Page 58 of Pack Captive

"Let's just say Tyra didn't get that lesson, on top of everything else she did," he said bitterly.

Maybe I'd made a mistake in pushing so hard. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pried."

Ryden shrugged, then gave me a half-smile. "I don't like to dwell on the past too much, but...she was something else. She left nothing but bad blood behind."

"Well...as long as people quit comparing me to her, I'll let it go." I wondered what she'd done to him.

It would be just about impossible for any female wolf, even a trained Claw, to get the physical advantage over a male as built as Ryden, but...there were other ways she could've violated his boundaries.

"You'll grow into your own here," he said gruffly. "We're used to new wolves coming in all the time. It's just unusual to find a Caller these days. You're bound to be compared."

His voice stuttered the tiniest bit when he said 'a Caller', and I found myself thinking he'd tried to say something else. There was something too quick about the way he'd said it.

But what else could they possibly be hiding?

Well, they have a Fenris wolf in the cells below the Palace, so...probably a lot.

I was beginning to agree with my acerbic inner voice on a far more regular basis.

And it was probably time I approached that topic without waiting for Ryden to punish me. "So... Calian might've told you, but...I sort of broke through the lunar runes and found a Fenris wolf below the Palace."

"He might've told me something about it," Ryden said. His grim tension was gone, at least. He looked like he was holding back another grin. "Although I'm not sure how you could claim you 'sort of' broke them when you completely shattered them. The Elder Caller wasn't happy about having to fix those."

No wonder she'd been grumpy with me this morning. "I was curious. Why do you keep him here? Why not kill him?"

It was my turn to stutter over what I said.

Last week, I would've said the only good Fenris wolf was a dead one.

After talking to Merikh, it felt a little too real. Somewhere under those bloody runes, he'd once been like any other wolf, and maybe it wasn't even his fault.

"Information." Ryden turned me towards the bridge to the Palace. "He was one of Fenris's closest lieutenants. If we break him...we might finally learn of a weakness."

That made sense, I supposed. I fell silent as we walked over the bridge, not wanting the Guardians to overhear my line of questioning.

Because I, too, wanted to know more about the wolf who had decimated my pack. And Merikh seemed starved for human companionship, whether he knew it or not.

Maybe, if the cell didn't break him, kindness would.

My thoughts came to a halt when I eyed the stairs.

There were a lot of stairs to climb, and I needed to conserve what energy was left for the dark moon ritual and my first real patrol.

I sighed and shifted to four paws, and Ryden did the same. He loped easily upwards, as though the exercise hadn't even affected him. He was probably used to it, since he seemed to be made purely of muscle.

I could've cried from relief when I dragged myself into my quarters and shifted, discovering that the maid had already filled the bath with hot water.

I reached up to yank the tie out of my hair, running my fingers through it.

The sound of the door closing and locking behind me nearly made my heart jump out through my ribs.

I whirled around, finding Ryden in my room.

"What are you..." I started to ask, but he strode across the room, catching me in his arms. My back was to his chest as he tilted my head back, running his own fingers through my hair.

"I've been wanting to do this all day," he growled, kissing the soft skin of my throat. Heat blazed to life in my abdomen when I felt the hard length of his cock pushing insistently against me.

After a day of being mentally and physically pulverized, being cradled in his arms was like heaven.

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