Page 130 of Wolf Caged
“You make this place sound like a cage,” Saphira murmured, her focus fixed on the two boats trading goods just beyond the border of my court.
“Not a cage. Merely protected, and with good reason.”
She leaned further forward, folded her arms across the top of the wall and rested her chin on them. “As someone who spent a great deal of her life ‘protected’, I can say with good authority that’s a cage.”
I turned my back to the sea and studied her instead, watching the subtle changes in her expression as dark clouds gathered in her eyes. “I do not expect you to understand my reasons, but this is my court to rule, and I shall rule it as I see fit.”
“Until a more rabid wolf comes along.” Her blue eyes darted up to me and then back to the ocean, a sombre edge to them as she sighed. “I don’t have first-hand experience of a lot of things. I’m first to admit my life has been sheltered… but rabid wolves, as you put it, aren’t the only ones who differ in strength. Alphas do too, and sometimes one is foolish enough to let that power go to his head.”
I frowned down at her, my hands coming to rest against the stones on either side of my hips as she watched the sea with a sorrowful edge to her expression. “You speak of someone you know?”
She shook her head, her silver-white hair brushing her shoulders, the soft strands loosening from her braid to catch on her blouse. “I never knew him. I only know of him. My uncle. He challenged the alpha of the neighbouring pack in an attempt to take control of it and seize more power.”
“Sounds much like court politics to me,” I murmured, my mind on the way several courts had ended up with a new king in the last few decades, usurped from within by another member of their family or from without by another bloodline with royal ties. But internal battles were not the only way courts changed hands.“It is not uncommon for one king to challenge another in this world. What happened to him?”
“He paid the price for his actions.” Her gaze lowered. “He was executed and my cousin, Chase, was left without a father, and Morden lost his father and brother, and my pack ended up without an alpha. The mantle passed to my father.”
I mulled over what she had said, filing away the information about the one called Chase and marking down this new name, Morden, in my mental roster of people I wanted to know more about. I would task Vyr with discovering more about this new male.
Saphira stared at the sea, a trace of fascination in her expression, layered with sorrow and a hint of hurt that had me closing ranks with her, edging nearer against my will, some powerful part of me demanding I be closer to her.
“I think our worlds are more alike than I could have imagined.” The hurt gained a foothold in her eyes, beginning to overpower the fascination directed at the ocean and the sorrow for her uncle and family. “You have courts. We have packs. You play at civility while plotting murder. We employ deception and outright lies to get what we want.”
I grew increasingly still as she spoke, each word that left her lips cranking the tension within my body higher and higher, and not because she talked of the unseelie as if we were dark and cruel things.
“Who in your court—your pack—acted in such a manner?” My voice had never sounded so cold, so dark, as I stared down at her, heart pounding like a war drum that demanded blood and vengeance, because she might not have said the words, but she had said enough for me to know someone had gravely wounded her with deception and lies, and they had taken what they had wanted with them.
That little crease between her fine eyebrows formed again as she twisted towards me, her gaze lifting to lock with mine, no trace of fear in it as she faced me even when I knew my wrath, my dark desire to harm the one who had harmed her, was written all over my face.
“Not my pack. He was never my pack, and I was never to be part of his, apparently.” Though she kept her voice steady and full of malice, it came dangerously close to breaking as pain surfaced in her eyes.
Pain I recognised.
I had seen it in her eyes when she had been in that cage.
When she had been in my dungeon.
Only in the last few weeks had that pain disappeared.
And now it had returned.
And I growled low as I realised why.
“You speak of the wolf who sold you.”
She swallowed hard and averted her gaze, that pain so fierce in it that tears lined her lashes and she angled her face away from me, as if she was ashamed I had seen them, and perhaps angry too—but not at me. At herself. Because she was letting this pain rule her.
As I had let my pain rule me all those years ago.
“What did he do?” My voice pitched low, a vicious snarl as I took hold of her arms and twisted her towards me, needing to see her face as I asked that because I knew she would try to evade the question if I let her withdraw and I wanted answers.
I wanted to see the truth in her eyes.
They leaped to mine, the tears in them ripping at my soul, shredding my control so rapidly I did not have a chance to hold my shadows at bay. They whipped from me, but rather than lashing at the world in a fit of rage, they swirled around her in an embrace some buried part of me hoped gave her comfort.
Because those eyes, so haunted and distant, revealed how much this male had wounded her, and how that pain continued to fester within her. Even now, far beyond his reach, the wolf still had influence over her.
Invisible bonds I could not shatter.
