me,” I pointed out.

Damon smiled, but his gaze said he knew something more. “That’s true, but it wasn’t to begin with. They lived with us—for years, in fact. It wasn’t until we all had children, and Sarah and Katerina had personally acclimatized to our weather, that they eventually chose to live in town.”

I blinked at him, momentarily taken aback. “I, ah, I didn’t know that.” I’d thought they’d lived it rugged and rough like I had.

Damon grinned at me. “Why would you? That was almost thirty years ago, now.”

I sighed and put down my glass, resigned to the fact that this was going to be an uncomfortable conversation. “So, what’s that got to do with me?”

Damon stood up and moved over to the fireplace, bending down to begin the process of building the fire for the night just like any other man. When he was done, he stood back up, groaning softly with the pain of moving. “It’s got everything to do with you Jaegar. Whether you like it or not, you have royal blood flowing in your veins, a royal fated mate from another kingdom, and from what you’ve said, a potential future in the castle that Anthony had already seen.”

I stood up and paced the room, my heart beginning to gallop. I’d been running away from this conversation for so long, unsure I was ready for it. “And?” I said, my chest tightening, “So, that means that this noose around my neck will always be there? That I have no choice in the matter?”

“You always have a choice,” the king said. “But are you ready for the consequences of making those choices?”

I stared at him, then crossed my arms over my chest, an unexpected anger building in my heart. “What are you talking about?”

Long moments ticked by as Damon stared at me before he spoke again. “Do you really think you can reject your fated mate and survive?”

My throat thickened, and I swallowed hard at the solemn expression on his face. He was being deathly serious. He was giving me a warning. “But Vanya would never survive this world. She wants me to be a prince and to live in her father’s castle!”

Damon shrugged. “And? What’s wrong with that?” he asked.

I threw my hands up in the air in frustration. “Are you serious? You know exactly what’s wrong with that! I’m an ice dragon! A man of the North! I’m not living in some pampered, bullshit castle with nothing to do all day.”

Damon raised an eyebrow at me. “You do realize that with all that power comes money, duty, control, and resources? Do you know what sort of changes you could make? What sort of good you could do for our people?”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again.

Damn it.

He was right, unfortunately. It was what he’d done, after all. He’d fought hard when it was required of him, then used his power to help our people. “Fine,” I conceded. “But even if I wanted to help our people, I still don’t want to be king.”

Damon snorted. “Son, I don’t intend to die for at least another good twenty years, and I’m not giving up the job until then. So, how about you don’t make wide, sweeping statements that aren’t relevant yet?”

I glared at him. “And yet your son seems to think I need to make that choice, now. He certainly made it an issue over dinner the other night.”

“Your half-brother,” Damon added, “is young and enthusiastic to have the mantle of crown prince taken off him. He wasn’t lying when he intimated that he wasn’t interested in ruling.”

For fuck’s sake...

Damon strolled over to the door and put his hand on the handle. “Look, son. I am so grateful that you came to us when you did. I only wish I’d known about you sooner.”

“What would you have done?” I asked, my throat thick with emotion as I dared to ask the one question that had plagued me all my life.

The king’s icy blue eyes looked right into the depths of my soul as he answered, “I would have brought you into my family immediately. You and your mother would have lived in the castle, and I would have looked after you the best I could. I would have made you feel welcome and made sure you knew that you were loved.”

Despite my original reservations, I believed him. And it made more of a difference than I ever imagined.

But...

“I still don’t want to leave the North,” I said, voicing my truth. “I can’t do it.”

“Then you better speak to Vanya, because trust me when I say, you won’t survive long without her. Especially since you’ve taken her to bed. That only reinforces and strengthens the intensity of the bond.”

I inhaled sharply through my nose. I didn’t like people telling me what I could and couldn’t do. Not fate, or the king, my father.

Damon held his hand up to wave farewell. “I hope you choose the path that is right for you both,” he said, then took his leave.

Out of pure stubbornness, I stayed in my humble little thatched home for the evening and climbed into my cold, empty bed to sleep away the thoughts that overwhelmed me and the pain that wracked my aching body. But sleep eluded me, and instead I lay on my lumpy, old mattress staring up at the ceiling with nothing more than the ghost of Vanya’s scent and my memories to keep me company through the long, dark and icy night.