Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 17

Chapter 17: King-Sized Problem Behind Her

Nicholas Shadowfell had not slept.

It had been eighteen hours since Renwick Lunaris looked him in the face, and took Maddox Drakencrest’s offer.

Damon, his Beta, was walking next to him, when the first thing happened. Terror flooded into his chest so hard his hand flew to his sternum and he stumbled.

Damon froze mid-step. "Nick?"

What came after was worse. Nicholas hunched over, grunting, his ribs on fire. Left side, cracking in a sequence too even. Then his hand seized.

Before he could process it, pressure closed around his throat. Tightening.

The kind of slow that meant whoever was doing this wanted her to feel every second. Nicholas felt every second too.

He looked up at Damon, his eyes glowing wolf-gold.

"She’s being hurt." His voice was wrecked.

"Drakencrest is hurting her?"

"Someone is." Nicholas spat blood onto the cobblestones. "Lunaris is going to wish he’d taken my offer."

✦✦✦

Guinevere surfaced just enough to hear and not enough to move.

"She’s been out for over a day, Aldric. Talk to me."

"Kael was thorough, I’ll give him that, Your Majesty. But the fact that she is breathing at all is not something I would have bet on when you carried her in yesterday."

The word ’yesterday’ pulled her back to the surface faster than the pain had. She kept her eyes closed, not fully awake. She had lost a day. Possibly more. Her last clear memory was a red dragon dropping through the canopy.

"Kael’s thoroughness is not going to be a problem for much longer."

"On the bright side, her healing is faster than anything I’ve seen from a wolf. She’s recovering at the rate of a high-blood female who is fully marked with male dragon venom. Given there are no fang marks on her neck, and she grew up on a non-dragon continent, that’s the part I find interesting."

"Her father is Renwick Lunaris. Wolf king who wouldn’t mate with a non-wolf. No dragon blood."

"With respect, Your Majesty, one of those parents lied. If I were placing bets, the girl has dragon blood, and it didn’t come from her mother."

"Who else has access to her bloodwork?"

"Just me."

"Nobody hears about this."

"Understood."

Footsteps. A door closing. Silence.

✦✦✦

Someone was holding an ice pack to her ribs, and someone was very much underneath her, and these two facts arrived gently, like a courtesy her subconscious was extending before the rest of the information showed up.

Makes sense, was the full extent of her analysis, because she was very tired and not yet in the business of asking follow-up questions.

The skin wasn’t just against her cheek, though. It was against her stomach and along the tops of her thighs where they pressed between his, and his arm lay across her back like he had been holding her for hours and had forgotten he was doing it.

She should have been alarmed by all of this. Against all evidence, she was good with it. Her body had settled into him like poured concrete and was not interested in being disturbed.

Then her brain caught up.

Her eyes flew open, but the moment she tried to move, her ribs went from sore to screaming. A broken noise tore out of her that she didn’t recognize.

"Hey. Easy. It’s me. Maddox."

She knew who Maddox was. King Drakencrest. What she had not known, until approximately four seconds ago, was that they were apparently on a half-naked, first name basis.

Then he pressed his lips to the top of her head, which was not something she had authorized. She waited for the part where it bothered her. It did not arrive.

The back of his hand drifted to her hair, tracing slow, absent circles against her scalp while his other arm stayed carefully around her, holding the ice pack in place and high enough to avoid the worst of her ribs.

Muscle by muscle, without her permission and without her understanding why, her body relaxed into him.

He kissed her hair again, confirming the first time wasn’t a glitch in the matrix. He was doing it on a cycle, every thirty seconds or so, automatic and unhurried, like his mouth had developed a habit his brain had not caught up to yet and no one was going to be the one to tell him.

She decided she didn’t mind. That was as far as her assessment was willing to go. The rest was confusion wrapped in cognitive dissonance, wrapped in a thin layer of exhaustion she could not shake.

Low in his chest, under her ear, something rumbled. His dragon. A deep vibration that was not quite a growl and not quite a purr, and her wolf, battered and still half-asleep inside her, stirred.

"I won’t let anything happen to you, Guinevere." His voice was quiet, directly above her head. "You’re mine."

He pressed another kiss into her hair. Then another. Guinevere breathed him in.

"Hang on." He sat up, adjusting her without putting her down, so she was sitting in his lap. He grabbed a cup of water from his nightstand and tipped it to her lips before she could move her hand to take it.

She drank it greedily.

Then he leaned in and kissed the side of her jaw. She stared at him. He didn’t explain himself. He had kissed the worst of the bruising like it was a thing he was trying to apologize for in a language she had not learned yet.

The man had no shame, and she almost laughed. It was kind of adorable.

"Thank you for taking care of me."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify