Chapter 39: How To Stalk A Man

The manor received them in silence.

Marcel stepped through the front entrance first, coat still carrying the faint, dried scent of wolf blood. Adrian followed a pace behind, the usual restless energy in his movements tempered by something sharper and less playful. Servants appeared, then wisely disappeared again after a single look at Marcel’s face.

Adrian expected orders. He expected Marcel to summon the household’s best trackers, to demand the exact boarding house, the street, the room number. He expected the cold, efficient machinery of a Vampire Lord’s will to turn toward the human districts before the hour was out. That was how Marcel had always handled loss, by refusing to accept it long enough for reality to change its mind.

Instead, Marcel stopped in the center of the main hall and spoke without raising his voice.

"No one is to follow him."

Adrian stared. "I’m sorry. It sounded like you just said—"

"No one," Marcel repeated, turning just enough to meet his brother’s eyes. "Not you. Not the guard. Not a single pair of eyes from this household. Asher asked for freedom. I gave him my word, and that word will be kept."

Adrian let out a short, incredulous breath. "You’re seriously going to let him walk away. After everything. After Conrad, the ring, and after you called him your mate in front of an Alpha?"

"Yes."

"He’s vulnerable, Marcel. Half the powerful people in four kingdoms already know what he can do. The ones who don’t will hear soon enough. You’re leaving him in the lower districts with a bruise on his face and a claim ring he can’t take off."

Marcel’s expression did not soften, but something in it tightened. "I am aware of the danger. I will not use it as an excuse to control him again. That was the entire point of what he asked for."

Adrian dragged a hand through his hair, pacing a short line across the polished floor. "And the prince? That ring is still on his finger. Aaron already proved he’s willing to cross boundaries for him. What happens when the Crown Prince decides he wants his claim back?"

Marcel’s eyes flashed, black and absolute. For a moment the air in the hall dropped several degrees. Then the temperature stabilized again, forced back under control by sheer will.

"If Asher needs help, he knows how to call for it," Marcel said. "Until then, we do not interfere."

Adrian studied his brother’s face and, for the first time, understood that this was not a temporary strategy. Marcel was not waiting for Asher to fail so he could justify retrieving him. He was genuinely attempting to do the one thing centuries of instinct had never required of him: stand still while something he wanted walked away.

"You’re actually going to do this," Adrian said quietly.

Marcel did not answer. He simply turned and walked toward the stairs that led to his private wing. The conversation, as far as he was concerned, was finished.

***

The suite felt wrong the moment Marcel stepped inside.

It was the same collection of rooms it had always been, elegant, sparse in the way he preferred. The heavy curtains were drawn against the night. The bed was neatly made. Nothing had been moved. And yet the space registered as empty in a way it had not for weeks.

Marcel removed his coat and draped it over the back of a chair. As he did, his gaze caught on the small side table near the window. A plain ceramic cup sat there, the kind the kitchen used for everyday tea. Asher had left it two mornings ago after complaining that the delicate porcelain Marcel favored made him feel like he was going to break something expensive. Marcel had not had it removed. He had simply grown used to seeing it there, a small, ordinary object that did not belong to the careful order of the room and somehow made the order feel less absolute.

He stared at the cup for a long time.

Other details surfaced without permission. The way Asher talked to furniture when he thought no one was listening. The particular rhythm of his breathing when he finally slept without nightmares. The scent that had begun to linger in the sheets and on the collar of Marcel’s own shirts. None of it had been planned. All of it had quietly rearranged the shape of Marcel’s days until the absence of those small disruptions felt like a missing limb.

He wanted to go after him.

The urge was clean and immediate — to take the car back out into the night, to find the boarding house on Cinder Street, to stand in the doorway of that small rented room and refuse to accept the distance Asher had asked for. He could do it. He had the power, the speed, the absolute certainty that Asher would be safer under his roof than anywhere else in the kingdoms.

Marcel remained where he was.

He remembered the exact words Asher had spoken in the wolf stronghold: If you truly like me... let me make my own decisions. The request had not been complicated. It had simply required something Marcel was not accustomed to giving. He had given his word. Breaking it now would prove every fear Asher had named.

Marcel sat on the edge of the bed and did not move toward the door.

***

Adrian found him an hour later.

He did not bother knocking. He stepped into the suite, took in the untouched cup on the side table and the stillness of his brother’s posture, and leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

"Do you regret it?" Adrian asked.

Marcel did not pretend to misunderstand. "Yes."

"But you’re still not going after him."

"Regret does not change the promise I made." Marcel’s voice was quiet, almost distant. "If he chooses to return, I will welcome him. If he chooses another life, I will accept that too."

Adrian studied him for a long moment. There was no mockery in his expression, only a restless calculation that Marcel recognized from centuries of watching his younger brother decide which rules were optional.

"You’re a better man than I am," Adrian said at last. It did not sound like a compliment. "I’m going to bed."

He left without waiting for a reply.

***

In the eastern wing, Adrian closed the door to his own room and stood in the dark for a while, unmoving.

Marcel could keep his word. Adrian had no intention of breaking it in any way that would be obvious. He would not drag Asher back. He would not interfere directly with whatever fragile independence the human was trying to build in that cramped boarding-house room.

But he had tasted Asher’s blood.

The memory of it still sat under his tongue — richer, denser, more alive than anything he had taken in decades. It had dragged him back from the edge of death and left something restless and unfinished in its wake. Attachment was too soft a word for what it had started. Possession was too simple. All Adrian knew was that the idea of the fortune teller moving through the lower districts completely unwatched felt unacceptable.

He would keep his distance. He would not let Asher see him. But someone needed to make sure the human did not disappear into the hands of the next powerful creature who decided a seer’s gift was worth taking. Marcel had chosen restraint. Adrian, for once, would choose the quieter, uglier form of care.

He poured himself a glass of wine he did not want and began to plan how to watch a man without ever being seen.