Page 32 of Wolf Caged
Since I had awoken from strange nightmares of running in my wolf form through a darkened wood where trees glowed with violet veins that ran down their bark and their blooms glittered like stars, she had refused to come around the corner to where I could see her.
Either that, or she had been taken away.
With whatever magic that made it impossible for me to sense her in place, I couldn’t really tell.
Was I alone?
“Neve?” I tried again, because I needed to ask her something, and the longer I went without an answer, the more my imagination ran riot and panic set in. “Neve, please. Come where I can see you… or at least answer me. I fell asleep so fast after eating a little and I’m afraid?—”
“It was not Kaeleron.” Neve’s soft voice was a blessed relief, soothing my fear, but she still refused to move into the open where I could see her. “You needed rest.”
I frowned at the empty cell. “You made me sleep.”
I had been fighting so hard to remain awake, afraid that something would happen to me if I slept. That the fae king would choose that moment of vulnerability to enter my cell while I was unaware of him and take me. When I had come around, I had checked myself over ten times, desperate to convince myself that he hadn’t.
“You needed rest,” she repeated. “Though you sound as grateful for my expending my limited magic as Kaeleron did.”
“He was here?” My blood chilled and warmed at the same time, the strange combination spinning my thoughts in several directions at once. Dangerous. I was already on dangerous ground with the fae king. I pulled my shields back up, forming a thick wall around me to keep whatever dark desire he roused in me away. I was not going to fall for his charms. “What did he want? How deep asleep was I? Did he?—”
My voice hitched, lungs tightening as I threw aside the blanket Neve had given me and checked my clothing again, even though the sensible part of me knew I had already checked and found none of my clothing out of place and no evidence the king had touched me.
Neve did appear now, her face a dark mask as she glowered at me. “You think so ill of him.”
“He hasn’t exactly given me a reason to think any other way about him,” I snapped back at her, the relief I felt upon finding my clothing intact short lived as my anger spiked right back up again. “He bought me for sex!”
“And has he enjoyed what he paid for?” Neve’s expression only hardened, her amber irises smouldering around her pupils like fiery embers.
“It’s still early.” I wrapped the blanket around myself again, a shield against the cold of the dungeon and the chilling thought of the fae king taking what he had paid a hefty sum to enjoy.
Since our last meeting, my traitorous mind had become fixated on the way he had looked at me, the feel of his hand on my flesh, and how drawn to him I had felt when he had uttered that filthy word—fuck.
His parting words had remained with me, a challenge I had felt deep in my flesh and my bones.
When I had lost the fight against my fatigue later that day—or night, I wasn’t sure what time of day it was anymore—I had replayed that moment over and over again.
How his eyes had shone with a mischievous light, how his smile had been seductive and his look searing as he had told me that I only had to ask if I wanted to find out which the unseelie did better—fight, feast orfuck.
My dreams had twisted that moment, unfurling it into several different endings, ones where those hadn’t been his parting words, but ones said while he still faced me.
My cheeks heated as I recalled several of the ways that replayed moment had ended in my dreams, and my body thrummed and ached, my clothes suddenly feeling too tight and restrictive.
The reason for my reactions and my heated dreams dawned on me.
“I don’t need this now.” I curled forwards into my knees, burying my hands in my matted hair, and cursed my maturity as it taunted and tormented me, and my mind flashed back to the night of the celebration at the Hunt pack and how hungry I had been for my mate.
My first heat was approaching, rolling up on me fast by the feel of things.
“Do not need what now?” The deep masculine voice swept over me, crashing against me like the waves of a raging, wild sea.
I drowned in it for a heartbeat, unable to fight it as it surrounded me and pulled me under, back into those dangerous dreams.
And then I kicked upwards, battling the strength of the waves, fighting for my life and refusing to succumb.
“None of your business,” I bit out as I emerged from my knees, lowering my hands to rest on them, and glared at the one male I really didn’t want to see right now, while my maturity was messing with my mind and my body.
Making me want him.
Not him.
