Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 98

Chapter 98: Mine. Still Mine. Always Mine. (THOOM.)

Everyone leaned forward, holding their breath. Ryker looked up. Then fixed his face to neutral.

When he broke the wax and unfolded the parchment, he kept the seal hidden under his palm. That told Maddox two things. One: Ryker recognized something. Two: Ryker did not want him or the room recognizing it yet. Both facts were filed and neither was forgotten.

Ryker read it quickly. Whatever was on that page, his face gave nothing more to the room until he folded the parchment and tucked it into his coat. That’s when his face hardened. The man who flipped coins and had been using finger guns lately for some reason unknown to Maddox, had vacated the premises. The shift was tectonic.

The events that followed would be classified, redacted, reclassified, and then burned. In that order.

"By order of the High General, you are under arrest for treason, seditious conspiracy, and acts of espionage against the forty dragon houses and the Drakencrest Crown."

Five hundred mouths fell open. A rider in the fourth row said, "Oh, FUCK yes." Loud enough for his wife to elbow him. A few smiles broke through the jaw drops. The expressions ranged from thank-gods-I-came to I-hope-he-resists.

Dragons at their finest.

Ryker kept reading. Each charge landed heavier than the last, stacking like stones on a man’s chest. Conspiracy to undermine sovereign intelligence. Unauthorized communication with hostile foreign entities. Violation of the Accord of Forty Houses, Article Nine, Subsection Three.

Guards moved through the crowd in formation with the kind of coordination that said standing arrest protocols were built into every event. Dragon lords watching tried to not look impressed, but Maddox saw.

The prisoner held out his wrists, complying and completely calm. The posture of a prisoner who had expected this or a man who had already planned past it. Ryker’s hand twitched. His only tell. Maddox translated it without looking: his High General would not hesitate to cremate this motherfucker.

Full warded dragon-iron cuffs blocked all magic and dragon strength, shift, and flame. The guard locked the first wrist with a click that echoed off the stone.

The second cuff was in the guard’s hand when the prisoner twisted, snapping the guard’s wrist then his neck before the pain hit his body. With one cuff already on, his speed and strength shouldn’t have been possible. That guard was also a full-blown dragon with a shift.

The guard’s body dropped before the snapping sound of his neck registered in the hall.

The next sound was Blair screaming.

Iron links wrapped around his sister’s throat, biting into skin, cutting air. Her hands caught his arm, fingers trembling, clawing, trying to shove it off. Her face went red in under a second.

The traitor had moved faster than any mage Maddox had seen, and faster than 90% of dragons with a shift. The kind of fast that rewrites what you think a body can do and makes you recalculate every threat assessment you’ve run in the last decade.

Blair’s scream was choked into silence.

Gold flame roared around both of them, engulfing the man from every angle, swallowing him in a blaze that should have cooked the meat off his bones.

Unlike earlier, he showed zero reaction to it. The flame blazed brighter around him. But he stood in the center of it like it was rain.

Maddox’s voice dropped into the Draconic register. "Release her."

The chain did not loosen. The man did not flinch. The command rolled off him the way Guinevere’s flame had, which meant this was not a dragon, wolf, mage, or anything nature intended dragon law to rule. The room had a much bigger problem than treason.

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