Chapter 31
C lara swatted away Bronze’s hand for the third time since they’d left her bedchamber. “Stop that. If you keep rubbing at it, who’s to say it won’t up and disappear?”
“It doesn’t work like that, princess.” He’d managed to snatch her wrist back up and, with the stealthy skills of a ninja, press a tender kiss to the softly glowing mark there before she yanked it back again. It wasn’t a hard yank, mind you. She didn’t have that in her. But it was just enough to keep their private game alive.
The one where she pretended his devotion didn’t melt the tender bits inside of her and make her wolf want to pounce.
Soul bonds. True mates. It was all too much to wrap one’s head around, and the irony of the outcome had done far more than simply settling around her like the realization of their future.
It wasn’t just a future of a co-managed monarchy, as they had originally planned, but a future together. Really together.
And perhaps the most wonderful comprehension of all was that it had largely happened without her meddling. The thing she’d been most worried about, the thing that had driven her to sheer madness and kept her up at night, was just how deviant she’d have to become to give her people the chance at happiness they so deserved.
But Bronze had changed all that, and the relief was still so immense, she hadn’t yet managed to find the right words to describe it or thank him.
Or, perhaps even more significantly, share with him the other thoughts that lurked in her mind as she and her wolf reveled in his admiration.
Clara adjusted the wide headband that concealed the majority of her bare scalp and snuggled in closer to his side as they walked toward her father’s receiving room. “I hope it doesn’t disappear,” she whispered against his chest, adding her hope to his earlier assertion and already feeling the warmth that grew on her wrist every time she touched the soul bond mark.
They still had so much to discuss, so much to make sense of. And while her heart desperately wanted to leap to the finish line and her wolf was eager to commence with the more carnal celebratory activities, her head knew better.
Leave it to Clara to possess the only brain in existence that successfully managed to blend foolishness and sensibility.
She stifled a soft chuckle as her wolf wondered, strangely, what such a combination would smell like. Perhaps selling scented candles called foolish sensibility was in her future.
“First things first,” she announced to Bronze, who’d already stiffened his posture and shunned the carefree smile from his features.
He wore his weapons, as he was used to doing before coming to the lycan lands, though still well concealed at her request. The only difference was that he didn’t need them now.
His angel fire and all his celestial powers had been returned to him, and what a wonderful night of discovery that had been.
“Father,” Clara said in a chilly greeting as she and Bronze entered the receiving room.
True to fashion, the king stood in front of his desk, fists down, and a sour expression twisting the cruel lines of his face into something she had not seen before, but it still didn’t look entirely out of place. He had been reading something—a note—and whatever it said not only commanded his attention but his body language as well. Pascal and Broderick lingered silently in the corners of the room, but otherwise, the king’s usual entourage was absent.
“Thank you for meeting with us. I trust the western lycans have left.”
“They have.” The tone was harsher than she’d ever heard him use. For a moment, she was inclined to retreat into her familiar posturing, but then her wolf growled a low reminder in her mind and she paused.
No. You’ve earned the right to speak your piece. So has Bronze.
Clara stepped out of Bronze’s hold and strode forward. Right into the desk’s great shadow. “This does not have to be harder than it is. We only wish to speak civilly and establish a new chain of communication for the present monarchy. The union between Bronze and me is one our people will greatly benefit from, and it is my hope you will see that our people’s needs should be placed above the monarchy’s own. We have a responsibility to serve, and you have an opportunity to ensure your place in our new future. Bronze is next in the line of succession, per our current laws, and I will serve alongside him, but you are still the king and will be for as long?—”
“Damn right I’m the fucking king!” her father snarled at her. The outburst had her retreating a stunned step. “And if you think for one goddamn second, I’ll—” He froze. All the anger and volatility he was prepared to fling at Clara dissolved into a look of blank confusion.
Bronze threw Clara behind his back, and she could tell, from the warmth radiating off him, that he was banking his fire, calling it to be at the ready.
Oh, this was bad. This was not how she hoped this would play out. She made to step out from behind Bronze, who was so big and damned immovable, but the fangs poking free of her father’s upper lip stilled her steps.
The king sniffed the air, then dragged his nose between her and Bronze. He sniffed again. Slower. Deeper. As if drawing the entirety of the room’s air into his lungs.
Clara knew the moment her father scented the soul bond, and her heart plummeted into her stomach. It was in the twitch of his ear. Subtle but noticeable to those trained to look for it.
Oh no.
“You mated with him? It was bad enough you let a male of another species fuck you, but now you’ve actually bonded ?”
This time, she managed to shoulder her way in front of Bronze, who still hovered close by but said nothing. “Who I spend my time with and who I choose to mate is none of your business anymore. Or have you forgotten the events of the last several days? I have won the right to live my life as I see fit. Bronze has fought to ensure that right remains so.”
The king spit in Bronze’s direction. Broderick flinched, his hand going to his weapon, but a warning flash in Pascal’s eyes told him to stand down.
Surprisingly, Bronze did nothing, which only angered the king even more.
“You stupid fucking girl! All you’ve won yourself is a tainted womb and people who would rather claw out their own eyes than serve whatever spawn you promise them. You’ve corrupted the bloodline of this great monarchy and everything I’ve worked for.” His eyes grew wild, crazed. His hands clenched into fists, then opened and clenched again, as if he had no control over the movements of his body.
She gasped in a ragged breath but couldn’t bring herself to retreat, frozen as she was to the French Aubusson rug. She’d never seen him like this. Angry, yes. Frustrated, of course. But this surpassed all of that, tumbling into a fit of pure rage she had no true experience with and no recourse to fight.
Her father had just . . . said those things to her. Had actually said, with words from his own heart, things no parent should ever say to their offspring. And he’d done so in front of an audience, including her new mate, even after she’d acquiesced to his public shaming in the final Betrothal Game.
She cast a helpless look to Broderick, one of the males who knew her father best, as if to ask whether any of it was true. Would he also view her differently? Had she misjudged what her ambition and hope would mean for the people she loved?
Have I gotten this all wrong?
Broderick merely took an uneasy step forward, closer to her father, though she didn’t know whether it was to defend him or restrain him.
“Clara,” Bronze warned. “Get behind me.”
“Yes,” she mumbled to herself, sensing the gravity of a mistake she’d not foreseen.
But she was far too slow.
The chair behind her father hit the floor before Clara had even lifted her foot out of the great desk’s shadow.
Then that very shadow transformed into one of fangs and claws.
When Clara looked up, her father’s gray wolf stood atop the desk. By the Moon Mother, he was huge. She’d forgotten how large and powerful he was. The howling snap of his jaw was a stark reminder, and the saliva that fell from his elongated fangs gave his message the ferocity he so clearly wished it to have.
Clara screamed as the wolf took flight. It leaped at her and scattered everything on the desk into a whirlwind of confusion. Teeth shot at her like a missile. She fell back against the rug and flung her arms over her face, bracing for her father’s bite?—
The roar that erupted above her was none like she’d ever heard before. A masculine cry of rage drowning out a predator’s growl. There was a yelp, a grunt, followed by a whoosh she couldn’t place, and then finally . . . heat.
“Up, lady. Up now!” Broderick’s hands were beneath her arms as he helped her to her feet.
Good thing, too, because she had no idea what she was witnessing and her limbs had frozen in shock.
No, that wasn’t true. She had words for all the components of the picture. The circle of blue flames. The snapping gray wolf in the center of them. The Aubusson rug reduced to embers where the flames touched it, though the fire, strangely, wasn’t spreading beyond the concentric circle.
Yes, she had words to describe all those things. Just none of the sense as to the why of it all.
And then Bronze stepped out of her peripheral vision.
Goodness, he was glorious . . . and terrifying. A hard mask of brutality stretched across the angles of his face like stones coming to rest into long-familiar settings. Every muscle on his body was strung taut and locked up tight, as if relishing finally being called into service. The blue flames of his angel fire, however, were the most brutal of all. Targeted, menacing, and under the complete control of her soul bond. It was the power that had been freed by their celestial connection coming into being and was a force that was immense in its fury.
“You got a dungeon or something? Cells? Some form of detainment?”
Broderick placed himself in front of Clara, ensuring she was out of the way of the flames. “Yes.”
“Throw him in there and keep this in the cell with him.” Bronze extinguished the flames encompassing his right fist, reached into his back pocket, and tossed a closed metal switchblade at the guard. “Make sure he can’t reach it, but keep it close to him. It’ll ensure he can’t shift.”
Broderick caught the blade and held it away from his body. Clara took a few steps back from it as well, despite being used to the close proximity of Bronze’s weapons. When she stepped back farther, however, her heel bumped against the edge of the desk, and she had to throw her hand out to right herself. Her pinky brushed the lip of a raised wax stamp, and the large wolf emblem upon it caught her eye.
It was a message bearing Lord Raff’s official seal.
More guards entered the room, with Bronze shouting commands while Broderick echoed the orders to his lycans. But it all faded into the blur of the background as Clara brought the note up to her nose to focus on the words that, though in a legible order, didn’t seem to make sense.
“Don’t feed him,” Bronze barked as he lowered the flames so Broderick and the guards could detain the king. “Unless Lady Clara allows it.”
Vaguely, she heard her name. That was her name, right? Possibly. Though with how badly her hands were shaking, she didn’t think she could put much stock in anything she’d previously taken as a certainty.
The words before her were succinct. No flowery language or unnecessary adjectives. Just pure brutal facts from a purely brutal warlord.
Clara’s hand flew to her stomach, and she waited for the truth to hit her, for the sky to open up and declare that what she held in her hands was a fallacy crafted by the king to ensure further dominion. Another manipulation. Something.
But the seal was real, and the note was dated the morning of the final trial. It had been written by Lord Raff before he died.
“This can’t be. No. No no no . . .”
The commotion in the room began to die down as the guards took her father away. Pascal had gone to accompany them at some point or see to whatever matters the old male needed to see to. Moon Mother knew he’d have much on his plate to clean up.
“Clara?” The worry had never left Bronze’s voice since they’d first entered the receiving room, but it had shifted into something tinged with unease. When he said her name again, she recognized why the word sounded so off, so wrong.
There was no confidence in it.
That was when the first tear threatened to fall because she knew the words in her hands were true.
So she called on the Moon Mother for strength as she took in the sight of her soul-bonded mate and asked, “After you left my room the night we first made love, did you go to the royal coffers to try and steal from my father?”