Chapter 4 Rings
Patricia
He stands still like he belongs here, which technically he does, because this is his house, and I have been living in it for four weeks without ever quite forgetting that fact.
"You're back," I manage.
He acknowledges this with a "Mm."
"We haven't seen him once in three weeks," Louella observes, like she has been waiting to say exactly this. "And now he shows up twice today. He's definitely hiding something. Maybe your friends weren't wrong after all."
I feel the thought take root before I can stop it. The female Lycan...
But what comes out of my mouth is: "I thought you had business."
"I came back for documents." He doesn't elaborate. "I'll be leaving now."
"Ah." I set my phone down on the counter. "About the dinner. I spoke with my mother. She said they're flexible, whenever suits you."
He considers this. Not long. "This Saturday, then."
I nod.
"Anything else?"
"Ask him," Louella says, suddenly urgent. "If he leaves now, who knows when you'll see him again."
"Actually," I say, "there is something I'd like to discuss."
He looks at me. He doesn't check his watch, which I take as permission.
"I've been thinking about something I heard recently," I begin. "About a female Lycan. Someone you may have been seeing in Silvermoon Harbor." I keep my eyes on his face. "I'm not asking for details. I understand this kind of arrangement can be complicated, and I'm not here to make it more so. If that relationship is ongoing, I want you to know I won't interfere. I won't ask questions. And if the time comes when you want to formalize things with her instead, I can step back. I only ask that the family cooperation agreement between our two families remains intact."
He doesn't respond immediately.
"You see," Louella says, sounding vindicated. "He's not denying it. There's still hope for us yet. We can find our own mate."
I push her aside and keep going. "We both need this arrangement to remain stable, aren't we?"
He never told me why he chose me. But I've observed enough Lycan family politics to form a reasonable hypothesis: after Gloria shattered their mate bond, he needed to neutralize the fallout. A replacement mate, selected quickly and publicly, would silence the speculation before it could spread.
"What you want," Julius says, "is only this?"
I don't answer immediately.
"You're telling me," he continues, "that assuming all of it were true, you would be willing to maintain this arrangement."
I feel the faint sensation that I have miscalculated somewhere. "I'm establishing my right to be informed and my minimum conditions."
"You're conceding." He cuts me off cleanly. "In a negotiation where you should be holding the advantage, you've handed the leverage across the table."
I close my mouth.
"Patricia." His voice doesn't change register, but something in it settles into a different quality entirely. "We did not sign any agreement."
"I'm aware. We have the family cooperation framework."
"That protects two families' commercial interests. Not yours."
The room goes very silent. He looks at me, and there is no mockery in his expression.
"If you ever discover I have given you genuine grounds," he says, "the correct response is not to come find me and offer terms. You document everything first. Then you bring in a lawyer you trust absolutely and have them compile the materials. You contact the Greyson family's public relations team and assess the optimal disclosure window. Then you negotiate from that position."
The silence that follows is different from the ones before it.
"Did he just..." Louella begins, and for once her voice carries genuine bewilderment, "taught you how to dismantle him?"
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask.
"Because if you ever genuinely need to use it, I'd prefer you do it correctly."
I don't know what to do with that sentence. "Then I need to ask directly. Does this female Lycan exist?"
"I have no chosen mate. If I must name one, it's you."
Something in my chest loosens before I can prevent it. Not warmth, exactly. Relief, perhaps. At least his sudden attentiveness isn't guilt dressed up as consideration.
"Oh, wonderful," Louella says flatly. "He clarifies, and you're relieved."
I press her voice down. "I see. Thank you for telling me."
Julius looks at me for a moment, and I become aware that my face has not entirely cooperated.
"Wait here," he says.
He moves toward the stairs without further explanation. A minute passes, then he comes back down.
He is carrying a small box, dark velvet, minimal in every detail. He sets it on the island counter and pushes it toward me.
"The rings," he says. "Before the mark ceremony, this is the most effective public declaration available."
I register the faint trace of magical residue on the velvet surface first. High-order witch work. I have encountered attachment spells in the lab before, but the concentration embedded in this object exceeds anything I've seen.
I look up at him.
"Top-tier enchantment," he confirms. "The setting contains a fragment of ancient Lycan wolf fang. In situations that require it, the ring will release a brief pulse of Alpha Lycan presence, enough to deter anyone who approaches you with the wrong intent." He pauses. "Your work environment is unpredictable."
He means more than that. He means the various species that might consider a Lycan lord's unmark mate an accessible target.
He opens the box.
Inside are two rings. The male band is dark metal, severe and unornamented except for a line of ancient script etched along one side, nearly too fine to see. The female band mirrors its restraint, but at the center sits a fragment of pale ivory wolf fang.
Julius does not kneel. This is not that kind of moment, and neither of us pretends otherwise. He picks up the male band and slides it onto his own ring finger in a single unhurried motion. Then he lifts the female ring, and looks at me.
I hold his gaze for a beat. Then I extend my left hand.
The ring settles onto my finger, and in the instant it does, something shifts. It is barely perceptible, a low reverberation, like a frequency too deep for ordinary hearing, moving outward from the point of contact. An old announcement. A territorial fact.
Louella stirs. Not the flinch of submission, but something else entirely, something I don't have clean language for. A recognition. A sense of having been named.
I shut it down before it can develop further.
"A ring," Louella says, and her tone has recovered its edge. "This is not a mark. This is nothing."
Quiet. Muttering in my mind, I look down at my hand for a moment, then back up. "Thank you. I'll wear it when it's appropriate."
Julius holds my gaze for one more second. Then he picks up whatever documents he came back for, turns toward the front door, and says, without looking back, "I won't be back tonight. Good night, Patricia."
