Chapter 7: The Morning After
Regulus woke to an empty bed. The space beside him was cool, the sheets still indented with the shape of James’s body. For a long moment, he just lay there, the memory of the previous night—the chanting, the brutal tenderness, the promise of the sand—washed over him like a warm tide. He felt sore, thoroughly used, but the hollow ache in his chest had eased, replaced by a tentative, fluttering thing he dared not name.
He rose, washed, and dressed in one of the new chitons, the linen soft against his skin. The villa was quiet. He found Luna in the garden, tending to the herbs.
“Where is he?” Regulus asked, his voice still rough with sleep.
“The study,” Luna said without looking up. “He has been there since before dawn. He sent riders out. There is food for you inside.”
Regulus found the platter of figs, cheese, and bread, but his curiosity pulled him toward the study. The heavy oak door was slightly ajar. He peered inside.
James was asleep. He was slumped forward over the wide, scarred desk, his head pillowed on his arms amidst a chaotic spread of parchment and wax tablets. A single oil lamp had burned low, bathing the scene in a weary amber light. Maps of the coastline were weighted down with a dagger and a cup. Several scrolls, some sealed with James’s distinctive lion crest, lay ready for dispatch.
But it was the sight of James, so utterly surrendered to exhaustion, that held Regulus still. The legendary Lion of the Arena, vulnerable in the grey morning light. His brow was furrowed even in sleep, as if strategizing in his dreams. One hand, ink-stained and calloused, rested near an unfurled letter.
Regulus stepped silently into the room. The floor was cool under his bare feet. He looked at the letter. The script was James’s own—strong, practical strokes, not the elegant hand of a scribe.
To General Marcus Lupus, Commander of the III Legion (The Northern Wolves), Fort Augusta, Britannia. Greetings.
I write on a matter of personal import. Inquiry is to be made regarding a soldier transferred to your command approximately three years past: Sirius, of the conquered Black Court. Known as Sirius Black. I require information on his status, health, and conduct. Any debt attached to his service, I will settle. Any request for transfer or manumission, I will sponsor. Respond with all haste. Your cooperation is noted and will be reciprocated.
James Potter, Champion of Rome.
Regulus’s breath caught. He read it twice. The words were blunt, transactional, but the intent behind them was a seismic shock. I will settle. I will sponsor. No pleas, just the unequivocal power of a man used to getting what he wanted, deployed now for him. For a brother Regulus had believed lost to the empire’s grinding machinery.
His eyes stung. He blinked rapidly, looking away from the parchment to the man who had written it. A blanket was folded over the back of a nearby chair. Regulus took it and gently draped it over James’s broad shoulders, his fingers, of their own volition, brushing a lock of unruly dark hair from his forehead.
James stirred. A low, animal sound of wakefulness rumbled in his chest. His hand shot out, not in attack, but with instinctual speed, closing around Regulus’s wrist. His hazel eyes opened, blinking away sleep, and focused on Regulus’s face.
For a heartbeat, they just looked at each other. The early sun sliced through the high window, turning the dust motes to gold and painting James in a soft, gilded light that belied the hardness of his grip.
“I will find him,” James said, his voice gravelly with sleep. No greeting. Just the promise, raw and immediate. “I swear it.”
Regulus nodded, the tightness in his throat preventing speech. Emotion surged, reckless and warm. He leaned down and pressed a soft, fleeting kiss to James’s forehead. The gesture was so fundamentally tender, so unlike anything that had passed between them, that they both froze in its aftermath.
James’s grip on his wrist loosened, becoming almost a caress. Regulus straightened up, his cheeks warming.
“You didn’t sleep,” Regulus said quietly, stating the obvious to break the potent silence.
“Had work to do,” James grunted, pushing himself upright, the blanket sliding down his back. He scrubbed a hand over his face and gestured at the desk. “Tides. I know fuck-all about tides.”
Regulus’s gaze swept the papers. Among the letters were carefully drawn charts noting water levels, sketches of the coastline north and south of the villa, and notes in James’s handwriting: ‘Craggy, dangerous – no,’ ‘Strong riptide – no,’ ‘Sandy shelf, maybe?’
“You were mapping the coast,” Regulus said, comprehension dawning.
“You need the water. Alone,” James said, as if reminding himself. He tapped a specific sketch of a small, curved inlet. “Remus knows a local fisherman. Says here, just south of the main bluff, there’s a sheltered cove. The tide comes in gentle, like a bath. No sharp rocks underneath.” He looked up at Regulus, his expression intense, analytical. “I could have the men clear a path. Build a small platform, an altar of sorts, right at the high-water line. Sacred space. Yours. Where you could… do your rituals. Or just be. Without me watching your every stroke.” He paused, then added, more roughly, “I’d still post a guard at the cliff top.For safety. But he wouldn’t look down.”
Regulus was stunned. The sheer, practical thoughtfulness of it was more disorienting than any violent passion. James was engineering a solution, using the same focused strategy he would use to breach a fortress wall, to give him a piece of his freedom back.
“Why?” The word escaped before Regulus could stop it.
James leaned back in his chair, the old leather creaking. He looked at the map, not at Regulus. “I took you from the Emperor’s household. But I’ve just kept you in a different cage. A nicer one. Still a cage.” He finally met Regulus’s gaze, and there was a frustrated honesty there Regulus had never seen. “I don’t want you to feel owned. Not like that. I want…” He struggled, a man wrestling with a foreign language. “I want you to be happy here. With me. You should thrive. This place…” He gestured vaguely around the villa. “It’s not just for me. It could be for a family. Heirs. A future.”
He said it like a commander stating a long-term campaign objective. There was no romantic poetry in it, just a stark, daunting vision. Heirs.A future. With him. James Potter saw a lineage, a legacy, and he had decided Regulus was central to it. Not as a trophy, but as a cornerstone.
“You’re researching tides and writing to generals,” Regulus said softly, a strange, airy feeling in his chest.
“I’m fixing problems,” James corrected bluntly. He picked up another sealed letter. “This one goes to the quartermaster of the XX Legion. And this to a political attaché in Gaul who owes me a favor. Casting a wide net. Someone will know something about Sirius.” He set them down with a decisive tap. “And the cove. We’ll go see it today. If you approve, we start building tomorrow.”
It was so much. The promise of news, the gift of a private sea-sanctuary, the staggering implication of a shared future. Regulus felt off-balance, as if the ground had shifted beneath him. The man before him was not just the brutal lover or the captor; he was a relentless force of will, and that will was now bent, with terrifying focus, on making him happy.
“Thank you,” Regulus said, the words utterly inadequate.
James stood up, stretching the kinks from his shoulders. He approached Regulus, stopping close. He didn’t reach for him, just studied his face. “Don’t thank me. Just… be here. When I find your brother. When the altar is built. Be here.”
It was a demand, but a fragile one. The arrogance was still there, but it was underwritten by a need so raw it was almost humble.
“I’m here,” Regulus whispered.
A ghost of James’s old, cocky smile touched his lips. “Good.” He finally reached out, his thumb brushing the curve of Regulus’s cheekbone, a touch so light it was more startling than a kiss. “Now, eat something. Then we ride. I want to see if this fisherman knows what he’s talking about.”
He moved past Regulus toward the door, all business again, the moment of vulnerability sealed away like one of his letters. But Regulus stood in the sun-drenched study, surrounded by the evidence of James’s silent, predawn campaign, and felt the walls of his gilded cage begin, irrevocably, to transform. They were not falling down. They were being meticulously, stubbornly, rebuilt into something else entirely—a home by the sea, designed by the hands of a conqueror who had just decided to learn the language of the conquered. The ink on the parchment was dry, the plans were drawn, and the impossible future James had outlined hung in the air between them, as real and as fragile as the morning light.
The ink on the parchment was dry, the plans were drawn, and the impossible future James had outlined hung in the air between them, as real and as fragile as the morning light.
They rode out an hour later. James chose a sturdy, calm gelding for Regulus, whose experience with horses was limited to being transported in cages or carts. He watched, an unreadable expression on his face, as Regulus mounted with an innate, liquid grace that seemed to settle the animal instantly. James swung up onto his own restless bay stallion with a single muscular heave.
The path down to the coast was narrow, winding through fragrant pine and scrub. The roar of the surf grew louder, a constant background hum. Sunlight dappled through the trees. For a while, they rode in silence, the only sounds the crunch of hooves on gravel, the creak of leather, and the distant gulls.
“The letters,” Regulus said finally, his voice almost lost in the natural noise. “That was… strategic.”
James glanced over, guiding his stallion around a rocky outcrop. “It’s what I know. Find the pressure points. Apply leverage. Doesn’t matter if it’s a man’s throat or an imperial bureaucracy.” He said it plainly, a statement of fact. “It’ll work.”
“I believe you,” Regulus said, and realized he meant it.
The admission seemed to unlock something. The tension in James’s shoulders eased a fraction. He looked ahead at the path, then back at Regulus, his gaze appraising. “You rode before. In your court.”
“Yes. Smaller horses. Wilder.” A small, true smile touched Regulus’s lips for the first time in weeks. “Sirius once stole my father’s prized stallion. Rode it straight off the low cliffs into the surf. Just for the thrill of the drop. He was fourteen. My father was apoplectic. The horse loved it, came back shaking its mane and wanting to do it again.”
James barked a short, surprised laugh. The sound was raw and genuine. “Sounds like a little shit.”
“The worst,” Regulus agreed, warmth flooding his chest at the memory. “He’d charm the kitchen staff for extra honey cakes, then get caught because he’d be sticky for days. He carved his name into my mother’s favorite tidal pool. He… he taught me how to swim past the breakers. Held my head above water when I was too small.” The words kept coming, stories spilling out like water from a cracked jar. He told James about the submerged caves they’d explored, the way Sirius could imitate the cry of every seabird, the time he’d dyed all his formal tunics a shocking seaweed-green right before a diplomatic visit.
James listened. He didn’t interrupt, just nodded occasionally, his eyes forward but his attention wholly on Regulus’s voice. It was a different kind of intimacy, this sharing of memories under the open sky.
After a long pause filled with the rhythmic clopping of hooves, James asked, “How old are you, really? I know what they said at the palace. But that’s just years since your capture, isn’t it?”
Regulus tensed, then forced himself to relax. This was the trade, wasn’t it? Information for effort. “Twenty-three, by your counting. By ours… it’s different. We measure in tides, in bloom cycles. I was nearing my first maturity when I was taken.”
“Maturity?”
“When our biology fully settles. When we can… conceive.” The word felt strange on his tongue, spoken aloud in the daylight. “It’s not like humans. Our cycles are tied to the turn of the seasons, the solstices and equinoxes.”
James reined his horse in slightly, falling more level with Regulus. His curiosity was a palpable, focused thing. “Explain.”
“When the heat breaks. When summer tips into autumn.” Regulus kept his eyes on the path, his cheeks warming despite the cool sea breeze. “That’s when our bodies ready themselves. A… a heat. It lasts for several days. Fertility is almost guaranteed then, if there’s a partner. That’s when alliances between courts were traditionally sealed. Offspring.”
James was silent for a full minute, processing. “So this autumn. You’ll have this… heat.”
“Yes.”
“And that would be the best chance. For an heir.”
Regulus nodded, finally looking at him. James’s face was a portrait of intense, practical consideration. There was no leering, no crude suggestion. He was assimilating data. “The only real chance, outside of rare flukes. Our bodies aren’t like human women’s, cycling every moon. It’s one concentrated, potent window. Once a year.”
“That’s efficient,” James murmured, almost to himself. Then his focus sharpened on Regulus. “What’s it like? The heat.”
The question was so blunt, so devoid of mockery, that Regulus answered just as plainly. “A fever in the blood. A relentless pull. The body demands… completion. It can be painful if ignored. All senses are heightened. Touch, scent. It’s overwhelming.”
“Painful?” James’s brow furrowed.
“A deep, aching emptiness. Like a cramping thirst that nothing but a specific water can quench.” He sighed, watching a hawk circle high above. “It’s why our marriages were timed to it. To have a dedicated partner. It’s… vulnerable. Needy.”
James absorbed this, his jaw working. “You’ve never…”
“No. I was taken before my first. The ceremony on the shore was supposed to be the start, with my intended. Then the bonding during the autumn heat.” He shook his head, a dry, hopeless gesture. “Another thing stolen.”
“Not stolen,” James said, his voice low. “Redirected.”
They rode on. James’s questions came steadily, each one earnest, his gladiator’s mind attacking this new subject with the same focus he gave to combat technique. “The pointed ears. Just for show?”
“Hearing. We can hear a storm over the horizon, a specific fish in a school. The shape catches the sound of the water.”
“And the…” He gestured vaguely toward his own torso.
“Both sets are fully functional,” Regulus said, his tone matter-of-fact, falling into the clinical rhythm James had established. “Conception can happen through either channel, though internally it’s the same result. The heat… prepares both. The body opens. It welcomes.”
“Gods,” James breathed, not in lust, but in sheer fascination. “And the live-longer thing?”
“Slower metabolisms. Denser bone and tissue. We heal faster, if we’re near our element. I can stitch a cut shut in salt water in hours. Without it… days. We age, but it’s gradual. A century for us might be forty years for you.”
James whistled softly. “So you’ll watch me get old and grey.”
The statement landed heavily between them. Regulus looked at him, at the sun-weathered skin at the corners of his eyes, the powerful hands holding the reins. “Yes.”
James met his gaze. His expression was complex, a mix of wonder and a sudden, stark mortality. “Huh.” He clicked his tongue, urging his horse forward. “Better make my time count, then.”
The path began to slope more steeply downward. The scent of pine was slowly overtaken by the crisp, mineral tang of the sea. The trees thinned, revealing glimpses of brilliant, crushing blue.
“All these questions,” Regulus said softly. “You’re not… repulsed?”
James looked genuinely baffled. “Repulsed? By what?” He shook his head, a faint, incredulous smile on his face. “It’s incredible. You’re incredible. A whole different… architecture of being. I’m trying to understand the blueprint.” He reached over, his calloused fingers brushing the back of Regulus’s hand where it rested on the pommel. The touch was fleeting, electric. “My little siren is full of secrets. I want to know all of them.”
Regulus’s breath hitched. The crude, possessive nickname should have rankled. Instead, it warmed him, spoken with that tone of awed curiosity. He didn’t tease James for his endless, simple questions. He just kept answering, the words flowing more easily with each stride of the horses, each shared glance.
They rounded a final bend in the path, and the cove opened up below them. It was a perfect crescent of white sand, sheltered by high, honey-colored cliffs. The water here was a calmer, greener blue than the tumultuous indigo of the open sea beyond the headlands. It lapped gently at the shore, and a wide, smooth shelf of rock extended into the surf, forming a natural platform.
James reined in, his eyes scanning the geography with a tactical gleam. He pointed. “There. The tide line is just past that dark band of seaweed. We could build right at the edge. A stone slab. Maybe a sheltered niche in the cliff for offerings.” He looked at Regulus, his earlier intensity returning, but softened now by the long, revealing ride. “What do you think?”
Regulus looked down at the pristine, empty sand, the gentle water, the sacred solitude of it. It was a gift, hard-won and perfectly understood. He felt the hollowed-out places inside him begin, for the first time, to truly refill.
“It’s perfect,” he said, his voice thick.
James nodded, satisfied. He nudged his stallion forward, beginning the careful descent toward the sand. “Good. Let’s go see how deep that shelf is. I want measurements.”