Page 154 of Heart of the High King
Chapter 58
“I’m nervous,” Rafe told a still sleeping Aleksander. Standing next to the bed, he clutched the tablet in his hands. “You should’ve woken up before dinner, but you’re still asleep. We’re supposed to have a meeting any minute. I don’t know how to do this, so you should wake the hell up.”
“Aleksander up?”
“No, dammit,” Rafe told Mortis. The wolves had resurfaced that morning, and Rafe had asked no questions. Although he could not sense that they were mated, there was a definite fondness, as they had stayed together all day. Rafe had explained what the griffins were going to do for them, and Harley had shown up that afternoon to take measurements. Construction would start by the end of the week, and it wouldn’t take much time to do their small adjustments.
“Come on, Sander. Don’t you want to meet Nox?” Rafe asked. His palms grew damp enough that he had to grapple with his device and bring it closer to his chest. “Don’t do this to me. I really don’t want to do this by myself.”
“Rafe be okay. Relax. Heart beating fast.”
“That’s because I’m fucking scared. I have to go sit in a room full of people that probably hate me and act like I’m in charge of them.”
“You High King.”
Letting out a sigh, he refused to kiss Aleksander, even though he desperately wanted to, but the man wasn’t acting according to plan, so he’d have to wait until after the meeting to get any affection. “Aleksander’s the High King. I’m just his mate.”
“Rafe silly.”
Opening the door and waiting for the wolves to go out into the hallway, Rafe scowled. “That’s not very supportive.”
“Mortis honest. Rafe being silly. Rafe High King.”
“Can you talk to your mate?”
“No, Alaric say after matebond.”
“Good, you can annoy him and not me.”
“Love Rafe.”
“Dammit, don’t be nice to me,” Rafe muttered, walking into the living room. It was dead quiet as the D’Vaires stared at him. Gluing his eyes to the floor, Rafe hunched his shoulders and shuffled to the sofa, where he should be sitting with Aleksander. Within seconds, he had a wolf planted on either side of his legs once he got seated. “Uh…thanks, guys, for coming tonight. Aleksander’s still asleep or whatever.”
“I’ll go check on him after our meeting if you want to make sure there’s nothing to worry about, though I’m sure he’s just adjusting to Nox,” Saura offered.
“I’m not going to say no to that for sure.”
“We can give you a cleansing potion,” Idris suggested. “You know just in case he gets stinky.”
“I don’t think Rafe should be touching potions. I can take care of it,” Brogan stated.
Idris nodded. “Good idea, there are some in our office. I’ll grab one and you can use it while Saura’s checking on him.”
“Okay, guess we move on now,” Rafe got out, desperate to get the meeting done. “Um…Dra’Kaedan, any news on the sanctuary?”
“Nope, it was a pretty quiet week. We did get our first application for Elven D’Vaire but before I could even finish processing it, the guy decided to join the Tristis tribe, so at least he’s out of his old environment and hopefully on the road to happiness. If not, he can always reapply.”
There was literally nothing else on Rafe’s agenda, so he pulled his tablet to his chest and swallowed. “Any questions or anything?”
“Are we going to have a Team Rafe meeting tomorrow morning?” Renny asked.
“Um, sure. We can do that. I worked with your ideas this weekend, so I think we can finally sit down and start organizing tasks.”
“Awesome,” Renny enthused, high-fiving Evlithar.
“When are the sword lessons going to start? I’ve got a ton of wooden ones ready to go,” Madeline said. “Even put together some wooden shields.”
“Wait, swords?” Brogan asked.
