Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 88

Chapter 88: I’d Choose You Every Single Time

There is a specific way a man walks when he is carrying news that will hurt someone he loves. Nicholas was walking that way now.

Guinevere knew the walk, and she could feel it. He didn’t have to say it. His wolf was already mourning through the matebond before his mouth caught up.

"A relay arrived during the summit session. Ship-carried to the harbor, then wolf-run from the coast." His voice was steady. The voice of a man who had practiced this sentence at least twice on the walk here and was now delivering it like a field report because the alternative was delivering it like a man who didn’t want to leave. "Shadowfell’s eastern border has been hit. My people are under attack."

The words landed in her chest before they finished reaching her ears. Her wolf pressed forward, low and anxious, reading the grief through their matebond before her brain could process the language.

"You have to go back." She blinked once, hard, and the burn spread to her lashes, and then her vision blurred, and she was furious at herself for it because the grief she felt was irrational and selfish and she knew it.

Nicholas exhaled. He opened his mouth, then swallowed.

"Of course you do." Her voice held.

She pressed her hands flat against her thighs and held them there until the trembling transferred into her legs where he couldn’t see it. She was going to hold this together if it killed her.

He had a kingdom under siege. His people were bleeding. The weight of what he carried dwarfed the weight of what she was feeling, and she had absolutely zero right to stand here with wet eyes because a man she had known for a few days was doing exactly what a good king was supposed to do.

Her wolf disagreed wholeheartedly.

She swallowed it down. "When do you leave?"

"Right now."

Two words. Her lungs emptied. The air left her body like it had been summoned somewhere else. She looked at the ground because looking at him was going to break her.

"Thank you for coming here." Her voice dropped to something quieter. "For finding me."

The matebond carried her grief into his chest in a wave that his wolf absorbed and his body processed as pain.

"Guinevere. Look at me."

She lifted her chin, wearing a face he had seen in a jungle and a bathing chamber.

"Do you want to stay in Velkaris?"

The question arrived sideways. She blinked.

"At the moment," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her gloved hand, "the experience hasn’t been ideal."

A laugh broke out of him. Genuine. The kind that started in his chest and reached his eyes, and for one second the king disappeared and the man was standing in his place, looking at a woman who could make him laugh while she was crying.

Her mouth twitched. The tiniest shift at the corner.

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