Chapter 24: A Knight Among Patrons
The morning after the bandaging felt different. The air in the Ember & Stein seemed charged, like the quiet moment after a lightning strike. Taichi moved through his pre-opening routine—wiping tables, checking keg taps—with a nervous energy he couldn’t shake. His fingers kept tracing the memory of Yamato’s skin under his hands, the tight heat of the wound, the way the alpha had trusted him completely. It left a hum under his ribs.
He was elbow-deep in a barrel of soaking malt when the door swung open. The familiar creak was followed by a sudden, dense silence from the few early patrons.
Taichi looked up.
Yamato filled the doorway, but not as the tired, wounded man from last night. This was Sir Yamato, Knight of the Crown, in full formal plate. The steel was polished to a blinding silver, the royal crest engraved on the pauldron gleaming. A long cloak of deep blue wool was clasped at his shoulder. He looked like something from a ballad—imposing, untouchable, magnificent. Every eye in the place was on him. A farmer at a corner table actually stopped chewing.
Yamato’s gaze swept the room, dismissing everyone else, and landed on Taichi. A slow, private smile touched his lips, erasing the formal mask. He walked to the bar, the weight of his armor making the floorboards groan a familiar protest. He didn’t sit. He just stood there, a pillar of military might in the middle of a rustic tavern.
“A simple ale, please, Brewer,” Yamato said, his voice carrying easily in the quiet. The formality of ‘Brewer’ was a playful contrast to the intimacy of the night before.
“You planning on fighting a war in here?” Taichi asked, grabbing a tankard. His own voice sounded too high. “Or is this just your idea of casual wear?”
“Audience with the Lord Chamberlain this afternoon,” Yamato said, accepting the frothing ale. “Protocol. Makes the bureaucrats feel important.” He took a long drink, his throat working. A drop escaped, tracing a path down his neck and disappearing under the steel gorget. Taichi watched it. He couldn’t look away.
For the next hour, Taichi pretended not to watch. He polished glass after glass, rearranged bottles, made unnecessary notes in his ledger. His attention, however, was a physical thing, a tether hooked to the alpha in the corner. He saw Yamato lean down to listen to old man Garrat, the farmer, nodding seriously at some story about blighted wheat. He saw a merchant’s young child stumble and drop a wooden toy; in a fluid motion, Yamato was off his stool, the intimidating armor bending easily as he retrieved it, whispering something that made the kid giggle. He laughed with a group of off-duty guardsmen, the sound rich and warm, cutting through the tavern murmur.
He moved with an unconscious, grounded grace. The armor wasn’t a costume; it was part of him. This was the other side of the man who’d winced under Taichi’s antiseptic rag. The protector. The pillar. It did something dangerous to Taichi’s insides.
A familiar, lemon-and-sage scent cut through his reverie. Sora appeared beside him at the back counter, her arms crossed over her flour-dusted apron. She hadn’t said a word when Taichi had disposed of the bloodied rags this morning, just gave him a long, knowing look. Now, she followed his gaze straight to Yamato.
“You’re drooling, boss,” she hissed, her voice low enough that only he could hear. The protective edge in it was sharper than her kitchen knives.
Taichi flinched, tearing his eyes away. “I was checking if he was causing trouble. All that steel’s a tripping hazard.”
“Right. And I’m the Queen.” Sora nudged him with her elbow, her alpha presence pressing close, a shield. “You’ve been staring at him like he’s the last piece of pie at a famine feast. Don’t tell me you’ve actually fallen for the cocky knight. The one with the ‘dangerous profession’ and the ‘royal obligations’ that’ll take him away for weeks? That one?”
Her words were darts, each hitting a secret fear Taichi had been refusing to name. The memory of Yamato’s ripped tunic and the smell of blood flashed behind his eyes. It made his reply too sharp, too defensive. “I haven’t fallen for anything. He’s a customer who pays his tab. That’s it.”
Even to his own ears, it sounded hollow. A hot, betraying flush crept up his neck, warming his cheeks and the tips of his ears.
Sora saw it. Her eyes widened a fraction. “Oh, hell. You have.” It wasn’t a tease anymore. It was a diagnosis. A warning.
Before Taichi could spit out another denial, he felt the weight of a gaze from across the room. He looked up, helplessly drawn.
Yamato was watching him. He’d finished his ale. The conversation around him continued, but he was utterly still, his blue eyes locked on Taichi’s face. He saw Taichi’s flushed skin, saw Sora’s protective stance at his side. He saw everything.
Slowly, deliberately, Yamato raised his empty tankard. Not in a boisterous, public salute. It was a subtle, intimate gesture, just a slight lift of the vessel, his eyes holding Taichi’s. A silent toast. To what? To the memory of last night? To the unspoken thing thickening the air between them? To the challenge in Sora’s stance?
The blush on Taichi’s face burned nuclear. He was exposed. Caught. The stubborn, independent omega who needed no one, utterly unraveled by a look.
He couldn’t hold the gaze. He looked down, busying his hands with a dry rag, wiping a spot on the already-clean counter. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat that surely everyone could hear. When he dared to glance back a moment later, Yamato was settling his tab with a copper, nodding farewell to the table. He moved toward the door, the crowd parting for him. He didn’t look back.
The tavern door closed behind the knight with a soft, final thud. The normal noise seemed to rush back in, twice as loud.
Sora let out a low whistle. “Just a customer, huh?”
Taichi had no retort left. He just stared at the door, the ghost of Yamato’s silent toast lingering in the space between them, a promise and a threat, all at once. The scent of cinnamon and sweat in the air suddenly felt less like a declaration of independence, and more like a question.