Chapter 15 Beneath the Wolf’s Cloak
Chapter fifteen
Beneath the Wolf’s Cloak
-Maris-
Maris didn’t bother to rise when Kael came into view within her chamber.
He didn’t knock. Of course he didn’t. He never did.
She remained curled in the velvet-cushioned window seat, one leg tucked beneath her, a book half-forgotten in her lap.
Outside, the grey light of morning draped the mountains like mourning cloth.
“Kael,” she said coolly.
Kael’s silver eyes flicked to her and lingered. “You were meant to be in the library tower.”
“I was,” she replied. “Then I decided I preferred a book that doesn’t try to decode my soul.”
His jaw clenched. “Aldwyn said you haven’t been focusing.”
“And Valea says I’m improving in sparring. Would you like to duel over my progress reports?”
He stepped closer. “This isn’t a game, Maris.”
“No, it’s a prison with prettier curtains.”
Their eyes locked — a breath between them stretched like the string of a drawn bow.
“You don’t know what’s out there,” he said lowly. “If I gave you a single day beyond these walls, you’d crawl back broken.”
“Why not let me see for myself, with you my great protector as my guide?”
A challenge. A dare.
Kael’s nostrils flared. “Fine.”
Her eyes widened, lashes fluttering in disbelief. “What?”
“I’m going into the city.” He stepped forward, towering now above her. “You’re coming with me.”
She opened her mouth, to protest but he silenced her with a flick of his hand.
“You’ll wear glamour,” he said. “You’ll obey every order I give. And if you disobey me, I’ll carry you back to this chamber like I did the night of the feast, only this time… I won’t set you down gently.” He offered a knowing smirk.
Maris’s pulse stuttered not entirely from fear. The air between them pulsed. A heartbeat. Two.
She stood slowly, chin tilted high.
Without hesitation, she said, "Let us be on our way then, your highness."
-Kael-
He hated how well she moved in shadow.
Dressed in plain leather and wool, dyed ink-dark and cinched at the waist, Maris looked like any street-born girl in the capital.
He kept a glamour over her face, just enough to blur the unique angles that had lodged into his mind like a blade.
Still, she glowed. Kael’s own glamour shifted his hair from starlit black to merchant-brown and dimmed the gleam of his skin.
But nothing could smother the predator in his stride.
Nythra’s capital city sprawled like a living beast around Calyrix Castle.
Narrow alleys spilled into broad, stone avenues.
Market tents of blood-red silk fluttered from balconies, their spices curling into the air like incense.
Roasting meats, fried dough, and the sharp bite of fermented plumwine mixed into a pungent, intoxicating fog.
Maris crinkled her nose.
“You’ll get used to it,” Kael said.
“I’d rather not.”
The crowds were thick today, traders from the coast, nightbound nobles disguised in charm glamour, street children darting between wagons.
Musicians played haunting three-stringed harps beneath lantern-lit awnings, the melody ghostlike.
A beggar woman sang an old ballad about the five gods, her voice fraying at the edges like an unraveling thread.
They passed a masked fortune-teller murmuring to cards made of bone.
A blacksmith sharpening twin daggers that gleamed green with poison oil.
A girl no older than Maris, selling copper coins strung on cursed thread to ward off dream-spirits.
Kael watched Maris’s eyes take it all in, the colors, the smoke, the rot beneath the silk. He hated that he found her awe beautiful.
But his mind was on the hunt. Astrielle had come through here, he knew she had been the one to leak information — acting on wounded pride.
Someone saw her. Someone spoke to her. And someone would die if they helped her leave this city alive.
He had checked her chambers this morning, the maids said they had not seen her in an age.
So that left the city or beyond the walls.
He was pulled from his thoughts as he sensed the danger a breath before the scream.
It curled around his spine like frostbite, an unnatural cold threading through the crowd.
Kael’s hand shot out, gripping Maris’s elbow. “Stay behind me.”
They had just turned down a tighter alley, slipping toward one of the lesser-used wine streets of Nythra’s capital, where the shadows were thicker, and few dared name the things they saw out of the corners of their eyes.
The creature erupted from a collapsed stable house, bone-thin, sinew-covered, slinking on spider limbs and trailing black smoke like ash. Its eyes glowed a molten silver-blue, and its mouth was packed with too many teeth.
A nightmare come to life. One of the veilspawn, that slipped through unnoticed, feeding on the dreams of the desperate.
A woman screamed behind them. Bottles shattered. Kael unsheathed his sword in a blink, already casting a protection glyph with the other hand but it wasn’t fast enough.
The beast lunged.
Straight for Maris, death consumed it’s eyes.
She didn’t scream. Didn’t even move, frozen with terror.
It slashed across her upper arm deep and vicious before Kael drove his blade clean through the creature’s throat. It shrieked like boiling air and fell back, writhing, curling into smoke before it dissolved completely.
The moment her knees gave out, he moved — shadows curling as she fell into his arms.
Blood surged from the wound in thick, rhythmic bursts, soaking through fabric and flesh alike.
“Fuck.” Fear ripped the curse from his chest before he knew he'd spoken.
They were too far from the castle. She wouldn’t survive the ride back. And he wouldn’t risk pulling her there with his shadows.
Kael shifted her into his arms and carried her to a place he knew was safe.
-Maris-
The world returned in pieces. Warm wood. A crackling hearth. The sharp sting of something bitter being poured on her skin.
Her vision slammed back into place in a blur of pain and color.
Kael leaned over her, shirtless, taut muscles shifting beneath his skin as he pressed a cloth soaked in green-glass liquid to her wound.
“What,” she croaked.
“You were poisoned.” His voice was dark, breathless. “From a Veil born spawn. I brought you here.”
She looked around, they were in a tucked-away inn, small but clean, built of old pine and smelling faintly of pine smoke and rose soap.
“It’s… beautiful.”
Kael’s lips twitched. “It’s mine.”
“You own an inn?”
“No. But it's my room. I come here. When the castle’s weight becomes too much.”
He dipped the cloth again and pressed it to her skin. The sting made her gasp.
“Why did that creature come straight to me?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer for a moment.
“I wish I knew, they normally don't target prey. It was a nightmare that slipped through the Veil. It shouldn’t have gotten that close.”
She looked at him. His eyes were shadowed. Drawn. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the snap of the hearth.
“Do you always carry healing potions?” she asked finally.
“I had it made after your first week here,” he admitted quietly. “For your blood. In case . . .”
Something in her chest squeezed painfully.
“Kael —”
He met her gaze. “What?”
She watched him from the edge of the bed, skin still tingling from the bitter sting of whatever potion he’d poured across her wound.
The room was dim and quiet, lit by the single hearth whose embers crackled low and gold.
Shadows climbed the walls like climbing ivy.
It smelled of old cedarwood, clean linen, and something faintly floral that clung to Kael’s skin.
He knelt beside her now, his hands moving deftly over a strip of linen bandage.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
He looked up. “Didn’t know what?”
“That you ever —left the castle —spent time somewhere else.”
Kael’s mouth curved at the corner but not into a smile.
“I come here when I’ve bled too much in silence. When the ghosts in the throne room start to speak louder than my advisors.”
She blinked. His tone was too honest, too real. Like the mask had slipped.
“I didn’t think you had ghosts,” she murmured.
Kael met her eyes, and for once, there was no cruel amusement there. Just something hollow and sharp — almost human.
“I was born with them.”
Maris shifted on the bed, pulling the blanket tighter around her front. “I’ve always been alone,” she said quietly, surprising even herself.
He tilted his head.
“I had my family once. Then the plague came. I was nineteen. I buried my father. Then my brothers. Then my mother. One by one.”
Kael’s hand stilled.
“I kept breathing out of spite. I kept stitching clothes, sweeping floors, waiting for someone to see me. No one ever did. Not until —” She broke off. Flushed. “Not until you.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full of all the things neither of them had ever spoken aloud.
Kael slowly stood and stepped close again, his bare chest rising and falling with a restless energy. He reached for the bandage on the side table but as he leaned down, their faces were only inches apart.
His shoulder brushed her knee.
Maris inhaled sharply.
They both froze.
Her breath caught in her throat, but she didn’t move. Neither did he.
His gaze lifted from her lips to her eyes in a long aching pause.
“Say no,” he said roughly. “And I’ll step back.”
She didn’t. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
So he kissed her.
-Kael-
Her lips were softer than he imagined. Warmer.
Tasting of blood and wine and fire-forged will.
He had meant to graze her mouth nothing more.
Just a taste. Just enough to settle the madness inside him.
But when her fingers curled into the fabric of his pants and she arched, just a breath, into him.
He deepened it. His hand slid to her waist, pulling her flush to his chest, and she opened for him like something breaking, something blooming.
The linen bandage tumbled from his hand.
She gasped when his tongue slid against hers not in fear — but in some wild —surprised want. Her fingers threaded into the dark strands of his hair. He pulled her into his lap without thinking, knees sinking into the rug. The blanket slipped down her shoulders.
Kael groaned softly into her mouth as her hands skimmed his bare back, nails trailing the runes along his spine. The contact burned him in ways nothing ever had.
She was too hot in his arms. Too soft. His. Not his. A war he was losing by the second.
He kissed her jaw, her throat , just below her ear where her pulse pounded so sweetly.
Her breath hitched. “Kael…”
He stilled. One more second and he wouldn’t be able to stop.
She pulled back, panting, her forehead resting against his. Her lips swollen, her eyes dazed.
“I want to Kael. But . . . I'm in more pain than I care to admit.” she whispered.
Kael froze, the warmth of the moment shattering like glass.
His hands had found her waist, had pulled her close — to close in her condition.
"Gods," he hissed, recoiling like he'd touched flame. "I forgot in the moment — damn it, Maris, I —"
He raked a hand through his hair, jaw tight, shame crawling down his spine like cold iron.
"I shouldn't have —" His voice broke on the edge of restraint.
" You're hurt, forgive me." He begged
The truth was simple even broken, she undid him. And he hated himself for letting desire come before her pain.
"Kael." Her voice stopped him from unraveling further — quiet but certain.
She reached for him, her fingers curling around his hand. Even through the faint tremble of pain, her grip was steady.
"I'm okay, you didn't hurt me. Not really." She said, her thumb brushing over his knuckles.
He looked down at her, his silver eyes shadowed, jaw still locked with restraint. But she tugged gently. pulling him closer.
"Lay with me," she whispered.
Kael hesitated only a breath longer — then let himself sink beside her, carefully. His hand remained in hers, held not out of guilt now, but something far more fragile.
She let her head rest against his shoulder, breath steadying with the rhythm of his own.
-Maris-
The fire dimmed to glowing coals. The city sounds faded beneath thick stone and shuttered windows, muffled as if they’d been swallowed whole.She hadn’t meant to stay in his arms. Truly.
But his hand was warm on the small of her back, fingers slow and reverent as he stroked the fabric of her shift like she might vanish if he touched too hard.
His breath was steady against the top of her head.
His bare skin beneath her palm felt more than male, something ancient, unmoving, protective.
She should have pulled away. But the ache in her shoulder where the poison had struck throbbed dully, and the rest of her — her heart, her pulse, the loneliness that had clawed inside her ribs since childhood, all of that ached louder.
So she stayed. She lay curled into Kael’s side on the wide inn bed, wrapped in one of his worn shirts, the scent of forest and frost and faint spice still clinging to it. Her fingers idly traced a line across the low runes etched into his chest.
They didn’t speak. Not at first
Not until her voice finally broke the silence. Soft.
“Have you ever felt seen?”
Kael exhaled a breath like he’d been holding it all night. “No.”
His voice was low, almost rough. “Not truly. I was born a weapon. Raised as a King. But seen?” He gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “I think people only see what they fear in me. Or what they want from me.”
Maris nodded slowly, cheek pressed to the firm wall of his chest. “That’s how I felt in Eryndor. Unseen.”
She could feel the war in him then the way his muscles tensed, the way his breath caught. He hated what he’d done. Not because he regretted her presence. But because part of him had stolen something soft from the world, and Kael was not made for soft things.
He brushed her hair back slowly, fingers catching in the strands like he couldn’t bear to let her go. “You weren’t meant to be ordinary,” he murmured.
-Kael-
She breathed slower now.
Her heartbeat had steadied where it rested against his ribs. He could feel it. The quiet drum of a mortal pulse — but one that shimmered in his magic like a silver thread strung too tight.
He watched her fall asleep.
It was a terrible thing, how badly he wanted to protect that moment. To bottle it like wine. The way she looked now, bone tired but trusting, soft-lipped and flushed with sleep.
As if he were safety.
As if the predator could ever be the shield.
He ran a hand down her back once. Just once.
Then stilled.
And stayed awake long into the hours past midnight. Because she slept in his arms. And for the first time in centuries, Kael did not feel alone.