Chapter 333: Chapter 333: Attention
The next afternoon his office didn’t look like an office at all but a bunker after a siege. The folders from the presentation had been dumped in one corner, a stack of thank-you notes and debrief memos balanced on top like a precarious tower. Lucas lay sprawled sideways across the sofa with one arm flung over his eyes, shoes still on, and tie somewhere on the carpet. The only sign of life was the low glow of his phone on the coffee table.
A soft chime broke the quiet. He cracked one green eye open, thumb sliding across the screen. The notification wasn’t from Serathine or the palace. It was from his own health tracker, the discreet one Windstone had set up for him after the last scare.
Cycle Alert: projected heat window: 3 days.
Lucas stared at it for a beat, brain foggy from too many sleepless nights. Heat. Three days. Right on time.
He rolled onto his back, phone resting against his chest. That was when the second thought arrived, slow and cold and odd: Trevor. In all these weeks of being glued to his side, of schedules and security drills and stolen kisses behind doors, Trevor hadn’t once slipped into a rut. Not even the faint scent shift he usually got in the days beforehand. Nothing. As if he’d simply... switched it off.
Lucas lowered the phone, eyes narrowing at the ceiling. That wasn’t normal. Trevor never left something like that to chance, especially not with Lucas this close to his own cycle. Either he was dosing himself or hiding something.
A slow, crooked smile tugged at Lucas’s mouth. He set the phone on the table, swung his legs off the sofa and straightened his shirt. "Suspicious," he muttered to the empty room. "And very stupid if he thinks I won’t notice."
He stood, smoothing his hair back with both hands, the lazy sprawl gone. The exhaustion was still there under his skin, but the pulse of curiosity, and something warmer and needier, was already burning through it. Trevor had been keeping his distance on purpose. Fine. He’d go find him.
Lucas grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair and headed for the door, still smiling to himself. "If he’s hiding from me, he’s about to regret it," he said under his breath. "I want my barnacle back."
—
Trevor’s office didn’t look like a noble’s study, but more like a CEO’s war room. Floor-to-ceiling glass gave a view of the manor’s gardens below, the late-autumn light running in thin gold bars across a slate-grey desk. Two curved monitors glowed faintly above a wireless keyboard; one showed live palace feeds, the other a scrolling stack of reports. The hum of a quiet HVAC unit and the faint hiss of an espresso machine were the only sounds.
On the desk lay a tablet, two phones, and a single, slim black folder with Caelan’s seal. Trevor had been reading the same page for ten minutes. Ophelia had handed over everything: contacts, accounts, and code names. The analysts had already mapped the network overnight with what they extracted from her and Alexander Stone. The last memo in the folder was her transfer order, a new name, a sealed file, and a "correctional residency" somewhere no cameras reached. Clean and bloodless, Caelan’s kind of disposal.
She hadn’t even been Misty’s daughter, nor Alexander’s, as she firmly believed. One of Vivienne’s "program" strays, raised as a lure, pointed like a weapon at Lucas. That revelation had hollowed her faster than any sentence. Trevor closed the folder and leaned back, rubbing a thumb along the edge of his espresso cup. It was almost done, but for some reason it still tasted like ash.
The soft hiss of the door opening broke the quiet. He looked up, expecting Windstone, and found Lucas instead.
Lucas stepped through, jacket slung over one shoulder, green eyes bright with something between amusement and accusation. The brushed steel and LED panels made his hair look almost gold. "You’re hiding from me," he said, voice light but pointed. "That’s dangerous."
Trevor swivelled his chair a fraction, one brow lifting. "I’m working," he said evenly, though his hand stayed on the closed folder. "Somebody has to read the fallout."
Lucas let the door shut behind him and crossed the polished floor, dropping his jacket over a visitor’s chair. "Fallout can wait." Hands sliding into his pockets, he moved closer to the desk. "You’ve been very disciplined lately. Too disciplined for a man ready to pin me to the bed every night until the presentation."
Trevor’s violet eyes flicked up to him, a flicker of surprise quickly masked. "You’re keeping track of my biology now?"
"I’m keeping track of my husband," Lucas said softly, stopping at the edge of the desk. "And my cycle is in three days." His smile turned a shade more wicked. "So either you’ve developed monk-level self-control or you’re hiding something from me."
Trevor’s mouth quirked despite himself, a faint crack in the cool executive mask. "And if it’s the first?"
Lucas leaned in until his palms were flat on the cool glass of the desk, the green of his eyes bright under the LEDs. "Then I came to collect my barnacle," he said, voice low and edged with humor. "Before you drown yourself in reports." With a flick of his wrist, he slid the folder out from under Trevor’s fingers and set it aside. "This can wait. I want attention."
Trevor watched the folder disappear under Lucas’s hand, the cool glass of the desk now an empty stretch between them. His violet eyes stayed on his husband for a long second, measuring the glow under the green and the small tremor of tension at the edge of his mouth. He’d known this conversation was coming; he just hadn’t expected it to walk in wearing a half-smile and smelling faintly of soap and autumn air.
"You don’t waste time," he said at last, his voice low. He tapped the end of his pen once against the desk, then set it down. "I’ve been on suppressants." He said the flat truth between them. "It kept me steady through the last two months. It kept you from having to juggle another variable."
Lucas tilted his head but didn’t move his hands from the desk. "That’s a very polite way of saying you’ve been medicating yourself to stay out of my bed," he said lightly. "And you didn’t think to tell me?"
"I didn’t want you to think it was about you," Trevor replied. He pushed the chair back and stood, the line of his suit breaking as he moved around the desk. "It was about control. The palace was breathing down your neck. You’ve had enough pressure without me pinning you to bed at the same time."
Lucas’s mouth curved, but there was no real humor in it. "That is mine to decide."