Page 12 of Craved By a Wolf

First another country. Now another realm. Add the fact that his wolf instincts had recognised Hella as his fated one and it was all becoming too much. He missed the uncomplicated nature of his home in the Highlands already, ached to return to the clan and rest atop his favourite spot, taking in the rolling moorland that embraced the munros and waiting for the gloaming, when a sense of magic and wonder filled the air.

His mother had held him on her lap many times as a pup to tell him the gloaming was when the faeries came out—in that brief moment between day and night.

Between light and darkness.

Now he was expected to go to a place of faeries and he was unsure what to expect when he got there. There were other stories about fae-kind. Darker stories. The ancient books in his possession, passed to him by his mother, were filled with tales of the seelie and unseelie, and their eternal war.

The thought of stepping into their realm had him hesitating, lingering in the mortal one, where he was safe.

But the vision of his female being held against her will, shackled and stripped of power, and the lingering scent of her that swirled around him had him gearing up for a battle.

He couldn’t bear the thought of her in danger, so he would place himself in the path of it by pursuing her into another world.

Kin flexed his fingers into fists.

He’d had to fight for everything he had ever wanted.

It looked as if this time would be no different.

If it was war the nymphs wanted, it was war he would give them.

Chapter 4

If Hella’s magic hadn’t been bound by the infernal shackles weighing her arms down, she might have been tempted to hit the nymph who dogged her every step with a spell or two. Turn him into a eunuch. Elevate him to a soprano. That sort of thing.

As it was, all she could do was glare at him as she paced around the circular room, her anger at a constant rolling boil.

She passed a very expensive looking vase, the sort humans paid millions for, and swiped it from the polished wooden sideboard, turned in one fluid motion and launched it at the guard. He swayed to his right, easily dodging it, and it landed on the pretty parquet floor and smashed into a thousand pieces. Part of her had expected him to at least attempt to catch it, saving the precious object for his master.

Hella reached for a nice crystal sculpture of a man and woman going at it, the temptation to see if he would catch this one and the desire to smash more of Ethyrian’s belongings too powerful to deny.

Her guard gripped her arm before she could grab the statue and hauled her away from it. He twisted with her and shoved her towards the centre of the room. Her prison. She curled a lip at it. She was being held by force by a man she had dumped.

In a sumptuous room that had every luxury imaginable, but it was still by force.

Just this one room put her home to shame. It put every home in the Geneva fae town to shame. She had been in the most opulent of them, attending soirees thrown by the nobles, or peddling them a potion. This room made them look shabby in comparison.

The gold and crystal chandelier sparkled in the candlelight that illuminated the intricately painted domed ceiling of the huge circular room—a painting that depicted a lot of naughty things—and caught on the gilded mirrors that lined the ivory walls, mimicking the two arched windows and the arched doorways.

Between the two windows, there was a large circular mattress covered in colourful silk pillows. Four posts enclosed it, carved to look like trees, their branches reaching and entwining and studded with diamonds. The wood was as pale as her skin, finely grained.

It looked like bones to her.

Hella kept her distance from the love nest side of the room, opting to pace on the side that had been turned into a lounge area, with a chaise longue and two couches made of the same bone-coloured wood and turquoise velvet. She pretended not to notice how the two couches faced the chaise, as if they had been positioned so people could watch whatever was happening on it. She also pretended not to notice that the carved wooden frame that ran over the top of the back of the chaise had two worn patches that looked awfully as if someone had been regularly tied down there.

She pivoted towards the door that was open and drifted towards it, breathing deep of the fresh air that rolled into the room through it as her panic mounted. This wasn’t her home now. She wasn’t going to become part of whatever weird kinky things happened in this room. She would speak to Ethyrian and convince him that he was being unreasonable, and he would let her go.

She chuckled at that, the mirthless, desperate sound bursting from her lips, loud in the thick silence. Her guard tensed and she glared at him when he gave her a look that questioned her sanity. So, she was losing her mind a little. Who wouldn’t when they were being held in a nymph king’s sex den with no way to escape and no real hope of convincing him to let her go?

Ethyrian would keep her here. No matter what she said or did. She knew it in her gut. He had been wounded when she had last seen him, hurt by her rejection and the fact she hadn’t believed his continuous declarations of love, and she had foolishly thought it was over.

But it looked as if the male really didn’t know how to take no for an answer.

And wasn’t above kidnapping to get what he wanted.

Typical king.

She huffed, her strides growing more agitated as her mind raced, as her fingers were drawn towards the secret pocket in her black dress. She focused on her guard as her hand brushed across it and she felt the vial that had survived the brute’s rough handling of her. Maybe she did have a way to escape. Although she wasn’t sure it would work.

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