Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 109

Chapter 109: Home. She Is Home. This Is Correct.

The war room had required a king. The corridor required a husband. Something that Maddox apparently was now, whether he remembered signing up for it or not.

When he reached his chambers, the doors were open, servants already moving with urgency. Trunks were being carried.

He turned left into his study. The fireplace was cold. He didn’t bother lighting it. He would keep the woman in his arms warmer than any fire could.

He sat in his desk chair. Adjusted her against his chest. Her head settled into the crook of his neck like it had been designed to fit there, which, given recent revelations, it had.

He kissed her hair. Held his mouth there.

The desk beneath his free hand was buried. Letters. Reports. Correspondence that had been piling up during the week he’d spent at his field tent managing a summit instead of managing his mail. The stack had the look of a man who had been too busy to read and too important to ignore, and the result was a small mountain of parchment that his adjutant had probably been sweating over.

He shifted Guinevere to one arm, freeing the other, and began sorting with the efficiency of a man who ran an empire and had learned to triage paper the way medics triaged wounds. Urgent. Less urgent. Can wait. Should have been burned before it reached his desk.

A letter near the middle caught his eye. The handwriting was feminine. Looping. Confident. The kind of penmanship that had been tutored into existence at great expense and with marginal results. The seal was unfamiliar, which was unusual, because Maddox recognized most seals the way other men recognized faces.

He opened it.

My Dearest Maddox,

Hey there sexy....

He skipped to the signature.

Yours Always, Emma

Maddox stared at the name. Emma. He searched his memory with the focus of a man who had excellent recall and zero results. Emma. Nothing. He tried attaching the name to a face. A house. A conversation. A location. Anything.

The shelves were empty.

He looked at the letter again. Our last conversation. He had apparently had a conversation significant enough for this woman to reference it in written correspondence, and he could not conjure a single detail about her.

He set the letter in the should have been burned pile. Emma sounded batshit crazy. Next.

The next letter had a Lunaris seal.

Drakencrest,

I am writing to demand the immediate disclosure of my daughter’s status.

Renwick Lunaris

The date on the letter lined up with the jungle.

"What the hell was I doing." He said it out loud. To the empty room. To the unconscious woman in his lap.

He set Renwick’s letter in the urgent pile. Then moved it to the top of the urgent pile. Then looked at it again and moved it to a separate pile he mentally labeled respond before he invades.

More letters. His elders requesting a review of "the Lunaris situation," which Maddox now understood was code for your wife and the understanding made his blood simmer.

He made a pile of the ones he would be addressing first thing tomorrow.

The sounds from his chambers had quieted. He stood, scooped her tighter against him, and walked through the study door into the bedroom he apparently shared with his wife and couldn’t remember sleeping in.

The servants were gone. The room was transformed. Her presence had been restored with the speed and precision of a team that feared their king, and the fear had produced excellent results.

His dragon exhaled.

Home. She is home. This is correct.

He carried her through the bedroom the way he had carried her through every corridor tonight: like she weighed nothing, like his arms were the only place she was allowed to exist, like the concept of putting her down was a suggestion that had been reviewed and permanently rejected.

He walked into his closet.

His side was organized with military precision: black, charcoal, midnight blue, arranged by function and season. Her side was full. Abundantly, generously, excessively full.

His lips twitched.

The version of himself that he couldn’t remember had filled this closet for her. Row after row of fabric and leather and silk that said, in the only language Maddox trusted more than words: you live here and I want you to stay. If his current self had been starting from zero, he would have done the same thing.

He selected a chemise from a drawer. Light blue. Soft silk. Small enough for her frame and pretty in a way that made his chest tighten for reasons he refused to examine because he was a man among men.

He carried everything back to the bed and laid her down.

She looked smaller against the mattress. The crimson dress consumed her. The earrings, Kael’s earrings, caught the candlelight with a weight that made him wince. Heavy gold dangles, teardrop shaped, lined with diamonds.

He reached for the first earring and unclasped it carefully. The weight of it in his palm was absurd.

Oh.

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