Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Every item in Guinevere’s ”sleepwear” drawer was designed for a locked door and an audience of one.

The audience had doubled.

She had been above the covers lying on top of Maddox for hours while he pulled fever from her body. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her hardened nipples poking through the thin lace like they were begging for attention. Her thighs straddled his hips, pressing her core firmly down onto his throbbing erection.

His dragon, predictably, was no help. It had been purring against his ribs for hours, entirely too pleased with the arrangement

His hips twitched once involuntarily.

A baby pink camisole and shorts. Lace. Silk. Absolutely no goddamn coverage. The tamest thing she owned because of Maddox and Maddox alone.

He had opened that drawer last night like a man defusing a bomb. Every option was worse than the last. It was the winner by default, which said everything about the drawer and nothing good about his judgment.

And she was wearing it now because Maddox had put her in it.

He looked at the baby pink silk, then at Nicholas Shadowfell asleep in the chair, then at the baby pink silk, then at the ceiling.

There was no universe in which he had not seen it before he fell asleep. Maddox added her outfit to the list of problems he had caused himself and moved on to the one he could solve in the next five minutes.

Maddox: The elders called a meeting. Shadowfell is in my quarters—

Sterling: I’m on my way.

Maddox blinked. No tactical assessment of whether his presence was the optimal allocation of the Third’s time.

Odd. But he’d take it.

He shifted Guinevere off his chest, settled her on the mattress, and pulled the silk sheet up to her chin. His jaw worked once. Then he pulled the sheet higher, past her neck until the silk rested just below her ear.

He ignored his dragon, who was roaring inside his chest, demanding he climb back into that bed and finish what the fever started.

The door opened before he reached it. Sterling entered, his eyes sweeping the room.

”She hasn’t woken up yet,” Maddox said, voice low. ”Shadowfell gave his blood and will tell you if something feels off if I don’t first.”

Sterling nodded once.

”If her temperature spikes, mindlink me first, Aldric second. If the wolf wakes, you stay in the room. He doesn’t leave, and neither does she.”

”Understood, Commander.”

Maddox stopped at the door. He turned his head, looking back one last time before he left.

There was a second pillow behind her head that had not been there before. Sterling was fluffing it like a mother hen, followed by repositioning the I.V. stand two inches to the left.

He then went to the bathing chamber and returned with a wet cold cloth, dabbing her forehead.

Maddox watched the most analytically gifted military mind on the continent nest. There was no other word for it.

He walked out of his own bedroom, the door closed behind him.

✦✦✦

Elder Varro exhaled through his nose. For him, that was a tantrum.

”Your Majesty. Fourteen hours. No consultation. No briefing. Two dead warriors whose families received more information than this council, and a wolf warship in the harbor that the harbor master was kind enough to tell us about.” Varro set each fact on the table like a card turned face-up.

”Do you know their names?” Maddox asked, then let the silence stretch.

Varro’s jaw tightened by a fraction. ”The council extends its condolences to—”

”Condolences are for hallways, Varro. I asked you a question. Did you know their names?”

Two elders on the far end exchanged a glance. The glance said: he’s doing it again. He was, in fact, doing it again.

”Calder. Wessick,” Maddox answered his own question. ”Say them back to me, Varro.”

”Calder. Wessick,” Varro repeated after an uncomfortable pause. ”The council failed those men by not being in the room when the decision was made. That is the point I am making. Not a different one.”

Maddox closed his eyes, pushing his dragon down who was trying to light Varro on fire. ”Every man in that rescue was a volunteer and knew the risks. This council will not use those two names to score procedural points.”

The other elders sat with expressions ranging from supportive to uncomfortable.

”Which brings the council to the decisions themselves,” Varro continued unfazed. ”The allocation of crown resources and military personnel to retrieve a woman you haven’t announced as your wife officially, let alone a candidate for queen.”

Maddox slammed his hand on the table. ”Let me make something crystal clear. My wife is not a topic for discussion. She is not a political tool. And if any one of you utters her name with anything less than reverence again, I will replace this entire council before sundown.”

The temperature in the room skyrocketed. Several elders broke into a sweat.

On the wall, Ryker’s expression said that’s my king with a clarity that required no words.

”Your Majesty, the wolf king.” Elder Drystan let the title settle. ”He sailed an ocean. He fought beside your men. And now he sleeps in your Keep. The council is curious why the most powerful king in Nyros is here and included in your black ops rescue.”

”Oh, for the love of the gods.” Elder Cassia waved a hand. ”Does Shadowfell have a claim on your wife? That’s what Drystan has been circling for the last three sentences and will circle for the next ten if someone doesn’t put the man out of his misery.”

”Romantic interests fade, Cassia. Political ones compound.” Drystan folded his hands. ”A wolf king crossed an ocean. The council should understand why before the answer becomes expensive.”

Cassia rolled her eyes with an efficiency that suggested years of practice in exactly this room, at exactly this table, listening to exactly this man.

”I’m sorry, are we doing this right now?” Ryker said. ”The man tracked fae through a jungle that eats people because we needed a nose and he had one. That’s it. That’s the whole romance novel. Disappointing, I know.”

”The wolf has been in your wife’s quarters, Your Majesty.” Cassia didn’t dress it up. ”The guard rotation confirms it. If there’s a reason that doesn’t make this council’s job harder, now would be the time.”

”My chambers,” Maddox corrected. ”My wife lives with me. She’s a wolf who merged with my flame and survived. She needed blood. My blood and wolf blood. Shadowfell volunteered because he knows my wife’s father. If this council wants access to that conversation, it can earn it by solving the problems on this table instead of inventing new ones.”

”Noted. There is one other matter we need to discuss,” Elder Cassia continued. ”There have been attacks on our eastern border houses and the banners aren’t Ashenvale. No dragons were used in the conquest.”

”How many points?”

”Simultaneous incursions on sixteen houses,” Cassia replied. ”Dark fae. Arrived by portal and it’s reported that dragon flame doesn’t work on them. All sixteen attacked territories have formally requested armed forces deployment under the Drakonic Accord.”

”Call all forty houses,” Maddox ordered. ”War High Council. Forty-eight hours.”

”Ryker.”

”On it.” Ryker pushed off the wall. ”I can have companies in the air within the hour.”

”Good.” Varek folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. ”If all forty houses are meeting, that means you can announce your wife and she can demonstrate. Two purposes served. Efficient.”

”She will.”

Two words.

Maddox walked out, leaving behind an elders’ council that had opened the morning arguing about an inquiry and was closing it mobilizing for a continental war.

✦✦✦

Nicholas hadn’t planned to touch her. His hand moved on its own, two fingers pressing against the inside of her wrist to check her pulse.

The moment skin met skin, he jolted from the sparks. The ones he ignored on another continent while rescuing her.

His wolf threw itself forward with the enthusiasm of an animal that had been caged for forty-eight hours and had just been handed the key. Nicholas told it to sit. It did not sit.

Golden flame exploded up his arm like liquid fire in his veins.

Her back arched off the bed with a broken noise. Her thighs pressed together under the silk sheet as the fever twisted into something darker, hotter.

Her temperature dropped. He could feel it under his fingertips, the frantic pulse slowing by a fraction, the heat receding from her skin like a tide pulling back.

”Fuck—”

Then he staggered back, chest heaving. The golden heat now pulsed low in his gut, making his cock ache and leak against the fabric of his pants.

For one dangerous second he imagined flipping her over, ripping those tiny silk shorts aside, and burying himself inside her just to see if the flame would burn hotter around his cock.

He needed to leave this room. He needed to leave this room before Sterling came back and found him standing over the king’s wife with dragon fire in his blood and a problem in his trousers that no amount of Alpha composure was going to hide.

The walk to the ambassador wing took four minutes. He made it in three because his body knew what was coming and his pride would not let it happen in a hallway.

Nicholas collapsed onto the floor, back against the door. The golden flame surged through his body and straight into his groin.

Without hesitation, he shoved his pants down and wrapped his fist around his throbbing cock. He stroked hard and fast, eyes squeezed shut.

In his mind he saw Guinevere beneath him, legs spread wide as he drove deep into her. His hand moved brutally until he came with a silent, violent shudder, spilling across his stomach.

For a moment he felt relieved. Chest heaving, but better.

Then pain hit like a war hammer.