Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 51

Chapter 51: I’m Not Your Goddamn Vessel

The woman in his arms belonged to another man, was on fire from the inside, and was currently half conscious. Three problems he was choosing to address in reverse order.

The heat that poured off her skin blistered against his jaw. His wolf was restless. And somewhere south of them, through miles of jungle, was the one man in the world Nicholas needed and hated in equal measure.

His Beta lifted his nose, searching for Drakencrest’s signature.

A faint nod. South. Faint, but there.

Nicholas adjusted her weight in his arms and moved.

The jungle was dense enough to punish speed.

"Hold on, Guinevere. Stay with me."

The dark blur came from the left.

It hit with a speed that bypassed his reflexes entirely, ripping her from his arms with a force that spun him sideways. One second she was pressed against his chest. The next she was on the ground, pinned flat, dark wings spreading over her body in the cocoon formation he had seen described in Sterling’s briefing and had hoped was exaggerated.

It was not exaggerated.

A high-pitched, blood-curdling scream ripped from her throat, tearing through the canopy and scattering birds from every tree.

Nicholas was already moving. His blade cleared the sheath in one motion, and the stroke took the fae’s head before its fangs reached her neck. Black blood sprayed across the ferns in an arc that caught the fractured light and turned violet. He kicked the body sideways, before it collapsed on her, and pulled her up against his chest.

His free hand covered her mouth. Her tears spilled over his fingers, hot and fast, running between his knuckles in lines he could feel more than see.

She was shaking against him. The kind of shaking that lived past fear, in the territory where the nervous system stopped distinguishing between threats and just trembled at everything.

"That scream was heard in four kingdoms, Guinevere. On the bright side, if your husband is within ten miles, he is currently running this direction with murder on his mind. On the less bright side, so is everything else."

"Don’t worry. I won’t let them get you."

He scooped her up and made it half a minute before the canopy went dark above them.

Fae dropped from the canopy in a ring. Seven of them. Coordinated. The formation of a hunting pack that had done this a thousand times.

Nicholas stopped. Damon pressed against his leg, teeth bared.

He set Guinevere down. Her legs buckled and she caught herself against a trunk, one arm wrapped around her ribs, her green eyes wide in the dark.

"Stay behind me."

Damon shifted to human form, pulling blades from two sheaths. Two wolves, two swords each, back to back, with a feverish woman between them and a closing circle of dark wings.

The first one spoke. "The vessel runs and runs. We can smell her womb ripening from here."

A second one dropped lower, its augmented eyes locked on Guinevere. "We will split her open from navel to throat and drink the fire from her spine."

Damon lunged. Two heads left two bodies in a cross-stroke so clean the fae beside them flinched. Black blood misted the moss.

Three more dropped from above. Their mouths moved together. "The dragon’s flame warmed the seed. Upon harvest we shall feed."

Nicholas’s vision went full gold. His wolf pressed so close to the surface that his jawline distorted, fangs dropping past the human threshold, and the sound that came from his chest was territory and fury and the specific violence of a male hearing his mate described as prey.

He killed three in the time it took the fourth to draw its blade. Damon took two more from the flank.

More came. A fae flanked Nicholas from his blind side. Its blade came up in a thrust aimed at the center of his chest, the killing stroke, committed and fast.

Guinevere moved unnaturally fast for a girl who had nothing left to give. The blur that sat between wolf and dragon flickered once, just enough, and her hand closed around the flat of the blade three inches from Nicholas’s sternum.

The dark magic hit her system like venom while the blade burned against her palm. Her fingers locked around it in a grip her body refused to release, the muscles seizing, the gold light under her skin recoiling from the contact in visible waves.

Nicholas saw her on her knees, and felt it through the matebond. His own hand cramped. His own ribs ached. The fidelity of it staggered him, and for one disorienting second the line blurred between his nervous system and hers.

"Guinevere. Drop the blade."

She couldn’t. Her hand was locked.

Nicholas lowered into the Alpha register.

"Release."

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