Lucas didn’t speak. His entire body was relaxed in that way Trevor had learned to recognize—too still. Too careful. The kind of composure built to mask something deeper.
Trevor’s gaze dropped to the article again.
"Rebellion or Red Flag?" NovelHub
He could already hear the court whispering. That sharp, gilded judgment dressed up as concern.
"You don’t want one," Trevor said quietly. It wasn’t a question.
Lucas didn’t look up. "No."
A pause. Then, softer: "I won’t wear one."
Trevor waited. But Lucas didn’t elaborate.
"I’m not asking for an explanation," Trevor added. "But I won’t let them weaponize it."
Lucas was quiet for a moment longer, then said, "She made me wear one. Misty."
Lucas still didn’t look at him. "Not always. Just when it was useful. When someone important was visiting. When she needed to show how ’well-behaved’ I was."
His tone didn’t break. If anything, it became colder. Stripped of feeling. Almost clinical.
"Usually it was so tight I could barely breathe," he added. "But she said I should be honored. That someone sent something so expensive."
A short pause. "Diamonds."
Trevor’s hand clenched over the back of the chair, slow and silent. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. But Lucas felt the shift—the crack in composure, the way stillness turned into restraint. The kind of restraint that came from a man who could move nations... and was choosing not to move at all.
Lucas didn’t tell him the worst of it.
Didn’t say that in a life he couldn’t explain, where time bled sideways and memory returned like bruises beneath the skin, a collar hadn’t just been decoration—it had been a leash with teeth. That Christian had turned what should have been symbolic into something cruel and constant, a choke chain of affection and ownership, tightening whenever Lucas dared speak too freely, breathe too loudly, resist too hard.
He didn’t say how it became a weapon—used in front of guests, behind closed doors, in moments that blurred between love and punishment until he couldn’t tell the difference.
He didn’t say how he’d woken up more than once with blood on his throat and a lock too stiff to break.
He didn’t say any of it.
Because it wouldn’t matter. Because Trevor wasn’t him. Because this life was different. Supposed to be.
So instead, Lucas looked away, trying to shield something deeper than pain. Something that hadn’t healed cleanly.
"She liked showing me off," he said instead, his voice so calm it nearly echoed. "Said it kept people from asking questions. They saw the collar and assumed I belonged to someone important. That I was already taken. That there was no point trying to see anything else."
Trevor stepped around the chair then, slowly, his hand never leaving the wood. When he came to a stop in front of Lucas, his jaw was tight, but his voice was quiet.
Trevor’s violet eyes met his. "You don’t belong to anyone. Not like that."
Lucas exhaled, slowly. "And what do I belong to, then?"
Trevor’s answer came without hesitation. "Yourself."
And then, more gently: "You married me. That doesn’t erase you."
Lucas’s fingers curled lightly in his lap. "Most people seem to think it should."
Trevor knelt slightly, resting his weight on one knee, and reached out, taking Lucas’ hand and comforting him with slow movements of his thumb over his knuckles.
"I don’t care what they think," he said. "They’ll say worse things before this is over. But you’ll never wear something that hurts you again. Not for their approval. Not for mine. Not even for tradition."
Lucas watched him. Carefully. Slowly. And for once, didn’t argue.
Trevor rose and took a step back, but the moment remained, suspended like glass in the moonlight.
Lucas didn’t speak of the past life that still burned behind his ribs like a scar no one else could see.
But Trevor didn’t need the whole story to feel its shadow.
Because some things weren’t broken anymore.
The days blurred after that.
Not in the way trauma used to blur time, but in the way luxury—wrapped in finely tailored chaos—tended to erase the concept of hours.
Windstone was unrelenting.
He had, in his exact words, "no intention of allowing a diplomatic entry to Saha that looked like an emergency evacuation or a badly dressed coup." The estate became a runway of quiet war. Racks of custom-fitted garments appeared in every hallway. Every hour brought a new tailored jacket, a revised itinerary, a courier requesting travel documents, and at least two designers bickering over the shade of twilight silk.
Lucas, whose tolerance for formalwear began and ended with things that didn’t itch, had given up somewhere around day three. Somewhere after Windstone rejected a perfectly acceptable coat for being "emotionally insufficient."
He was measured three separate times by three separate people who never introduced themselves and bowed only to Windstone.
Meanwhile, Trevor pretended to be deeply invested in military briefings while studiously ignoring the empire-wide havoc that Windstone had declared necessary pre-departure preparation. At one point, Lucas caught him slipping out of a room with a wine glass and a look of practiced guilt.
By the time the convoy was confirmed—twelve vehicles, six armed staff, and one sealed guest wing at the Sahan palace—Lucas had stopped asking questions entirely.
And now, he sat by the window of a private plane so smooth it barely hummed, clouds spilling like soft ink past the glass.
His seat reclined. His shoes had been "quietly retired" by Windstone that morning. The blanket across his lap was softer than anything he’d owned in either of his lives.
He stared out at the sky.
’I’ve never traveled ,’ he thought. Not in either life. Not even close.
In his past life, travel had meant isolation. Caged movement. Being shipped from estate to estate under supervision or locked inside a luxury he couldn’t touch. And in this one, before Trevor, it had meant walking. Hiding. Being kept just dignified enough to sell.
Now he was dressed in a custom ensemble that cost more than his mother’s entire wardrobe. He had guards assigned to his name. He was seated beside the Grand Duke of the North, legally and publicly untouchable.
And the strange part wasn’t the power.
It was the quiet. The absence of fear.
Lucas folded his arms over his chest, his eyes tracing the skyline, watching as the clouds parted ahead like something mythic.
And if the empire thought this was a honeymoon, well...