Page 79 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 33

The next morning, at court.

“Dane!”

A beautiful woman rushed over to the leader of our pack, her face radiant with delight. She had long, dark hair that flared around her in a cloud, her eyes not seeing anything but him. Her smooth brow creased for just a second, then she swooped in, putting her arms around his neck.

“Mother said you returned last night,” she said. “I can’t believe you didn’t call on me or send word. You know I would’ve come, at any hour. I’ve missed you so much.”

The last two sentences were said in a very quiet, intimate tone, which told me a whole lot. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and found the other three men watching me closely.

And why?

Because I didn’t want to be back here at the doorway into the court. I wanted to be back down at the inn with Pepin, grooming Arden with Nordred, riding out of this bloody city and never coming back. Instead, I was forced to stand here and experience something curious.

A feeling of possessiveness so intense it stole my breath away, the ragged sound of air going in and out of my chest drawing the other’s focus. Gael took my hand, as if to keep me where I was. Because I stared at this beautiful, beautiful girl who obviously thought she had a right to manhandle my mate, who had volunteered to come to his room at any time, day or night, like she had a right to. My focus finally caught her attention, or it was the feel of Dane plucking her hands off him and setting her aside, firmly, but gently.

“Malia, we need to talk.”

“Well, that sounds serious,” she said, trying for a smile, but it faded when she saw he didn’t return it. “Were the humans frightfully boring? I imagine dealing with them must’ve been like attempting to reason with a cat. Are they even capable of proper negotiation?”

Funny, I thought, people said the same thing about the Strelans on the other side of the border.

“I heard that Gael brought one back as a pet,” she said with a smug smile. “Or was it his mate? I can hardly remember. When someone tried to tell me the story I just laughed…”

Dane stepped back then, revealing me and that’s when her face fell. She blinked, then took several deep breaths, her nostrils working.

“She’s human…” she said in a much smaller voice, a frown forming for real now. “And she smells of…” Her eyes searched every man’s face before coming back to Dane. “She smells of all of you.”

“Lady Darcy is our mate,” Weyland said, his hand going to the back of my neck, stroking the bare skin there possessively. I’d woven in my own warrior braids today for some reason. Braids were always seen to be a feminine thing in Grania, but in Strelae? The way they were pulled back in a topknot or bound into a queue made a man’s face look fierce and I found I liked that style a lot.

“Our?” Malia had to force that word out.

“We were always a pack,” Dane explained in a calm voice. “And now we are complete. We’ve found our mate.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head and holding out her hands, like she could ward the words off. “No, your mother said…”

“I’m well aware of Mother’s machinations, but we’ve had conversations about this,” Dane replied.

“No, no. My father is the king’s closest ally. The alliance was cemented. We—”

“Malia.” I felt a spike of sympathy as Dane gripped the girl on the shoulders and forced her to face him. “We have spoken about this at length. What we… had, was always going to be trumped by finding my mate.”

“Mates are an outdated concept,” she said with a ferocious sneer, her voice taking on a growly note. Her eyes flashed bright blue, which should’ve been warning enough. “We are not beasts and we needn’t live like them, letting instincts dictate our actions. Our parents approved the match. We were to be—”

“Malia.” Dane cut her off with a forbidding tone. “Anything that was said or done before this means nothing now. I have found my mate. I belong to her, body, mind and soul. I have nothing else to give any other woman. It’s all hers.”

I blinked then, my eyelids fluttering. We were making a scene; I could see that. People looked through the doorway, chatting amongst themselves at what was happening, trying to glean the gist of the conversation. They reminded me of crows clustering around a corpse, each one fighting to be the one to pluck out the eyeballs and eat them.

But Dane’s words? They were blunt and concise, the message only now driving home and that, in some ways, was a mistake.

“You’re the one that seeks to take Dane from me?” she snapped, finally acknowledging me.

All those instincts Nordred had worked so hard to instil in me came alive as she stormed over. The men went to cluster around me, to prevent her from coming close, but me? I walked up to her, prepared to meet a challenge head on. I felt the whisk of her hand before I saw it, my own whipping up and grabbing her around the wrist, stopping the slap from landing.

“Let go of me, you grubby little human!” she snarled, all her composure shattering around her.

“No,” I said, refusing to bite, because in the end, I’m not sure I would have responded all that differently if Dane had ridden away from me for a few days and then presented me with some stranger as his mate. Malia tried to jerk her hand free and when she failed, something finally seemed to dawn on her.

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