Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Every king has a room where the crown comes off. Maddox’s was a borrowed guest room across from a biohazard, and the woman in it couldn’t hear a word he was about to say, which was the only reason he was going to say it.

Maddox stripped without ceremony.

His ribs caught as he pulled the shirt over his head, a dull complaint where the break had been that morning. Aldric’s work had knit them nearly whole, the bruising faded to a yellow-green ghost across his side, healing at dragon speed and grumbling about it the whole way. He ignored it. Broken ribs were the least interesting thing that had happened today.

His briefs stayed on purely because Blair had a lockpicking addiction and zero respect for personal boundaries.

He crossed to the bed and eased the cloth off her forehead, setting it aside.

Then he went to work.

He drew the silk shorts down her legs and off, careful, unhurried, leaving her undergarments exactly where they were. This wasn’t that. Tonight was skin needing skin for a reason older than want. It was instinct in its purest form and Maddox didn’t question it.

Some cultures called it cuddling. He was choosing to call it tactical matebond maintenance.

He slid into the bed, gathered her up, and pulled her onto his chest.

She settled against him like she’d been poured there, her cheek finding the spot over his sternum, one hand curling loose against his collarbone. Warm. Small. His.

The second her bare skin met his, the sensation started.

Warmth poured into him like liquid sunlight, chasing away every knot in his chest. His mind stopped spinning. There was only her.

He was, effectively, a six-foot-five heat thief, absorbing hers the way parched ground drinks rain. He felt it seep into his chest, his arms, the healing ache of his ribs.

His dragon dropped into a purr so deep it rumbled up through his ribs and into hers, the beast finally, finally satisfied that its mate was breathing and here and pressed to its heart where it could guard her.

Mine, his dragon rumbled, smug as a bastard who’d won a war he never fought. Safe. Ours.

”Yeah,” Maddox murmured. ”I heard you the first four hundred times.”

He slid one hand up into the white of her hair and cradled the back of her head, working slow circles against her scalp with his fingers, the way he’d learned settled her when the fever spiked. She made a small sound in her sleep and burrowed closer. Something in his chest did a thing he’d have denied on a stack of dragon codes.

He pressed his lips to her hair and left them there.

”I bought you off a wolf king with an urn and a fortune,” he said against her hair, low, meant for no one, meant for her even though she couldn’t hear it. ”I don’t remember doing it, but supposedly I did that.”

Silence answered him. Her breath, warm, against his chest.

”We’ve been married one day.” Maddox let out a soft, disbelieving laugh into her hair. ”One. I ran the numbers on that too, because I’m me, and one day is far too early for a man to feel the thing I feel, and I feel it anyway. So the numbers can go to hell alongside Solveil.”

His arms tightened, careful of the ribs, careful of her.

”Here’s the truth I’ll only say while you’re out cold, because saying it awake would give you leverage and you have enough of that already.” His thumb traced the curve of her scalp. ”I love you.”

The fever-warmth kept bleeding out of her into him, and his cold kept easing, the two of them balancing like his body had been built to do exactly this and nothing else.

”Nothing takes you from me.” His voice dropped lower, past charm, past performance, into the bedrock underneath. ”Not your father, not your grandfather, not the Eclipse bastard. Let them come. They’ll see exactly what happens when they try to take what is mine. I’ll fight them all. After I finish cuddling you, obviously.”

He kissed her head again, softer this time.

”I’ll always come for you.” A promise, flat and certain, sworn to a sleeping woman in a borrowed room while his real bed got scrubbed of the dark magic that had tried to take her. ”Every time. Any distance. Through smoke, through blood, through whatever version of hell they build to keep me out. You never have to wonder. That part’s decided.”

His dragon purred its agreement, wrapped tight around the same certainty.

Mine.

The word vibrated through his entire body. His dragon was declaring, not asking.

Maddox tightened his arms, letting the deep, rolling purr rumble from his chest into hers. ”Yeah, you greedy bastard. I heard you.”

He felt her heartbeat sync with his while his body sucked heat from her. Exhaustion from the longest night of his life had finally started to catch up to him, and Maddox Drakencrest, King of Velkaris, slayer of lords and out-bidder of gods, fell asleep holding his wife like the last thing on earth he’d ever let go of.

Across the corridor, in a room still glowing with half-drawn runes, a mage muttered a correction and a ward clicked into place.

The Keep held.

For one night, so did he.

In the morning, Blair would walk in without knocking and own the moment for the rest of their natural lives. But that was future Maddox’s problem, and present Maddox, warm and unconscious and wrapped around his wife like a man who had never once heard of dignity, could not have cared less.

✦✦✦

Maddox’s body went rigid under Guinevere before she was fully awake.

His scent hit her next. The scent that made her feel safe and that she couldn’t get enough of.

Sparks danced everywhere they were touching, which was basically half of her body.

She was dazed, her thoughts foggy. She tried and failed to remember where she was before this and how she wound up in bed with him under her. Nothing surfaced.

Guinevere could feel his heart slamming against her ear like it was trying to leave his body, and hers was matching it.

Then terror slammed into her chest. Not hers. His fingers twitched against her skin, gripping tighter, then releasing. A sound tore from his chest, somewhere between a whimper and something worse than a growl.

”I’m Sorry, baby. Tell her I’m so sorry. Tell—”

His words cut off mid-sentence. He was having a nightmare.

She pushed herself up.

”Maddox? Hey. It’s just a dream. It’s okay. I’m here.”

His eyes flew open, unfocused, and glowing. His dragon was at the surface, raw and unchained, and for one second the man behind those eyes didn’t know where he was or who was touching him.

His lips were on hers before she could say anything else.

He flipped them so quickly she didn’t realize it right away.

She was also too busy kissing him back. His tongue slid past her lips, deep into her mouth. The kiss was desperate, consuming, the kiss of a man trying to prove to himself that the version of the world in his dream wasn’t real, and she was still here with him.

His hands roamed like a man possessed, mapping every curve with greedy reverence. He gripped the flare of her hip, palmed her breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers as his breath grew ragged.