Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 87

Chapter 87: Dick-Punched Into Map Dysfunction

Two days. Six sightings. Zero approaches.

Women were Maddox’s native language. Beautiful fell into his bed the way rain falls on a roof. Naturally. Consistently.

She was staying in his Keep and hadn’t approached him, which would be considered rude by most kings. Normally he wouldn’t have noticed or cared. But this woman broke his record and apparently had been flying with his men.

This was a war summit. She was foreign. Realistically she probably thought he was too busy. She wouldn’t be wrong. He was, in fact, catastrophically busy. That had never stopped him before and it wasn’t going to start now.

By the afternoon of day two, every other woman in this camp had found an excuse to enter his tent or approach him.

One had brought a broken compass and asked if he could "help her find north." He could. North was wherever he was standing.

There was no way she hadn’t seen the other women approaching him. If she was unsure on protocol, that would have tipped her off and she would have corrected by now. But she hadn’t, which meant she was choosing to avoid him.

Playing a game. The game was making him come to her, and it was working. Fine. Cute. He could respect the strategy.

Playing hard-to-get with Maddox Drakencrest was like building a sandcastle in front of a tide. Admirable effort. Beautiful craftsmanship. Same ending every time.

It always ended with the woman in question deciding she was done pretending to ignore him and with Maddox pretending he hadn’t noticed the pretending.

Maddox crossed the summit field towards Blair.

His sister was standing beside the white-haired woman at the edge of the diplomatic row between the Thornvale and Greymarch tents.

Then he noticed every single male in the vicinity angled towards them. None were stupid enough to approach his sister. Smart men.

"Blair." His hand touched her arm, the greeting familiar, warm. The greeting of a brother who had been raised alongside his sister and loved her in the uncomplicated way that siblings love each other when the complicated parts are directed at everyone else.

"Maddox." Blair kissed his cheek. "You smell nice. Did you put on cologne for the summit, or..."

She let the ’or’ hang in the air like a knife balanced on its point, and looked at him with an expression so innocent it circled all the way back around to criminal.

"What brings you to diplomat row? You never come find me during summits. This is sweet. Really. I’m touched."

She was not touched. She was loading ammunition.

He swallowed the comeback. It was a good comeback. It died inside him and he mourned it briefly and moved on.

He turned to Guinevere seeing her up close for the first time. Green eyes. White hair in loose waves that fell past her waist, catching the light in a way that made the gold at the edges look like the sun had left a signature. The crown. The Drakencrest sigil on her zip suit.

He had a type. His type was beautiful. His type had shown up at his door, in his tent, in his bathing chamber, and once memorably in Sterling’s office, on Sterling’s desk, and he had never turned his type away because he was a generous king and generosity was a virtue. He was practically a saint. A deeply attractive, morally flexible saint, but a saint nonetheless.

This woman was his type, and he planned on being very generous with her.

The universe had delivered her directly into his Keep, wearing his sigil, and breaking his records. If that wasn’t an invitation, the gods needed to work on their communication skills.

She dipped. Respectful, formal, the incline precise to the degree that court etiquette demanded for a visiting dignitary greeting a sovereign.

Textbook. Which meant she knew the rules. Which meant when she broke one for him later, it would be on purpose.

Maddox flashed her a smile. Confident. Self-aware. Touched with the faintest suggestion that he found his own charm mildly amusing, which had historically been the detail that finished the job.

"Guinevere Lunaris." He said her name the way he said everything, like it already belonged to him and he was doing her the favor of returning it. "I hear you set a record on my training field, which means I owe you a drink, because the last person to hold that time was me and I’ve been looking for an excuse to retire gracefully."

He leaned against a tent post.

Her green eyes moved across his face. The scan was quiet. Thorough.

She did not speak. The kind of listener who made a man feel heard and foolish at the same time.

He adjusted. "Nyros is a long crossing. The sunset from my balcony makes the journey worth it. Say the word."

Her eyes stayed on his. The silence that followed lasted three seconds. He held his ground. Most women looked away blushing by now.

"Thank you, Commander."

He waited for more. None came. Bold. Showing zero cards.

"You broke my record. You’re wearing my sigil. You haven’t said more than three words to me." He waited. Let the silence do the work. "Join me for a drink tonight and I’ll let you break another one."

The ’break another’ line was versatile to many situations. It had worked on a duchess, a high priestess, and a woman who had explicitly told him she hated him.

’The sigil suits me’ was her throwing him a bone so he could save face. So he didn’t have to stand there with his dick in his hand in front of the entire war summit. She tossed him a lifeline on her way out.

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