Chapter 47
JINGYI
The carriage swayed, the clip of hooves muffled beneath the rattle of wheels. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, gaze fixed on the passing fields. The sun slanted low, gilding the grass in warm light, but memories of the sea, of their board game during voyage, kept returning.
She hadn’t meant to ask him. Not like that. And yet the moment she captured his tile, the words had slipped out: ‘Did you change your mind about sending the annulment request because you felt . . . sorry for me?’
He could’ve lied. Said what she wanted to hear. But he hadn’t.
Because he was, at heart, an honourable man.
She didn’t think she could despise him at all. Alexander Wulfbane had looked her in the eye and admitted to pitying her—and in that same breath, had spoken of admiration and fear. And something else that never made it to air, poised at the edge of his tongue.
She didn’t know what it was. But it made her chest ache all the more.
Her gaze drifted toward the window. The road had narrowed, hedged in by shrubs and unfamiliar fields. The Golden Hare Inn was supposed to be on the outskirts of Niewberg, but why did it seem as though they were veering farther from civilization?
“Is this truly the road to the inn?” One of the soldiers called. “It looks like we’re heading north.”
Tedric’s voice answered easily, “The road ahead was blocked. This way’s quicker.”
“Is that so?” The soldier’s tone held more bite than belief. “Doesn’t look quicker to me.”
Shadows pooled across the road. JingYi’s palms dampened as she gripped the door.
Then, the carriage lurched to a halt.
The driver’s shout was cut short by a metallic rasp. A sharp command followed, too fast for her to catch. Voices erupted outside.
She rapped on the carriage wall. “What is happening?!”
“Stay inside, Highness!” someone barked.
But she already opened the door. The instant her slippers met the dirt, the world tilted into madness.
One of the soldiers lay crumpled in the road, throat opened to the bone, blood spilling in a dark, steady sheet.
Another reeled backward, clutching at a deep slice through his mail, eyes wide with disbelief.
JingYi froze when she saw the one behind him. Holding a slender blade glinting under the afternoon light, was . . . Tedric.
His rapier moved with an elegance that stole her breath, each thrust and slash clean, precise, unhurried.
He sidestepped a charging Alpha without breaking stride, the point of his blade catching the man beneath the chin, driving up through soft tissue.
The soldier convulsed, boots scraping the dirt before he dropped.
The last Alpha came at him in a desperate arc of steel.
Tedric’s wrist turned, deflecting the blow, and in the same motion, his blade slid between ribs, quick as breath.
He withdrew it with a twist that sent a fan of blood across the road.
Warm droplets struck her cheek, sliding down over her birthmark.
No veil to hide behind this time.
The silence afterward was deafening. Horses blew nervously, hooves stamping the path. Tedric stepped through the bodies leisurely, the rapier’s tip leaving a thin, wet trail in the dirt. He stopped before her.
She looked up at him, at those brown eyes, so often docile.
Her breath snagged as he touched her blood-splattered cheek.
His thumb moved deliberately, as though wiping away something that didn’t belong.
His fingertips skimmed the familiar curve of her birthmark.
No revulsion, no hesitation, only that unnerving calm, as if the slaughter had been a passing inconvenience, disturbingly gentle for a man who had painted her in blood.
“Who are you?” she rasped.
A smile curved his mouth. “Today? The Beta who keeps you alive. Tomorrow? We’ll see if I’m still in the mood.”
He let his hand fall, leaving her skin cold where his warmth had been. Nausea churned in her belly.
“You killed them all,” she whispered.
The arch of his brow was almost pleasant.
“Nothing like the sound of an Alpha hitting dirt to brighten the day. They were disappointingly slow, though.” His nose wrinkled. “And they claimed to be Wulfbane’s finest?”
“They were your comrades.”
“Obstacles, all of them,” he corrected, still smiling. “I remove obstacles. Efficiently.”
Her hands trembled. “Why am I still breathing, then?”
Tedric’s gaze swept her from head to toe, clinical, appraising. “Because you’re not an obstacle. You’re . . . an investment. And I take care of my investments.”
He leaned closer, voice dropping. “I imagine Alexander Wulfbane told you I was trustworthy. In a way, he wasn’t wrong.”
She flinched as his fingers caught her chin, tilting her face toward him. “You’re safer with me than with anyone else right now. That’s the truth.”
A distant shout tore the hush. Hooves hammered the path. Tedric’s smile thinned as he straightened, rapier at the ready. “Ah. Here comes the interruption.”
The brush split. Conrad burst into the clearing astride his mare, mud spattering, sword drawn. He must’ve doubled back after they left the main road and followed the carriage trails, trusting his instincts over Alexander’s orders.
“Get away from her!”
JingYi’s heart lurched. “Conrad, no—go back!” she shouted.
He didn’t listen. He swung down before the horse had fully halted, steel meeting steel. Tedric took the first cut on his rapier and let it skid aside with lazy precision.
“You’ve improved,” he said, stepping on a diagonal and turning Conrad with him. “But you still lead with your temper. Like an Alpha.”
Conrad pressed harder. The clearing rang. JingYi lunged for Tedric’s arm—he sidestepped without looking, shoving her aside with a casual backhand that sent her stumbling.
“Stay back,” he said, his eyes never leaving the boy, “or he dies faster.”
She caught herself against a tree, breath knocked loose. Conrad was pressing forward, too fast, too angry. “I never trusted you,” he snarled. “Who are you?”
“Don’t worry about that, runt.” Tedric’s voice was almost bored. “You won’t live long enough to remember.”
Conrad struck again. “What do you want with her?”
“Today?” Tedric’s wrist snapped. “Her attention.”
JingYi stepped forward again, hands raised. “Please—”
Tedric’s free hand shot out, gripping her shoulder and shoving her hard to the ground. She landed on her bad leg and gasped, the old injury screaming.
“Last warning,” he said without looking at her. “Watch, or I’ll gut him now.”
Conrad overextended. From where she knelt in the dirt, JingYi saw the opening—the unprotected line from shoulder to hip. The rapier’s strike was too fast to follow, but not its consequence: a dark, sudden bloom high on Conrad’s chest, just below the collarbone.
“No!” she cried.
He staggered back, his sword arm going slack.
Tedric was on him before the pained gasp could fully leave his lips—torquing, driving a hammer-fist into Conrad’s side.
The sound churned her stomach. A dull, wet crack.
Conrad’s cry shattered into a strangled, wheezing gag.
His face, already pale from the puncture, turned the colour of chalk.
His knees folded. His sword fell.
Tedric stepped over the blade, his own rapier levelled at the kneeling boy’s heart. Conrad’s hands clawed—one at the bleeding stain on his chest, the other pressed flat and desperate against his ribs, as if trying to hold the broken pieces inside.
A punctured wound. Broken ribs. Shock. The diagnoses flashed through her mind. If he couldn’t draw a full breath—
She was moving before she knew it. Her balance meant nothing. The distance was everything.
“Stop!”
She threw herself between them, Tedric’s point halting a hair’s breadth from her ribs. His eyes cut to her, amused and assessing. Behind her, Conrad tried to rise. She pressed a hand to his shoulder, holding him down. Her palm came away slick with blood.
“You can’t win this,” she said, eyes fixed on Tedric. Behind her, Conrad’s breathing came shallow and wet, hitching with every attempt.
“Go,” she told him. “Find Lord Wulfbane. Tell him what you saw.”
“Highness—he’ll take you—”
“If you stay, we both die.” Her voice hardened. “This is not a fight you can finish today.”
Tedric watched them as one might watch two sparrows arguing over a crumb.
“I could let him leave,” he said, voice almost playful. “He hasn’t Awakened, after all. But—” A smile curved on those lips. “His mother is known to be prolific at whelping Alphas. I shouldn’t take a chance.”
She heard a ragged breath behind her. Then the scrape of boots, the creak of leather as Conrad hauled himself into the saddle. A choked cry of effort. Then hoofbeats, lurching and uneven, fading into the trees.
She didn’t turn to watch him go. She couldn’t afford to.
Tedric didn’t follow. He stooped, retrieving a fallen bow from one of the dead soldiers, nocking an arrow with casual grace. He drew, sighting down the shaft.
“Don’t,” JingYi said sharply.
He ignored her.
Her hand went to her hair, yanking free the pin LinXin had gifted her. In one smooth motion, she pressed the sharp end to her throat, her flesh dimpling under the point.
“You said I’m an investment.” Her voice was steady despite the hammering of her pulse. “How much am I worth when I’m dead?”
The string creaked as he held the draw, his gaze sliding from her eyes to the pin at her neck. For a long, taut moment, nothing moved—just the whisper of leaves overhead and the far-off pounding of Conrad’s retreat.
Tedric’s mouth curved, the expression unreadable. The bowstring slackened with a soft sigh, the arrow dropping onto the ground. He tossed the weapon aside and closed the distance between them. JingYi kept the hairpin pressed to her throat until his shadow fell over her.
“Easy,” he murmured, his hand coming up to pry her fingers away from it. The care in his touch was disconcerting, each movement languid enough to feel calculated.
“That was clever,” he said, turning the hairpin in his grip. The blood on his knuckles caught the light before he tucked the pin back into her hair. “But don’t think you can play that card twice. Next time you point something sharp at yourself, I’ll call your bluff.”
He stepped around her, retrieving his rapier from where it lay in the grass. “You’ll find I’m much harder to bargain with when I’m not in a generous mood.”
She heard only the faintest ghost of a sound—mockery wrapped in breath.
The blow came fast, cracking against the base of her skull.
Light flared behind her eyes. The forest spun, the hairpin dragging heavier as her body lost its hold.
As she sagged, she felt his arms catch her.
Efficient. Like a man hefting a burden he knew from the beginning he’d had to carry.
Her last thought, before the dark swept her under, was of Alexander.