Page 115 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

“What did I tell you about running?” he growled, forcing me to still. His fangs nipped my ear and he licked away the blood that welled there. “We’ll always hunt you down, find you and that will never change.”

“Weyland…” I breathed out his name and he loosened his grip on me then, letting my feet return to the ground.

“We thought we knew how this would go,” he told me, stepping in and pressing his forehead to mine, his lips hovering inches away. “We knew we’d be forced to bring our father down. That any mate we took would become queen. But we thought we’d help her adjust, teach her the ways of the crown as we took control of the city, of the country, starting to right all the wrongs Father has created. And then we met you.”

His head tilted sideways then, his mouth kissing the air between us.

“All our grand ambitions fell to nothing when we saw you. You’re going to be the one to do all the things we dreamed about, and more besides. Our job is to keep you safe from the bloody bastards with their sharp knives that will come for you as a result.”

His hand went to the small of my back and he pressed me hard against him.

“You’re my queen in every way possible and I will spend my life explaining just how that is true, until you start believing it.”

But he didn’t understand.His words, his touch, the pulsing hot sensation that came from being near him, near any of the pack, had me feeling things I had no right to feel, but it was all just window dressing. Because beneath it was something that made me ache.

How on earth could a whole country, a whole culture, be ruled by a silly girl who got lost in her own thoughts, her own steps, in the movement of her own body? Half of me was sure that, when we finally consummated what flared between us, I’d lose myself in them and the way they managed to make me feel, going back again and again for more of it. Surely there had to be someone wiser, smarter, who actually understood the way to run a country…?

And that’s when Dane shouldered forward in my mind.

Right then, I saw the reverse of the way we’d met. Dane, red of tooth and claw, striding up to take his place on the throne that his father had been forced to vacate. Would I lick his father’s blood from his fingers?

I just might.

“Just… help me forget, for tonight at least,” I said to Weyland. “If I was born here and my father was Strelan. If your mother didn’t hate the idea of me and supported our relationship, what would we do?”

“You want to live in a world of pretend for a night, lass?” he asked me with a grin, then swirled me around in his arms. “I think I can manage that.”

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