Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Nap In The Dragon King’s Lap

Ryker: You stalked a virgin. Gifted a dead man in a jar. Middle-fingered every king on two continents with seven fifty in pocket change. And now you’re on your first date holding hands.

Maddox: Your point?

Ryker: I have no point. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page about how absolutely unhinged this evening was.

Sterling: Seconded. Raventhorn’s bride-throttle tantrum was the punctuation mark.

Maddox looked at her again. She was staring ahead, jaw set, breathing measured. Her white hair caught the moonlight in a way that made it look like it was glowing.

Ryker: Tell her now. Soft. She’s wound tight enough to snap a tendon.

Maddox: I know how to talk to her, Ryker.

Sterling: Do you, though? Genuinely asking. You have known her for less than a day.

Maddox: Shut up.

His default response to his inner circle. Effective roughly zero percent of the time.

"We’ll be flying from here."

She blinked. The question she was clearly running through her head had nothing to do with the flying and everything to do with the logistics. He watched the exact moment it landed.

She recovered fast. "In wolf culture, riding on a shift is... unconventional."

Diplomatic. Delivered like a woman selecting the politest possible word for ’absolutely insane.’ He almost smiled.

"For dragons, it’s an honor. The rider is the protected. The dragon beneath them is the shield."

Ryker shifted into a red dragon that filled the clearing. Guinevere’s eyes went wide for exactly half a second before she locked it down.

Sterling: Cute. She is pretending she has seen a dragon before and this is completely normal.

Maddox: What do you expect? Her to scream and throw a tantrum?

Sterling didn’t answer that. Which meant yes. That was exactly what he’d expected.

Guinevere looked at the dragon. Then at Maddox. Then back at the dragon. He could practically see the calculations running behind her eyes. How to get up there. Where to sit. What was polite. What was offensive. Whether there was a protocol.

He didn’t give her time to solve it.

He moved, arm hooking around her waist, and jumped. One motion. The kind of vertical that wolves couldn’t replicate, because dragon shifters carried more of their shift’s strength in human form in comparison. He felt her inhale sharply against him as the ground dropped away beneath them and they landed on Ryker’s back.

He settled behind her, pulling her against his chest. His arms locked around her. Ryker vaulted airborne immediately.

Ryker: She didn’t scream.

He sounded genuinely disappointed.

Sterling: She fits nicely against you, doesn’t she?

Maddox: Shut up. Both of you.

He had been expecting fear. Gravity was a hard negotiation, and the first flight always won the argument. Every dragon rider remembers their first time. But she didn’t so much as blink.

Instead she looked down. The relief she felt bled straight through to Maddox.

Unbelievable. Three thousand feet in the air on the back of a dragon and that’s what she felt.

His dragon purred deep in his chest at the way she fit against him.

Ryker: Your heart rate, Maddox.

Maddox: Don’t.

Ryker: I can feel it through my back. The princess is going to think we’re being attacked again.

Maddox: I will roast you alive, Ryker.

The threat would have landed better if his heart rate wasn’t confirming everything Ryker just said.

She leaned back into him by half an inch. Not a surrender. A test. The kind of small adjustment a woman makes when she is checking whether a man’s body will move with hers or against it.

His did not move. He held her exactly where she had put herself, and after a long second, she let her head settle against his shoulder.

Maddox stopped breathing.

Then he felt her shaking. His brows knit together. She was more relaxed now compared to when they were in the forest.

He glanced down at her.

Below freezing. Wind at altitude. A thin white dress designed to make her look beautiful at an auction, offering absolutely zero protection against a night sky at three thousand feet.

He pulled his cloak around her, covering them both. He could have taken it off and draped it over her. He would have been fine. Dragon blood ran hot enough that the cold was an inconvenience, never a threat.

But she’d be warmer with him under it with her. Not because he had a reckless, irrational, entirely unjustifiable urge to hold a woman he hadn’t had a real conversation with.

Her head turned slightly and her eyes lifted to his, surprised. The mask slipped for a full second this time, and underneath it was a girl who had been sold, traded, chained, gagged, frozen, backhanded, and auctioned, and the first warm thing she had been offered since a cave was a cloak she didn’t ask for.

"It’s below freezing." If he said what he was actually thinking, he would scare her. And she had been scared enough.

She held his gaze for another moment. Then looked forward.

He almost kissed her ear, but caught himself.

He pulled his mouth back by an inch. Held it there. Control. The word of the evening. His new least favorite word.

Ryker: Permission to speak freely.

Maddox: Denied.

Ryker: She’s asleep.

Maddox: I know.

Ryker: Riding on me. In the air. First flight. Asleep.

Maddox: I know, Ryker.

Ryker: I’m just saying. That’s either the most trusting thing I’ve ever seen, or the most exhausted.

Sterling: It’s both.

Ryker: Whatever was done to her in that pack. I want their name.

Sterling: Get in line, Ryker. I claimed the brother during the bidding war.

Ryker: Fine. I’ll take the father.

Maddox: No one is taking anyone. Yet.

She chose me. She feels safe with me.

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