Chapter 114: Not Yours to Carry

Chapter 114: Chapter 114: Not Yours to Carry

Lucas barely had time to look up before Sebastian crossed the space between them and pulled him to his feet.

Then he hugged him.

Lucas went still.

Sebastian had inherited Trevor’s height, and much of his build, which meant wrapping his arms around his smaller blond father had always felt strangely easy, even when he had been young enough to remember Lucas seeming impossibly tall.

"Stop," Sebastian murmured.

Lucas’s hands closed slowly against the back of his white shirt.

"You don’t get to tell me not to feel guilty."

"I absolutely do when the guilt belongs nowhere near you."

"Sebastian—"

"No."

Sebastian tightened his arms.

"This wasn’t your fault. None of it."

Lucas’s breath trembled against his shoulder.

"You were carrying something like that for years, and I was right there."

"Exactly. You were right there being my father. You loved me, annoyed me, interfered in things that were absolutely none of your business, fed me when I forgot to eat, and called every time you thought I sounded tired."

A wet laugh escaped Lucas.

Sebastian smiled against his hair.

"You did your job excessively well. I was simply very determined to make sure you couldn’t do anything about this one."

"That does not make me feel better."

"It should make you irritated with me."

"I’m capable of both."

"Good. Irritation is healthier."

Lucas pulled back enough to look at him, green eyes bright.

"You thought you were going to die."

Sebastian hesitated.

"That wasn’t what frightened me most."

Lucas’s expression tightened.

Sebastian knew he had to be careful.

There were things even Trevor did not know in full, details Sebastian had never managed to say aloud because speaking them would make the images too real.

"I wasn’t the one suffering in most of what I remembered," he said quietly. "Nero was."

Lucas stared at him.

Sebastian released a slow breath.

"I saw myself hurting because of what happened to him, yes, but when I think about those lives, Nero is the one I remember bleeding. Nero is the one who kept losing things. Nero is the one who..." He stopped before the image of blood-covered hands could complete itself. "He always paid for me."

Lucas’s face changed.

"And you still chose him."

Sebastian looked toward the closed doors.

Somewhere beyond them, Nero was probably arguing constitutional structures with Dax while simultaneously planning three different ways to interrogate Sebastian the second he returned.

His arrogant, obsessive, impossible fiancé.

"Yes."

Lucas searched his face.

"After all of that?"

Sebastian’s mouth curved faintly.

"I decided to believe in his arrogant ass."

Lucas blinked.

Then laughed despite the tears still caught along his lashes.

"That is your explanation?"

"It’s the short version."

"I’m afraid to ask for the long one."

"You should be."

Sebastian’s smile softened.

"The truth is, I spent years making decisions based on endings when I didn’t understand the beginning. I thought staying away from him was the only safe choice because it was the only choice I could control." He looked down briefly. "Then I actually let him close enough to prove me wrong."

Lucas listened without interrupting.

"He waited," Sebastian continued. "He manipulated everything around me, naturally, because apparently behaving normally would have killed him, but he kept the one promise that mattered. He never crossed the line I gave him."

Lucas’s mouth moved faintly.

"And eventually you crossed it yourself."

"Yes."

Sebastian looked toward him again.

"I chose Nero knowing what I remember. I’m not pretending those memories stopped frightening me. They haven’t. But I trust him more than I trust fragments of lives I don’t understand."

Lucas’s hands remained on Sebastian’s arms.

"And if the same thing happens?"

Sebastian was quiet for several seconds.

"Then we deal with what is actually in front of us."

That sounded suspiciously like something Trevor would say.

Perhaps that was why Lucas smiled.

Sebastian squeezed his shoulders.

"So no more deciding you failed me."

Lucas sighed.

"I reserve the right to feel wounded that Trevor knew first."

"That is fair."

"And Dean."

"Less fair. Dean started this."

"Arion?"

Sebastian grimaced.

Lucas’s eyes narrowed.

"Oh, wonderful."

"In my defense—"

"You have none."

Sebastian laughed.

Lucas finally leaned forward and hugged him again, less startled this time.

Sebastian held him.

"Nero doesn’t know."

Lucas stilled against him.

After a moment, he pulled back, though his hands remained around Sebastian’s arms as he searched his face.

"None of it?"

"Not from me."

Lucas studied him long enough that Sebastian could see several questions forming and being discarded before his father settled on the least dangerous one.

"Why?"

Sebastian released him and returned to the sofa, lowering himself into the corner while Lucas sat beside him this time rather than across from him.

"Because telling Nero that I spent years seeing versions of our lives where something terrible happened seemed unlikely to improve his behavior."

Lucas considered that.

"Fair."

"Thank you."

"That wasn’t approval."

"I’ll take what I can get."

Lucas leaned back, one leg crossing over the other.

Sebastian looked toward the windows.

"Nero doesn’t react to threats the way normal people do. If I tell him there are possible timelines where we lose, he won’t hear possible timeline. He’ll hear that something has challenged him."

"And then?"

"He’ll declare war on causality."

Lucas snorted before he could stop himself.

Sebastian glanced at him.

"You’re laughing, but you know I’m right."

"I do, which is unfortunately why it’s funny."

Sebastian smiled briefly before his expression settled.

"There’s another problem. I don’t know enough."

"You know considerably more now than you did five years ago."

"Yes. And every answer created three more questions."

His fingers moved absently over the edge of his sleeve.

He was becoming an omega.

The markers were strengthening exactly as the temple had once predicted. His body had responded to Nero’s pheromones, to intimacy, to a process medicine had barely begun to understand.

Some of those impossible fragments had already proven frighteningly accurate.

That did not mean he understood them.

"I don’t want to hand Nero half a story and watch him build decisions around it," Sebastian said. "Especially when those decisions concern his own life."

Lucas was quiet.

Then, gently, "Isn’t that what you did?"

Sebastian looked at him.

Lucas did not soften the question.

"You spent years making decisions for Nero because you knew half a story."

That landed unpleasantly well.

Sebastian leaned his head back against the sofa.

"I liked you better when you were blaming yourself."

"No, you didn’t."

"No."

Lucas’s mouth curved faintly.

Sebastian stared at the ceiling.

"I know."

The admission sat heavily between them.

Lucas did not tell him to confess immediately. He understood Sebastian too well for that, and perhaps understood Nero well enough to know that such a conversation could not simply be dropped between dinner and tomorrow’s constitutional meeting.

Eventually, Lucas reached over and rested his hand on Sebastian’s knee.

"You chose him knowing what you remember."

"Yes."

"And you trust him."

Sebastian turned his head.

The answer came without hesitation.

"Yes."

Lucas nodded slowly.

"Then perhaps you should eventually trust him with why choosing him was so difficult."

Sebastian looked away again.

"That sounds suspiciously reasonable."

"I have occasional moments."

"I’ll inform Father."

"He already knows. It’s why he keeps me."

Sebastian laughed softly.

Lucas squeezed his knee before standing.

"Not today, if you aren’t ready."

Sebastian looked up at him.

"But don’t wait until you convince yourself silence is protecting him again."

The words remained after Lucas stepped away.

Sebastian had no clever answer for them. Because that was exactly what he had been doing.