Chapter 63: Near

Chapter 63: Chapter 63: Near

Sebastian fell asleep less than forty minutes after lunch.

The physicians had examined him again the moment Nero returned him to the medical wing, apparently unconvinced that eating soup and kissing the crown prince constituted medically neutral activities, and Roberta had spent several minutes comparing his pulse, pheromonal activity, receptor response, and gland pressure against the readings taken before he left.

Everything had remained stable.

Better than stable, according to Claude, though he had delivered that information while looking directly at Nero in a way that suggested he considered the improvement deeply irritating on principle.

Sebastian had endured the examination with declining patience, changed back into a softer shirt when one of the sensors irritated his skin, and announced that he intended to sleep before anyone could invent another procedure.

Nero had not argued.

That alone deserved recognition.

Now the observation suite had gone quiet around them.

The afternoon light had faded behind gathering clouds, leaving the narrow forest-facing windows washed in gray while the recessed lamps near the bed cast a muted amber glow across the wood-paneled wall and the edge of Sebastian’s blankets. Rain had not started again yet, though the trees beyond the glass shifted heavily beneath the wind, dark branches brushing together in irregular movements.

Sebastian slept on his side.

One arm rested beneath the pillow, dark hair fallen across his forehead, while the other lay loosely over the blanket near the monitor attached at his wrist. The tension that usually remained around his mouth had finally eased, and without it, he looked younger than he had all week.

Nero sat at the small table near the windows.

His laptop was open in front of him.

A military dispatch from the southern command occupied Nero’s laptop, filled with deployment schedules, fuel projections, and an increasingly ridiculous dispute between two regional officers who apparently required crown-level intervention because neither had learned how to share aircraft without turning logistics into a question of personal dignity.

Nero had read the same paragraph four times.

He still had no idea what it said.

His mind had narrowed around a single command until everything else became background noise.

MAKE HIM YOURS.

His fingers stopped above the keyboard.

TAKE BACK YOUR MATE.

The thought did not feel like language anymore but like something older pushing through instinct, something buried beneath reason where his enigma recognized Sebastian not as a man sitting several meters away but as something that should already have been permanently bound to him.

Nero covered his face with one large hand, gold and purple rings catching beneath the sterile light from the medical station, and clenched his jaw hard enough that his teeth ground together while his heartbeat hammered violently against his ribs.

This had been easier when Sebastian rejected him.

Painful, humiliating, and occasionally enough to make Nero want to tear apart half the world simply for existing between them, but easier.

Then Sebastian had walked into his bedroom, told him he wanted him, touched him without hesitation, kissed him until Nero forgot every clever thing he had ever learned to say, and sat in his lap as though being held by him had become natural overnight.

His instincts had interpreted that change with terrifying simplicity.

MARK HIM.

Nero inhaled slowly through his nose, trying to anchor himself in the room by separating every scent around him—the faint chemical trace of disinfectant, rain caught in the ventilation system, polished wood, warm linen, and finally Sebastian underneath everything.

That was a mistake.

His eyes closed.

The medical suite disappeared.

Red stretched beneath him.

Nero’s breath stopped.

For one disorienting second, the place felt too complete to be imagination, because there was no room around him anymore, no ceiling, no medical equipment, and no laptop glowing beneath his hands.

Only an endless red sea.

There was no visible shore and no horizon he could understand, only a colorless sky hanging above dark liquid that remained unnaturally still except for a single ripple spreading somewhere far ahead.

Nero could not tell whether he was standing in it or sitting inside it.

The blood reached around him without weight.

Then he heard a sound.

One drop.

Somewhere beyond sight.

Another followed several seconds later.

Nero’s pulse surged.

He knew blood too well to mistake it for anything else.

The certainty arrived before thought.

Sebastian.

The name tore through him.

Nero tried to move, but the red surface seemed to stretch with him, endless and empty while something tightened brutally around his chest.

There should have been Sebastian.

If this was an enigma warning, a hallucination produced by exhaustion, or some fragment of the futures that had haunted them for years, then Sebastian should have been there somewhere.

He was not.

Nero looked down.

His hands were empty.

For reasons he could not explain, that frightened him more than anything else.

The sea vanished.

Nero sucked in air so sharply that pain cut across his chest, one hand striking the edge of the table hard enough to make the coffee cup beside his laptop jump against the wood.

Gray afternoon light returned.

Amber lamps.

The dispatch was still open.

Sebastian asleep in the observation bed.

Nero stared at him while his own breathing came too fast, chest rising beneath his black shirt as he forced himself to count each breath and loosen his grip before he cracked the table beneath his fingers.

Nothing had happened.

Sebastian was there.

The monitor remained steady.

Yet the red sea stayed behind Nero’s eyes, waiting every time he blinked.

He pushed the chair back and stood too quickly, the scrape against the floor loud enough to make Sebastian shift beneath the blanket.

Nero froze.

Sebastian settled again.

Only then did Nero let out the breath trapped in his lungs.

This was becoming dangerous.

His instincts had tasted what it felt like to have Sebastian willingly in his arms and apparently decided anything less qualified as starvation.

Nero straightened slowly.

He needed sleep.

Not because his body required it, but because his mind needed several hours in which it was not actively restraining itself.

He crossed the room quietly and opened the door to the adjoining station.

Roberta looked up from a diagnostic display, her attention sharpening the moment she saw him.

"What happened?"

Nero pulled the door nearly closed behind him so Sebastian would not hear.

"I need something to make me sleep."

Roberta stared at him.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Around seventy hours."

Her expression flattened.

"For you, that is nothing."

"I know."

That answer changed something in her face.

She stepped closer, studying the tension in his shoulders and the way his hands still refused to relax completely.

"What are you experiencing?"

Nero looked through the narrow gap in the door toward Sebastian.

"My instincts are becoming difficult to suppress."

"How difficult?"

Nero almost lied, then remembered what he had demanded from Sebastian.

"Enough that I would prefer several hours without them."

Roberta remained silent for a moment before understanding settled across her expression.

"You are asking for sedation because you need a break from controlling yourself."

"Yes."

Roberta nodded once and turned toward the medication cabinet.

"All right."

Nero exhaled slowly.

"Nothing long-acting." 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

"I decide that."

"You can pretend you do."

Her eyes narrowed.

Behind him, Sebastian continued sleeping peacefully.

Nero looked at him once more, and the red sea flashed behind his eyes before he forced it down again.

A few hours.

That was all he needed.

A few hours where he did not have to be the wall standing between Sebastian and the worst parts of Nero himself.