Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 181

Chapter 181: They Dove Simultaneously (It Was NOT Teamwork)

There was no right way to hit water from a hundred feet, but there were degrees of wrong, and Guinevere found the worst one.

The river punched like an ice god, forcing a shift on impact.

White flash. Fur gone. Lingerie pajamas back. The cold upgraded from bad to FUCK with a capital scream.

She hit a rock, then pinballed on more. Back. Shoulder. Forehead. Each one stole something. Air. Orientation. The ability to tell up from down.

Drowning in a freezing river after escaping a goddamn glowing cult of brothers who lived in a brown bachelor pad together was not the ending she had written for herself.

✦✦✦

Nicholas didn’t hesitate.

His wolf tore across the cliff at full sprint, four hundred pounds of Alpha predator locked onto the white blur disappearing. The edge came and he launched.

A hundred feet of open air.

The shift ripped through him mid-fall. Claws retracted. Muscle condensed. Skin replaced fur.

By the time gravity had him at sixty feet, Nicholas Shadowfell was in a dive position as a human. Arms up. Body arrow-straight. Then he hit the river.

The cold drove so deep into his chest his lungs seized.

Barely above freezing. Mountain snowmelt with zero interest in keeping warm-blooded creatures alive. The current grabbed him immediately, pulling him under and south with a force that made his Alpha strength feel like a suggestion.

He’d fought currents before. Trained in rivers, lakes, open ocean. This was different. This water was faster than anything he’d swum in, and it was getting faster.

He couldn’t see her.

The water was black. Silt, depth, and speed turned everything past his hands into nothing, and his wolf’s tracking instincts, which could find a rabbit across a moonless field at three hundred yards, were useless when the trail was underwater.

He surfaced, gasping.

"GUINEVERE!"

He dove again.

Her name roared through his blood.

Every second she was under was a second her lungs didn’t have. A woman her size, unconscious, in water this cold. The clock was ticking.

Their matebond had been half-broken since she woke. Her emotions reached him muffled, like hearing someone speak through a wall. But the wolf signal had been clean. Clear. That was how he had reached her first in the forest.

But now that was dimming too.

He broke the surface again, catching his breath. Then he refocused so his wolf could properly orient to hers.

For a second, nothing.

Then a pulse. His wolf grabbed it.

She’s downstream. We don’t lose her.

He went under and Nicholas swam toward her with everything his body had left.

Then his shoulder slammed into a rock hidden in the black. Bone cracked. Pain detonated. He didn’t slow. If he lost her now, he wouldn’t be able to sense her again.

✦✦✦

Maddox: Guinevere.

Maddox: Answer me. Please, baby.

Maddox: Don’t you dare. Answer me. Now.

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