Damien stiffened. "It escaped my mind," he replied with a forced calmness.
"Do you plan to attend the wedding?"
"No," Damien replied, trying not to picture Luna in the hands of another man. "Actually, I need your advice."
Lucivar perked up, sensing an opportunity to sound wise. "Advice? Oh, how rare. This must be serious."
"It is." Damien turned, finally stopping his pacing. "A… werewolf friend came to me."
"A what?"
"A werewolf. Friend."
Lucivar looked genuinely scandalized. "Vampires and werewolves don't form friendships. We have truces. Temporary treaties. Casual threats."
"Well, he's different." Damien waved off the comment, already regretting bringing it up. "So, turns out, he's got a fated mate. A vampire. But her family is marrying her off. Against her will."
Lucivar's eyes sharpened. "A vampire-werewolf mating? That's… rare. I'd like to meet them."
Damien gave a tight smile. "I bet you would."
Lucivar rubbed his chin, settling into King Mode. "Werewolves have similar rights to us when it comes to fated mates. A fated pair has the right to at least explore their bond. It's not something to ignore lightly."
"Vampires," Lucivar continued. "can't reject mates, whether werewolves or vampires. At least not completely. The bond may be severed by the other species, but for us? We carry it. It echoes in our magic, our mind, our very cells. Even if they marry someone else. Until they die."
"So," Damien said slowly, "if he walks away…she still suffers."
"Exactly," Lucivar nodded. "And if she walks away… he gets to move on."
Damien's lips curled bitterly. "Lucky him."
"I know that," Damien said through gritted teeth, his jaw tightening as his father watched him with that knowing gleam in his eye. "But the lady didn't even give him a chance. She just… accepted her parents' choice. Out of duty."
There was pain in his voice now. Lucivar's amused smirk faltered.
"Then your friend," the king said carefully, "needs to make a move. Request his right. It's his mate, after all. I believe the law gives about three weeks, can't remember exactly, it's been ages since I had to deal with mating rites. But he has time. At the end of it, if they're not aligned, then the werewolf can reject it, and the vampire… well, she can do whatever she wants with her life."
Damien nearly laughed.
He knew how it would end. He didn't need a prophecy or a mirror or the whispering ghosts of the castle's dungeons to tell him.
Luna would choose Kyllian.
Not because she loved him.
She would choose him because she was Luna—the princess who would rather break her own heart into pieces than bring shame to her people. The one who would bleed on her own sword if it meant keeping her kingdom whole. She wouldn't disgrace her family. She wouldn't disappoint them.
She wouldn't think, not even for a moment, about what it meant for him.
What it meant to suffer. To burn with a bond that couldn't be severed on his side. To wake up each day knowing she was alive, happy, touched by someone else, and still feel her name in his soul.
She just wanted to be the perfect princess.
And Damien? He was already breaking.
*****
Kyllian arrived from the palace just as the sun began to set, painting the skies in violent shades of orange and violet. The cool wind tugged at his shirt.
Talon's report about the past few days had been… colorful.
"She's gonna kill the instructor, Alpha," Talon had said. "Or herself. Or both. There's no telling with that one. The sex ed teacher made her do diagrams today."
Apparently, the instructor was relentless. No subtlety. No metaphors. No poetic euphemisms. Nope. Just hard, anatomical facts and brutally graphic expectations.
And Luna? Poor, brave, deeply mortified Luna? She was dying. Every. Single. Day.
Kyllian smirked as he stepped into his quarters. Her scent hit him instantly. He heard a thud upstairs.
He climbed the stairs quietly, not wanting to startle her mid-breakdown. At the top, he paused, listening.
"…and then she said, if you do not properly stimulate the upper hood of the clitoris—WHAT EVEN IS A CLITORIS HOOD?! Is it a hat? Why does it need a hat?!"
Kyllian barely contained his laughter, biting his knuckles as Talon's voice drifted back.
"Technically, it's a fold of skin. Like a protective flap."
"Oh my GODS, Talon, get out before I break something over your head."
There was a loud thwap. Possibly a throw pillow.
Kyllian finally entered the room, casual as ever. "Sounds like your education is going well."
Luna turned, her eyes wide with righteous fury and embarrassment.
"I'm scarred, Kyllian," she hissed. "Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually."
He raised a brow. "That bad, huh?"
"She made me draw a penis yesterday."
Talon snorted behind her. "It was terrible. Looked like a deformed eggplant."
Luna hurled a throw pillow at him. "GET OUT!"
Talon darted from the room with a cackle.
"So," Kyllian said, lounging back in one of the plush velvet armchairs in the sitting room "What did you learn today that has your knickers in a twist?"
Luna, standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed and a deeply offended look on her face, sighed dramatically. "I learned how to perform oral sex."
Kyllian blinked. "I… I beg your pardon?"
She tilted her head, sarcasm oozing from every word. "Oral sex, Kyllian. With detail. And a diagram. And a banana."
"A banana?"
"A banana!" she repeated, throwing her hands in the air. "Like, is that standard procedure?"
Kyllian grinned, his amusement growing. "Come on, tell me how she explained it."
His tone had shifted less teasing now and more intrigued, though he still wore that maddening smirk. He shifted forward in his seat, elbows resting on his knees.
Luna narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. "Why? So you can laugh at me?"
"Absolutely," he said with zero shame. "But mostly because I want to see this banana demonstration for myself."
With a dramatic groan, she snatched the nearest banana from the fruit bowl on the coffee table. The irony that it had been sitting right there, mocking her with its yellow smugness, was not lost on her.
She held it up with two fingers. "Okay, so first, she said this is the penis…"
Kyllian held up a finger. "Wait. Did she call it that?"