Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 112

Chapter 112: Winging The Husband Thing

"I had everything brought back."

The Dragon King stood behind his wife in a closet doorway and learned, in real time, that silk on hangers could do more damage than any weapon in his armory.

He was standing close enough to feel the moment her composure cracked. Her shoulders. First. Then her breathing.

"Are you sure?" The question came out raw and small, and she couldn’t look at him because looking at him would break the dam she was barely holding together.

Her hand covered her mouth, and her eyes burned with a heat that had nothing to do with bathwater and everything to do with the fact that the absence of this room had been a wound she hadn’t realized was still bleeding.

"I’m sure. My dragon wouldn’t have it any other way."

His dragon rumbled in agreement, vibrating through his ribs and into her spine. Then the scent hit him. Salt and warmth and something cracking open behind her composure that she was fighting to keep sealed.

Excellent work, Commander.

"What’s wrong?"

She didn’t answer. Her hand stayed over her mouth and her shoulders trembled once, a single involuntary shudder that traveled through every point of contact between them.

Maddox spun her around, lifted her by the waist, and set her on the dressing table with the ease of putting a mug on the shelf. His thumb caught a tear before it reached her jaw.

"You’re forbidden from crying in front of me, Guinevere. New policy. Effective immediately. I don’t have the emotional infrastructure for it and my heart is doing something I can’t identify."

She let out a wet laugh that was ninety percent tears and ten percent his fault for being ridiculous.

The Dragon King was fluent in women the way poets are fluent in language: instinctively, effortlessly, and with the kind of confidence that comes from a lifetime of natural talent. But his mate had broken that fluency in under a week. Every conversation with her required a decoder ring he didn’t own, and a matebond sure as hell would have helped.

His dragon rumbled, low and distressed, because she was upset, and the beast had zero tolerance for her tears. Zero. The number was firm and non-negotiable and the dragon was prepared to burn down whatever had caused them, which was currently a closet.

He put himself in her position. Tried to see the room through her eyes.

She arrived here from Nyros. A different continent. A different species. Sold by her father. Maddox, the version of himself he couldn’t remember, had moved her in. Filled this room for her. Made space for her in the one place a Dragon King makes space for nobody.

Two weeks later, his inner circle moved her out while the man who’d married her forgot she existed. The closet wasn’t a closet. It was proof that she’d belonged here once, and the absence of it had been proof that she didn’t anymore.

"You came here," he said slowly, his thumb still on her cheek. "Blair said I moved you in this room." His voice found its footing, understanding landing in real time. "Two weeks later, you woke up and all of it was gone. The room you’d started to call yours. In a Keep that wasn’t your kingdom, surrounded by a species that wasn’t your own. And it felt like losing the only anchor you had."

She nodded once. Small. The kind of nod that costs a person everything because it confirms the thing they’ve been carrying alone.

He pulled her into his chest, arms wrapping around her while she sat on the dressing table and he stood between her knees, and her face pressed into the bare skin over his heart the way it had a hundred times in a life he couldn’t remember.

His lips found her hair. Held there.

"Welcome home, Wife."

✦✦✦

Across the summit grounds, the man Maddox had just made Fourth in Command was about to earn the title faster than either of them expected.

Kael and Jaxon crossed the Solandris encampment, which was separate from the other tents by exactly the distance that old money buys when it doesn’t want to be overheard.

Two guards stood at parade rest outside of the tent. Both nodded at Kael and Jaxon as they entered. For Kael, that was new. The opposite of what he usually got.

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