Chapter 277 Exploded – Aleksandr’s POV

Chapter 277 Exploded – Aleksandr’s POV
Dominic tracked the map on my desk with the concentration of a man who treated coloured pins as both intelligence and chess pieces. Red marked anti-Amelia gatherings. Blue showed supportive counter-protests. Yellow identified the places where both had collided during the past forty-eight hours, turning public opinion into thrown drinks, shouting and broken furniture.
“Three arrests in the merchant quarter,” he said, tapping a yellow pin. “Minor. Drunken shouting escalated when someone mentioned the Queen. No injuries worth reporting. The harbour district is quieter than expected, so I’ve added patrols there anyway. The eastern border remains stable. The northern territories have not responded to Kane’s statement, which is either reassuring or concerning depending on whether silence means loyalty or planning.”
I leaned back. The ancient oak chair creaked beneath me, scarred by generations of Alpha Kings who had made decisions from the same position. Beyond the windows, morning light spread across rooftops, spires and the distant harbour. Somewhere below, several thousand werewolves were choosing sides because two escaped prisoners had spoken from a room I could not fucking locate.
“Double the guard rotations in the merchant quarter,” I said, using the quiet tone that had ended arguments for a century. “Visible presence on every corner. If someone throws a punch, I want them contained before the crowd joins in.”
Dominic nodded. His pen moved across the notepad with the crisp efficiency of a man converting orders into action while they were still being spoken. “And the pro-Amelia gatherings? They’re peaceful so far, but numbers are growing. The university district especially. Younger wolves. Academics. They’re organising what they’re calling solidarity walks. Marching through traditionalist neighbourhoods with signs that say rather pointed things about genetic purity and century-old biases.”
“Let them march. As long as they stay peaceful, they’re doing more for public opinion than any statement I could issue.” I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose. Two days without proper sleep had left pressure behind my eyes. Skoll remained wakeful at the edge of our bond, less a growl than a constant awareness that Amelia and the pups were threatened.
“One more thing,” Dominic said, and the hesitation in his voice made me look up. “Elder Silverstone requested a meeting. Informal. He says the council needs restructuring after... recent events. With Redwood, Juniper, and Blackstone gone, and Kane and Blackthorn...”
“On the run,” I finished. “Broadcasting from anonymous rooms. Yes. Tell Silverstone I’ll see him tomorrow. Mid-morning. His office, not mine. I want this conversation somewhere the walls haven’t been listening for seven centuries.”
Dominic was halfway through a nod when the door exploded inward.
Not opened. Exploded. The oak door struck the obsidian wall hard enough to shake the bulletproof glass, and my wife filled the doorway with her hands clenched at her sides and fury in every line of her body.
The guards behind her looked like people who had considered stopping her and wisely reconsidered. Their weapons remained holstered. Their careful neutrality said that standing between an angry queen and her king was beyond any reasonable interpretation of duty.
Dominic and I both jumped, an undignified response from two men with a combined two centuries of practice at visible composure.
“Why,” Amelia said, placing each word with devastating care, “the actual fuck did I have to find out about Kane’s statement from Mira Bennett over breakfast toast?”
Skoll snapped to attention, confused by his mate’s anger and unable to find the threat. His bewilderment joined my exhaustion in a thoroughly unhelpful knot.
“Amelia.” I stood. The chair scraped against obsidian. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“I’m supposed to be your equal.” Her voice broke on the last word, not from weakness but from hurt beneath the anger. “That was the deal, Aleksandr. That was the entire point of the ceremony, the crowns and the two equal thrones. Either I’m your partner or I’m not, and partners don’t keep each other ignorant because one of them has decided the other is too fragile for the truth.”
I came around the desk without rushing her. “I was trying to protect you. You’d just been discharged. Sylvia said stress wasn’t...”
“Sylvia said a lot of things. None of them included ‘keep your wife ignorant of threats to her safety because you’ve decided she can’t handle it.’” She held my gaze, and the hurt there cut deeper than anger. “You don’t get to make that call. Not about this. Not about anything.”
She turned to Dominic. Not asking. Telling. “Leave us.”
He did not seek confirmation. He gathered his notepad, bowed and left with the efficient speed of a man who had no desire to witness the next stage of his king’s domestic crisis.
Silence tightened across the office. The map remained spread between us, an irrelevant record of a kingdom’s divisions while our own stood three feet apart.
“You can’t do this.” Her voice dropped, making every word harder to evade. “You cannot decide what I’m allowed to know based on what you think I can handle. I deserve to know the risks. I deserve to know when people are telling an entire kingdom that my children shouldn’t exist. That’s not protection, Aleksandr. That’s control.”
“It’s not control.” The defence sounded weak even to me. Skoll remained confused, built for the simple logic of threat and defence rather than the nuanced misery of a marital argument. “It’s necessity. You were recovering. The pups...”
“The pups are fine. Sylvia repeated that for five days while you sat beside my bed and chose not to mention that the two men who tried to have me killed were now explaining why I should not be queen.” She stepped closer. Her lower lip trembled once before she mastered it. “I am not breakable, Aleksandr. I survived four years in a basement, a silver knife across my back and someone trying to poison my children out of my body. What I cannot survive is you treating me like something to manage instead of someone to trust.”
The truth landed with a quiet force no battlefield had prepared me for. I had spent a century making hard decisions alone, and the only person whose judgement mattered had just shown me that the habit itself was the problem.
“I was trying to keep you safe.” The words felt inadequate the moment they left my mouth. Small. Insufficient against the hurt in her eyes.
“You were trying to keep me contained.” She shook her head. Once, sharp, the gesture of someone who had made her calculation and found the answer unacceptable. “There’s a difference.”
She turned and reached the door. For one suspended second, she paused with her back to me, the loose jumper unable to hide either the curve of her abdomen or the rigid set of her shoulders.
Then she left. The door closed with considerably more restraint than she had used opening it. Skoll’s confusion lingered in the sudden quiet, alongside the understanding I had been avoiding.
Dominic returned about ninety seconds later. He entered without knocking, closed the door carefully and wore the expression of a man who had spent that interval deciding how little of the argument he intended to acknowledge.
He sat opposite the desk and focused on the map. Coloured pins and security reports had been the entire purpose of the morning before my wife reminded me that marital equality outranked riot prevention.
“We should increase patrols in the university district,” he said with deliberate neutrality. “The pro-Amelia marches remain peaceful, but numbers are growing. More bodies mean greater potential for escalation, regardless of intent.”
I nodded, converting guilt into action because action remained easier than repair. “Do it. And Dominic.”
He looked up. Really looked, reading my face with the particular careful assessment of a beta who had spent decades learning exactly which expressions belonged to which varieties of royal distress.
“Make sure she’s safe.” Protocol had left my voice. “Wherever she goes and whatever she does, she keeps her guards. Visible and constant. No exceptions. But they follow her orders, not mine, unless there is an immediate threat.”
He nodded once, accepting both the security order and its limit. “Already arranged, my King. Six guards, under the Queen’s direction. She will not be left unprotected.”
Dominic’s answer gave me one solid fact in a morning full of failures. Amelia would be guarded without being contained, which was a distinction I should have understood before she needed to teach it to me.
I turned back to the map: the fractured geography of a kingdom choosing sides based on the calculated lies of two escaped men.
Somewhere in the palace, my wife was walking away from me. The distance had nothing to do with metres and everything to do with what I had failed to understand about partnership.