The Wolf Prince Hid His Mate, So the Lords Wanted His Crown novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Second Bed
Hakon finds the guard he swore never to see again unlacing his boots in the tower suite, loses the fight to get him out, and agrees to the King's terms. In the dark, the silver mark on both their hips lights.
Hakon Aldenhoff opened the door of the tower suite and found the one man he had sworn never to see again.
He was sitting on the second bed.
Joren Hallgren was unlacing a black boot, in no hurry at all.
Two years had made him bigger across the shoulders, and the scar through his left eyebrow had gone white.
He glanced up, and he did not look surprised.
"Your Highness," he said.
Hakon dropped his bag, crossed the room, and put him against the wall by the throat.
The plaster cracked behind Joren's head.
"Get out," Hakon said.
Joren put one hand over Hakon's wrist and turned it.
He walked Hakon around until Hakon's own arm was twisted up behind his back and his cheek was against the wall.
The door swung shut on its spring.
"No," Joren said, close to his ear.
He was not even breathing hard.
Hakon had fought him on the practice floor a hundred times as a boy and won perhaps twenty.
He pushed back with his whole weight, and it got him nowhere.
The warm body behind him smelled of pine smoke and wool.
Under that was a scent Hakon had been trying to forget since the night of his eighteenth birthday.
"Let go of me, Hallgren."
"When you're done."
"I'm not done," Hakon said.
"Then we'll stand here," Joren said, "until you are."
Hakon twisted his hips, found the gap, and slammed his elbow back into Joren's ribs.
Joren grunted and let go.
They faced each other across a yard of stone floor, and Hakon realized his hands were shaking.
Joren's were not.
"You were in the Northern Guard," Hakon said. "You were supposed to stay in the Northern Guard."
"I was."
He reached into his coat and took out a folded paper with a heavy red seal.
"Until your father wrote."
Hakon snatched it from him.
The seal was the King's own, the black wolf in a ring of twelve stars.
Under it, in his father's slanting hand, were three lines.
Sworn Guard Joren Hallgren is the Crown Prince's bodyguard from this date.
He will share the Aldenhoff Suite.
He answers to me and to no one else.
Hakon read it twice.
His father's handwriting had been shaky for a year now, and the last word had run off the edge of the page.
"He can't do this."
"He's the King."
"He's sick," Hakon said. "He doesn't know what he's doing."
"He knows what he's doing," Joren said.
"He asked for me by name, in front of the Captain of the Guard."
"Then you say no," Hakon said.
"I don't say no to him."
"You said no to me."
It came out before Hakon could stop it, and the room went very still.
Joren looked at him for a long moment.
His eyes were the same green-brown they had always been, and there was nothing in them Hakon could read.
"I'll make this simple," Joren said.
"I sleep in that bed. I walk behind you or beside you, as the day needs."
"The door stays unlocked. I don't touch you unless I have to move you."
"You just did," Hakon said.
"You attacked me."
"I'll do it again."
"I know," Joren said. "I'd be disappointed if you didn't."
Hakon wanted very badly to hit him, and he wanted something else just as badly, which was worse.
"And the rest," he said, hating how it sounded.
"The rest?"
"That night."
Joren's face did not change.
"What night, Your Highness?"
Hakon stared at him.
Then he understood what he was being offered, and why Joren had said it so evenly, and his jaw set.
"Right," he said. "The wine."
"It stays in the wine," Joren said.
"Agreed."
"Good," Joren said.
"Good."
Neither of them moved.
A bell rang somewhere down in the academy, and Joren finished unlacing his boot and set it by the bed with the other one.
Hakon ate three cold rolls from the basket on the window seat, standing up.
He did not want to sit anywhere near the second bed.
He undressed in the bathroom with the door shut.
He came out in a plain shirt and sleep trousers, and Joren had already put out the lamp.
There was a thin light from the fjord, and a long shape lying very still on the far bed.
Hakon got under his blanket and lay on his back.
Neither of them said a word.
After a while Hakon felt it, a faint warmth low on his left hip, where the skin was always cool.
He put his palm over it through the cotton.
The warmth grew into a slow burn.
He had spent two years telling himself the mark had faded.
He sat up.
His shirt was lit from underneath, a fine silver crescent glowing through the cloth.
Across the room, Joren had turned onto his side to face him.
The same pale light showed through the dark wool at his hip.
They looked at each other across the dark.
"Go to sleep, Your Highness," Joren said, and his voice was not steady.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend