Page 59 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

“Because what stayed my hand wasn’t lack of skill and perhaps wasn’t even a lack of strength.”

I flexed my fingers, feeling the slender muscles pop in my forearms and biceps now. My eyes flicked up to meet Weyland’s, but the heat, the softness I saw there was not what I wanted right now. He dropped his sword and came rushing over, but I grabbed the hilts of mine and raised them to cross at his throat, stopping him from getting any closer.

“What would my people do if they caught me brutalising my father, the duke?” I asked him.

“They would charge you with the crime and jail you,” he replied.

“And if I managed to get away and my father was too ashamed to admit what I’d done, then what? Where would I go? Where would I live? What land would I be able to buy, if I earned the coin? How would I support myself?”

I hated this conversation, because Nordred and I had had it many a time. When I’d slunk down to the stables crying. When I’d sobbed myself dry on his shoulder as his hand rubbed my back.

“You think that it's your superior skill and strength that allows you to rule the world,” I said, “but instead it’s this. When a woman is born into a world where men own everything, all she can do is go cap in hand and beg for a piece of it. Her skills, her power, they don’t matter, just what she has to trade that they deem is worth something to them.”

I lowered my blades then, not caring much what Weyland would do now. He’d said at the end of this I would be broken and aching and, in some ways, I was, just not in the physical way he’d thought.

I nodded to Nordred. “You brought me here to remind me of what I am, to show me what I can do now…” Now what? Something appeared to have shifted in me, with the fangs and the claws, something I needed to discover more about.

“You were always strong, fast, resilient,” Nordred said. “And now you’re free. It’s time to see exactly what you’ll do with that.”

I nodded then, walking over to the rack and replacing my weapons, the crowd slowly dispersing.

“I’m sorry,” Weyland said, and I didn’t pause in what I was doing, just nodding as I set the blades back into the slots. “I didn’t realise. I thought…” He kept talking, but I kept walking, so that forced him to move and keep pace with me as I walked out of the training grounds and back towards the front gate. “Darcy.”

I stopped when his hand landed on my shoulder, weighing me down, pinning me to the spot. I stared up at him, into those bright blue eyes and just waited with a slight frown.

“This is killing me,” he said, “all of it. Your father, finding our mate in bloody Grania. Needing you so—”

I snorted at that, and it was his turn to frown. The warg took it like a slap to the face, just like I knew he would, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. My head shook slowly as the prince had his feelings hurt.

“You want me,” I stated baldly.

“Yes, so much—” he said, starting to move closer but I held out a hand.

“You think I’m your mate, the only woman for you.”

“There is no other,” he ground out, staring down at my hand.

“But you have no idea who I am. Right now, I’m just an idea, an abstract concept to you, along with some burning need to fuck me.”

He blinked at that and then did something that surprised me. A smile spread across Weyland’s face. Not a cocky one or a sly one or even one full of the damnable heat. Just a light thing that seemed to brighten his whole face.

“So, let’s do something about that,” he said, offering me his hand.

I stared at it for a second, my mind racing. In the training field I knew exactly what I had to do, but here? After a few moments more, I lifted my hand and had to force it toward him, though, strangely, when he grabbed hold of it, something released inside me.

“Are you tired after all of that…?” He looked down at me. “You’re not, are you? Whatever it is in you that had you moving across that sand like a devil, it’s still there, isn’t it?”

“It’s changing.” I looked down at my free hand and watched the way the nails turned into claws and back again. “I’m changing and I’m not sure into what.”

“That’s something I should be able to help you with. I hope those boots are comfortable, because we’ll be walking a-ways. We’re going up onto the tor.”

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