Page 81 of Savagely Mated

“You’re shaking.”

“I just killed the fucking king. I think. I mean, if I didn’t… I don’t know. Do you remember when I used to be terrified of it, and now…”

“Wolf form is different from human form. And you were in your wolf form, I assume?”

“Yes. I was.”

“You acted on instinct to protect yourself. That’s good. You did what you should have done. What you had to do.”

“I know. He didn’t give me a choice. I mean, he knew he wasn’t giving me a choice, he just thought that I’d have to let him…”

“Good girl!” Kirin shouts from the front. He’s absolutely thrilled. The other two, not so much. They look concerned. I think they’re more worried that this all happened on their watch. They shouldn’t blame themselves. They should blame me. No matter how many times I was warned, I did whatever I felt like in the moment.

“Can you guys check the news?” Kirin calls back. “Could be intel on where we should go.”

The back of the van has a television in it, along with other surveillance equipment. Einar flicks the picture on.Immediately, we see a very cheerful lady making cupcakes. Einar changes the channel, and we see some dogs being cute.

“I don’t think there’s any news on this. Check the mobile apps.”

Rafe is already on his phone, scrolling.

“There’s nothing,” he says. “Trending tags are limited to sports and the Delivery 2 Go murder.”

“Wow, that’s a whole murder ago,” I say. It’s hard to believe there was a time when I really couldn’t do anything all that violent and in a couple of days I’ve quintupled my body count. I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t know what to feel about it. I’ve become a talking point in Eclipse City.

“Looks like the social media has her name,” Rafe says. “Darcy. Someone from the academy must have leaked it.”

“That’s okay. Nobody is charging her for that.”

“Why isn’t there any news about it? They didn’t really even raise a lot of alarms when it happened. I think they did at the end, but… I got away really easily.”

“Half of being a modern royal is keeping things quiet,” Rafe says. “They will not want it to be known that someone attacked the king and fled the castle. It makes everybody look bad. Makes the palace look as though they have security problems. Telegraphs to enemies that an attack is likely to be successful in the future. Makes the king look weak.”

“He wasn’t really the king.” I say. “He had common wolf markings when he shifted. The guards would have seen that too. I don’t know if they’d do anything with that, or…”

“Those guards are already dead,” Einar says. “They allowed the king to be attacked and potentially even murdered on their watch.”

“Told you we didn’t need to worry about her.” Kirin throws the words over his shoulder. “You couldn’t keep Darcy in captivity if she wanted to be there. She’d escape on principle.”

I smirk.

The horror is starting to give way to relief and even a little bit of excitement. What just happened will change everything, one way or another.

“What are we going to do?”

“I think we should head for the mountains,” Einar says. “It’s time to get clear of Eclipse for a while. I know you don’t care for the wilds, Darcy, but it’s going to be dangerous, and we won’t know where the danger is coming from. You can never risk being seen again.”

“Never?”

“Not in the short term. The king’s maiming, or death, or whatever it is, will not unfold in public as it does in private. They know very well what you did, and they will want you as dead as those guards, or worse.”

I know exactly what he means by ‘or worse.’ It’s the same thing the king meant when he said I belong to him.

“I believe they will try to hunt you down in silence and kill you, would be my guess. Unless they come to the conclusion that you acted in self-defense and are unlikely to be an ongoing threat, but I doubt the kindness will go that far. It really depends onwhat happens. If the king dies, it depends on who they decide to replace him with.”

“But he has twenty-one heirs. You’d have to kill an awful lot of people to eradicate his line.”

“His line is meaningless. He may have bred, but he doesn’t have the royal genes.”

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