Chapter Fifty-Two
I wake sometime in the morning.
The fire has died, and there is only ash in the hearth. Darkness stains the floorboards, and the rain patters against the window. Still, I’m not cold.
Callum lies on his front. His heat sears me, and his scent is overpowering. I think I must be finally accepting that wolf part of myself, because I smell him all over me. Mountains and the dawn light, a hint of woodsmoke. His hand is inches from mine on the mattress, as if he reached for me in his sleep but fell short.
He seems so close, yet further away than ever. I understand now what plagues him. I understand how this bond—this unbreakable bond—with Blake tortures him, just like it tortures me. I understand that for him, it changes things. Things have changed, I suppose, for me, too, though I like to think that if things were reversed, I would at least fight for him.
Perhaps it’s because I’m not a wolf, or not a full wolf anyway. I’ve not grown up in the light of the Moon Goddess. Breaking a bond she has made doesn’t seem like sacrilege to me.
In spite of everything, a strange peace settles over me. There’s something growing in me that I don’t understand. Something awoke within me long before I was bitten by James. The night I took Callum’s hand, and came with him to the Northlands, it burst into existence, and it has been agitated since.
I’ve struggled to find my place here. I’ve always been defined by my relationships to other people. Even now, that is the case. The Wolves see me as either the daughter of their enemy, or the consort to their king, and—if the truth about the bond comes out—they will define me by my connection to Blake as well.
It’s stifling. Constricting. I wish, for a short time at least, to be free of it all. To find out who I am outside of that cage. Blake was looking into my ancestry, Philip has made a strange allegiance with the Snowlands queen, and my mother... Lochlan thinks she had the Heart of the Moon at some point.
I want to do something for myself, for once. I want to learn about where I came from, and what happened to my mother. I want to break this damned bond.
I don’t want the day to start. I want to stay like this, sore and sated, while he sleeps. I want to memorize his face, soft in a way most will never see. I want to trace the muscles in his back, revealed since the covers are bunched at his waist. I want to kiss the bullet scar in his shoulder and run my fingers through his hair—the color of wet sand.
He opens his eyes, as if he senses me watching him. “Morning, Princess.”
“Good morning.”
If he’s embarrassed about last night, he doesn’t show it. He smiles. It’s the first sincere smile he has offered me since we arrived here, and it lights up his face. It makes him seem boyish. Mischievous. I can’t help the twitch of my own lips.
“Last night was fun,” he says, voice rough with sleep.
Visions of him pinning me to the rug as he thrust inside me flood my mind. “Yes, it was.” We stare at one another. The light in his eyes dims, and I know he’s remembering the conversation we had afterward. The warmth inside me ebbs. I sigh. “We need to talk about—”
“Aye.” He exhales. “Aye. We do. There is something I must do first.”
He rolls onto his back, then slides out of bed. Naked, he pads across the room, wraps his kilt around his waist, then slips on a shirt. A grim expression is etched onto his face when he throws open the chest at the foot of his bed and pulls out a couple of swords. I jolt upright.
“Callum, what are you. . .?”
He strides across his chambers and heads into the corridor. “I shall be right back, Princess.”
I throw myself out of bed. I grab one of my simple dresses that hangs in his armoire and almost fall over as I pull it on. My messy hair gets caught in my mouth.
He can’t kill Blake without me dying too. He knows this. “Callum! Wait!”
He’s already rounding the end of the corridor when I stagger out of his bedchambers. I run after him, heartbeat pounding. I presume the dungeons are beneath the castle, but he strides past the stairwell and down another corridor, throwing open a door. I jerk to a halt beside him.
“Up. Now,” Callum commands.
Philip groans, rolls over, and staggers out of the small bed by the window, arms outstretched. His copper hair is messy and it glints in the light of the low fire in the hearth. He wears a long-sleeved white cotton top, his tattoos covered. He blinks a couple of times as he turns to face us, as if confused. Yet when Callum tosses him a sword, he catches it with one hand.
Philip stares at him as if he is mad.
“You’ve overstayed your welcome,” says Callum. “Outside. With me. Now.”
Philip’s eyebrows lift. Callum is already striding away. My heart beats quickly. I’m not sure what he’s planning. I hurry after him. “I know he’s despicable, but you cannot just kill the heir to the Southlands throne,” I hiss.
Callum looks over his shoulder as he reaches the stairwell. “I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?”
Philip appears beside me a moment later, now wearing boots and a shirt over his undergarments. “Have fun last night, little sister?” His nostrils flare, and he pulls a face. “You smell like cock.”
“Don’t be disgusting.” Goddess, I despise him. Yet...
I barge past him and hurry to stride beside Callum as he powers down the stairs. “Callum, what are you doing?”
“Testing a theory.”
“Are you going to elaborate?”
“No.” We make it to the entrance hall, and the torches are being lit by Kayleigh, who looks between us, wide-eyed, as we pass. Callum pushes open the double doors and steps into the Madadh-allaidh courtyard. “You’ll see.”
The courtyard is quiet. A few Wolves mill around—a servant carrying chicken feed, Fiona, who waves a hand before walking through the archway toward the stables, and Lochlan and a few of his men. I assume they have been training from the way their shirts cling to their chests, and the way they gather around the water pump. My breath mists in front of my face.
Callum turns to face Philip in the center of the courtyard. He draws his sword and drops the sheath onto the cobblestones.
Philip cocks his head to one side, his nose curling up. “Are you serious?”
Callum roars as he whips the blade through the air. In a lithe, graceful movement, Philip unsheathes his weapon and raises it to block Callum’s blow. The sound of steel on steel reverberates through the courtyard. Birds nesting in the walls take flight, their wings flapping as they head toward the mountains. The Wolves around the water pump stop their conversation and turn to watch.
The force of Callum’s blow should have shattered Philip’s arm. Philip throws him off. The two males go at each other, and my lips part.
Callum is brutal, every blow deliberate and designed to overpower his opponent. His biceps ripple beneath his sleeves, and he grunts as he brings the sword down upon my brother. Philip blocks and dodges every blow. It’s like watching fire battle water. A hammer clashing with steel. He is the opposite of Callum’s brutality yet no less efficient—he moves as if he’s dancing.
A muttering fills the courtyard as more people going about their morning chores stop to watch. I’m frozen, my mind not able to make sense of what I’m seeing. Callum is a battle-hardened alpha, while Philip is a spoiled drunken fool. And they are equally matched.
“Is that all you’ve got, princeling?” Callum kicks Philip in the torso, and sends him staggering back.
Philip glances up and smirks. He winks, and when I follow his gaze, I catch Isla scowling through the window above the oak doors. “Not quite.”
Philip goes on the offensive, and I realize I was wrong. They’re not a match. Philip is better. He slices his blade through the air and dances around Callum. His moves are ethereal yet deadly.
There must be twelve Wolves out in the yard now. They gather around the two with interest in their eyes. Callum’s claim to the throne is already weak, and my brother is beating him. If he were to win, I dread to think of the violence that would befall both them and me.
Yet when Callum staggers back, a soft laugh escapes his lips. “Lochlan,” he says.
He ducks back, into the circle of Wolves, and Lochlan darts forward to block Philip’s next blow. He attacks Philip, and Philip adapts instantly. Lochlan’s style is almost as brutal as Callum’s, and his steps have some of Philip’s grace, yet Philip outmatches him too. The two parry each other’s blows, and Philip doesn’t seem to tire.
This doesn’t make sense. This is the male who would drunkenly bellow through the palace halls with a bloodied nose and the scent of perfume on his collar.
My eyes find Callum as he watches. A smile ghosts his lips. “A keg of ale to anyone who can knock this perfumed princeling on his spoiled southern arse.”
The Wolves watching laugh. Two men dart forward and join the fray. Philip disarms one of them, and sends the other reeling back. Another raises his sword. Philip ducks, then swipes out his leg and sends him flying.
By the time Philip is holding his own against five Wolves, his blade a blur in the grey light, my fear ebbs away and all I can do is stare, dumbfounded.
“That’s enough,” says Callum, amused, when four of them are on the floor, and only Lochlan still stands against him—and even he is breathing hard.
Lochlan shrugs a shoulder at Callum. Philip glances up at Isla, whose mouth is parted. Slightly breathless, he bows elaborately, and her scowl reappears before she disappears from the window.
“You’ll do,” says Callum.
Philip turns on Callum, eyes widening. “Do for what?”
Callum strides toward Philip and clasps him on the shoulder. “Pack a bag. I’ve got a job for you.”
He heads toward me, his expression softening. Something sad swells inside me when he towers before me.
“A word, please, Princess. I think it’s time for us to have that conversation.”