Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
I should be used to it by now, but heat stains my cheeks.
“Are you alright?” He cups my face in his big hand.
I keep my eyes resolutely on his as Blake walks to his armoire. When he opens it and pulls out breeches and a shirt, my resolve wavers and I look. Raised white ridges crisscross the muscles in his back. I overheard him tell Callum he was whipped for being a half-wolf.
“I didn’t shift,” I say.
A slow grin spreads across Callum’s face. “No. You didn’t. You’re not a wolf after all.”
I feel Blake’s emotion. That thread between us shudders, as if he is holding something back.
“You sound almost as relieved as I am,” I say. “Did you not want me to be a wolf?”
He brushes his thumb against my cheek. “I know it’s not what you wanted, that’s all.” I frown, because I’m not sure he’s being entirely truthful. “Come here.” He scoops me into his arms, and I reflexively hook my hands around his neck. Without a backward glance at Blake, he carries me out of the room.
“I hope you’re going to put some clothes on,” I say, as Callum carries me down the corridor.
“Don’t need them.” He kicks open the door to our chambers and grins. “Not for what I have planned.”
He drops me onto the bed, and I squeal. “Callum!”
“What?” he asks as he crawls over me, then drags his teeth along my throat. “You know, it would be nice if, for once, I could spend the morning after the full moon with you not smelling like my worst enemy.” He shifts down and plants kisses on my collarbone, then my torso, and then between my legs through the fabric of my dress. I breathe in sharply. “Last time, there was not much I could do about it. This time, I plan to rectify the situation.”
“Is that so?”
He kneels on the mattress. His eyes glint when they meet mine-full of mischief. “I promise it will be very pleasurable for you.”
Who am I to deny him?
***
Callum makes good on his promise.
We spend the morning in bed, with him drawing moans from my lips until I’m liquid in his arms. And then he starts all over again. He remains careful with me, though. Gentle. His promise to unleash himself upon me after the full moon is nullified. I didn’t shift.
At noon, after getting some food brought up from the kitchens, he goes to meet with Lochlan and Jack to plan tomorrow’s ambush. I spend the rest of the afternoon reading in the armchair by the fire, my legs curled beneath me.
As the sky darkens, so do my emotions. I was scared to shift, but being a wolf gave me an explanation for my mother’s death, and a connection to her. It connected me to Callum, as well. I’m sure his high spirits this morning were linked to my inability to shift. I think he’s glad I’m still human.
Still weak,
that wild part of me whispers.
I drop the book I’m reading onto the chair. I walk to the window. The bloated sky is dark grey, and shadows shroud the peaks of the mountains. The water ripples in the wind.
It doesn’t make sense. There’s something inside me, pressing against my skin. I’ve felt it since James bit me. I keep falling into fever. Lochlan believes my mother was a wolf, and my father must have thought I was like her, because he had me whipped so I would suppress it. I wanted to bite Blake last night. I wanted to bite him this morning. I almost did.
I can’t accept that the human part of me would ever do such a thing.
Movement draws my gaze. A dark figure walks to the water’s edge, hands in the pockets of his long coat. He looks out onto the loch, and the wind stirs his black hair.
I felt something from Blake, this morning. He knows something about me. Something he is concealing.
“Stay where you are,” I whisper, even though I know he can’t hear me.
I stride to the armoire, and pull on a warm coat and boots.
I’m going to find out what Blake knows.
Volume 2
Prologue
Blake
His footsteps echo as he walks down the endless prison corridor.
Shadows coil around his arms and legs, almost as if they are alive. They slink around his ankles like cats.
His nostrils flare as a sweet, familiar scent hits them.
She’s peering through the barred window of one of the cells ahead, her back to him.
He tilts his head to one side. Is this his dream, or hers? Has he merely imagined her? Or is this a consequence of the bond between them?
Her red hair cascades down her back, almost the color of blood in the gloom. It’s as if she’s been plucked from her bed and dropped here. She’s wearing his shirt, the one he gave Callum for her to put on after James bit her. It’s too big for her. It caresses the soft curve of her behind, and strokes her thighs. Her calves and feet are bare. He swallows.
She stiffens like prey, and he wonders if she senses him watching. Then he follows her gaze. A writhing mass of shadow surges toward her. The jailer of this prison is coming.
Blake prowls toward her as she edges back. She bumps into his chest, and he hooks an arm around her waist-clamping a hand over her mouth before she can scream.
He brings his lips to her ear. “You shouldn’t be here, little rabbit.”
She stiffens in his arms.
And how he loathes her. He loathes the way her scent washes over him-even here. She smells like the slither of moonlight that would drift through the grate of the cell beneath the palace. Freedom, taunting him. The broken promise of something he cannot have.
He loathes how soft and warm she feels, how his cock stirs at her proximity. He loathes how the wolf he keeps on such a tight leash longs to sink his teeth into her.
Footsteps approach.
He drags her though an open cell door. It clicks shut behind them. Her attention shifts to the emblem carved in the obsidian beneath the barred window; a key with two crescent moons in the bow. He wonders if she knows what it means. Most Wolves would-it’s a remnant of when the
acolytes rose a century ago, but this symbol is not common in the Southlands. They don’t worship the darker gods there.
Her elevated pulse drums in his ears. His arm tenses against her torso. “Shh.”
The temperature drops, and Blake’s breath mists in front of his face. Aurora inches back, as if desperate for warmth, even from him. He holds her tighter.
The footsteps fade, and Blake exhales. He removes his hand from her mouth. She twists in his grasp to look up at him, and the soft swell of her breasts presses against his chest. A crease forms between her eyes. “What-“
Her attention jerks back to the door.
The figure stalks back. Thick, unnatural darkness bleeds through the barred windows.
“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” She’s muttering under her breath. “It’s just a dream. Wake up.”
It’s not just a dream.
He shuts his eyes. He wrenches her back. He doesn’t hit the wall-instead, it dissolves. The cell door bursts open in front of them, but they’re already falling through endless darkness.
He lands on his feet in the cell beneath the palace, and he knows they’re inhabiting his dream now. A memory. He doesn’t like it here, but it’s not as dangerous as the place before.
There’s a cot against one wall, the mattress stained brown with old blood. A bucket of waste sits in the corner. There are books piled against one wall, a candle flickering beside them. The scent of lemons mixes with iron and the cloying odor of bodily fluids.
Aurora stands in the center of the space. She’s perfectly poised, her back straight, her chin slightly raised so she can look down her nose at her surroundings. Only her slightly elevated pulse and the fact that he can feel that whisper of her inside him through their bond-like a small thread of light-tells him she is not as unfazed as she seems.