Chapter Fifty-One
Calista
The doors boomed shut behind Trystan, and the sound rang through the now empty throne hall like a verdict.
For one breath, the world went still. There were no more bickering Alphas, no priestesses whispering judgment, or chairs scraping over stone. Only torchlight and the hard thud of my pulse filled the chamber.
Savage stood with his back to me, jaw tight behind the iron mask, and hands flexing at his sides before he forced them still. Trystan had walked out of the Hunt alive, smirking as though he hadn’t just driven a blade into my back.
My stare burned into the side of Savage’s head.
Rage hotter than anything I’d felt in the Hunt—hotter than anything I’d ever known—rippled through me.
He had lied. Hidden behind two faces and a dozen half-truths.
And moon’s curse it, he’d made me fall for him. That was the part that cut the deepest.
He stayed facing the doors a moment longer, as if he needed the time to gather himself. Then he turned. And I finally saw him fully, the king and the wolf all standing in the same body.
“It’s you…” My voice shook despite my best efforts.
“You’re Everest and you’re Savage. You’re the Black Wolf.
You’re the king.” My breath hitched, and the questions came faster, sharper.
“How did you hide your scent? Why are your eyes a different color? When did you decide to lie to me? Was any of it real? Was any of it—”
“Not here.” The words came out rough, harsh.
How dare he? I nearly laughed. Not here?
He had lied to me across half a kingdom, through blood and storms, and now he wanted to draw lines?
Anger surged hot and clean through me. My fingers curled against the edge of the throne like I wanted to rip something apart. Him, ideally.
He stepped closer. One pace. Then another. “Can you walk?”
The question hit me so sideways I blinked. For one stupid heartbeat, pride tried to lift my chin. Then my ankle throbbed, mean and immediate, despite the tonic, and the truth cracked through me.
No.
I hated it. Hated the way my gaze dropped. Hated the way my body betrayed me now, of all times. Hated that he could see right through me.
So I only shook my head once, furious at myself for even that much.
Something unreadable flashed across those eyes, now a brilliant silver-blue.
“Worthless healers,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“I’ll have a Light Fae sent over from Aetheria immediately.
” He glanced toward the windows across the Moonglass Sea to the Fae Courts.
“One who can set bone and tendon with the goddess Raysa’s healing rais. No more wraps. No more limping.”
I stared at him. “You can just… have one summoned?”
“I’m the king.” The answer should have sounded arrogant, but somehow it didn’t. “Queen Aelia of Ether owes me after her mate stole into my lands unannounced three moon cycles ago.”
Then he stalked toward the door, opened it a crack, and whispered something to one of the silent sentinels standing outside the hall. The sound of heavy footfalls hurrying away echoed a moment later.
Before I could stop Savage, before I could tell him exactly where he could shove his sudden kingly competence, he crossed the distance between us and bent down.
Suddenly, I was weightless.
And in his arms.
My breath left me in a startled rush. “What are you doing?”
“Carrying you.”
My hands hit his chest in instinctive protest. I pushed once, twice, then gave up because my ankle screamed and because he was too solid, too warm, and too impossible to move.
Worse, some terrible part of me recognized the hold. Recognized him.
Everest had carried me like this.
Everest had steadied me like this.
And now the king held me with the same impossible certainty, and I didn’t know whether I wanted to strike him or cling harder.
“You don’t get to carry me around like I’m already yours,” I muttered as he turned with me in his arms. “Not after you lied to me. Not after everything—”
His jaw flexed. “I’m carrying you because your ankle is done. Not for any other reason.”
“I’ve heard worse compliments.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. His mouth twitched, and that somehow made everything worse. Now my thoughts could only focus on that perfect mouth and the things he’d done to me in that hut…
No. Not now.
Savage carried me through the hall, past wolf-carved pillars and silent guards and enough watching eyes to make my skin prickle. Frostcrag felt half-asleep around us, as if the whole fortress were holding its breath to see what would happen next. Or maybe that was just me.
I shifted against him, my cheek brushing the fur at his shoulder. The scent of him struck me all over again. Pine. Cold. Iron. Not Everest. Not quite. And yet exactly him beneath the lie.
My heart twisted so hard it hurt.
We passed the chamber I’d been allotted before the Hunt, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he continued to the one right beside it.
Savage must have noticed my unease because he slowed. “It’s less likely we’ll be disturbed in my rooms. At least until the healer arrives.”
The king’s chamber was right beside the one he’d given me. Something about that knowledge sent a flicker of warmth through my chest. But I shoved it down before it made me soft.
He carried me straight through the guarded doors and into a chamber much warmer than the throne hall.
I’d expected his room to be cold: stone, iron, and an unforgiving bed.
It wasn’t that at all. A brazier burned clean in the corner, sending a thin ribbon of warmth up the chimney.
Wolf-fur lay across the foot of a massive bed, the pelt dark and soft.
Shelves lined one wall filled with maps, coils of rope, and a collection of battered books.
I glanced around the room, curiosity claiming the best of me.
On the desk, a stack of sketches waited loose under a stone, quick charcoal drawings.
A small figure, legs swinging off a railing.
A wolf in profile with its muzzle lifted.
A woman’s hands, not the face, just the hands.
They were strong, knuckles scarred, and fingers ink-stained.
Had he drawn these? I didn’t ask because there were simply too many questions burning at the back of my throat.
The room smelled of fur, iron, and him. Entirely too much of him.
He set me down carefully on the bed. As if I were something fragile after all. Then that piercing gaze razed down my leg to the swollen ankle.
I swallowed hard and forced my eyes to his. “So now that you’re playing king again, you can’t bandage an ankle yourself?”
Something flickered in his expression at that, like memory dragged briefly too near the surface. He crossed to the table instead, poured a glass of water, and set it within my reach. “I can have food brought up—”
“I’m not hungry.” A lie. An obvious one. My stomach growled in defiance. But I needed one thing in the room I still controlled, and my pride was easiest to reach.
He turned back to me, studying me the way Everest always did when he was trying not to say too much. “Fine then, if you won’t eat, you can ask your questions. I can feel them burning at the tip of your tongue.”
I looked at him, really looked. At the iron. At the mask. At the wall he was still holding between us even now. “Take off the mask first.”
The air changed, grew thicker all at once.
He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Just watched me with all that terrible stillness he wore like another weapon. “Why?” he asked at last.
“Because I need to see you.” My voice came out sharper than I intended, then rougher. “All of you. Not the king they fear. Not the guard I…” I broke off, then forced the rest out anyway. “I want you.”
He stepped closer, slowly, and my gaze traced his movements because I simply couldn’t help it. My traitorous body remembered every inch of him even when my mind wanted to hate it all.
“Is it really me you want?” he whispered, voice gone low and lethal. “Or is it Everest?”
Anger flared through the humiliation fast enough to save me from drowning in it. “Don’t do that.”
“Answer me.”
My hands fisted in the blankets. “Yes,” I hissed.
“I want Everest. I want the male who carried me when my ankle failed. The one who warmed me in the hut. The one who fought for me when I thought I’d die.
” I didn’t dare speak the last part—the one who had feasted upon me and made me see both the moon and stars.
For a heartbeat, something raw crossed his face before he locked it down again. “None of it matters now,” he growled.
I glared at him.
“Everything that happened out there…” His voice caught, then hardened. “Trystan has leverage now. If he speaks, he can challenge my position as king. Challenge the Hunt, your claim. Challenge everything you earned.”
I swallowed hard. “Then make him forget. As his Alpha, can’t you simply compel him? Isn’t that something you can do?”
He let out a harsh breath through his nose. “You think it’s that simple.”
“You’re the Alpha King, aren’t you?”
“And even as king, there are limits to my power.” His voice was flatter now. Colder. “An Alpha’s mind is not a door I can simply close with a command. He can resist. He can twist it. And if the Conclave senses compulsion touching rite-law, they will tear this realm apart looking for the reason.”
My anger sharpened into something almost desperate. “Then kill him.”
The words landed hard between us. He stared at me like he no longer knew me, but I didn’t flinch.
Something unreadable flickered behind that damned mask. Heat. Approval. Horror. I couldn’t tell.
He stepped closer until his knees brushed the bed. “I could,” he said at last. “But I won’t. Not like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I need him alive for now.”
“Why?”
His lips thinned. “There are thing you don’t know, Calista—”
“Then tell me, damn it!” I roared.