Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Three kings jumped into a raging river to save the woman they loved.

One had claim to her. Two had very strong opinions and didn’t give a fuck. Zero of them were willing to leave until they found her.

The problem?

It was so goddamn cold that three pairs of royal jewels were now playing extreme hide-and-seek, and unfortunately, freezing your balls off was only the opening act.

Hypothermia has stages. Fingers first. Arms. Legs. Then the brain clocks out for the day. Nicholas had just hit the leg phase when something in his sternum went supernova.

Gold fire erupted across his body, wrapping him in a shell so precise it could have been painted on. His half-dead muscles flooded with warmth.

Twenty yards south, Landon’s body answered with the same explosion. Gold flame first, warming him. Then Luminari light. His reserves, which had been empty, refilled halfway in under five seconds.

Maddox felt it too. His fire, which had been maintaining his core temperature through sheer stubbornness, surged, surrounding his body perfectly.

For a split second, he could sense her by flame again. He grabbed that signal and yanked with everything he had.

Nothing.

The only gold he saw under the water was Landon and Nicholas’s figures.

All three surfaced at the same time.

Kael: Found her. Maddox. One mile south of your position. She’s deep.

The other two kings weren’t on a shared mindlink.

”Kael just mindlinked. He has visual of her one mile south,” Maddox called to them.

Nicholas was already swimming. Landon was right behind him.

Sterling:Need a ride? Her flame won’t burn me.

No other dragon in their right mind would pick up three people surrounded in flame when the flame-bearer in question had no idea she was doing it.

But in that treasure room, she had promised Sterling that she would never burn him, and he had full faith in that, whether she remembered who he was or not.

Sterling dropped low, his right foreclaw skimming the water beside Maddox. A band of gold light wrapped around the base of it, sitting exactly where a bracelet would sit on a human wrist.

Maddox grabbed Sterling’s claw and hauled himself up. Nicholas followed one-armed. His broken shoulder was not invited to the discussion.

Landon could fly, damn it. But he was exhausted, so he said ”fuck it” and climbed on last.

Ten seconds into his very first dragon ride, Landon thought, Yeah... I’m gonna need one of these.

✦✦✦

THE RIVER. ONE MILE SOUTH.

Dying of hypothermia was the single most embarrassing way to go for a fire-breathing dragon. Kael was too damn good looking to let that be his legacy.

Unfortunately, his flame was guttering like a candle in a hurricane because Kael Ashenvale was swimming in a washing machine built by a sadist.

Harbor tidal jets body-checked river currents and he was in the goddamn center of it trying to reach a flicker of gold before it vanished.

She was close. He could see her flickering under the surface.

Forty yards. Thirty. Just kidding — back to forty. Fifty. Fuck.

He was going to lose her because he was too goddamn slow. The thought had barely formed when her gold flame casually decided to make an appearance.

Gold warmth. Sensation in limbs. Then strength flooded back into his arms and legs like he’d just chugged an energy drink from the gods.

The half-dead doggy paddle rescue turned into a dragon torpedo in one second flat.

He swam.

Twenty yards. Fifteen.

The gold flicker stopped.

”Shit.”

He refocused, calling for it again, as hard as he could.

It answered. Easier that time.

A shape was caught in a current, tumbling, white hair trailing like a banner in the black.

She was being pulled toward a vortex where two currents collided, her body twisting and spinning in the grip of water that was deciding whether to spit her out or drag her under.

The vortex won. She was pulled under.

Kael dove.

The gold flame around his body held. Underwater, it burned brighter, the fire responding to the cold with the specific aggression of a flame protecting its own.

He could see her now, ten feet below him, her body limp, her white hair spiraling in the churn. Her lips were blue. Her eyes were closed.

The tiny silk pajamas had become translucent in the water. Terrible timing, but he was a resurrected dragon with working eyes. Priorities were hard.

Both arms went around her.

The current fought him. He kicked against it with legs that had been dead thirty seconds ago and were now running on dragon flame and rage. His arms locked and he pulled her against his chest and drove upward with everything he had.

They broke the surface in a gasp that was all him because she wasn’t breathing.

”No.”

One word. The full vocabulary of a man who had already died for this girl and was watching her do the same thing in his arms.

The rock was fifteen feet to his left. A flat-topped boulder jutting out of the rapids, wide enough for two bodies if one of them was willing to be creative about positioning.

Kael wasn’t creative. He was desperate. He kicked towards it, one arm locked around her waist, the other clawing at the current.

He got her halfway onto the rock with his leg wedged between hers.

The angle was terrible.

She still wasn’t breathing.

He pumped her chest. Two compressions. Three. Four.

His hands were shaking and they shouldn’t have been because he was a military-trained dragon shifter who had performed field resuscitation on soldiers twice her size in worse conditions, but none of those soldiers had been her.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Her lips were cold and still and the worst color he had ever seen on the most beautiful mouth he’d ever been this close to.

He tilted her jaw, lowered his mouth to hers, and breathed into her.

The contact hit him in a place that had nothing to do with medicine. Mouth-to-mouth while tangled together on a rock in the middle of a river. The most fucked first kiss in history that still counted as a first kiss.

He breathed again. Deeper. Holding her jaw steady, his thumb against her cheekbone, his mouth sealed over hers.

Pumped her chest. Three more.

Breathed into her again.

”Come on, Guinevere. Breathe.”