Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 96

Chapter 96: Fucking Adorable. He’d Teach Her.

Draconic command should have made everyone stop. It didn’t.

As soon as Ryker put her down, she sprinted without looking back at Maddox. The problem was the ballroom was dark and she was glowing like a beacon. The worst tactical retreat in the history of retreats. Every eye in the room was on her. Including his. Especially his.

A Draconic command was supposed to have a one hundred percent success rate across dragons and wolves. She was the exception. Naturally.

He didn’t want to use it on her at all. It was the equivalent of pulling rank on the person you were trying to impress. Bad form. Terrible optics. He was doing it anyway because this wasn’t right. Something had her rattled.

"Guinevere. Stop. Look at me."

She stopped, muscles locking, then turned to look at him. The crowd parted immediately. And the only thing Maddox could hear was his own pulse and his dragon saying one word on repeat like a war drum that had found its rhythm and refused to stop.

Gold flickered in his vision. Instead of pushing flame, he called for it from her. Something he had never done before but knew what it was in theory. It came.

Her already glowing hair got brighter, her skin mirroring in answer. Her right hand rose. She did not raise it. The motion belonged to the fire, not the woman. When her fingers opened, a single orb of gold flame floated above her palm, rotating slowly.

Maddox stood perfectly still while every assumption he’d made about this woman collapsed in sequence. The heat he’d dismissed. The pull he’d blamed on her avoiding him. His dragon saying ’mine’ and him telling it to shut up. He’d had every piece.

It took five days for him to trust his instincts, but he’d had the answer since diplomat row. He’d been too busy being charming to read it. Outstanding work, Commander.

The ballroom went dead silent. Five hundred people. Zero sound. Every dragon understood what this meant.

Good. At least someone in this room understood. He’d been the last to figure it out and he was the one it was happening to.

Maddox’s dragon slammed against his ribs with bruising force, the beast roaring.

Mine. Take her from here.

Then whispers erupted.

"The Wolf Princess..."

"That’s the Dragon King’s flame."

"I told you."

Her eyes changed from green to gold in answer. Her hair lifted off her body, floating like she was underwater.

Beautiful. Terrifying. The visual equivalent of watching a woman sleepwalk off a cliff and sprout wings halfway down. He was in love. He was also in trouble. Both were accelerating.

That’s when the orb in her palm exploded upward, hitting the ballroom ceiling as a roaring pillar of gold. It looked like she was holding a tall cylinder of Maddox’s flame in her palm.

Externally, he didn’t move. The Dragon King showing shock in front of five hundred nobles was a headline. The Dragon King showing shock to his mate and scaring her was a bigger problem.

But he had called for a spark. She had answered with a pillar. The match-to-forest-fire ratio was concerning.

Someone whispered "gods" and it traveled through the crowd like a ripple.

Half the ballroom stepped back, a few glasses shattering in the process. The other half couldn’t move. The division was roughly split between those who understood what they were seeing and those who were still processing.

By sunrise the knives would be out. Some aimed at her, some at Maddox. They would get over it.

A Thornvale lord whispered to his wife. "The Drakencrest elders look like they swallowed their own teeth."

"They knew."

"Of course they knew. Look at Varro’s face. That’s not surprise. That’s a man watching his cover story die in public."

"They’ve had a flame-bearer in their Keep and they put her in a flight trial," a visiting lord said. "A flight trial. Like she was a recruit."

An Ashwick elder turned to the man beside him. "Wolf. They called her a wolf. Does that look like a wolf to you?" He pointed at the pillar of gold, the glowing runes, the flame wrapped around five hundred people.

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