Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
James leans forward. “Why not?”
“You’re not a strategist, James. If you mean to create a rift between Callum and me, it won’t work.”
“You won’t kiss the lass, but you were happy enough to mark her and claim her as yours on the night of Oidhche Fhada?”
“So it seems.”
James addresses Callum. “His reluctance is interesting, isn’t it, Brother? It’s just a kiss. It’s not like I’m asking him to fuck her. He knows as well as I do that you’d get over it-given the circumstance. Particularly as it will likely save her life. What is it that he does not want us to see, I wonder?”
James gets up and strolls toward me. The marks I gave him are healing already, and the three lines on both of his cheeks look like faint scratches. Duncan pulls away the dagger and steps back.
“Don’t you think she’s bonny?” James grabs my chin, and his scent of bracken and steel assaults me. He turns my face toward Blake.
Blake’s jawline tightens.
I try to pull away, but James’s grip becomes painful. Blake straightens, ever so slightly, in his seat. “He doesn’t like that, does he, Brother?” He releases me, and I edge away until my hips bang against the stone column. Chuckling, James strides back to his seat and drops into it.
I turn to Callum, sure he’s going to challenge James and put a stop to this. There’s a crease between his eyebrows, and he stares at Blake.
“Do as he says.” Callum’s low growl is barely audible, but it near deafens me.
My insides hollow, and darkness fills me. I thought he would protect me. I thought he would save me from this humiliation.
Blake turns his head toward Callum. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Careful, Callum. Some things cannot be undone.”
Both seem to hold their breath. Callum jerks his head.
Blake sighs. His chair screeches across the tiles as he pushes it back and stands. He drags his teeth over his bottom lip, then taps the surface of the table with his fingertips. I think he’s trying to communicate something to Callum, but Callum stares at his clasped hands.
Shaking his head, Blake strolls past the gathered Wolves and makes his way to me.
This can’t be happening. Callum can’t be allowing this to happen. Robert jeers, and another wolf whistles.
Callum does nothing.
Nothing.
I want to shed my skin, to disappear into the darkness where no one can see me. The noise muffles around me as I struggle against my bindings. For a second, I’m back in the Church of Light and Sun, held by the Sisters of the Sun while the High Priest prowls toward me. Helplessness crashes through me. Like then, no one intervenes.
Callum doesn’t intervene.
Blake’s body heat and scent wash over me, and he stands so I can no longer see the men who jeer and laugh. His expression is solemn. Even though he’s holding back his emotion from me, I sense his reluctance.
I shake my head. “Don’t.
“
He touches my bicep. He runs his hand down my arm to my wrist, and slides his thumb between my skin and the rope. I hold my breath, because it seems like he’s testing how tightly I’m bound. As always with him, I’m unsure if he’s going to help me or make things worse. I know he doesn’t want to kiss me.
He cups my face with both hands, and his touch is gentle yet firm. His mouth is a breath away from mine. “I’m sorry about this, Aurora, darling.”
He brushes his lips against mine.
His mouth is hard and unrelenting for a second, then he softens. His darkness floods me. His pine scent coils around me like a deadly serpent and refuses to let go. His heartbeat thunders in my ears, loud and unsteady.
Feelings that are not my own, feelings I cannot decipher, tangle with my fear and my anger and I cannot breathe. A word rumbles in my head. Intangible. The wildness inside me raises its head. My blood howls. My canines ache. Everything aches. I’m nothing but this dark, endless, aching void that needs to be filled. I’m an infinite scream, growing, raging, entombed in stone. I cannot bear it.
I part my lips, and he slides his tongue against mine. His grip on my face tightens. I jerk back, and Blake stills. The wolf blazes in his eyes. His pupils are blown and his irises flecked with the same molten gold that courses through my veins.
Jeers fill the air. Blake takes a deep breath. Movement catches my eye beyond him. Callum’s breathing is fast. His nostrils are flared. He wears his emotion for all to see, and the anguish in his eyes is disproportionate to what happened when he could have stopped it.
Blake looks over his shoulder. Something seems to pass between the two men, and Callum pulls back his pain. He inclines his head.
Callum kicks Kenneth’s chair, and Blake grabs Duncan. A second later, Kenneth and Duncan are both on the floor, and Blake holds Duncan’s dagger. Blake slices the blade through my bindings, while Callum throws a chair through the air toward James. James dodges aside with a roar.
I stagger back as the rope falls onto the ground. Blake hooks an arm around my waist, and pulls me flush against him. He moves us both to the other side of the column, to block the sword of one of the men in green kilts. The ring of steel against stone, echoes in my ears. Blake pushes me back, twists, and knees the male in the crotch then slides the blade across his throat.
Callum pushes aside another chair, punches Kenneth in the face, and strides toward James. “Brother, I challenge you for the Wolf Throne. Face me now, or-“
The arched stained-glass window on one side of the ballroom shatters. He and James both raise their elbows over their faces to protect themselves from the shards of glass. Blake spins away from another male, his dagger even bloodier as his victim crumples to the ground. A rock rolls into the middle of the space.
Seconds later, men pour into the room from outside. Their shouts fill the space. Glass crunches beneath their boots. They’re wearing the star sigil of the Borderlands on their chests. The alphas draw their swords, turning to greet them in battle. Alexander has clearly sent them to attack, not to negotiate a trade. More of James’s Wolves spill through the double doors to join the fight.
James’s eyes find mine. “I need the lass! Someone get the lass!” He strides in my direction. Callum charges at him, grabs him around his waist, and tackles him. They hit the floor tiles with a thud that rattles the chandelier.
“GET HER OUT OF HERE!” he roars at Blake.
Blake grabs my wrist. “Time to go, little-“
He pulls me into his chest and turns us both around as a loud crack reverberates through the ballroom. White-hot pain bursts across my shoulder, and both Blake and I grunt. There’s another crack, and I feel it again, slightly lower. My legs buckle.
“Fuck,” Blake hisses into the crook of my neck. He holds me tightly. My pain dissipates, but Blake’s breathing is ragged.
On the other side of the room, one of Alexander’s men holds a musket. Adrenaline crashes through me. Blake has been shot. Twice. The man turns and aims his weapon at another one of the alphas.
I grip Blake’s back under his arm, and try to keep him upright. “Blake! Are you-” My words catch in my throat.
A tall male, packed with muscle, strolls through the space where one of the walls once was. His hair is black and shaved close to his skull. Even though he’s human, and the wind is cold, he wears only a thin black coat over his breeches, expensive and embroidered. It’s at odds with the brutality of his appearance. The moonlight highlights a mad glint in his eye, and the scar that cuts through his eyebrow.
“Alexander,”
I breathe.
He is even more fearsome now than he was in the finery of the palace. There are no rules here, no etiquette, no one to stop him from taking what he wants. He grins and flashes perfect white teeth as he strides toward us.
“Hello, love.” His voice carries over the chaos. “It’s been a while. I’ve been looking for you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Alexander strides toward us.
“Blake, we need to go,” I whisper. “Now.
“
Blake’s legs buckle, and we almost fall. He buries his face in my neck and groans. A familiar scent hits me-a scent that reminds me of my mother’s bedchambers when I was a child. Herbal and sickly. My skin turns to ice.
The bullets were dowsed in wolfsbane.
Men and Wolves are fighting all around us. Callum’s roar reverberates around the ballroom as James straddles him and slams a fist into his jaw. Blood sprays the faded mosaic on the ground. My heart clenches. The sound of clashing steel and male shouts fills the air.
A wolf in a blue kilt steps into Alexander’s path, sword raised. Alexander blocks his blow, then guts the man with another blade. Blood and gore, black in the moonlight, spills out of him.