Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 258

Chapter 258: Best Thirty Seconds I’ve Had All Day

LUNARIS KEEP - INFIRMARY - 9:00 PM

Renwick Lunaris had one more thing to do before he left. It was going to take sixty seconds. It was going to ruin a young man’s entire evening. He was fine with that.

Tyler Draven opened his eyes to see his Alpha standing over his bed.

"Your father is no longer Beta of Lunaris."

Tyler stared at him. The words entered his ears, passed through his brain, and came out the other side without leaving comprehension behind.

"Effective immediately, you are. Don’t fuck it up."

The color left Tyler’s face so fast it looked like someone had pulled a plug. "I don’t understand. What happened to my father?"

"Ask him about it. I don’t have the energy to explain other men’s mistakes tonight." Renwick’s voice was flat and final in the way that meant the conversation was over whether the other party had finished processing or not. "What I need from you is this Keep running when I return. My daughter went to Greyhall Crossing for a summit she would be removed from because you didn’t know something basic. That’s the kind of failure I don’t forgive twice. The Keep is yours until I return. Run it like you understand what’s at stake."

Tyler swallowed the accusation like a man swallowing glass, one painful shard at a time.

"Yes, Alpha. It won’t happen again. I’ll take care of the Keep."

Renwick paused.

The pause was small. Barely a breath. The kind of pause a man makes when something surprises him and he refuses to let the surprise reach his face. Tyler Draven had just accepted full responsibility without deflection, without excuse, and without a single syllable of the defensive bullshit that Cassian would have fired back in the same situation.

He would never acknowledge the comparison. He would never admit that the boy lying in a bed with stab wounds and dark magic scarring was a stark upgrade over the son he’d killed on a staircase hours ago.

But the pause said it anyway.

"Heal. I need you functional, not brave. That’s not a request."

Tyler would have saluted if his arms weren’t full of stab wounds. He gave a nod instead and watched Renwick leave.

When the door closed, he exhaled for what felt like the first time in fifty-three seconds. He had been promoted, threatened, blamed, and dismissed and was trying to determine which one to process first.

✦✦✦

LUNARIS KEEP - MAIN GATE - 9:50 PM

Renwick Lunaris departed his own Keep with six of his men.

He was going to collect his daughter from a summit she had no right to attend, smooth over whatever political damage she’d caused, and bring her home.

Behind him, the Keep settled into the first quiet it had known in forty-eight hours. Maddox’s dragons held the walls. The Luminari held the wards. Tyler Draven held the command from a bed.

Somewhere over the mountains, Landon Solveil was forty-seven miles from a balcony. Somewhere inside Greyhall Crossing, Nicholas Shadowfell was winning a continent.

And somewhere between them, unconscious on a bed guarded by eleven men who were about to fail spectacularly, Guinevere Lunaris slept with wolf venom in her veins, lash marks on her back, and a blanket that would not be there when Nicholas arrived.

✦✦✦

LUNARIS KEEP - GUINEVERE’S CHAMBERS - 1:30 AM

Maddox planned a quick five-minute eye-rest but ended up dead-to-the-world, jammed into a white armchair in the most uncomfortable sitting position invented by the devil himself.

He was tearing through the clouds in dragon form over the ocean when something grabbed his attention.

I’m your husband. You married me. I’ve been looking for you for two days and love you so goddamn much.

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