Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 55

Chapter 55: Stop Puking, Honey. It’s Disgusting.

Maddox’s eyes didn’t move from Kael’s and it took every ounce of control not to look at Guinevere.

"Fine. Forty-eight hours."

"Swear on your dragon, little brother."

"I swear on my dragon. Two days. Let her go."

"Wonderful. I accept your terms." Kael lowered the blade.

Guinevere’s legs gave out the moment the support left. She pitched forward, and Maddox was there before she hit the ground. The sound that left his chest was the sound of a man who had been drowning in a void and had just broken the surface.

He touched her neck, then her face, checking her. Every touch was fast and precise and said things his mouth couldn’t say with Kael ten feet away.

He wanted to pull her to his chest and wrap his arms around her, but that would tell Kael who she was to him and Kael would use it against her.

"Status. Can you move or are you dead weight?"

His tone was hardened, the one he used with the elders. Never with her. But there was no universe where he would not be carrying her.

She pushed herself to stand, shaking, and immediately turned away from him, falling back onto her knees with a dry heave.

Nicholas connected the pieces at this point to play along, but he didn’t bother to hide his irritation.

"Interesting," Kael observed. "Do you treat all your concubines this way, little brother? If so, you are outperforming our father by a mile. You might want to tell her the relationship is transactional."

Maddox’s jaw worked when he said the next thing, the words tasting like ash. "I’ll manage my property how I see fit."

He hated himself for that sentence more than he hated Kael for making it necessary. But he held the mask.

The matebond carried her reaction back to him. She understood why he said it, but it still stung. The kind of hurt that she would never admit to. Maddox added it to the list of things he would fix when they were home.

Kael moved towards her, fully planning on picking her up. Before he got there, Maddox scooped her up in his arms.

"Okay then. We have about five minutes before more dark fae come. Guinevere, honey, if you could stop puking that would be great. It’s disgusting." Kael glanced once over his shoulder at Nicholas. "Wolves. Don’t get their blood in your mouth. Keep up."

He turned and began cutting vines to carve a path.

As soon as Kael’s back was to them, Maddox’s lips found her hair, her temple, the bruise on her jaw. Quick. Desperate. The inventory of a man confirming she was real. He pressed his forehead to hers.

They ran.

Kael set the pace at the front. Maddox was behind him, Guinevere pressed against his chest, her body radiating heat that his dragon blood was pulling in as fast as it could.

Sterling fell into formation last and his eyes never left Kael’s back. Forty-eight hours started now, and he was counting.

Ten minutes passed. The moss grew denser on the trunks, which meant they were moving deeper into fae territory, which meant Kael was either navigating toward an exit or navigating toward something else entirely, and Maddox did not have the luxury of determining which because the woman in his arms had started shaking.

The first convulsion hit without warning.

Her body seized against his chest, every muscle locking simultaneously, her spine arching backward with a force that nearly broke his grip.

Maddox stopped running. He dropped to one knee, cradling her against him, one hand behind her skull to keep it from slamming into his shoulder as the convulsions rolled through her in waves.

"Guinevere. Stay with me. We’re going to get it out of you."

Nicholas staggered beside him. His hand flew to his ribs, his jaw clenching, his amber eyes going wide as the matebond delivered her seizure into his body with merciless fidelity.

Two men feeling the same woman’s pain through two different connections, mirroring each other with a synchronicity that neither of them registered and both of them would have hated if they had.

A sob broke through her convulsions, wet and choked.

Maddox looked up.

Kael was standing ten feet ahead, arms folded across his chest, watching with detached interest. His eyes darted from Guinevere’s seizing body to Maddox’s face to Nicholas’s mirrored flinch.

Then he disappeared.

The speed was dragon-fast, his body blurring through the undergrowth in a direction perpendicular to their trajectory.

Maddox pulled Guinevere tighter against his chest and pressed his mouth to her temple. Her convulsions were weakening but the intervals between them were shortening, which meant the toxin was spreading faster than her body could resist.

Nicholas’s Beta was already scenting, nose lifted, reading the jungle air for anything useful.

Sterling’s blade came up. His body shifted to cover Maddox and Guinevere, positioning himself between them and the direction Kael had vanished. Trust had an expiration date and Kael’s had never started.

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