Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

CRACK

The portrait slammed shut behind Maddox so hard the impact threw him forward.

He rolled. Stopped. Stayed down.

All of them were on the ground. Sterling was flat on his side with Guinevere still locked under one arm. Kael was on his back, chest heaving. Lux was on her knees, blood sheeting from both nostrils into the stone. Jaxon was sitting against the corridor wall, arms shaking so badly his hands were blurring.

For two full seconds, the only sound was breathing.

Then the banging started.

The wall shuddered. Once. Twice. The third impact cracked the stone, where the portrait was on the other side.

Then it spoke.

”Sterling.” The voice was soft. Female. ”Open the door. Please. I’m scared.”

”Oh, that’s low,” Kael commented. ”Even for a shadow cunt.”

Sterling’s jaw locked. The bracelet on his wrist was still vibrating.

”That is a dead woman’s voice,” he said to the corridor. But it was more for himself.

The banging stopped.

”Gwen,” it said in a little girl’s voice. Guinevere when she was eight years old. ”Gwen, he’s coming. He’s coming up the stairs. Hide.”

Guinevere flinched on the stone floor. Her whole body curled inward.

”Don’t listen to it, Gwen,” Maddox panted. ”Every word is bait.”

The voice changed again. Deeper. Male. Warm.

”Baby.” Maddox’s voice, perfect in every register. ”Open the door. I’m hurt. Please, Gwen, I’m bleeding.”

The real Maddox, who was in fact bleeding and who was in fact hurt, lifted his head from the stone and stared at the wall with the expression of a man who had just heard his own voice weaponized against the woman he loved.

”Open the door, Gwen. Please baby. I want to be inside of you so bad. I’ll make you cum so hard the whole castle hears what a filthy little wolf queen you are for me.”

Maddox’s face twisted in rage. ”I am going to find that thing, and I am going to kill it slowly.”

”Maddox. MADDOX. They won’t let me in. Tell them to let me in.” Guinevere’s voice begged from the other side. Desperate. Afraid.

His gold eyes burned brighter.

”I’m so wet for you,” she called breathlessly from behind the wall. ”Open the door. I need your cock inside me right now.”

It slammed against the wall, causing the crack in the stone to grow.

”Lux.” Maddox turned his head. ”Can you contain it?”

Lux’s dark magic was already surging. Her palms pressed flat against the stone floor, and threads of black energy spread outward from her fingers, racing towards the wall.

”I can try,” she said through her teeth.

Jaxon was already pressing one hand flat against her spine, blue light flowing from his palm into her back. His other hand was aimed at the wall, reinforcing the seal with concussive bursts. His arms were still shaking. His teeth were clenched so hard the tendons in his neck looked like bridge cables.

”Maddox.... I’m touching myself thinking about your cock. Open the door.”

The wall shuddered again. The cracks widened.

”Kael. Come fuck me. Maddox is too hurt. Let me ride you until I’m shaking and screaming your name.”

Maddox’s gold eyes flared so bright they lit the corridor like twin suns. ”You fucking piece of shit. I’m going to rip you apart molecule by molecule and make you choke on your own tongue before I’m done.”

Suddenly the wall echoed with wet, rhythmic sounds of sex.

”Oh gods, Kael... you’re so deep,” it moaned in Guinevere’s voice.

”Fuck, Gwen. Your pussy is so tight,” Kael’s voice groaned back. ”You gonna cum for me while my little brother listens?”

Maddox’s dragon roared so loudly in his chest, it vibrated the ground they were lying on.

”That’s my girl,” it grunted in Kael’s voice. ”Bounce on my cock. Fuck, I’m cumming already.”

”I last longer than that,” the real Kael said flatly from the floor. ”At least give me more than thirty seconds in your little fantasy. Have some respect.”

Guinevere’s eyes opened.

Gold. Full gold. The green was gone, swallowed by a light so bright it threw shadows against the corridor walls from ground level.

Sterling felt it before he saw it. Her body temperature spiked against his arm.

”Gwen.”

She stood.

The motion was wrong. The woman who had been shaking on the ground three seconds ago rose to stand the way a puppet rises when someone finds the strings.

Sterling was on his feet, arm hooked around her, positioning his body between her and the corridor she ran down earlier, that he chased her through.

Maddox was up a half second later. The cost of standing was visible in every line of his face, white at the edges, blood in his teeth, his left arm pressed against his right side in a way that said the ribs had officially moved past broken and into territory that needed a healer ten minutes ago.

He stood anyway.

Kael was the third to rise, though it was a process now. His body had been thrown, launched, rebirthed, and buried in coins today.

Three men. One line. Between Guinevere and the hall.

”Get her out of here,” Maddox commanded. ”Now.”

Her hand rose.

Sterling’s grip tightened around her waist. He started pulling her backwards. Her arm stayed raised, palm facing the stone wall, where the portrait was on the other side, and the resistance she gave him was so gentle it barely registered, but it was enough to hold her position for the three seconds she needed.

She spoke.

The language was older than anything he had ever heard.

White light erupted from her palm, different from her gold fire. It was white in the way sunlight through a prism is white, containing every color before the split, carrying every frequency at once.

It pulsed once, passing through the hidden door like it was air. Another pulse followed. Then a third.

The thing released a blood-curdling, gurgling scream like it was being skinned alive while still trying to moan Gwen’s filthy words.

This was different from the shrieks before.

This was agony. It clawed at the darkness, thrashing, ripping at walls that were no longer there, because the white light had turned the corridor behind the hidden door into a space with no shadows left to hide in.

Guinevere’s nose started bleeding.

She didn’t seem to notice, still generating the white light in diminishing pulses, each one weaker than the last, her body spending a currency it couldn’t afford.

The screaming climbed. Higher. Sharper.

It let out one last broken moan in Gwen’s voice.

Then it stopped.

Clean. Absolute. The way a candle dies when the oxygen leaves the room.

Silence.

Guinevere’s hand lowered. Her body swayed, and her weight shifted backward into Sterling, who was already anticipating it.

He picked her up. One arm under her knees. The other behind her back. The heat that poured off her skin was enough to blur the air around her.

Lux’s dark magic went quiet. Jaxon’s hands lowered next to her, his blue light fading.

Both of them turned around at the same time. They looked at her, then at each other.

The exchange lasted two seconds and contained an entire conversation. The conversation was: What the fuck was that. That was magic. We need to figure it out. Immediately.

CRACK.

A massive slab of ceiling crashed down from the tunnel Guinevere had run down earlier.

The floor began to rumble, showering dust and stone.

”MOVE. NOW,” Maddox roared. The roar cost him. His ribs charged him for every decibel.

Everyone was up.

Sterling dashed to the stairs, with Guinevere in his arms, the others behind him.

Maddox planted himself at the base until every person was ahead of him. Then he followed, blade drawn, holding the rear.

Lux tripped on the fifth step. Jaxon caught her elbow, then picked her up without breaking stride and carried her the rest of the way. She let him. The fact she did not verbally eviscerate or threaten to castrate him was proof this shit was absolutely fucked.

As soon as Maddox cleared the threshold, the floor began to rumble. Stone ground against stone as the dragon statue corkscrewed upward out of the ground, sealing the entrance until the floor was solid again.

The library went quiet as if the staircase had never existed.

”War room,” Sterling panted. ”Confirm, Commander.”

The war room was the closest space to the library with the least amount of hallways and people.

Maddox’s answer came through gritted teeth.

”Confirmed.”

They moved. Sterling was in front with Guinevere.

Maddox fell in behind him, ribs grinding like broken glass with every step. The sight of his Third’s hands on his wife’s thighs, carrying her because he couldn’t, made him want to torch the entire Keep and claim her right there.

Kael closed the distance and extended the golden bow to him. ”Easy there, Possessive. I grabbed this before the ceiling collapsed. Try not to lose it. Or your mind. You’re on a roll today.”

Maddox snatched it without sparing him a glance. His eyes were too busy trying to laser through the back of Sterling’s head while his dragon roared inside his skull: Mine. Mine. Mine.