Page 24 of Ruined Kingdom

Panic overtook me as I rushed down the stairs. Tieni and some soldiers were ahead of me, and I noticed how spots of sunlight decorated the floor at their feet.

Strange, it’s usually very dark in here in the morning.

As I neared the foyer where they stood, I suddenly understood where the light was coming from.

The front door had been nearly ripped from its hinges. There was a huge hole in the middle, just big enough for a certain Alpha King to fit through.

The staff were still cleaning up the mess but stopped once they noticed me.

I tried to breathe, but my air was stuck in my lungs. I clenched my chest in horror as I approached them. I didn’t see any blood which I supposed should have put my mind at ease, but I didn’t feel the least bit relieved.

One of the caretakers approached me. “Miss, don’t worry. The men have been out looking for him all morning. I’m sure?—”

She was interrupted by a menagerie of soldiers piling in through the broken front door behind the very man on everyone’s minds.

My heart dropped into my stomach when his eyes found mine, only to avert them away from me immediately after. It was as if he couldn’t stand to look at me.

With fire and brimstone flaring in my blood, I marched up to him. Everyone close to him stepped aside, even the rough and tough soldiers knew better than to get between me and my warpath.

“Sophia,” he began to say, but it was too late.

“I would like to have a word with you, now. Privately,” I said, staring straight into his dark eyes, leaving no opening for him to argue.

His face solidified into a grimace before leading me away from the crowd and toward his office.

We had barely turned the corner when he turned and snapped at me, “You’re not to treat me like that in front of others again. You cannot command me. I am still the King around here.”

“You are more fool than King right now,” I shot back as I whirled toward him, matching his temper with my own. “Last night, I asked you if something was wrong, but you lied to my face.”

His lips tightened as his teeth gritted against each other. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

“Oh, so breaking through the front door in the middle of the night after a nightmare is completely normal,” I raged, unable to control my fear, worry, and anger, letting it all out. “Running wild through the forest and needing your soldiers to go out to search and bring you back home isn’t cause for concern either!”

His back straightened as he stood there before me, not about to back down, but something had changed in him. Was that amusement in his eyes? “Gods, woman. You’re certainly far more tenacious than I originally gave you credit for.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s not my fault you keep underestimating me.”

“Perhaps I do,” he said, and did the strangest thing … he smirked. “What do you intend to do about it?”

Heat and tension, other than anger, were beginning to build between us.

A tangible tension tingled against my skin like electricity as he took another step closer to me.

A shiver ran down my spine as my eyes met his with a different, passionate emotion this time.

I let out a breathy sound of protest, not wanting him to distract me from the matter we needed to settle, but my heart’s yearning was beating louder than my reasoning thoughts.

His eyes fell to my chest, watching it rise and fall as if he couldn’t help but notice it, too.

The anticipation danced along my tongue, and it was sweet like honey.

Before I knew it, he drew me into his arms and pushed me up against the red wallpaper with his body.

His lips took mine with an insatiable need. To say we were kissing would have been a farfetched understatement. It was more like a devouring of each other. An absolute merging of two bodies into one.

At the back of my mind, I vaguely wondered if anything would even be left of me once he was done. Not that I cared. All I wanted was more of him. More of his claiming mouth on me. More of his hungry touches. More of his hard body pressing into my softness.

I moaned into his mouth, and he ate it up immediately, sending a strangled groan of approval back to me.

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