Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Five weeks ago, if someone would have told Kael Ashenvale that the most dangerous thing in the world was a wolf princess with no sense of self-preservation, he would have laughed.

He wasn’t fucking laughing now. He was sitting six feet away doing math on how fast he could lunge if she so much as sneezed towards the door.

The chair was six feet away. Six feet was too far.

Guinevere Lunaris specialized in wandering into shitstorms unless three things were true: he was there, she was within arm’s length, and he wasn’t currently out cold.

Every single time this woman left his arm’s reach, she fucking vanished. In his arms she stayed put. The only exceptions were the two times he’d been knocked out and halfway to a decision he had zero input on.

The first time happened in his chambers when she screamed him awake, scaring the shit out of him, and he opened his eyes just in time to see her already across the room. The second time was yesterday morning in this room. He was out cold and she had apparently taken off on an eight-hundred-mile jog.

He came to looking at his brother’s face instead of hers. Worst swap the universe had ever forced upon a man. He loved his brother. But waking up to Maddox’s face when the last thing he remembered was Guinevere’s was the kind of cosmic dick-punch that made a man question whether the gods were running the show or just fucking around.

Black wisps of smoke curled out of his bandages with each pulse of light from the healer. The dark magic leaving his body was visible and ugly and he barely registered it because his attention was welded to the woman in the chair.

The Master Mage gave Guinevere a thorough once-over with the warmth of a tax audit and the conversational skills of a brick.

She didn’t mind. He was doing his job. Clearly, their people took their work very seriously, and she wanted to respect their ways of life.

She could feel Kael’s eyes on her like twin solar beams burning through the side of her skull and felt his anxiety flood into her chest like he expected her to run away at any second. It was kind of adorable in the way a guard dog circling a sleeping baby is adorable.

Also unnecessary because she was right next to him.

Glowing hands moved over her head and body while the Master Mage’s face ran through a greatest-hits reel of expressions that told her exactly jack shit. A fucking Magic 8-Ball set to ’ask again later.’

”Oh.”

Silence.

”Interesting.”

The healer and mage locked eyes in a silent full-length conversation that she was not on the need-to-know list.

”I need to take you back to Solveil,” he said after a moment. ”The dark magic is too deeply rooted in your light to safely remove it here. His Majesty and a full team will be required.”

Guinevere’s heart went from resting to hummingbird in one syllable. Back to the cloud city. Back to the glowing terraces and the guards and the balcony she’d jumped from and the man she’d woken up underneath. Back to the place where she was currently a wanted fugitive who had almost trampled someone’s flower garden and run from the police.

”That will be unnecessary,” she said, voice pleasant, disguising the full-body panic blooming underneath. ”I feel fine, truly. I appreciate your concern very much. Your culture is incredibly kind, and I assure you the issue is from the silver, which will purge on its own.”

”Our culture,” Octavian repeated, confused.

She could feel Kael’s exasperation hit her chest like a warm slap. He was either embarrassed for her or about to laugh. She wasn’t sure which or why for that matter and she didn’t have the bandwidth to give a shit.

”Yes.” Guinevere sat up straighter. ”Setting up wards on a foreign Keep and healing our wounded without being asked is an extraordinary act of generosity.” She paused, choosing her next words carefully. ”I may be ignorant about wards, but I know enough to know that erecting defenses across an entire Keep while simultaneously treating dark-magic-infected warriors is the kind of work that should be recognized. Your mages and your healers honored us. Lunaris will remember it.”

Octavian’s chin lifted a fraction. His shoulders pulled back by a degree so small most people would have missed it. She caught it because she had spent her entire life watching men who were never thanked respond to being thanked for the first time.

Tyler was unconscious. Her father was gone. Cassian was in the dungeon. Every person who should have been here expressing gratitude to these men had been either stabbed, imprisoned, missing, or asleep, and this Master Mage had installed continental-grade wards on a wolf fortress as a favor and walked into a room where nobody said a single goddamn word about it.

That would be fixed now.

”Lunaris owes your people a debt that I fully intend to see repaid. If no one has been here to say thank you to you directly, then that is a failure of our hospitality, so please allow me to say it now.”

Over on the bed, Kael’s dragon made a sound that roughly translated to ’my woman is diplomatically thanking a man I want to growl at and I’m having a very confusing fucking evening.’

”Your words are appreciated, Princess.” The formality in his voice softened by one shade. Then the shade hardened right back. ”You still need to come to Solveil. Your light requires calibration. It is fluctuating and each fluctuation is affecting the Young Dragon’s recovery.”

Her blood ran cold. That city was a location she’d visit only if every other door was already locked and on fire.

”Is there any literature on calibration?” she asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral. ”Or on controlling the light in general? I would prefer to educate myself before making decisions about treatment.”

The question translated roughly to ’is there a DIY option that doesn’t involve me walking back into a city where I committed multiple felonies and police blasted white light at me while I freefell through the fucking sky.’ She was hoping the answer was yes. Her track record suggested the answer was never yes.

But if her light was hurting Kael, she would go. That was the line. She would walk back into that nightmare with both eyes open if it meant his recovery stopped being sabotaged by her proximity.

If the guards clocked her face, that ’calibration appointment’ was going to flip into ’arrest the bitch who wrecked our plaza fountains’ in about three seconds flat.