Page 49 of Settle Down, Princess

Silas’ grin was wild and brilliant in the moonlight, filled with the kind of recklessness I hadn’t seen for some time. He’d been assigned to me as a minder by The Guild when we were boys, but the relationship had evolved quickly into one where we both got ourselves into scrapes and then tried to find a way out of them. I felt like I was standing beside the boy again, not the hardened and somewhat cynical man.

“We go in, and they bleed,” Roan said, his eyes following the movements of the bandits, noting the terrain and the route they took into the cave complex. “Just like our foes always do, then we go and get our girl.”

“Our…?” The fur receded from Creed’s face, as more of the man pushed forward. I saw the brown begin to bleed back into his eyes, right before he bared his fangs. “Ours. We get Jessalyn now.”

“No strategising?” Silas drawled as Creed leapt over the rise and started running towards the caves. “Just the kind of fight I like. Better be quick, Brothers, if your blades thirst for blood like mine do. Creed is about to claim all the skulls of our enemies.”

“The fuck he is…”

Roan and Silas jumped off the rise, running after Creed, leaving me standing there, wavering. Not from fear of the fight, but from a sense of uncertainty. This felt like the end of something, although I couldn’t say exactly what. But the prospect that it might also be the beginning of something—something likely to make more ripples than a giant throwing a boulder into a lake—that terrified me far more than any two-bit bandits hiding in a hole in the ground. I shook myself out of my hesitation when I heard the others let out whoops of excitement. I did too and set off to join them. Any fight they were a part of, I knew I would always be there. It was the only way I could survive everything that happened.

But would we survive Princess Jessalyn of Stormare?

That I didn’t know.

Chapter 28

I had made the most terrible mistake.

I’d known as much the moment before the club came smashing down upon my head, and it was now even more obvious. My whole head throbbed mercilessly, and my vision pulsed in time with the waves of pain. When I’d come to, I’d found that I was bound hand and foot, slung over a saddle like a bundle of kindling, and the horse’s relentless motion had driven the breath out of me with every stride. When the journey had come to an abrupt stop, I’d thought I’d get some relief, but then I was hoisted up into the arms of a man that stank of beer, old blood, and stale body odour, and the nausea was rising, rising, as I was carried inside. Inside where? Not to safety, that was for certain. What I saw made me want to close my eyes tight, as if that would make it go away. My guts lurched as I stifled the urge to vomit.

“What do we do with her?” one man asked.

I tried to look at the speaker and my surroundings, but I couldn’t see far. The place was dark and seemed cavernous. I realised why as torches were lit and stuffed into primitive sconces set into the walls of an actual cave. The man who was carrying me dumped me onto the cold stone floor. The movement jarred my throbbing head, and I reflected again on just how terrible my decision had been.

“I need my cut.” Rion’s voice was snivelling and querulous, and he sounded a completely different person to the sweet bath attendant whose intelligence I’d discounted. One who’d been so eager to help me. His eyes were squirrelly, while his nose twitched like a rat’s. “Gotta get back before the master realises.”

“‘The master…’” It was the same man who’d carried me in and unceremoniously dropped me onto the cave floor, mimicking Rion’s whiny voice.

“Hey, that job helps me find all the likely marks for you to intercept on the road out of town,” Rion whinged. “This one almost fell into my lap.” He nodded toward me, but not in acknowledgement. It was more as if I was an inanimate object with no more thought or feeling than one of the rocks that littered the ground near me. Rion grinned in a way that I recognised. I’d become familiar with it at court: the conspiratorial, sly smile that weak men used to try to keep themselves out of the line of fire by mocking someone weaker. “Gave me a gold coin for my ‘help.’ Got herself free of those likely lads she came in with, too.”

“If she already gave you a gold coin, then you don’t need anything from us.” The leader’s eyes had narrowed. “You’ve got your payment.”

“From her but not…”

The slow trickling sound of cascading gravel coming from somewhere outside the mouth of the cave put a sudden halt to their argument.

“You led them here?” the leader snapped at Rion.

“What? No. How could I? I was with you the whole—”

Rion’s babbled protestations were cut off by a long, drawn-out howl. All the men stiffened, even though it could have been a wild wolf out there howling at the moon. All I could do was laugh. Each movement hurt my head and my stomach, but I was unable to stop. It poured out of me in loud, racking bursts of relief because I knew that it meant I wasn’t here on my own anymore.

Creed was coming.

I looked around me, still laughing, then realised that there were at least seven men, along with Rion, and each one of the robbers was armed to the teeth. I knew that the beast men had fearsome reputations, but fear struck me as I worried whether Creed might be outmatched. My laughter trailed away, turning sour and desolate before fading totally.

“Is one of your guards a beast man?” the leader asked me, his head whipping around to stare at me. “Is he?”

“A wolf shifter?” I forced myself to smile, then nodded, my whole head bobbing on my neck. “Worse than that.”

“What?” The bandit strode forward. “What could be worse than that?” He kicked me with his foot, the blow reverberating through my whole body. “What the fuck could be worse than one of the beast men on our trail?”

“I’m his fated mate.”

The moment I said the words, something broke inside my captor. He strode forward, grabbing me by the ropes around my wrist and hauled me up so high I was forced to go on my tiptoes.

“You want to hope you’re lying about that, girl. Beast men might be legendary, but no more so than the Band of Twenty.” I started to look around me, looking for the others, because I could only see seven. With a shake, he drew my focus back to him. “Haul the bitch up.” He pulled a knife from his belt and held it toward me. When I went to shuffle back, he pressed it against my throat. “The beast man can either walk away or watch his ladylove’s blood spill out on the stones. Garret, Riley, go and guard the cave entrance and send up the signal when the beast man arrives.”

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