Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 34

Chapter 34: In Exchange, You Get Me

She was dead.

The matebond was empty and his wife was dead and the thought landed in Maddox’s chest like a blade between the ribs and stayed there.

The only reason he was still upright was because the body keeps moving after the mind has stopped, and his body had been trained to move in exactly these conditions for exactly these reasons.

Maddox saw Ryker below.

Black armor. Blood on his face. A sword in each hand because his dragon fire was gone and the man underneath the dragon had never needed fire to be lethal. He was holding the eastern flank with a line of warriors fighting on muscle memory and adrenaline, and the line was bending.

Maddox: Ryker. I am here.

The mindlink carried for the first time. Weak. Fragmented. Enough.

Ryker: Maddox. Do you have fire support?

Maddox: Negative. Seven dragons. Fire dampened on entry.

Ryker: Then why the hell are you here.

Maddox: Because you are.

Lorens landed in the courtyard hard enough to crack the stone. Maddox dismounted before the talons had stopped moving. His dragon was gone.

Dampening wards held his dragon down like a boot on a throat, and Maddox Drakencrest stood in a battle in human form.

A guard threw him a sword. He caught it without looking.

The first man came at him from the right. Maddox killed him in two moves. Clean. Mechanical. The swordwork of a dead man’s body doing what it had been trained to do.

He cut his way to Ryker’s position in under a minute. Warriors parted as he passed, and the ones who failed to part were removed. By the time he reached the eastern flank, his sword was red to the hilt.

Ryker looked at him across the shield wall. Blood on his jaw. A gash above his left eye. His black armor dented in three places and scratched in twenty.

"You look terrible."

"Kael set the trap and left," Ryker said. "His commanders are running it. Three companies. The dark mage is holding the dampening field from inside the Keep. If we drop the mage, we get fire back."

"How many men behind the mage?"

"Two hundred. Warded door. My best warriors have been hitting it for three hours."

Maddox looked at the Keep. Then the courtyard. Then the three companies closing from the north, west, and south. Two thousand of Ryker’s men were alive, but their fire was gone, their shifts were failing, and the formation was shrinking by the minute.

Seven fresh dragons with dampened fire and a king who could not shift changed nothing.

The math was simple.

"Lorens."

"Commander."

"White banner. I am walking to the gate."

Ryker’s head snapped towards him. "What did you just say."

"I am the objective. I have always been the objective. You were the bait. I am the prize." His voice was flat. Empty. The voice of a man who had already lost the thing worth living for and was settling accounts with what remained. "The moment they have me, the siege is pointless. They pull back. The field drops. Your fire comes back. Two thousand men go home to their wives and children."

"And you go in chains."

"Yes."

"Absolutely fucking not."

"It was never a question, Ryker."

Maddox looked at him. Gold eyes steady and dead. The specific calm of a man standing past the worst thing that could happen to him, operating in the wasteland on the other side of it. There was nothing left to threaten him with. Kael could chain him, break him, kill him. None of it mattered.

"She is dead, Ryker."

Ryker: If you die in there, I will personally drag your corpse back to Drakencrest and let Blair kill you again.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify