Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 84

Chapter 84: Hypothetically, What If You Got Married

Ryker tossed his coin. Caught it. "Hey, Maddox."

"No."

"I haven’t said anything yet."

"The tone said enough. Whatever it is, no."

Ryker leaned against a post in the tent. "Hypothetical. What if I were to tell you, that during the three weeks you blacked out, you got married."

Maddox took a sip of coffee. "I would say bullshit."

"Humor me."

"If, in some fever dream, I married a woman I can’t remember, that would be an impulse marriage. And I would annul it." He said it the way a man says something obvious, with the mild impatience of a king who had been asked whether water was wet.

"What if she’s a fated mate?"

Maddox gave him a flat look. "Dragons don’t get married because their nose told them to. That’s wolf behavior."

Ryker’s mouth curved at one corner. The curve contained things he was choosing to withhold, and the withholding was physically hurting him.

"What if you paid seven hundred and fifty million gold for her and gave a middle finger to twenty kings who were also trying to buy her?"

Maddox processed the number with detached interest. "I would ask about the refund policy."

"There is no refund policy. You also gave her a ring. You were very thorough about the whole thing."

Maddox stared at him. "That doesn’t sound like me."

Ryker laughed with his whole body, the way he laughed when the joke was funny and also devastating and also aimed at a man who had no idea why it was either of those things.

Sterling did not laugh. His jaw moved a fraction. The fraction contained an entire strategic assessment of how close Ryker had come to detonating a situation that was being held together with discipline and selective silence.

Maddox looked between them. The look on his face was the look of a man who knew he was missing context and had decided the context was Ryker being Ryker, which was usually an adequate explanation and was, in this case, catastrophically insufficient.

"What brought this on?"

"Nothing." Ryker collected himself. "Just thinking out loud. War summit topics. Marriage alliances. Hypotheticals. You know."

Maddox looked at Ryker the way he looked at bad intel. "I don’t know. That’s the problem."

"Quick poll. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, black hair, white hair. Rank them. Top to bottom."

Maddox stared at him. "Are you having a stroke?"

"No, Commander."

"Brunettes." He took another sip of coffee. "Why."

"No reason. Casual survey. Moving on," Ryker said casually. "Follow-up question. What if she was also very pretty?"

"Ryker."

"Extremely pretty. Like, historically pretty. Like, ’men start wars over this’ pretty."

"You’re describing a hypothetical wife I don’t have with details that are suspiciously specific."

"Am I? Weird. Anyway. Your answer?"

"Pass."

"You can’t pass. It’s a poll."

"I’m a king. I can pass on anything."

Ryker swallowed the next laugh before it formed. Sterling’s posture shifted a millimeter toward him, which was Sterling’s version of a physical threat.

The moment passed.

"I’ll be right back, Commander." Ryker straightened, rolling his shoulders. "Got a simulation to run."

"The day I see you running a simulation and training someone is the day Sterling smiles in public."

He would not be right back. He was about to run a lethal simulation with the woman who held the second fastest time on record.

Across the grounds, Guinevere stood inside a tent near the training field with Blair, Damon, and Nicholas.

Ryker entered through the flaps of the tent. Flipped his coin.

"Are your feelings about showing off flexible? Because I need you to show off."

She looked up and saw him grinning from ear to ear.

"Tell her, Blair. Humble settings off. We’re adding a new trick and I’m not telling you what it is until we’re airborne."

His hand waved once in a small circle. Keep up with me here.

A thought crossed his face. A terrible thought. The thought was: oh gods, this is why Kael uses tokens.

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