Page 34 of The Wolf Queen

“Why should I spare you?” I asked Bryson, knowing that with just one twitch of my wrist, I’d open the big artery in his neck. “I need your army, not a prince who drags me halfway across the country under false pretences.”

“You’re right, my queen. You don’t need me,” he said, baring his neck in a way that put me in mind of what I had done with Axe, just hours before. “Not really. Of course, I can help you gain access to the court, help you navigate what goes on there, but…”

He paused, took in a deep breath, then forced a grim smile to his lips. The expression transformed his face. The light there was a match to the radiance of the crystals.

“Your princes said they knew you were theirs before they even met you. That your love was written in the stars, well…” He let out a sigh, his shoulders sagging somewhat. “I didn’t need to take that statement at face value. I know what it's like to have sensed the other half of your heart, to know she walks out there, out of reach. The reason you should spare me, my queen, is because you are my fated mate.”

Chapter22

“No!” I said, recoiling in rejection of the very idea As I did, my sword hand twisted slightly, resulting in a thin trickle of blood slowly sliding down the prince’s throat. His eyes went wide, his throat convulsing, but he bore the pain without comment. “Take that back,” I demanded, full of regal authority then. “Take it back!”

“I can’t.” With a growing sense of horror, I watched him move to place his hands behind his back, interlocking his arms and denying himself any chance to protect himself. Instead his golden eyes bore into mine as he murmured, “I can’t, Darcy.”

“Don’t call me that!” I snapped. Though what else would he call me? Your Majesty? It was my title but it sounded wrong in his mouth.

It sounded the same as when my mates said it.

“What—?”

But before he could get his question out, he was interrupted. Keeping the sword trained on him, I turned my head, only to see my mates arriving.

When the gently glowing walls flared brighter as my men spilled into the crystal cave, I wasn’t surprised. A feeling of intense emotion rose up at the sight of them, and tears pricked at the back of my eyes at the beauty of it.

Love.

That was what I felt, what filled me as they stumbled in, wild-eyed, worried. They took in me, the sword, the glowing stones, then their expressions changed to suspicion and mistrust when they saw Bryson and the fact I had the sword to his throat.

“What the hell did you do?” Gael demanded, the crystals taking on a bluish cast as he grabbed the prince by the shirtfront and then shoved him back up against the wall of the cave. “What the fuck did you do to her?”

“Nothing.”

The prince and I said the word at the same time, and I flushed as though there was some significance to us speaking in unison.

“I caught the crown prince creeping down the hallway,” I explained, “and I followed him.”

“Of course you did. What…? Crown prince?” Dane’s head whipped around and he stared at the man much more closely. He stalked over to where Gael still held Bryson against the crystalline wall. Only the slight flare to his nostrils betrayed his anger. That and the jerky way he pulled his knife out of its sheath on his belt. “The very man who sent orders to retrieve my mate from her father’s estate?” The tip of his blade pressed against the small cut I’d left. “What the hell are you trying to achieve, Your Highness?”

“What is going on here?”

My grandfather strode through the doorway into the mouth of the cave, a stern look on his face. Despite the kerfuffle, when he saw me with the sword in my hand, his expression softened. Then he looked past me to where my mother hovered, and a terrible look of pained longing rose in his eyes.

“Eloise?”

I turned to her, to ask her to stay, to have the chance to get out all the questions that burned in my mind. Even more than that, to have the chance just to talk to her. I didn’t really have any memories of her death, so the pain of it was a soft, abstract thing. But as I watched her smile and raise her hand in recognition of her father, then fade from our view, that pain of her loss now was far sharper.

“No!” I leapt forward, grabbing at her form, but it was already dissipating like a curling plume of smoke being teased apart by the wind. “No…” I growled. “No!”

“Darcy—” the duke started to say. I whirled around and pointed the sword in his direction and that was enough to silence him.

“You knew.” I stared at him, then dragged my gaze around the cave—at the glowing crystals and the sword and the door and the prince, then, finally, at the space where my mother’s ghost had stood. “You knew. All of it.”

“All of what?” Dane asked, warily eyeing the duke while keeping his blade against the prince’s neck.

“You knew,” I insisted.

My grandfather straightened then, becoming every inch the duke, despite being in his nightclothes, and he nodded.

“All of it, darling girl, and I’d be happy to share what knowledge I have.”

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