Chapter 116: Agency

Chapter 116: Chapter 116: Agency

Sebastian held Nero’s gaze through the mirror for several seconds before returning his attention to the cufflink resting between his fingers.

"It doesn’t matter anymore."

The answer changed Nero immediately.

The easy amusement that had followed them from dinner disappeared from his face, leaving behind something so controlled that Sebastian felt the shift before Nero moved at all. The warm smoke of his pheromones thinned around them, the familiar heat withdrawing until the bedroom suddenly seemed colder despite the low fire burning beyond the sitting area.

Sebastian set the cufflink beside Nero’s watch.

Behind him, violet eyes remained fixed on his reflection.

"It doesn’t matter," Nero repeated.

"No." Sebastian reached for the first button of his white shirt. "Whatever kept me away clearly failed at its intended purpose. I’m here."

Nero’s expression darkened.

Sebastian should probably have chosen another phrasing.

He barely managed to open the second button before Nero’s hand came up, long fingers settling beneath his jaw and turning his face toward the mirror.

Sebastian went rigid.

"Look at me."

His voice was quiet.

That made it worse.

In the mirror, cream fabric stretched across Nero’s shoulders, several buttons already undone at his throat after dinner, while his white-blond hair fell loose almost to his waist. Against Sebastian’s white shirt and dark hair, they looked absurdly composed for two men seconds away from an argument.

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.

"I was already looking at you."

"Then stop dismissing me."

Nero’s thumb rested beside his chin.

"You asked about my ruts. I told you. You asked whether there had ever been anyone else, and I told you there hadn’t. I can ask any question you have, Sebastian."

"Nero... There is a time and place for everything."

"Yes. Now," Nero snapped.

Sebastian went completely still.

For a moment, even the fire seemed louder.

Then Sebastian turned his head against Nero’s hand deliberately enough that the fingers beneath his jaw had only two choices.

Hold him harder.

Or let him go.

Nero released him.

Sebastian turned around immediately, putting his back against the dresser. The polished wood pressed into his hips while Nero stood less than a step away, cream shirt open at the throat, long pale hair spilling over one shoulder and his face stripped of every trace of the easy affection he had worn through dinner.

"No," Sebastian said.

Nero’s eyes narrowed.

"No?"

"You don’t decide that."

"I have waited seven years."

"And that apparently destroyed your understanding of basic boundaries."

A pulse moved along Nero’s jaw.

"I respected every boundary you gave me."

"Then respect this one."

"This is different."

"Because you want the answer?"

"Because it concerns me."

Sebastian laughed sharply.

Everything about Nero cooled further. His pheromones spread through the room like smoke after rain, stripped of their familiar warmth until the pressure along Sebastian’s skin felt almost metallic.

Sebastian straightened, teeth gritting out of fury.

"Pull them back."

Nero did, but not before Sebastian understood exactly how angry he was.

That only irritated him more.

"You’re behaving as if marrying me gave you unrestricted access to my head."

"I want to understand why the man I wanted for seven years spent those same years running from me."

Sebastian’s hands fisted, his nails digging deep into his palms.

"I refused you. I hurt you to stop doing it. Stop trying to find an external enemy to all of this. If you wanted to hate someone for it, you should have hated me!"

The words struck the room hard enough that Sebastian heard his own breathing afterward.

Nero did not move.

For an instant, something raw flashed across his face before the cold returned, sharper for having cracked at all.

"You think I didn’t try?"

Sebastian’s anger faltered.

Nero stepped closer.

"I spent years trying to be angry with you."

His voice had dropped, every word controlled with visible effort.

"I told myself you were cruel. Arrogant. Cowardly. I told myself I should stop rearranging my life around someone who could barely tolerate sitting beside me at dinner."

Sebastian’s fists loosened slightly.

Nero’s eyes burned into him.

"It never worked."

"That wasn’t my responsibility."

"No. It was mine." Nero’s mouth twisted. "And I carried it."

He turned away abruptly, one hand dragging through his long hair before falling against the back of his neck. The movement disturbed the cream shirt across his shoulders, pulling the open collar wider.

Sebastian had rarely seen Nero angry without calculation beneath it. This time Nero didn’t try to control anything.

"I stayed away when you told me to stay away," Nero said. "I watched you leave rooms because I entered them. I watched you choose seats where I couldn’t speak to you without making a spectacle of myself. I learned exactly how close I was permitted to stand before you found an excuse to move."

Sebastian looked toward the floor.

"Don’t."

"You wanted me to understand what you did? Fine. Let me understand all of it."

"I already told you why."

"No, you gave me reasons that stopped making sense years before you came to Saha."

Sebastian’s head snapped up.

Nero had turned back toward him.

The anger was still there, but something much uglier lived beneath it now.

Desperation.

That disturbed Sebastian more than the cold pheromones had.

Nero crossed the room until only a narrow strip of carpet remained between them.

"You keep telling me you chose me now as though that erases the years when you looked at me like wanting you was something I needed to outgrow."

"You should’ve outgrown it." Sebastian swallowed. "This should’ve been just another crush on someone you knew and liked. You should’ve found someone else and gone on with your life."

For the first time since the argument began, Nero looked genuinely wounded.

Not theatrically offended. Not angry in the calculated way Sebastian had learned to recognize when Nero was already deciding what to destroy and how politely he intended to do it.

Wounded.

His shoulders drew back beneath the cream shirt, and the cold pressure of his pheromones faltered for half a second before returning with enough force to make the air around them feel thin.

"A crush."

Sebastian hated himself almost immediately.

He held the line anyway.

"You were eighteen."

"I know how old I was."

"You had barely started living independently. You had never been in a relationship. You saw someone older who had been around your family for years, someone you trusted, and you decided it was love."

"I knew it was love."

"You believed it was."

Nero’s jaw clenched.

Sebastian saw the muscles move beneath pale skin.

"That is incredibly condescending."

"It was supposed to be temporary."

"According to whom?"

"According to every reasonable expectation!"