Page 96 of Wolf Caged
His grin was all mischief.
He liked the idea of spilling all Kaeleron’s secrets to me, and I wasn’t sure he wanted to do it to arm me with information about my master. He looked as if he wanted to do it to irritate Kaeleron more than anything. A male unafraid of Kaeleron’s wrath? How powerful was he if he didn’t fear the shadow king?
“I am Oberon.” He extended his hand to me, his expression warm and open.
“Oberon,” I echoed, my eyebrows rising high on my forehead. “I know that name. Vyr mentioned you. She said you told her tales of my world… and something about wanting me to verify what you had said about it.”
His face brightened. “Vyr. She is well? I admit, I wanted to see her too, but she is absent from the castle. Away on some business apparently.”
“She’s well. I think. I haven’t known her long enough to tell whether she’s well or not really. But she seemed fine the last time I saw her.” I cringed as I recalled our trip into town and run in with Riordan. “Although, I feel herbusinessis an excuse to get away from a certain vampire.”
Oberon arched a fine black eyebrow and I felt I had said too much.
Before I could ask him to forget what I had said, he chuckled.
“Riordan has been annoying her again?” He shook his head, flashing straight white teeth in a broad smile. “The fool will never win her that way.”
I leaned towards him, wanting to ‘conspire’ just as he had offered, the words on the tip of my tongue.
Oh my gods, you see it too?
I held them inside instead, feeling I had already said too much and it really wasn’t my place to gossip with a relative-stranger about the princess of this court. I was trying to earn Vyr’s trust and maybe win her friendship, and I wouldn’t achieve either of those things if she heard I had been debating her possible feelings for the vampire.
“Sit with me, wolf. Anything you say will not leave my lips.” He took a seat, turning his back to me, and patted the spot beside him. “I am a great master of secrets.”
Rather than taking it, I walked past him to the wall and leaned against it, enjoying the breeze now I was out of the shade of the gazebo, and that strange twilight sky that shifted with colourful, bewitching aurora.
I sighed as I studied it, planting my hands beside my hips to steady myself as I tipped my head back further.
Oberon watched me, his gaze a caress of power that hummed along my skin.
I lowered my eyes to him. “I’m Saphira by the way.”
I extended my hand to him, and he rose and slipped his into it, his skin cool against mine but thrumming with power that echoed in my bones as he gently gripped my hand and lifted it.
And brushed his lips across the back of it.
My eyes widened, eyebrows shooting high on my forehead.
He chuckled as he released it and eased back a step, his handsome face filled with genuine warmth and light that was at odds with everyone else I had met in this world.
“Are you always this charming?” I said, a ripple of shock rolling through me at my blunt question. Oberon was really going to end up thinking all wolves were rather forward.
His smile held. “Not often. But charming you comes so very easily. I find it is not a chore with you.”
I frowned and pursed my lips as I puzzled over his words, and then smiled. “I’m going to take that as a compliment, I think.”
He came to stand beside me, his hands tucked behind his back, stretching his black tunic tight across his chest, and sighed as he gazed out at the sea, his eyes fixed on a distant point. I twisted and looked there, enjoying the strangely comfortable silence that fell over us, wanting to see what he was looking at with such an odd expression. As if he longed for whatever he was looking for, but despised it at the same time.
“Where is home for you?” Those words rose unbidden to my lips, born of some part of me that knew the source of his look, because that same feeling existed in my heart too.
I loved my home, but hated it at times. The confinement. The inability to do the things I wanted to do.
To be who I wanted to be.
“King’s Water. In the Stygian Isles. Far from here.” He didn’t take his eyes off the horizon as he pointed towards it.
No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see the islands he spoke of, but I imagined he could, even if he was only seeing them in his mind.
