Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Ryker tossed his coin. Caught it. ”Hey, Maddox.”

”No.”

”I haven’t said anything yet.”

”The tone said enough. Whatever it is, no.”

Ryker leaned against a post in the tent. ”Hypothetical. What if I were to tell you, that during the three weeks you blacked out, you got married.”

Maddox took a sip of coffee. ”I would say bullshit.”

”Humor me.”

”If, in some fever dream, I married a woman I can’t remember, that would be an impulse marriage. And I would annul it.” He said it the way a man says something obvious, with the mild impatience of a king who had been asked whether water was wet.

”What if she’s a fated mate?”

Maddox gave him a flat look. ”Dragons don’t get married because their nose told them to. That’s wolf behavior.”

Ryker’s mouth curved at one corner. The curve contained things he was choosing to withhold, and the withholding was physically hurting him.

”What if you paid seven hundred and fifty million gold for her and gave a middle finger to twenty kings who were also trying to buy her?”

Maddox processed the number with detached interest. ”I would ask about the refund policy.”

”There is no refund policy. You also gave her a ring. You were very thorough about the whole thing.”

Maddox stared at him. ”That doesn’t sound like me.”

Ryker laughed with his whole body, the way he laughed when the joke was funny and also devastating and also aimed at a man who had no idea why it was either of those things.

Sterling did not laugh. His jaw moved a fraction. The fraction contained an entire strategic assessment of how close Ryker had come to detonating a situation that was being held together with discipline and selective silence.

Maddox looked between them. The look on his face was the look of a man who knew he was missing context and had decided the context was Ryker being Ryker, which was usually an adequate explanation and was, in this case, catastrophically insufficient.

”What brought this on?”

”Nothing.” Ryker collected himself. ”Just thinking out loud. War summit topics. Marriage alliances. Hypotheticals. You know.”

Maddox looked at Ryker the way he looked at bad intel. ”I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

”Quick poll. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, black hair, white hair. Rank them. Top to bottom.”

Maddox stared at him. ”Are you having a stroke?”

”No, Commander.”

”Brunettes.” He took another sip of coffee. ”Why.”

”No reason. Casual survey. Moving on,” Ryker said casually. ”Follow-up question. What if she was also very pretty?”

”Ryker.”

”Extremely pretty. Like, historically pretty. Like, ’men start wars over this’ pretty.”

”You’re describing a hypothetical wife I don’t have with details that are suspiciously specific.”

”Am I? Weird. Anyway. Your answer?”

”Pass.”

”You can’t pass. It’s a poll.”

”I’m a king. I can pass on anything.”

Ryker swallowed the next laugh before it formed. Sterling’s posture shifted a millimeter toward him, which was Sterling’s version of a physical threat.

The moment passed.

”I’ll be right back, Commander.” Ryker straightened, rolling his shoulders. ”Got a simulation to run.”

”The day I see you running a simulation and training someone is the day Sterling smiles in public.”

He would not be right back. He was about to run a lethal simulation with the woman who held the second fastest time on record.

Across the grounds, Guinevere stood inside a tent near the training field with Blair, Damon, and Nicholas.

Ryker entered through the flaps of the tent. Flipped his coin.

”Are your feelings about showing off flexible? Because I need you to show off.”

She looked up and saw him grinning from ear to ear.

”Tell her, Blair. Humble settings off. We’re adding a new trick and I’m not telling you what it is until we’re airborne.”

”Looking forward to it,” she gave a sad smile, then swallowed. ”But you’re here to give me bad news.”

”Yes. But I’m going to be charming about it. You’ll still hate it, but you’ll hate it less. That’s my gift.”

On the other side of the tent, Nicholas met Damon’s eyes over a bow rack.

Ryker dragged a chair across the ground, sat down, and stretched his legs out in front of him. Casual. Deliberately casual. The kind of casual that only exists when the information behind it is anything but.

”Two things.” He held up two fingers. ”Good news. Maddox isn’t going to try to kill you when he sees you.”

Ryker chopped the air between Guinevere and himself with the side of his hand. Dividing the conversation into before and after.

Guinevere’s eyes followed his hand. She didn’t mean to. But the man was conducting a briefing with his hands and she couldn’t look away.

”Bad news,” he continued. ”The matebond is still blocked. He isn’t going to remember anything about you. You are going to be a stranger to him. All of the memories are gone. As far as his brain is concerned, it’s three weeks ago.”

He ticked items off on his fingers as he talked.

”Imagine waking up tomorrow and being told you blacked out for three weeks. It’s a lot to process. We’re catching him up on the attacks, political situation, the troop movements, the house lords arriving.”

He held out his left hand. ”Things Maddox knows.” Held out his right. ”Things Maddox doesn’t.” Lowered the left. Raised the right.

Her eyes tracked from his left hand to his right. Back to left. Back to right. She was watching Ryker explain a crisis as a mime and it was working.

”He knew Nicholas before three weeks ago, so we let him know Nicholas was there last night. But we will have to introduce you to him again. Maddox is stubborn, and resistant to change.”

His hand waved once in a small circle. Keep up with me here.

”All of that he can process. In the order of operations, he is a king, and his people come first.”

He made a circle in the air with one finger. ”This is his world right now.” Then he tapped a point outside the circle. ”This is where you are.”

He noticed her eyes tracking his hands. He paused. Looked down at them. Looked back at her.

A thought crossed his face. A terrible thought. The thought was: oh gods, this is why Kael uses tokens.

He would take that realization to his grave.

Guinevere took a steadying breath. ”I understand, Ryker. I assumed it wasn’t resolved.”

He steepled his fingers for half a second, realized it made him look like Sterling, and flattened them immediately.

She caught that. Her mouth twitched. ”Did you just stop yourself from doing a Sterling?”

”We’re not talking about that,” he said. ”But when you see him, don’t approach. Let us ease him into the idea of you. Sterling and I both agree on this. Before he met you, Maddox was—”

Blair’s look hit him from the left. Sharp enough to sever a sentence mid-word. Her gold eyes communicated, with zero ambiguity, that the next word out of his mouth would determine whether she forgave him this week or this century.

He closed his mouth. Pointed at Guinevere with two fingers, then turned them back toward himself. You and me. We’re getting through this.

Guinevere had already filled in the rest. The knowledge landed on a bruise that was already there. She swallowed it. Her face gave nothing away.

”Understood.”

She was going to stay out of his way. Give him space. Give them whatever time they needed to explain to the man she loved that the woman he didn’t remember existed was real and the ring on his finger meant something even if his brain had decided it didn’t.

She would do the simulation. She would perform for the council. She would wear the crown and the suit and the gloves and the smile that cost her everything to produce.

Then she was going to find a bathing chamber with a lock on the door and turn the water on and cry until there was nothing left. She was fully okay with that being her day. It was the only plan she had that felt achievable.

”I’ll have servants move your things, Gwen.” Blair’s voice was warm and certain in the way that only Blair could make a logistical statement sound. ”You’ll stay in my chambers.”

Guinevere nodded once. The motion was small.

”Thank you, Blair.” Two words. Delivered with the same gratitude she always had.

Nicholas’s wolf was howling in his mind, wanting Guinevere to sleep in his bed with him. He could feel her heart cracking and knew exactly the toll this was taking on her.

His nostrils flared.

”You good, Nick?” Damon asked.

Nicholas looked down only to see he was starting to shift, his wolf pushing to the surface. He shoved the beast down again.

”Yeah,” he answered, jaw tight.

Guinevere looked over at him with concerned eyes. Like she thought his frustration was aimed at her.

The matebond goes two ways.

He tried to relax his face. Overcorrected. Smiled. The smile was too big and completely wrong for the room and Damon stared at him like he’d grown a second head.

”Don’t do that,” Damon whispered. ”Whatever that is, stop.”

Nicholas killed the smile and the look he gave her was: Not about you, I promise.

Her worry dissolved into something quiet and fond. Her cheeks heated, and she looked away.