Chapter 117: Reasonable Expectations

Chapter 117: Chapter 117: Reasonable Expectations

Nero laughed once, but there was nothing amused in the sound.

"Reasonable expectations?"

"Yes."

Sebastian stepped away from the windows because standing still had become impossible, crossing the bedroom with quick, restless strides until he reached the dresser where their watches and cufflinks sat in careful rows beneath the warm wall lights. His white shirt was still open several buttons at the throat, the cuffs hanging loose around his wrists, and every movement disturbed the fabric as though even his clothes had become incapable of settling.

"You should have met someone else," he said. "Someone closer to your age. Someone uncomplicated. Someone who wasn’t already carrying an inheritance problem large enough to involve three governments."

Nero’s stare sharpened.

"Someone who wasn’t you."

Sebastian’s mouth tightened.

"That would have been preferable."

The silence afterward felt immediate and violent.

Nero stood beside the foot of the bed, cream shirt open at the collar and long white-blond hair spilling down his back, looking at Sebastian as though he had finally succeeded in saying the one thing capable of cutting through seven years of stubborn devotion.

"Preferable for whom?"

Sebastian did not answer fast enough.

Nero moved closer.

"For you?"

"For both of us."

"You do not get to answer for me."

The irony was so spectacular Sebastian almost laughed, but anger arrived first.

"Oh, now agency matters?"

Nero stopped.

Sebastian turned fully toward him.

"You have spent the last fifteen minutes telling me I owe you an explanation because you decided my reasons belong to you, but apparently you object when I say I wanted you to have a life that didn’t revolve around waiting for me."

"I did have a life."

"You organized it around me."

"I ruled beside my father, trained, studied, traveled, handled diplomacy, learned every part of the government I would inherit, and somehow still found the emotional capacity to love one difficult bastard."

Sebastian’s expression hardened.

"You know exactly what I mean."

"Yes, I do." Nero’s voice lowered. "You wanted me to replace you."

"I wanted you to move on."

"With whom?"

"That was not my decision."

"And yet you seem remarkably invested in the imaginary person."

"Because anyone would have been safer!"

Nero went still.

The fire behind them shifted as one of the logs collapsed inward, throwing a brief scatter of sparks against the dark stone and painting the polished floor with orange light.

"Safer," Nero repeated.

Sebastian closed his eyes for half a second.

"Yes."

"For me."

"Yes, Nero. For you."

The cold pressure of Nero’s pheromones faltered before drawing inward so abruptly that the room felt hollow without them.

"What did you think I needed protection from?"

Sebastian turned away.

Nero followed only one step before stopping himself.

That restraint should have helped.

Instead, it made Sebastian angrier because Nero was finally doing exactly what Sebastian had demanded, and the questions still felt like hands searching for a wound he had spent years covering.

"You don’t know when to leave something alone."

"No."

"At least you admit it."

"I also know when you are afraid."

Sebastian looked over his shoulder.

Nero’s expression was no longer merely furious. The wound remained there, buried beneath a desperation he had never been particularly good at hiding where Sebastian was concerned.

"You weren’t afraid of me when you rejected me," Nero said. "You were afraid of what would happen if you didn’t."

Sebastian’s throat tightened.

"Nero."

"What were you protecting me from?"

"Stop."

"I want to understand."

"And I told you I am not ready."

"You also told me anyone else would have been safer."

Sebastian spun around.

"Because they would have been!"

His voice rose sharply enough to echo off the high ceiling.

Nero took the impact without moving.

Sebastian dragged both hands through his hair, pushing it back from his face before pacing several steps toward the sitting area and turning again.

"You think I enjoyed it?" he demanded. "You think I watched you spend years waiting for me and felt good about myself because I was proving some point?"

"I don’t know what you felt. You never told me."

"I was trying to keep you alive!"

Nero froze.

So did Sebastian.

The words remained between them.

Nero’s face altered, anger giving way to something quieter and more dangerous.

"Alive."

Sebastian stared at him.

He could still stop.

He could walk away, sleep somewhere else, wait until tomorrow when anger no longer had its hands around his throat.

Then Nero said, "What did you think being with you was going to do to me?"

Something inside Sebastian tore.

"I would rather have died in berserk."

Nero’s complexion changed.

Sebastian stepped toward him before Nero could speak, years of fear finally outrunning every instinct that had kept it contained.

"I would rather have lost control, gone berserk, and died before I ever let you stabilize me than become the reason you suffered again."

Nero’s lips parted.

Sebastian barely noticed.

"Do you understand that? I knew what berserk meant. I knew what would happen to me eventually, and there were days when I still thought dying that way might be easier than choosing you and discovering I had dragged us into the same fucking ending."

Nero stared at him.

"What ending?"

Sebastian’s chest rose sharply.

"All of them."

The fury went out of Nero’s face.

Sebastian laughed once, breathless and miserable.

"There. That’s what you wanted."

"I don’t understand."

The lie was delivered perfectly.

Sebastian had no reason to recognize it.

"Neither did I."

He turned toward the windows again, but this time he did not make it there. He stopped beside the armchair, gripping its back until his knuckles whitened.

"Five years ago, Dean and Arion came back from their honeymoon with information from the temple. Visionaries had seen possible futures involving you and me. Roslew falling. Infected beasts. Entire command structures collapsing."

Nero said nothing.

Sebastian forced himself to continue.

"And me becoming a dominant omega."

Behind him, Nero’s breathing changed.

Sebastian turned his head.

"A siren."

Nero’s gaze dropped involuntarily toward Sebastian’s throat.

The transition.

The markers.

Roberta telling them only hours earlier that the omega development was increasing exactly as it should.

Sebastian gave him a bitter smile.

"You understand why I stopped believing it was nonsense."

"When did you start believing it?"

"Three years ago."

Nero’s eyes lifted.

"I started dreaming."

The word sounded inadequate.

Sebastian released the chair.

"Except they weren’t dreams. Not really. Sometimes I knew places I had never visited. Sometimes I remembered conversations that never happened. I knew what it felt like to have lived years beside you when, in this life, I was barely speaking to you."

Nero’s face had gone almost unnaturally still.

"Were we together?"

Sebastian swallowed.

"Yes."

"By choice?"

That hurt.

Sebastian looked away.

"Most of what I remember starts too late for me to know how we got there."

"But you loved me."

Sebastian closed his eyes.

"Yes."

The answer left the room raw.

When he looked back, Nero’s fury was gone, making everything even harder.

Sebastian’s voice dropped.

"And you kept dying."

Nero did not move.

"Every clear timeline I remember ends with you suffering somehow. Sometimes I know I’m dying too. Sometimes I don’t get far enough to find out because all that matters is that you’re gone."

He rubbed the heel of his hand against his sternum as though the pressure there could be physically removed.

"I can carry my own death. I can carry changing into an omega, losing Fitzgeralt, losing everything else if that is what happens."

His voice broke despite his effort to control it.

"I could not carry being the reason you died again."

Nero finally moved.

One step.

Then another.

He stopped in front of Sebastian without touching him.

Sebastian looked up into violet eyes that were no longer cold.

"I spent years trying to make you hate me enough to leave," he said. "Because hatred would have been survivable. Watching another version of you destroy yourself because you loved me would not."

Nero’s jaw tightened.

"And now?"

Sebastian exhaled shakily.

"Now I chose you anyway."

A long silence followed.

Then Nero asked, very softly, "Why?"