Chapter 67: Chapter 67: Tell Lucas.

Sirius stood in front of the tall window of his main office, hands clasped behind his back, watching the palace move the way a machine moved when it had been trained for centuries to grieve on schedule.

Below, in the inner courtyard, preparations for Caelan’s funeral ceremony were happening in real time. Black drapery went up. Sconces were replaced. The route was being measured twice, then measured again, because tradition loved precision more than it loved peace. Courtiers drifted through corridors in coordinated silence, already practicing the faces they would wear when the cameras turned.

As Trevor had said, whatever Arion’s pheromones had done, Caelan was declared dead of natural causes.

Eighty-nine.

Not too old for an alpha like him – alphas like Caelan tended to survive out of spite alone – but old enough that the paperwork didn’t argue. Old enough that the state could nod solemnly and pretend this was fate and not look closer.

The ceremony itself wasn’t a problem. Not even the illegitimate children Caelan had continued to produce long after he’d already had seven adult heirs, each of them suddenly crawling out of wherever they’d been kept and demanding rights like they’d been promised a throne.

Sirius had settled that easily.

Money. Contracts. Silence agreements dressed up as ’support.’ A signature bought the end of a story, and Caelan had left behind enough wealth to pay for his own erasure ten times over.

No… none of that was the problem.

The problem was Dean and Zion.

The problem was what Caelan had planned to do with both of his grandsons.

Sirius stared out at the courtyard and felt something feral tighten behind his ribs. He was grateful, genuinely grateful, that Trevor was as strong as he was, politically, militarily, physically. Grateful that Lucas had built a shield around their children so thoroughly that even Caelan couldn’t breach it without getting burned.

Because if Trevor had been softer, if Lucas had been alone in this, if Sirius hadn’t had a spine made of iron and reform…

It would have turned ugly a lot sooner.

Sirius could have intervened. He would have.

But gods.

Sometimes he caught himself wanting Caelan alive again just so he could kill him properly, with his own hands, without paperwork, without ’natural causes’ and polite condolences.

Behind him, Ethan exhaled like a man about to die from the sheer weight of bureaucracy. He had collapsed onto the chaise with the dramatic poise of a theater actor, one arm thrown over his eyes, papers scattered across the low table and the carpet like they’d attacked him first.

“Did you read that fucking will?” Ethan asked, voice muffled by his forearm and rage.

Sirius didn’t turn. “Yes.”

Ethan’s hand dropped just enough to glare at the ceiling. “And?”

“It was drafted without Parliament,” Sirius said evenly. “Without me. Without anyone knowing except one secretary.” A pause. “I will dispose of it.”

Ethan pushed himself up halfway, hair falling into his eyes. “Dispose,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. “Sirius, it’s not trash. It’s a crime.”

“It’s both,” Sirius replied, calm only because he had no choice. “The crime can’t live on paper.”

Ethan sat up fully, and the movement sent a stack of documents sliding off the chaise. He didn’t even flinch. “What was in his mind?” he demanded. “I get the grudge with me… with us. Fine. He hated that I exist. He hated that you chose me.”

His voice cracked on the last part from the sheer insult of it.

“But what did Zion do?” Ethan continued, sharper now. “Or Cassius?”

Zion – Ethan and Sirius’s first son, twenty-three, a splitting image of Caelan in bone structure and posture in a way that felt like fate spitting in their faces.

Cassius – Lucius and Mia’s son – was only a few months older than Zion.

Old enough to vote. Old enough to inherit. Old enough, apparently, for Caelan to have looked at him and seen not a person, but leverage.

Sirius finally turned from the window.

“Cassius did nothing,” he said, and the calm in his voice was the most dangerous thing in the room. “Neither did Zion. That’s the point.”

Ethan dragged his arm off his eyes and stared at the ceiling like it had personally offended him. “So he went after the grandchildren because we didn’t break fast enough.”

“Yes.”

Ethan laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Classic.”

The door swung inward with controlled force – enough to make the hinges complain, not enough to justify a guard intervening. The air changed immediately, the way it did when an alpha entered a room already angry and refusing to hide it.

Lucius walked in like he’d been holding fury in his throat for hours and had finally decided the palace could choke on it.

His suit was immaculate, but the composure was gone around the edges. His eyes were bright and lethal, jaw tight enough to hurt. In one hand he carried a sealed folder.

He didn’t bother with greetings or ceremony.

He crossed straight to Sirius’s desk and slammed the folder down hard enough that the papers inside shifted with a dry, sharp sound.

“Explain,” Lucius said, voice low.

Ethan sat up so fast the chaise creaked. “Oh. Good morning to you too.”

Lucius didn’t even look at him.

His gaze stayed locked on Sirius, and there was something in it that wasn’t just anger… it was disgust. The kind that came when someone violated a line you didn’t even think needed defending because it was so basic.

Sirius held his gaze steadily. “You received it.”

Lucius’s laugh was short and vicious. “I received a dead man’s attempt to turn my family into a contract portfolio,” he said. “Yes, I received it.”

Then his voice sharpened, like the blade finally finding the correct target.

“Dean,” Lucius said.

Ethan swore under his breath.

Lucius leaned forward slightly, palms braced on the desk, posture tight with restraint. “He tried to sell Dean,” he said, each word measured like it was being hammered into place. “He tried to… package him…”

Sirius didn’t interrupt. He didn’t soften it either.

Lucius’s eyes flashed. “Do you understand what that is?” he demanded, and the question wasn’t rhetorical. It was an accusation layered over old trauma, directed not at Sirius personally, but at the universe for allowing Caelan to breathe as long as he had.

“He knew,” Lucius continued, voice dropping lower, more dangerous. “He knew exactly what Lucas survived. He knew what being sold did to him. He knew what that word means in our house.”

Ethan’s expression had gone strangely quiet, all the theater had drained out of him. He watched Lucius like he was watching someone walk a knife’s edge.

Lucius’s jaw flexed. “Cassius being leveraged… fine. Not fine, but… preventable. Contained. Cassius is twenty-three. He has a brain. He has guards. He has me.”

His hand tightened on the edge of the desk.

“But Dean?” Lucius said, and the fury in his voice broke through the control for a brief second. “Dean is nineteen. And Caelan wanted to do it, knowing what it would do to Lucas if he ever found out he’d almost lost his child the same way he once lost himself.”

The room went very still.

Sirius’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I understand.”

Lucius stared at him hard, then finally yanked the seal open with too much force and pulled the document free.

He read.

His eyes moved quickly. His face didn’t change much, Lucius didn’t give people that satisfaction, but the tension in his shoulders climbed with every line. When he hit the parts about contingency clauses and stabilization, his jaw set so hard it looked like it could crack.

He lowered the paper slowly.

Lucius inhaled, controlled and sharp. Then he asked the question that mattered, the one sitting under all the rage like a loaded gun.

“Are you going to tell Lucas?”

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