“Uncomplicate it for me,” Jules said, when he regained his ability to speak. He still couldn’t make himself pull his wrist away and stop the scent-marking.
Westcliff’s green eyes were grim as he murmured, “He’s my father.”
Wait, what?
Jules blinked. “You mean the king and his sister…”
Westcliff laughed. “No, his sister wasn’t my mother,” he said with a rueful smile. “He’s an asshole, but he isn’t that sick. He convinced—forced—his sister to pretend that she gave birth to me while she was in the countryside.”
“Then who is your mother?”
Westcliff shrugged, still stroking his wrist. Their scents were so mixed at this point that Jules’s head felt hazy with warm, low-key pleasure, Westcliff’s face the only thing in focus.
“I have no idea,” the duke said, the tension in his shoulders easing as they gazed at each other. “She or he is probably dead.” His sensual lips curled into a wry smile. “The king and I hardly have the kind of relationship that would allow me to ask about it—and get a straight answer. He likes to act like I’m not his son at all.”
Jules thought about it for a moment, pressing his cheek against Westcliff’s shoulder. He breathed in deeply. He felt better than he had in days, the terrible frustration of the past few days shifting into something else. “So you’re actually his firstborn son,” he said. “You’re a bit older than Haydn, right?”
“I’m not his firstborn,” Westcliff corrected him, playing with Jules’s fingers. “The king had another son, much older than me and Haydn: Thander. Don’t you remember him?”
Thander. Right. The prince who had died decades ago in the war.
Jules would have been embarrassed by forgetting about the existence of a prince of his country, except his mind felt so hazy right now he could barely remember his own siblings’ names, much less someone else’s.
“In my defense, he died before I was born,” Jules muttered, trying to gather his thoughts. But it was so difficult. Westcliff smelled so good. Jules wanted to press his mouth against that chiseled jaw and suck, find out if Westcliff’s skin tasted as good as it smelled. Jules moistened his lips with his tongue. Focus, Jules. “So you aren’t actually stealing Prince Haydn’s crown.”
A small, bitter smile curled Westcliff’s lips. “But that’s what people would think anyway,” he said, releasing Jules’s fingers. “That I’m stealing it.”
Frowning, Jules took Westcliff’s hand again and squeezed it, their fingers entangling.
Those green eyes softened, losing their hard, bitter edge as they gazed at Jules.
Westcliff lifted their entangled fingers and glanced at them. “Thank you,” he said quietly, looking Jules in the eyes before brushing his mouth against Jules’s knuckles.
And Jules’s heart soared and then dropped, breaking into a million pieces.
He now had a word for what he felt for Devlin Schaefer, the Duke of Westcliff. It wasn’t attraction. It was much, much worse.
Jules didn’t know what he would have done—he was this close to just running out of the room, curling up into a small ball, and crying into his pillow—if someone hadn’t coughed awkwardly.
Jules flinched and turned his head.
He almost flinched again when he saw Liam.
Liam. He’d completely forgotten that his brother was in the room, too.
Flushing, Jules snatched his hand away and curled it by his thigh, though rationally he knew he had nothing to feel guilty about—besides falling in love with the alpha who was going to marry his brother.
His stomach clenching, Jules forced a smile. “I’ll go to my room. You were right, Li: I still feel very tired.”
Liam had a strange expression on his lovely face. For a moment, he didn’t say anything, looking a mix of stunned and thoughtful, before nodding distractedly. “Sure. Go get some rest.”
When Jules got to his feet, Westcliff did the same. “Are you all right?” he said, his voice brimming with tension once again. “I told you it was dangerous.”
Jules couldn’t look at him. Not now, when he felt so fragile and bruised.
“Yes, you did,” he said. “Good night.”
In his peripheral vision, Westcliff made an aborted move, as if he was about to grab his arm but thought better of it. “Good night,” he said.
And Jules walked away, his heart breaking a little bit more with every step as he left the man he was in love with alone with his beautiful brother.
I think he’s going to propose tonight, Liam’s voice sounded in his ears, over and over and over. I think he’s going to propose tonight. I think he’s going to propose tonight.
By the time Jules got to his bedroom, his vision was so blurry he could barely see.
Chapter 17
Liam Blake was used to people thinking he was just a dumb, decorative thing incapable of anything beyond batting his eyelashes and looking pretty. It was an assumption he didn’t mind—he even used it to his advantage sometimes—but privately, he considered himself a rather observant person.