Chapter 20
JINGYI
JingYi turned to find LánYàn standing at the edge of the gathering, embroidered plum cloak lined with sable, chin tipped just high enough to season the air with disdain. RenHuā and Mei Yün hovered behind, both dressed in their fine travelling coats.
“Oh, Princess,” LánYàn crooned in X?enguā. “How devoted you are, tending to villagers’ scrapes like a good little country wife. Lord Wulfbane must be proud.”
JingYi straightened, careful not to glance at Conrad, who’d come to stand beside her. His posture was taut and ready, though he couldn’t comprehend the words.
LánYàn’s smile sharpened. “Your noble husband looked so overcome when the veil lifted. Was it delight, I wonder, or disappointment?”
Conrad growled, “We’ve heard enough. I don’t even need to understand the language to know it’s cruel.” He asked LánYàn. “Aren’t you supposed to leave today?”
She patted her hair. “We are, thank the gods.”
“Don’t worry,” RenHuā added. “We won’t spend a moment longer than necessary. Just waiting for the carriage to be readied.”
JingYi lifted her chin. “Then, don’t let us delay you. I bid you a pleasant journey.”
She turned toward the villagers to continue her work, but LánYàn stepped in and yanked her back.
“I haven’t dismissed you, Ugly,” she hissed.
LánYàn’s fingers flashed at Jing Yi’s waist—a twist, a sharp tug. Jing Yi’s hand swung to her belt a heartbeat too late, seeking the familiar pouch of her Heat suppression herbs. Her pulse kicked hard.
“My, what’s this?” LánYàn mused, dangling the pouch high. “A secret little remedy?” Laughing, she yanked it open with a vicious jerk, spilling its contents, and ground them beneath her heel. Stems snapped. Petals split—every careful ingredient Wu Mā and Fēng had prepared, crushed to nothing.
The world fractured around Jing Yi. A high-pitched ringing filled her ears, and the vibrant green of the village square greyed at the edges of her vision. The scent of crushed angelica and fennel rose from the mud, only to be swallowed by the stench of wet earth and dung.
Dread coiled low in her belly. It wasn’t just medicine they’d destroyed.
It was her defence. Her autonomy. The fragile wall between her and the terrifying surrender of her Omega nature.
Without it, her biology was laid bare—scent unmasked, instincts raw, her next Heat a tidal wave she could no longer delay or soften.
And with Alexander so near, an Alpha whose very scent was now a physical pull she could no longer buffer against—
“Princess?” Conrad’s voice was low, uncertain. He glanced between her and the giggling women, then down at the crushed herbs.
JingYi kept her hands at her sides, chin high. She would need a replacement quickly—perhaps from the castle garden. Less effective, but it would have to do.
“I’m fine,” she gritted through clenched teeth.
LánYàn’s eyes gleamed, a victory claimed. She turned, cloak sweeping, and set off with RenHuā and MeiYün toward the approaching carriage.
Conrad exhaled. “Beg pardon—one moment.” He strode after them. “Mind your step, my lady!” he called, far too cheerfully.
He didn’t slow his approach. An innocent sidestep—just enough to force LánYàn off the path. Her heel slipped. She went backward into the gardener’s manure heap with an unmistakable squelch.
When she flailed up, the damage was done. Jade damask streaked brown. Phoenix embroidery clogged with straw. The smell rose in a hot wave. RenHuā and MeiYün froze, then squeaked in unison, pinching at LánYàn’s elbows with only their fingertips.
Conrad winced, polite as a suitor at court. “Ah. Cow dung is excellent for cabbages.” He plucked a twig from her cuff and flicked it away. “But maybe not for brocade.”
The coachman’s face folded in dread. He opened the door anyway. The horses tossed their heads, unimpressed.
“Windows open all the way to the capital,” Conrad advised, all concern. “Air does absolute wonders for foul odour, less so for foul characters.”
LánYàn sputtered something that wasn’t words. RenHuā shoved her into the carriage, MeiYün diving in after her. The door thumped shut. A beat later, it cracked open again as someone gagged. The driver snapped the reins. The coach rattled off, trailing an unmistakable scent.
For a heartbeat, the square held its breath. Then, a child snorted. Laughter broke—muffled at first, then spilling free. JingYi’s lips pressed together against an answering smile. Still, it slipped.
Conrad sauntered back, hands behind his back, eyes innocent. “Terrible patch of ground,” he said gravely. “I shall have it marked.”
“Conrad,” she admonished, attempting sternness and failing.
He bowed, shameless. “Garden safety is everyone’s duty, Your Highness.”
When laughter subsided, one of the village women said, “Don’t let their tongues sting you, Your Highness. You’re the only healer we’ve seen for a few years now.”
“And you’ve got the touch,” said another.
A breath shuddered out of her. The tight coil of humiliation eased, just a little.
“I believe someone asked me to look at their ankle,” she said. A few heads nodded. One older man stepped forward, rolling up his trouser leg with a hopeful look.
She spent time making sure each villager was seen.
The sun had begun to descend when she left the last house.
They’d barely taken a few steps toward the wagon when hooves crunched over gravel and distant voices called to one another.
From the bend in the forest road, a small procession emerged—a dozen riders cloaked in furs, bows strapped across their backs.
At the head of them rode Lord Wulfbane.
He sat tall in the saddle, his crimson-lined cloak flaring in the breeze. The shadows of the hunt still clung to him—windblown hair, a furrowed brow, and the unmistakable tension of a man who hadn’t slept well. His eyes found her at once.
Alexander snapped his reins, the gesture halting his horse mid-stride. His hunting party flowed past them with a murmur of nods and curious glances. Only Lord Krystoff Reave and his twin sons offered a genuine, fleeting smile in her direction and a wave at Conrad before moving on.
And then, there was only the distance between them, charged and still.
Alexander dismounted in one swift motion, boots striking the earth with a dull thud. His gaze swept over her, and the scowl that followed made her grimace before she could stop herself.
“Did you come on foot?” His gaze dropped to her leg. “In your condition?”
JingYi’s pulse thundered, but she lifted her chin. “What condition is that, my lord?”
She caught the flicker in his eyes, but it disappeared within a breath.
“You know what I meant,” he said.
“Do I?”
“We rode the wagon, my lord,” Conrad offered quickly. “Not walked.”
Alexander’s glare didn’t soften. “No one thought to tell the princess that riding half the valley on this cold day was reckless?”
Her fingers curled inside her sleeves, nails grazing her palms. “I needed to see the villagers. Some of them required care.”
“That is not the point.”
“Then what is?”
He stepped closer, close enough that she had to tip her head back to look into his eyes. “I would’ve preferred you stayed at the castle with the wedding guests instead of traipsing down to the village in the mud.”
JingYi shrivelled inside. Wrong again. She hadn’t even thought of the wedding guests, of entertaining the noble women, sipping tea while musicians played. Her whole body rebelled at the thought. She knew herbs and pulses, not courtly chatter.
She straightened and did not avert her eyes. “I assure you, I’m no stranger to strain.”
“Stubbornness isn’t strength,” he said, quieter now, but no gentler. “I’ve seen men break themselves trying to prove otherwise.”
“How fortunate it is I’m not one of them.”
The air between them thickened. Conrad fidgeted beside her, discomfort radiating in waves. She had endured far worse words before—yet these struck. They confirmed what she feared: he already saw her as a fragile, useless thing.
“I didn’t come here to be a burden,” she tried again, her voice barely above the rustle of wind against leaves. “Despite my shortcomings . . . you’ll find I’m sturdier than I look.”
His jaw worked, but she couldn’t read his expression. Not quite belief, not quite doubt—something unsettled. No reply came.
Instead, he turned to Conrad. “Ride ahead. Have Aliz light the fire in the princess’s chamber.” His eyes cut back to her. “You will ride with me.”
Not even Conrad dared to quip back. “Yes, my lord.”
JingYi watched the boy rush toward the wagon. One by one, the villagers bowed to their lord and slipped into their cottages, doors closing softly, leaving her alone with him.
Without a word, Alexander unclasped his cloak and set it across her shoulders, the hood protecting her from the wind.
The wool was warm from his body, carrying smoke and steel, and beneath it, his Alpha scent.
It brushed against her instincts like a spark across tinder.
When he lifted her to mount Duskwane, she pressed her lips together and let him.
Her pulse quickened when their bodies pressed for a moment.
He didn’t mount behind her. Instead, he took the reins and walked.
Purposefully. One step beside the horse, never ahead.
It should’ve felt like respect.
But it was distance.
And yet, every so often, the wind shifted and his scent reached her again.
Inescapable. She pressed her hands harder into her lap, the fabric of her gown twisting in her grip.
Her mind was a battleground: the fresh humiliation of the destroyed pouch, the cold sting of his disappointment, and beneath it all, the insistent, unwelcome heat his proximity stirred in her blood.
She willed her body to be still, to be silent, to not scream its recognition of the Alpha walking beside her.
After a long stretch of the quiet road, she pushed the words out. “Forgive me. I didn’t intend to make you angry.”
“I am not angry.” His eyes stayed on the path.
“Then why does it feel like anger?”