Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 107

Chapter 107: Why. Was. She. Running. A. Lethal. Simulation.

The questions came fast. The answers came from whoever was unlucky enough to make eye contact.

Ryker answered three. Sterling answered two and tried to pass one to Blair, who passed it to Kael, who answered it with the wrong amount of honesty and created three new questions. It was the most inefficient debrief in Velkaris military history, and it was about to get worse.

"Why was she in the foreign court wing, in sovereign quarters?" Maddox asked. "And not in the royal wing with full security and a guard escort?"

"We had her things moved," Blair replied. "But she has been staying in my chambers with me."

Kael glanced at Blair. The glance was fast, loaded, and poorly disguised. His brother had not known where Guinevere slept. Good. He shouldn’t. The fact that his reaction suggested he had been trying to find out was a problem Maddox would make sure to extinguish.

"My guards were briefed and took over her safety as well," Blair continued. "I can’t answer why she wasn’t assigned any outside of that."

"You moved her things from where?" Maddox asked.

The silence that followed was the kind that precedes a verdict.

Blair met his eyes. "Your chambers, Maddox. You moved her into your chambers the day you brought her here. The day Lux treated you, before we woke you, all of her things were moved. We had her scent scrubbed so you wouldn’t suspect someone was breaking in."

Maddox’s vision went red at the edges. The timeline assembled itself with military precision, every piece falling into a sequence that made the rage in his chest climb higher with each connection.

"So let me make sure I have this right. After she was choked, you moved my wife out of my chambers and had her run a Skyrunner Lethal Simulation."

The sentence sat on the table like a lit fuse with a very short wick. Every person in the room stared at it and chose to let it burn.

"Yes. I was against it," Blair snapped. "Her hands were sliced open from catching a blade the night before in the throne room. She saved a child’s life, and Sterling and Ryker still had her run the flight trial. Shadowfell had to dress her wounds again after she flew."

Sliced hands. Every new detail was a brick being added to a wall of things that had happened to his wife.

"Don’t worry," Kael said, leaning back in his chair. "I killed that guy."

Maddox looked at Kael. Kael looked back. It did not make Maddox feel better.

His dragon whimpered in his mind.

She was hurt. We were here. We did nothing. Fix it. Fix all of it.

He intended to.

"Nobody defended her to the elders," Blair continued. "She saved their lives in the throne room. Not one of them has thanked her."

"Technically I saved everyone in the throne room," Kael commented.

Blair gave him a look so flat it could have been used to level a foundation.

"It was a team effort," he amended. "In which I disabled the wards, took down an army of mercenaries, and killed the man who was trying to take her."

"You know ten percent of what she did," Blair clipped. "She freed four hundred hostages of dragon iron. And killed three people before you got there including the ones trying to kill Maddox and Ryker."

Kael gave her an unimpressed look. "With a flame she can’t control?"

"With blades, Kael," Blair answered flatly.

"Did she?" Kael took a sip of whiskey. "Because when I got there, she shut her eyes and swung a blade around blindly like she was trying to hit a piñata."

"She can throw blades, Kael," Ryker cut in. "Three kills. Three throws. One was about to kill me. One was holding a blade to Maddox’s throat. The third was Draven’s translator."

Kael opened his mouth like he wanted to argue. Closed it. Whatever he was about to say, he decided to keep to himself.

Maddox spoke. Low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that doesn’t compete with noise.

"I am Commander of the Drakencrest Armed Forces. Under no protocol, in any branch of my military, would I have a wounded soldier run a lethal simulation trial. Let alone the day after combat. The throne room constitutes as both." He paused. Let the silence carry the weight he refused to raise his voice for. "Why. Was. She. Running. A. Lethal. Simulation. I want the answer. Now."

"You had slotted her in to run that trial..." Sterling paused, choosing his words carefully. "Before everything."

"The elders," Ryker explained. "She needs to be a dragon rider to have a shot at being queen. That’s the reality."

Kael’s jaw tightened. Recalculation. Maddox had seen that now multiple times with Kael when it came to his wife.

And the offhand comments Ryker had said to him all week. The jokes. The remarks that Maddox had dismissed as his High General’s peculiar sense of humor. Every single one of them had been true.

His formal jacket came off. He draped it over her body, like a blanket. The room went silent watching him do it.

"Calder and Wessick." Maddox’s voice was steady. "Where are they?"

He used to interact with both men daily. Their absence had registered in the background but he had let it pass because the week had been loud enough to cover it.

"They’re dead," Ryker answered. "I’m sorry, Maddox. They volunteered for the strike team to rescue her. They were attacked in the air. Fae wards blocked dragon fire and shifts."

The words hit like a whip drawn across an open wound. Two men Maddox cared about were in the ground, and the grief he should have been carrying all week had been deleted along with everything else.

That’s when he noticed Kael’s jaw tighten. Every person in this room had tells, and every tell was firing at once. He was missing something key.

"The black ops report. When I go through it, am I going to find anything else I won’t like?"

"Yes," Ryker replied. "The company in this room is mixed, Commander. I suggest we debrief on that specifically in private."

Blair’s eyes narrowed. "What."

Ryker didn’t answer. The look on his face said that decision had been made for reasons Blair was going to hate and Maddox was going to understand.

Her expression said this conversation was far from over.

Kael took a long sip of his whiskey and didn’t comment which, for a man who had an opinion about everything, was the most damning thing he could have done.

"The parchment." Maddox looked at Ryker. "Whatever she pulled from that man’s body was important enough for you to arrest him on sight."

Ryker reached into his coat and placed the parchment on the table. The wax seal faced up. Red wax. An emblem pressed into it that Maddox didn’t recognize from this angle.

He turned the parchment so the seal faced the room. "Ashenvale seal."

Every head turned to Kael.