Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Guinevere’s eyes widened as the man knelt beside her and pushed white light into her side.

Her heart was jackhammering like a trapped animal because that light was the same one the cloud-city police carried while they chased her. The same fucking white that kept dropping her into new hellscape locations with hallucinations. The same light that changed the brown room into navy with new furniture.

She locked up completely. The logical corner of her mind registered that he was supposed to be the good guy. The rest of her was having a meltdown.

”Hey. Guinevere.” Kael waited until her eyes found his. ”He’s a healer. They came yesterday after the battle and have been helping everyone.”

She gave a single nod. It was all she could manage.

Then she forced herself to breathe.

Assuming every glowing person was hostile would be like meeting Cassian and deciding all wolves were power-tripping dickheads with emotional regulation problems.

Kael gave her hand a squeeze and the pressure grounded her enough to let the tension bleed out of her shoulders by a fraction.

She felt the light moving deeper, knitting the torn skin from the inside. It felt nice actually. The pain was fading every second.

Then the healer’s hands stopped.

His eyes went wide in a way that medical professionals’ eyes should never go wide while actively treating a patient. The universal signal for ’I just found something I was absolutely fucking unprepared for.’

”You are a light bearer,” he commented.

”A recent development,” Guinevere said lightly. ”I think I might have caught it from Kael.”

The man she had privately named Mr. Sun in the brown bachelor pad had the same white light radiating from him, and Kael lived with that man. Kael probably had the light from him and she didn’t want to be culturally tone-deaf, offensive, or insensitive to his people.

She wondered if what she had said was that.

Behind her, Kael rolled his eyes so hard she felt the exasperation travel through whatever connection they shared, land in her own chest, and almost knock a laugh out of her. The sensation was so absurd and so distinctly him that the corners of her mouth twitched despite the blood and the pain and the fact that she was lying on a stone floor in a tower.

That answered that. Now she knew that was not something to say.

”I don’t mind it at all,” she added.

The healer tilted his head at her for a moment. His mouth opened, then closed.

”I meant no offense,” she clarified. ”If I said something, I apologize. I promise, it was due to ignorance.”

Behind her, Kael let out a breath that she didn’t understand.

”No,” the healer said after a moment. ”No, you did not offend me.”

His hands lit and he continued working.

”Is ’light bearer’ the preferred term?” she asked after a moment. ”I want to make sure I’m using the correct language.”

”It is... the only term. The one who holds light. That or Luminari.”

”Perfect. I’ll make sure to use that in my vocabulary moving forward,” Guinevere said. ”When someone joins your people, is there an orientation? Or how do you typically handle that?”

”There is no onboarding. We are born with the light. It manifests usually in adolescence, similar to wolves,” the healer replied.

”Oh, okay. Is there a resource I could be directed to? A person, a text, a pamphlet? I’m very open to learning but I’m currently working with zero information and a bit of accidental property damage.”

”Property damage. How so?”

Behind her, Kael was silent. She wondered if he wanted to know too or what he was thinking because his emotions were unclear.

”Yes,” she answered. ”I had a near-miss with a flowerbed but resolved it before it escalated. Separately, and please flag it if this is insensitive, but do your people always glow or can you turn it off?”

”Turn it off,” the healer repeated. ”What do you mean?”

”Guinevere,” Kael cut in. ”Let the man work.”

She closed her mouth. There was a time and place for questions like that and for all she knew, that was the equivalent of her asking where babies come from.

She relaxed another degree and the healer’s light responded immediately, sinking deeper, mending tissue.

”How interesting,” she commented after a moment. The healer glanced at her. She course-corrected immediately. ”I meant the sensation and healing experience. The light itself is native to your culture. An identity to your people is not something I should be editorializing on. I meant no offense.”

She stopped talking before she could make it worse. The healer continued healing as if the last thirty seconds of cultural self-immolation had not occurred. She appreciated the grace.

”You are the one King Solveil has bonded with. The prophesied conduit of the Luminari bloodline,” the healer said after a moment. His tone was the kind healers used to deliver news that required a chair, a stiff drink, and possibly a priest.

Guinevere blinked three times. Then a fourth for good measure.

”I think you are mistaken.” She swallowed. ”Is King Solveil the leading executive for all of your people?”

The healer’s mouth worked like a dying fish. Open. Shut. Open. His face announced that referring to the Luminari King as an executive was so fucking novel his brain was still buffering the insult to reality.

A swing and a miss on Guinevere’s part. Her mistake. Now she knew.

Behind her, Kael made a noise that could’ve been a cough or a laugh he throat-punched into silence.

”King Solveil is the sovereign ruler of the Luminari Kingdom,” the healer replied, recovering after a moment. ”You are a woman carrying light. And your light signature is a mirror of his. The calibration is unmistakable.”

”Oh, I think you might be mistaken,” Guinevere said.

”Your Highness, there are no mistakes. You are—”

”Hey.” Kael’s voice cut through the healer’s escalating severity like a knife through warm butter. ”One thing at a time. Let’s get the hole in her side closed and then we can circle back to the prophecy and the doom and the light-bearing destiny stuff.”