Page 33 of Wicked Prince of Carnage
“I swear to the gods, Winter, if you don’t hold your tongue, I’ll—”
“Kill me?” The prince rolled his eyes. “Good luck.”
“Aren’t you going to inform me of your guest?” the king asked. “The one that should bedead.”
Winter flexed his fingers. “Red Riding Hood? I’m toying with her at the moment. She doesn’t deserve a simple death.”
The king lifted his chin. “I hear she will be participating in a second game. If she wins, I have something in store for her myself.”
Winter could see his father’s intentions gleaming behind his eyes.Fuck her,he meant. Willingly or not, because he was the king, andno onerefused him. Except the prince, of course. And, even with knowing so little of Sterling, he felt confident she would be the first person to reject the bastard. Anger blossomed at the idea of her struggling beneath his father.
“A human against so many wolves?” Winter said, forcing his voice to remain calm. “You give her too much credit.”
With that, the prince spun on his heel and left the room. Winter suppressed his simmering rage all the way back to his own bedchamber until he slammed the door behind him. He released a deep roar, his wolf snarling and snapping.
“Fucking bastard,” Winter growled.
“Is that any way to talk to yourself?” Sterling mumbled from her cage.
Winter froze, his focus snapping to his captive. Her hair was mussed. and she hugged the blanket around her shoulders as if there were a chill in the room. The fire crackled, its flames low but still pleasantly warm.Feeble human.However, it seemed she’d regained her passion for antagonizing him in the short time he’d been gone.
“For someone in your position, you’re strangely comfortable insulting me.” He prowled up to the cage and skimmed his fingers across the iron bars, his gaze never wavering from hers. She’d been healing perfectly over the last week from the salve he’d given her, her skin less pale, though she’d been sleeping most of the time and silently staring at the wall when she was awake. When he’d first noticed her bleeding on the floor after the game, he’d wanted to make her crawl up the stairs, wanted not to care, but he had fucking feltsomething.
While she’d been recovering, he’d planned the games and dealt with all the responsibilities of running a court—signing death sentences, allocating funds, making obligatory appearances.
She studied him with her bright green eyes, ones that he loathed to admit enticed himtoomuch. “I suppose so.” She shrugged.
“Don’t you have something to say to me?” He inched closer to the bars, inhaling her apple scent.
She arched a brow. “Do I?”
“Perhaps start withthank you.”
“For?”
He trailed a finger across his lower lip. “Making you comfortable.”
“Yes, you gave me a blanket and pillow,” she pointed out. “But you also tricked me into thinking I was going to eat human meat when it was boar.”
Winter’s lips curled up at the edges. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re not.”
Sterling narrowed her eyes. “I know my meat.”
Winter’s gaze fell to her scars, her mussed hair. His wolf clawed inside his chest, and a part of him wanted to rip the cage open, grasp his hands in her hair to see how soft it was as he bit into her sweet neck to taste her. Not to tear her apart—but to touch her.
Hewantedher.
Wanted to fuck her, even if it was just to get her out of his head. But she was a human, a traitor, a murderer of his kind, someone he shouldn’t want to stick his cock in.
“You were meant to die in the enclosure,” he said, forcing his voice to take on a lighter tone.
“And yet you helped me, then stitched me up,” she grumbled.
There wasn’t much of a choice in that. Though, he supposed, he could’ve called for a healer instead of doing it himself. He simply wasn’t ready to let her die yet—not when there would be another game that would accomplish the task for him. Draw out the satisfaction of watching her fight to live, only to fail.
He shrugged.
Sterling shifted closer to the bars, her face mere inches from his. “Why did your mate want to kill me herself?”
