Chapter 530: Missing menace.

Enzo pov

Khan was gone.

Not ‘gone to roar at someone’ or ‘gone to rearrange the pink supplies’, but properly gone - silent and missing, not seen by a soul in the castle.

I, myself, noticed his absence because the castle was too quiet. Without my chaotic mate, there were no dramatic announcements, sudden demands for honey cakes or unsolicited speeches about grandbabies and the healing power of glitter. There was just nothing - only silence that I didn’t trust for a single second.

So, I went on the hunt. First, I checked our room, which was empty. Next, I went to the kitchen, but I didn’t find Khan on his mission to steal any pastries, so I kept moving. At one point, I went to check the gardens and the darn library, even if I knew finding him among books was less likely, I still checked.

By the time I reached Willow’s door I was already irritated. Willow opened the door looking tired, but she didn’t ooze that nervous energy she did the day before anymore, so that was a whole lot of improvement.

“Grandpa Enzo?” She spoke, glancing behind me as if she was expecting Khan to jump out from behind me and roar something pink again. Which, honestly, was how life was supposed to be, but with the menace missing, clearly none of that happened.

I closed my eyes, sighed, and opened them again. “Willow, sweetheart, have you seen Khan?” I tried to keep my voice calm and even, so I wouldn’t add more worry, she was already dealing with far too much.

“Not since yesterday,” Willow grumbled, sounding curious. “He tried to wrap me in another blanket and I told him I needed space. I honestly feel a little bad because when he left, he looked so sad. Maybe he’s hiding because of me?”

“Of course he did.” I grumbled and slapped my forehead with a groan, “no, it’s not because of you. You know how dramatic Khan can be, just sit back, relax and don’t let his antics get to you. I’ll deal with our drama queen and let you know as soon as I find him.”

Willow didn’t look too sure, yet eventually, she agreed and went back into her room. Since I didn’t find him with the one person Khan was glued to these days, I went to find the next best option - Aife.

She was sitting in the living room with Kala, both of them chatting and stopping the moment I stepped inside. “Enzo?” Aife spoke first and the moment I asked about Khan, she added, “I haven’t seen him all morning. Why?”

“He’s missing.” I groaned, running a hand through my hair, growing more frustrated than I was willing to admit.

Kala raised an eyebrow and set aside her coffee cup. “Khan doesn’t go missing, he makes sure everyone knows exactly where he is at all times. And besides, he’s not exactly travel-sized, it would actually take great effort for someone like Khan to go missing.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes, exhaling slowly to calm down before I muttered, “that’s what worries me.”

Both Aife and Kala had different ideas about where Khan might have gone, so eventually, I thanked them and carried on with my search.

At one point, I even checked with the King. The man looked at me over his glasses like I’d brought him a particularly stupid problem. “If Khan has gone quiet,” the King said slowly, “either the world is ending or he is planning something. In both cases, I prefer not to know until it’s already too late.”

Yeah, that sounded so helpful, I definitely needed it.

By midday I was spiraling. There was no saying what Khan was doing, but there were too many options too - he could’ve decided to track Bane and join the hunt himself. There was a chance my wild and a little stupid mate found a group of warriors, challenged them to a roaring contest and lost his voice so badly he was hiding in shame.

Then, there was a chance that he had broken into the wine stores and was currently asleep under a table somewhere. Or, maybe he decided that the only way to support Willow was to dig a decorative ditch around the castle and had gotten stuck in it.

Either way, the possibilities were endless and all of them were stupid.

Eventually, I started checking storage rooms out of pure desperation. The first three were empty, if I didn’t count the brooms and cleaning supplies, but when I reached the third one and opened the door…

There he was.

Khan sat in the middle of the floor like a defeated god, completely tangled in at least four different colors of yarn. Pink, of course, because it wasn’t Khan if there wasn’t pink, but he had some yellow, a bright shade of lavender and something that looked like blue wrapped around him.

I froze and scanned him from the top of his head down to his feet, silently wondering why he had at least five pairs of different knitting needles and why some of them were somehow twisted in his hair.

There was an open book on the floor, flipped to the page that said:“Beginner blankets for precious new arrivals.”

Once he realized he wasn’t alone anymore, Khan looked up at me with wide, guilty eyes. “Enzo,” he muttered, “don’t judge me.”

I stared at him for a long second before I closed the door behind me, leaned against it, and exhaled the longest breath of my life. “I checked the entire castle,” I said after a moment. “I asked Willow, Aife, Kala and even the King. I imagined you dead in a ditch, stuck in a tree, or trying to single-handedly fight Bastian with something pink for a weapon. And yet, here you are, this is where you’ve been all this time - sitting in the dark, knitting.”

“Attempting to knit,” Khan corrected and lifted both hands, showing off the yarn that was tangled together in a hopeless, messy web. “It’s harder than it looks and the book lied, there is nothing ‘beginner’ about this.”

I arched an eyebrow and looked around the dark storage room. “Why?”

“For the grandbaby.” Khan said with nothing but pride lacing his words.

I closed my eyes. “There is no grandbaby.”

“There will be,” he said with absolute conviction. “I feel it in my bones, the Goddess whispers to me that tiny feet are coming. We must prepare, Enzo, we absolutely must. Because when I get to see those tiny feet for the first time, I have to ensure that this child will have the softest, warmest, most aggressively pink blanket in existence. I won’t fail my future great-grandcub.”

I watched the excitement on his face and grumbled, “Khan, my love, my sun and stars, you disappeared for hours to do this.”

“I needed privacy for my art.” He said in that ‘duh’ tone like it explained anything at all.

“You are tangled.” I pointed out.

“I’m committed to my craft.” He retorted.

I walked over and stared down at the disaster. Yarn was looped around his wrists, his ankles, one thigh, and somehow his left ear while one of the knitting needles dangled near his shoulder. “How long have you been stuck?”

Khan considered my question, fiddled with his fingers and eventually grinned at me, “time is irrelevant, my love, but possibly since mid-morning.”

“Of course.” I grumbled, crouched down and started trying to free him. Khan, being the menace he was, immediately made it worse by trying to help me. Every time he moved, another loop tightened, trapping him even worse, “stop moving.”

“I’m assisting.” He said and pulled another loop tighter.

I signed, shook my head and met his gaze, “no, love, you’re making a nest, not helping me free you.”

Khan grumbled something I didn’t quite catch and I didn’t ask either - there was no way I planned to make this situation any worse than it already was.

Getting him free took an embarrassingly long time and by the end, I was sitting on the floor with him, surrounded by yarn and needles.

The exhaustion I felt literally reached my bones while Khan, naturally, looked pleased with himself.

“You found me,” he said once I tossed the last leftovers of the yarn into a trash bin. “My hero, my perfect, patient, beautiful mate who never abandons me even when I vanish to create masterpieces for babies that don’t yet exist.”

“I’m so tired.” I grumbled, completely ignoring his praise because I knew, better than anyone, where praise led when it came from my mate’s mouth.

“I know.” Khan whispered and leaned closer, “that’s why you love me.”

When I arranged his stupid needles, ready to stand up and leave this entire situation behind me, Khan had other plans. The second I started to rise, his hands settled on my hips, pulled me back down into his lap with zero warning and one of his palms slid over my ass and squeezed. “Khan.”

“What?” He muttered, already nuzzling into my neck. “I was trapped for hours, my love. You have to understand that I suffered and now, I require physical comfort to undo the emotional damage.”

“You were trapped by the yarn you chose to attack.” I snorted out and as always, found myself wrapping my arms around his neck.

“Details,” he breathed against my neck while his other hand slipped under my shirt, warm and shameless, spreading across my stomach before sliding lower. “You came looking for me, which means you were worried and as you know, I find that extremely attractive. I’m feeling emotional and also extremely interested in removing your clothes.”

I tried to glare at him, but it was harder than it seemed when his mouth was doing something unfair just under my ear and his hand was openly groping me.

“We’re in a storage room.” I reminded him, but made no attempt to get off his lap.

“Romantic.” Khan hummed and ran his tongue over the skin on my neck. “I escaped death by yarn and now, I deserve a reward. And you deserve a reward too because you saved my life.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but before a single word could leave me, Khan pulled away from my neck and slammed his lips against mine, stealing my breath with a kiss as ridiculous as it was everything I ever needed. I was never going to escape this man.