27. Max
MAX
T he men who held me down flew into the air before my power had a chance to erupt.
The wolf came. The demon sighed in satisfaction. About time. It sounded entitled, as if the wolf were merely doing us a service.
A massive gray wolf stood before me, the size of a warhorse and twice as terrifying.
His fur was silver-tipped, bristling along his ridged spine.
The muscles beneath his coat rippled with each rumbling snarl, a vibration that traveled through the ground and up into the soles of my feet.
Golden rings burned around green irises as the wolf surveyed the men collapsed on the ground. Every single one of them was prey.
The wolf fixed his fiery gaze on me as I shot to my feet, fists raised, pulse hammering in my throat.
Rage rolled off the beautiful, powerful beast in heat waves that pressed against me.
But my fists weren’t for him. Facing the beast. I didn’t feel the blind terror I’d felt when the mutants tracked me through the Scorched Wastes.
I knew he was Caspian.
Something deeper than instinct recognized him before my brain caught up—a pull in my blood, a frequency my body was already tuned to.
The attackers tried to scramble up. A couple of them still groaned in pain. Fear flooded their eyes now that something far worse than them had arrived. One of them shifted into a fox and dropped prone on his belly in submission, ears flat, trembling.
The wolf leapt in a blur. Pouncing. In one fluid sequence, he tore out the throats of two cadets before they could even stand straight. Blood sprayed hot across the dirt. He disemboweled the fox on the follow-through.
Every time I’d seen Caspian, he’d been playful.
Easy smiles, lazy charm, the prince who flirted his way through life and made everything look like icing on the cake.
I’d never seen this. This was brutality without hesitation, violence without warning.
The apex predator beneath the pretty face, finally unmasked.
The cadet who’d cornered Bryn turned and ran. But a group of shifters, some in wolf form, others mid-shift, blocked his escape. The next biggest wolf thrust its clawed hand into the runner’s chest and tore out his heart. The body dropped. The heart steamed in the cold night air.
I swallowed hard but didn’t look away. I’d killed people myself. This was wartime, and I’d set myself on the soldier’s path. But I hadn’t expected to fight this battle in our own camp, surrounded by the bodies of men who wore the same uniform I did.
Only the ringleader, Kevin, was left alive. He knelt on the ground, shaking like a leaf in a storm. He was no longer the baddest predator in the alley, as he’d fancied. He never had been, not even when he’d been riding high, leading a pack of jackals.
“Your Highness.” Bryn bowed to the gray wolf. Blood was smeared across her lips from her own fight.
But the wolf only gazed at me.
I knew what he wanted to know. “I’m okay,” I said. My throat was parched, my voice rough. I could feel my eyes blazing from the rush of adrenaline that still hadn’t burned off. My blood ran so hot my skin prickled.
The wolf grew larger—if that was even possible.
Bones cracked and reformed with pops. Limbs stretched.
The lupine frame reshaped itself upward.
Fur receded from the face, retreating to the shoulders and arms. The beast rose from four legs to two and kept rising.
Seven feet. Eight. Nine. Until a warrior stood where the wolf had been: half-human, half-beast.
Caspian’s hybrid form was massive. His face was a blend of human features and lupine angles. Fangs filled his mouth, and his claws could have gutted a wyvern. His eyes still burned gold-rimmed green, locking on me.
I’d read about supernaturals in my spare time from the textbooks. I wanted to understand the heirs, their powers, and the armies they led. For shifters, only the most powerful could achieve the warrior form—the state between man and beast. In their hybrid form, they could even speak .
Caspian reached down, seized Kevin by the throat with one massive clawed hand, and lifted him into the air. The scarred brute dangled like a cloth doll.
“Cowardly and disloyal.” The words were guttural, half-growl, vibrating with a rage that made the air heavier. He brought Kevin’s face close to his own. “Do you know who she is? She’s mine . And you dare to touch what’s mine?”
My heart kicked wildly. Had the shifter prince just called me his? In a voice that carried across the camp like a war horn? In front of his pack?
Nikolai thought I was his, too.
And Aelindor…
Whom did I belong to, then?
I belong to myself. I held on to that thought with both hands before the insanity of musing on the four princes dragged me under.
Caspian tossed the would-be rapist a dozen feet. Kevin hit the dirt in a heap and didn’t move.
“Bring this piece of scum back to the compound,” Caspian ordered.
His cold voice carried the authority of a prince and the menace of a beast. “He’ll be made an example.
Sexual assault on a woman is considered far worse than cold-blooded murder under Covenant law.
” His growl deepened. “And he fucking dared to touch my girl.”
I blinked. Did he just say that? Twice.
Bryn looked as shocked as I was at the wolf prince’s declaration. He’d staked a public claim on me in front of witnesses. I had no idea what it would mean for my future, or what Aelindor and Nikolai would say when they heard.
My friend stole a quick glance between the shifter prince and me, then lowered her gaze. You didn’t look an alpha straight in the eye, a rule I’d been violating since day one, getting into glaring matches with Drakken at every opportunity.
Two shifters hauled Kevin up and dragged him away.
Caspian shifted back to his human form. Nine feet of hybrid predator compressed back into the frame of a man. He stood in the lantern light, his wine-red hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
Naked.
My gaze dropped before I could stop it. And stayed longer than it should have.
Shit. His cock was large even at rest, thick and hanging heavy against his muscled thigh. My mouth went dry, and then it watered. I had to gather my strength to tear my gaze away. My heart fluttered in my ribcage, and this time for an entirely different reason than fear and rage.
A shifter stepped toward his prince with a pair of trousers and a shirt. “Sir.”
Caspian nodded and shrugged them on without hurry. His green eyes never once left my face. When I finally dared to look at him again, he smirked. The bastard had caught me staring at his cock in open fascination, and his smirk said he wanted me to think about it for a long, long time.
Maybe I should explain the situation, like why I looked ?
But I could barely breathe. The heat in his eyes could have laid me bare more thoroughly than the dragon fire had.
All I wanted was to close the distance, grab the shifter by his hair, drag his mouth down to mine, and kiss the hell out of him.
Taste him until the hunger humming through my body finally, finally shut up.
I was taller. I could overpower him, right?
Shit. I blinked awake.
Were these my thoughts or the demon’s?
They couldn’t have been mine. I couldn’t be that desperate.
I licked my lips and stepped back by sheer will, terrified that if I lost my shit, I’d sprint straight into his arms in front of everyone. And then I’d never live it down.
“Prince Caspian, thank you for your timely rescue,” I said, lowering my head a couple of inches in respect and gratitude.
We might be miners, but we had manners when civilization opened its doors to us. Mom used to say that.
“I’ll always come for you, Max.” He grinned at me. “No need to thank me for that.”
“That’s sweet,” I murmured. “But how did you know I was being attacked? Were you just in the neighborhood?”
“I sensed you,” he said, those green eyes steady on mine. “I smelled you.”
Shifters had the best noses on the continent, and Caspian was the most powerful of his kind.
But singling me out amid over a thousand soldiers in a camp town that reeked of liquor, sweat, and cooking smoke?
That went beyond keen senses. I didn’t want to dwell on what it meant.
I already had too much on my plate. It wasn’t practical to fill my mind with every dark fantasy.
“That’s something,” I said vaguely.
“Are you hurt, Max?” He stalked closer. The playful ease was gone, replaced by raw concern that darkened his expression to something fierce and protective. “Let me escort you to the medic wing.”
“I can handle a few bruises,” I said. “I don’t need anyone to coddle me.”
“I’m not just anyone, Max,” he crooned. “And I like to cuddle.” A smile danced in his eyes, the playfulness surfacing again like it couldn’t stay buried for long. “It’s one of my favorite things to do. I’ll show you good cuddling, and I promise you’ll love it too.”
Seriously? I was supposed to roll my eyes, yet a slow burn lit behind my navel. I prayed these shifters, especially their prince, couldn’t see that well in the dark, because my face burned so hot I could have lit a Stormglass lantern with my cheeks.
“Then you should go home and cuddle a pillow, Highness,” I said.
Someone, probably one of his men, coughed into his fist.
Caspian chuckled in delight. “I also love to chase, Max.” My name rolled off his tongue like honey.
“You’ll learn that I’m a shifter, after all.
We can cuddle some other day. It’s too early for bed.
” He stepped toward me and threaded his fingers through mine before I could react.
“Come. Let’s not waste the night. We’re going to have a good time. ”
The contact of his fingers lacing with mine sent an electric jolt racing to my center, like a lit fuse following its track. My toes curled inside my boots so hard they cramped.
Why did it feel so delicious when any of the heirs touched me? I hadn’t tried the dragon, and I wasn’t about to. And I had no need to hold hands with some random cadet for comparison either. My body never reacted to anyone except the heirs.
All four of them.
What the fuck was going on?
“It’s not proper, Your Highness,” I protested weakly. “You’re a prince, my high-ranking officer, and I’m not even a real soldier yet.”
“Let me decide what’s proper, cadet.” Heat and amusement sparkled in his green eyes. “Everyone knows I drink with my soldiers all the time. If it makes you feel better, you can just picture yourself as one of them.”
I didn’t want to let go of his hand. Yet I also didn’t fancy Aelindor or Nikolai seeing me draped over another man like a loose woman.
At least Nikolai had kept our secret arrangement private.
And now I stood in the middle of the town, gripping the shifter prince’s hand, while his guard detail watched, while Bryn watched, questioning my very character with every heartbeat.
I’d wanted to be loyal. Faithful. But my body betrayed everything I believed in. How could I be so greedy as to want all of them? I should slap myself hard enough to quit being such a shitty person.
“But, Prince.” I tried one last time, half-heartedly. “Don’t you think this is fraternization? Isn’t it against the uniform code? ”
“Oh, Max. My Max.” He let out a low laugh. The sound sank through me like good liquor, warm in my chest first, then lower, then everywhere it had no business being.
Shit.
A Field Guide to Shifter Instinct stated in explicit detail that shifters could smell arousal. The chemical change in a person’s scent was as obvious to a shifter’s nose as smoke was to human eyes.
So when Caspian’s nostrils flared as he caught my scent and his green eyes lit up, I let him pull me along. It was best to get the hell out of here. Every shifter present could smell exactly what I was feeling right now.
Half of Caspian’s guard detail trailed behind us. The other half stayed behind to clean up the mess—the prince had told them to “take out the trash.”
Bryn trailed after us among the shifters. I wondered what my friend was making of all this: me holding hands with a prince like royalty while his guard escorted us through a camp town.
“I still think we shouldn’t hold hands like this,” I said after a few steps. “It’s not becoming for soldiers.”
At least in public.
“Fine. We won’t hold hands.” He unthreaded our fingers with a smirk that made my stupid heart stutter. Then he draped his arm over my shoulder and pulled me against his side. “But we can do this. Like comrades. We’re just buddies going for a drink to celebrate.”
He was impossible.
If Aelindor or Nikolai saw us, I could always blame Caspian for initiating the contact. That was the best defense I had.
Shit. I’m a cheater.
I didn’t want to be a cheater. But all I could think about was how to cover my tracks and hide the secrets multiplying in my heart and my body.
“To ease your mind, Max.” Caspian winked at me. “There’s no such thing as fraternization for us. Even before the Rupture, rules like that never applied to Aelindor, Drakken, Nikolai, and me.”
My heart skipped a hot, jealous beat.
Did they share women as well? The question surfaced before I could drown it.
I needed a drink. Desperately.