All around me, the walls were carved with large markings. It was like a feral beast had tried to escape this prison without any luck, desperate to free himself from these walls, just like I had been trying to for the past nineteen years.
A trickling noise from the sewage waste exiting the castle came from ahead. I glanced around and held an arm over my clutching stomach, feeling bile rise in my throat. I’d been here before in a dream, though I wasn’t sure why I was here now, or exactly where here was.
But this place always terrified me.
The oil lamps were turned down to mere flickering flames, which made it hard to see even a few feet ahead of me. A musky scent of unwashed clothes, mixed with sewage, drifted through the small and long corridor.
It wasn’t a pleasant place to dream about. Yet, night after night, I would find myself here.
A deep, monstrous growl rumbled from one of the rooms at the end of the underground passage. It shook me to my very core, but at the same time, awoke a hunger in me, one that I couldn’t seem to fathom.
It was a strange feeling, almost as if I recognized that sound. I inched closer to the silver-caged room, and the shadows that danced across the walls seemed to dim even more. Golden eyes peered at me through the darkness.
“Are you here to play, princess?” he asked me.
After sucking in a sharp breath, I took a few steps backwards.
Those eyes…
I’d seen similar ones before. But where?
My foot got caught on something sharp from behind, and I slipped backwards. I fell heavily until my body collided with a soft mattress. My eyes snapped open, and I was no longer in the horrific place of my memories.
I was in my bed. I was safe. And I was alive.
Yet, I feared that whatever lurked in that underground prison had taken hold of me. I might’ve been breathing and filled with vigor now, but that wouldn’t always be the case. Especially when those golden eyes haunted every fiber of my being.
I could just feel it. He was coming for me.
Growing up in a castle wasn’t a fairytale.
It’s not. It wasn’t. And it never would be.
My family pampered and prepared me for any possible suitors before I’d even left my bed each morning. Besides meetings and pretending like I cared about which fork to use for supper, my life here was pretty mundane.
That was until I learned about the inner workings of it all.
It hadn’t always been this bad. I could remember a time when fear didn’t creep along the walls of the halls and hang onto every door handle, refusing to open. There was a time before Count Noel Drackon, or Count Dracula, as I liked to call him.
He was a tall and slender man with beady eyes and a laugh that sounded like sharp claws on a chalkboard. He controlled the west region of the kingdom, but to me, he would always be the blood thirsty vampire that my nickname for him suggested.
Noel had been around the castle before and attended countless parties and meetings with my father about the werewolves they captured across the kingdom. I had never in my life understood why there was a need for all of the unnecessary pain and torment of those people.
And that was exactly what had landed me in the position I was right now.
Considering my father and mother were king and queen, I was heiress to the entire estate. Noel had been lurking around my family for a few years previously, learning the family trade, and somehow in that time, he’d magically convinced my family to agree to an arranged engagement.
Which would be fine.
If it wasn’t to me.
My father liked him. My mother thought he was charming. But there was a reason I had given him that horrendous nickname, and it wasn’t for his love of wine. Noel loved pain. He loved causing agony and relished in the sight of torture.
An absolute sadist of a man.
He led most of the manhunts that would collect the wolves and bring them back to the castle for their butchering. Luckily, I’d managed to go down the the torture chambers in the belly of the castle and let some of the wolves go free.
Of course, I was always punished for it.
But the less wolves in those chambers, the less my life felt completely worthless here.
Night after night, I would come from my rooms to see my father and Noel heading down to finish the jobs that their personal trappers would leave. I was aware of what they were doing. They made it no secret that they were hunting werewolves. Actually, here it was celebrated like a festival. Big parties that would be thrown after another hunt was complete, and everyone would toast to the king and queen.
It made me sick.
Yet, the more wolves that were brought home, the more those creatures just looked normal to me.
Human.
I’d never seen one shift myself. I was starting to wonder whether it was all just made up to keep the children away from their packs. If a ruler can make the kingdom think there’s a problem that needs fixing, they’re a lot easier to control.
My own father had taught me that.
Tonight, they were late for dinner.
My mother informed me that they were attending to business, but business meant that they were down in the chambers, hurting and torturing innocent wolves for no good reason at all. And tonight, I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I needed to do something. Anything.
“What exactly happens downstairs?” I asked Mother innocently.
She paused her eating, the fork falling inches from her mouth, then laughed it off and stuttered, “Well, you know, werewolves get questioned down there... for the safety of our people. All we want to do is protect the people and kingdom we hold so close to our hearts.”
I nodded, hoping she’d believe that I was just as stupid as she thought I was.
Of course, she was lying. I’d seen first hand the horrors that those people had endured. Though Noel never did tell my parents about the punishments I received for releasing the wolves into the wild where they belonged. Why would he?
“Why do we lock them up?” I asked.
Any kind of reasoning was frivolous. She didn’t have any reason. None of them did.
It was the whole point of doing this in the first place.
She hadn’t picked her fork back up, her face was stone and her body was rigid. “My little girl, aren’t we full of questions tonight?”
I wanted to know. I’d seen so many people pass through the castle halls and yet, none of them ever seemed to have an actual purpose or reason to have been in there. I opened my mouth to question her more, but I thought better of it.
The less suspicious she was of me, the better.
My parents had never allowed me to go down. I was caught sneaking my way there last year by Father, and they had assumed it ended with the one time. Little did they know, I’d been trying to rescue wolves from their grasp for as long as I had realized it was all for nothing.
At first, it would just be men that they were bringing down. I was told to lock my doors while people were being questioned. I had no idea why, but I would’ve never questioned it either. Not until I’d see it with my own eyes.
But even I knew better than to question the king.
The night had drawn in quicker tonight. I was unsure if it was the cool chill in the air, or the lack of light through the clouds, but my stomach twisted and turned with unease. The way that Mother had spoken about the people who had been brought through the castle had made me question my own part in all of this.
I gazed over the balcony in my room to the garden below, watching the crisp brown leaves fall from the trees. Autumn equinox had been upon us today, the day and night sharing the same length of time.
But somehow, on days like this, the darkness always seemed to drag a bit longer.
My lips curled into a frown as I stared at the kingdom. There was an expectation that I would take all of this over. But was this something I really wanted to be part of? To rule?
Laughter drifted down the hallway, and my head snapped to my door. Carefully, I rushed over and pressed my ear to the wood, listening for any indication of who it could be, quickly realizing that it was Father and Noel.
“Did you see the way that beast toppled over with those chains on?” Father asked.
It turned my stomach to know that my values were so far off from that of the people around me. I waited for a few minutes, listening for their footsteps outside the door. And when I knew they were close, I opened the door and stepped out. They blinked down at me in surprise.
“Aria?” Father scolded. “It's late. What’re you doing up?”
I wasn’t completely sure, but I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t stand to hear them speak like that anymore either. Both men stared down at me in expectation. Realizing I hadn’t answered Father, I mustered up my dumbest excuse.
“I was just about to get myself a glass of water,” I lied.
Noel’s mouth curved into a serpent-like smile. “That’s okay, Your Majesty. I can help her find her way to the kitchen, then to bed.”
My blood ran cold, and I found myself shoving past him. “I’m quite capable of finding my way to the kitchen and back, thank you.”
“Nonsense,” Father said, stopping me in my tracks. He stared down at me with those cold eyes that I had learned to loathe. “Noel has to take care of the duties tonight. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind helping you get there and back.”
My mind flashed back to moments before when Noel smiled at me, and I knew that he had more planned than just innocently helping me around the castle, though I simply held my head high and walked away toward the kitchen. If Noel was going to follow me as Father had instructed, then he could find his own way.
But I wasn’t going to wait around for him.
I hurried down the hall and quickly made myself busy in the kitchen, pulling a glass from the cupboard and filling it with water we had taken from the fresh stream this morning. A chill ran down my spine, and I pulled my night robe together to stop the cold.
Heaving and ominous footsteps pounded against the floor behind me. I sucked in a breath and turned toward Noel, who stood in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and his body towering over mine.
He moved closer to me and leaned against the wooden counter in the middle of the room. “Just getting a glass of water?” he asked, probably suspicious that I wanted to sneak down into the prisons below and release the wolf they’d tortured tonight.
And when they all had gone to sleep tonight, I would.
I vowed to free that beast.
I rolled my eyes and pointed to the glass in my hand. “Water.”
Noel glanced down at the glass and clenched his jaw, as if he had wanted me to stumble a bit, to catch me in a lie, to punish me like the wicked and cruel man he was. But he wouldn’t do that tonight. I refused to be put through that torture too.
I knew how to hide things better now.
I gestured toward the doorway. “I have my water, you can leave now. You don’t have to walk me to my room. I'm pretty sure I can find the way back.”
“We aren’t going back to your room yet,” Noel said, smirking at me. When I tried to walk past him, he blocked my swift exit, foot tapping on the floor and fingers drumming against his forearm. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
God, please, can’t he just leave?
Noel rocked forward on his heels. “Why do you have such an unhealthy obsession with helping the captured wolves?”
Oh, that wasn’t what I thought he was going to come out with at all.
I thought he was about to drag me to his room in this castle and do what he did last time.
And while I didn’t want to argue with him, I couldn’t help but speak my mind on the subject. I was damn tired of sitting around and allowing this to happen. I needed to do something, try to get someone to understand that what they did was wrong.
“I don’t understand why you’re keeping these people locked up. What’s the end goal?”
“And that is exactly why you’ll never be able to understand,” he said, shaking his head and glaring down at me with those harrowing dark eyes. “These aren’t people. These are monsters. They aren’t human, Aria.”
I scowled at him. “They have feelings. They have emotions.”
Suddenly, he slammed his fist against the stone wall. “They are beasts. They will hurt and kill our people if given the opportunity. We are just removing that chance. We have to be proactive with this.”
Not trusting myself to hold the water and not thrust it into his face, I set down my water on the counter and crossed my arms. “When I take over my father’s kingdom, I don’t want there to be a divide. They aren’t all bad people.”
He blinked slowly and walked toward me. “I want to show you something.”
He had that same look on his face he had every night before he hurt me for freeing those wolves. It was not a look of a saint or a God or even a sinner. It was the look of the Devil himself, towering over me and ready to rip me to shreds.
Nervously, I backed into the counter as far as I could go. “I’m not interested in anything you have to show me, Noel.”
He gripped my wrist and yanked me forwards. “I think you’ll be interested in this.”
Before I could stop him, he rushed through the stony passageways of the castle with me in tow. I stumbled on my feet behind him, not wanting to keep up but having no choice. If I were to fall flat on my face against these stone floors, he would drag me the rest of the way.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
“You care about them so much? You think they deserve more than they have? I’ll show you why they don’t.” He took the steps leading down to the torture chamber two at a time, like he was excited for me to see the agony of the wolves.
When we reached the bottom of the steps, I sucked in a breath and glanced around the prison. Cages of iron and silver, made just to stop the wolves from escaping, were all lined up together. My heart fell heavy. No one should have to endure this.
Noel walked over to a wall that was lined with sharp tools that I’d never seen before. Large poles with spikes and technology far too advanced for our time with electricity running through the end of it were hanging menacingly.
When I’d been down here in the past, I had to be fast, so I didn’t have time to look around.
Noel picked up a long shiny rod with a silver plate on the end of it. I instantly looked toward the man in the cage that he began walking toward. With his head hung low and his brown hair in his face, he looked utterly defeated.
It shattered my heart.
Shoving the torture device through the bars, Noel pushed it against the man’s skin and smiled when it seared the hairs from his arms. He looked up in the darkness at me with piercing gold eyes. My chest instantly squeezed in on itself.
Something pulled me toward the man. Something I couldn’t quite understand.
I had always ached to help wolves escape, but he was different.
It wasn’t a desire with him. It was a need to get him out of here.
Noel prodded the stick forward, and the plate started to burn the man, leaving red welts along his arm. The werewolf gritted his teeth and let out a sharp growl, canines dripping with saliva, but his eyes never left mine.
I pressed my lips together and broke eye contact with him, not because I didn’t want to see it, not because I felt shame, but because I couldn’t help him with Noel here with me. I couldn’t break him out. I couldn’t heal the man. I had to watch him suffer.
Noel grunted and grabbed the back of my neck, forcing me against the bars, pressing the side of my face against it until I could do nothing but watch. “You’re going to fucking watch, Aria. These are the beasts you want to have sympathy for, the beasts that hurt our grandparents and their parents and theirs.”
When Noel thrust the torture device against the man’s chest once more, the man stayed perfectly still again, except this time… this time I saw the pain in his eyes, the way his jaw twitched when the silver made contact with his skin.
“Watch him burn, you fucking bitch,” Noel seethed in my ear. “Once we marry, this will be my kingdom. Not yours. I’ll rule the way I want to and I’ll torture these animals until they’re all gone. You won’t get a say in anything.”
I yanked myself away from him and slapped him hard across the face, which I knew I’d pay for but I didn’t regret it. I had wanted to hit him—to kill him—for months now. And if he was paying attention to me, he wouldn’t hurt the wolf.
Noel dropped his silver device, letting it clatter against the concrete, and turned toward me. My eyes widened, heart racing. I should’ve ran, should’ve bolted right out of there. But I stood my ground, not wanting this wolf to see that Noel and my parents had total control of me. I wanted this man to have some hope. Any hope.
Snatching my wrists in his, Noel pulled me forward and slapped me harder against the cheek. The wolf let out a ferocious growl stepping toward the bars and letting the silver around his neck and wrists sear his skin.
“Don’t touch her,” he growled, voice deep and low.
Noel wrapped his hand around my neck and let out a lifeless laugh. “Worry about yourself, you disgusting animal.” Noel spit at the man in the cell, and my chest tightened. I slapped him again and spit in his face, trying my best to get him out of here.
“Fucking bitch,” Noel seethed, grabbing me by my hair and tugging me to the stairs.
I stared at the wolf with tears in my eyes as Noel dragged me up the stairs. “I’ll be back,” I mouthed to him, promising him that I wouldn’t let him die here. I’d be back, even if my parents and Noel killed me for it.
The torture chamber reeked of blood and rotting corpses. I walked down the long stone staircase and tried not to double over to puke up my dinner. With all the supplies I could steal from the doctor without being caught, I prayed to any of the Gods that my parents and Noel would stay asleep while I healed this wolf.
Sitting on the concrete inside a cell, the beast stood when he saw me and grasped the silver bars, burning his palms. Silver chains were locked around his neck, his ankles, and his wrists. “Let me out of here,” he growled at me, though his golden eyes seemed softer when they looked at me compared to earlier when they were a raging gold.
I glanced back up the stairs and swallowed. “Please, be quiet.”
After hurrying into the room, I deposited the medical supplies on the ground and took another step toward the cell. I stayed just out of reach from him, in case he tried killing me. It had been over twelve months since my parents brought a chained wolf to the castle.
My gaze traveled down the man’s nearly naked body, at all the lashes from Father’s silver whip. Blood ran down his torso and formed a puddle on the ground. The silver stopped his wounds from healing or even closing up.
If he didn’t get cleaned up soon, he wouldn’t even be able to run back to his pack when I helped him escape later. He’d make it maybe a few miles before he ran out of energy or his scent was picked up by the hounds my parents kept.
“Can I clean you up?” I asked, staring up into those dark brown eyes mixed with gold.
He continued to stare, furrowing his brows, nostrils flaring. “Why?” he growled, canines long. My heart pounded against my chest, and I pushed away all my fear as I stepped even closer to the bars, to within reach. He grabbed me by the collar and yanked me forward, pressing me right up against the silver bars. “Why the fuck do you want to heal me? So your parents can tear me apart again tomorrow? Is that what people in this fucking kingdom do?”
“Please,” I whispered, resting my fingers on his wrists. “I just want to help you.”
When my fingers brushed against his skin, something happened. I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t for the life of me even figure it out, but all the hairs on my body stood straight and a warmth filled my body. It had never happened with any other wolf before. I sucked in a breath.
The wolf stared at me for a couple moments, then released me, letting out a low growl that I hadn’t heard before. I had heard him growl when he was angry and hurting and in pain… but nothing like that.
I pulled out the key from my pocket and opened the prison cell, letting it creak. Hurriedly, I gathered the supplies, gave him a stool to sit on, and walked into the cell with him. It was a risk to trust a wolf, especially one this large who’s been treated poorly by my family, but I had to trust him.
“Sit,” I said, gesturing to the seat.
He eyed me for a moment, as if he didn’t know what to think of it either, but eventually sat on the stool. I gently took a warm rag and washed away all the blood from his skin. As soon as my fingers brushed against his shoulders, he tensed.
“Relax,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you. I would never.”
After a few moments of him still sitting tensely, I moved closer to him and cleaned the wound on his chest with alcohol. He stared at me with those golden eyes the entire time, never wincing once.
I swallowed hard, my heart beating faster with every second that passed, and peeked down at him, lips curling into a small smile. Butterflies fluttered in the pit of my stomach at the sight of his eyes, his sculpted face, his muscles that swelled underneath my fingertips.
“You shouldn’t be helping me,” he said suddenly. “You should be lying in your grand bed in the palace, being served wine and fresh bread, and making love to that man you call a fiance.”
“You sound jealous,” I said, trying to make light of the conversation.
He growled again, and I cursed myself for liking the sound of it too much. I couldn’t get close to him, feel these types of things for him. I was to be married to Noel soon… but, damn, Noel had never awakened these butterflies before.
I cleared my throat, trying to push away my dirty thoughts and trying to get rid of the ache between my legs. “What’s your name?” I asked, brows furrowed together. “I usually ask before I start to heal your kind.”
“Xander,” he said after some time.
My fingers stopped moving, and I froze. “You’re Xander, the Wolf King?”
He stared at me for a few moments and nodded. My eyes widened. That’s why he had been able to endure so much pain and torture and that’s why my parents were keeping him close. So they wouldn’t lose him.
They wanted him to crumble. They wanted him to break. They wanted him to be an example.
And from that moment, I knew that I needed to get him out of here. No matter what it took. Last time, when they caught me trying to help a wolf escape, Noel tortured me. This time… Noel would marry me, then kill me. He’d definitely kill me. But I couldn’t let them have the pleasure of breaking the Wolf King.
He’d been the talk of the kingdom, the reason the wolves continued to fight on. He sparked hope for a better future in the lives of his kind. If he died, all the wolves would die soon too. And beautiful creatures like him deserved to live for as long as they could.
“Why’d you come here?” I asked, grabbing a needle from the supplies and starting to sew up his wound faster. “You know that the people in this kingdom hate wolves. They want to see them all burn in silver chains and suffer the consequences of their ancestors.”
Xander tensed under my care. “My parents went missing three months ago. I’ve been looking for them for weeks upon weeks. Last I heard, they were spotted here, in your parents’ kingdom.”
I shook my head and continued to sew up the wound. He grasped my chin and forced me to look into his eyes. There it was again… my hair standing up, that warmth of his fingers. “You know something,” he said to me.
“My mother and father captured two older wolves a few months ago,” I said, remembering the way they seemed so damn happy when they were dragging them along by thick silver chains through the kingdom, like they were some kind of trophies.
Their fur had nearly been burned off by the silver. Their wounds weren’t healing because of the metal. And there was a long and thick trail of blood through the forest that Noel would take me to every morning to drill into my head that this was what monstrosities like them deserved.
I swallowed hard, my eyes filling with tears. “They brought them here to the dungeon. There was a trail of blood that didn’t wash away even in the rain. But my parents moved their location every couple weeks, so I don’t know where they are.”
“Why wouldn’t they tell their own daughter about where they kept them?”
My hands tightened into fists. “Because I don’t believe in what they’re doing,” I said, shaking my head and getting angry at the memories of them torturing those poor wolves.
When I had found that first wolf, gasping for breath and begging me to let him free so he could see his mate one last time, I made a promise to myself to free wolves whenever I had the chance.
“I let them go,” I whispered, remembering the last time I let a wolf free and the torture Noel put me through because of it. I still had scars on my back and shoulders from him slashing his silver whip against my backside as punishment.
Xander sat up taller. “They know that you let wolves go?”
My lips quivered, and I pulled my shawl over my shoulders so they wouldn’t be exposed. I didn’t want him to feel sorry about the punishment that Noel gave me. It wasn’t Xander’s fault or any of his wolves’ fault. I’d do it again.
“What did they do to you?” he asked me, reaching for my shawl.
I stepped away from him and put the needle away. “The same thing they’ve done to you,” I whispered. Though it happened over months ago, the scars still felt fresh. “They let me down here now because they thought they’d punished me enough to where I learned a lesson…” I swallowed hard and pulled the key for his chains from my pocket. “But I’d do it again and again and again, until they hang me by the throat in front of all the kingdom.”
After I undid all his chains, he stared down at his wrists and grabbed my hand. “Nobody is going to hang you by the throat,” he growled lowly. “Nobody is going to touch what is mine again.”
Mine.
The word came out so possessively that I couldn’t help sucking in a breath.
Mine.
The Wolf King wanted me as his.
But I could never be.
We came from two different races, two kingdoms that hated each other. I would never—could never—leave here without guards following my every move. I had to stay here and endure the wrath of my father and of Noel when they found out about me helping Xander escape.
I tugged him to the exit and ignored his comment. “There are guards in every hallway. I’ll try to sneak you around them, but… I’m not sure I’ll be able to.” I cracked the door and peered out of it. “There is usually one in every hallway until the main castle, then there are less.”
“Let me take care of them,” he said. “They won’t touch you.”
He snatched my hand in his and pulled me into the hallway. We jogged down the corridor toward the exit of the dungeon, running through hallways and sneaking past as many guards as we could.
Instead of heading through the main entrance to the palace, I took us the back way. Yet, there was still a guard at the main door. Xander went ahead of me, grabbed him by the neck when he wasn’t looking, and snapped it in his grasp.
My eyes widened as I stared at the man in pure shock, fear, and… and… excitement.
What is wrong with me?
Xander pulled the door open and grabbed my hand once more.
Since it was nearly the middle of the night, the hallways weren’t as busy as they usually were. We were halfway to the exit of the palace, about to turn a corner when Xander pulled me back against the wall, pressing me up against it and placing a hand over my mouth.
“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered into my ear, his body heat warming me in places that it definitely shouldn’t have. I stared up into those golden eyes and pressed my legs together.
He glanced down at me, the vein in his neck pulsing wildly. “Don’t do that either, princess. My wolf already wants to fucking tear someone apart. He won’t mind doing it to your dripping little pussy.”
My eyes widened, and I pushed my legs even closer together. “You can…”
He let out a low growl, showing me his canines. I swallowed hard and pressed my lips together. Stop thinking these sinful freaking thoughts about a man you don’t even know. Yet, I couldn’t stop. He was pressing me hard up against the walls, his hardness pressing right against my stomach.
The air was thick between us, his breath against my neck.
Xander looked around the corner and pulled me toward him. “Come on.”
I started forward and tugged my hand out of his, knowing that it was what was making me feel this way about him. It was so rough, so calloused, so strong. He grabbed it back, drawing his claws around the back of my wrist as if he refused to let me go without a scratch.
“A mark,” he said, as if he was reading my mind. A bead of blood dripped from my wrist onto the stone ground. “It’s a mark to let your family know that you’re not theirs anymore. You’re the Wolf King’s.”
When he brought my wrist to his lips and licked the wound, the wound healed almost immediately, closing up as if it was never there. But I saw his mark, that small barely there scar. It was a symbol, a memory of a moment that I’d cherish forever when he was gone.
We continued out the door with him. A thick fog sat heavily in the air on this autumn night, and I heard him thank the Moon Goddess that there was something to cover both his scent and himself as we started through the woods.
After a mile of running in the fog, I stopped him. “I can’t go any further with you.”
“You’re coming with me,” he said, tugging me along.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and staring back at the palace above the trees. Dad and Mom would be awake soon. When they found out about me letting another wolf out, they’d have everyone out trying to find us. And when they found us, they’d kill us both.
He growled loudly, his canines lengthening even more. “You’re coming.”
“I'd rather distract my parents and give you time to escape. I’m going to slow you down.”
“They’ll kill you,” he said.
“As long as you escape, I don’t mind,” I whispered, resting my fingers on his taut abdomen. They tingled. “If I can help one more wolf be free, then I died on the right side of this war.”
Xander stared at me. “I’m not letting you go back.”
He got down onto all fours and shifted into the most beautiful brown wolf I had ever seen. Standing tall and majestically in the forest and under the moon, he was bigger than the elder male wolf that my parents captured. He nodded to his back, gesturing for me to get onto him.
“Xander, I can’t—”
I swear to the Gods, he rolled his eyes, jogged behind me, and shimmied himself between my legs to sit me on his back. I swallowed hard and stared back at the palace. I was really doing this, really leaving this time. I grasped onto his fur to hold myself steady and let him take off into the woods.
Wind whipped my hair back. My heart pounded in my chest. For the first time ever, I felt free. Totally and utterly free from my parents and their strict rule, from the punishments, from the pain. Tears welled up in my eyes but I held them back.
I shouldn’t have been doing this, but I couldn’t get myself to tell him to stop again.
I had wanted to leave for so long, and Xander was forcing me to go with him.
It felt good.
After forty-five minutes of running through the forest, we approached a small settlement of wolves. They stared at us as Xander came to a jog, and I hopped off him when he stopped and started shifting back into his human.
“Are you okay?” I asked, hoping that I hadn’t hurt him.
Some men approached us with clothes. Xander snatched them and tugged them on. “I want our perimeter secure.” He grabbed my hand. “I’m locking the Kingdom’s princess in my chambers until further notice. Don’t bother me. Don’t visit me. What happens to her is my business and my business only.”
My eyes widened when he started to pull me toward a cabin secluded in the woods. “What are you doing?” I asked, shaking my head from side to side. “I was helping you. I… I don’t want to hurt you. My parents don’t care about me. You won’t be able to use me as bait for them or—”
He pushed me into the cabin and locked the door behind us. While the cabin wasn’t cozy at all, there were thick chains attached to the wall and a couch on the other side of the room. He tugged on my wrist with one of his large hands and chained it.
I stared at him with tears forming in my eyes. “Please,” I whispered, trying to keep my other hand out of reach. “Please, don’t do this. I just wanted to help you. I’ve never hurt a wolf in my entire life. I don’t agree with it. I loathe it. I—”
He wrapped his hand around my throat and placed a finger to my lips. “Shh.”
He stepped back and stared at me with those intense eyes. I shifted my weight from foot to foot and looked down at my feet, knowing that the worst was yet to come. Memories from Noel chaining me up floated through my memory.
“Look at me.”
I glanced up at him. He reached forward and pushed my shawl down. “If you want me to stop, all you have to do is ask me. I’m not going to touch you unless you want me to, but since I laid eyes on you, my wolf hasn’t been quiet.”
He stepped closer to me and traced the scars on my shoulders from the torture that Noel had put me through a year ago. He growled low, his canines lengthening.
“He wants to do bad, bad things to you, princess,” he murmured into my ear. My breath hitched, and I swallowed hard, feeling the heat gather in my core. “Bite this pretty little neck of yours…” He grazed his canines against my soft spot, and I moaned. “So everyone knows not to touch his mate ever again,” he growled in my ear. “Your family will pay for what they’ve done to you, but I can’t do anything to them and can’t leave this cabin until you’re marked and you’re mine.”
“Marked and yours?” I whispered, my heart racing in my chest.
“Mine,” he repeated, his breath hitching slightly. “Mine…” The words came out more feral now, more savage, deeper even. “Mine. All mine.” He wrapped a hand around the side of my waist. “Tell me that you’re mine.”
I stared into those golden eyes. “Yours, Alpha. I’m yours.”
His breathing was uneven, chest rising and falling harshly.
“I knew what I was doing when I left with you, knew what I was getting into when I came to help you,” I whispered. “Don’t hold yourself back.” I stared him right in the eyes, challenging him. “Bite me.”
He growled and gently pushed my head to the side, giving himself better access to my throat. After breathing in my scent, he pushed his canines into my neck and sunk them deep inside of me to claim me.
White hot pain pierced my skin for a split second and then it quickly subsided, leaving me with nothing but pure elation. My eyes had snapped shut on the penetration of his teeth, but now, they were wide open. Open and staring deep into the eyes of my mate.
He watched me closely as he licked at the small holes he’d made in my neck. The feeling of his tongue on my skin made me clench my legs together. He noticed my reaction and pushed his knee against my thighs, spreading them apart again.
“My mate doesn’t shy away from me,” he purred, intent dripping from his every word. His hand was still warm against my hip, but his free hand gripped the chains around my wrist and tugged them up. I was instantly pulled closer to him, my head inched upwards so I could see what he was doing.
Before I could do anything more, Xander leaned in and captured my lips with his mouth.
I could still taste the saltiness of my neck on his tongue, but I didn’t mind it. In fact, the longer I was locked in his embrace, the more I found I didn’t want to leave it. He yanked on the chains again and my lips left his, letting out a small sigh at the same time. “Oh, you like that, don’t you, princess?” he lazily whispered next to my ear.
I bit my lip and nodded. I looked back into his eyes and instantly realized the color had changed again. The gold in his eyes was fierce and strong, intimidating yet soothing at the same time. Xander gripped the chains and led me to the cabin wall.
“My wolf and I want to play with you,” he said, leading me to the cabin wall where there was a large hook. “The only problem is that these,” he purred, rustling the chains, “are going to get in the way.”
My eyes widened in surprise. “What kind of game is this?”
He spun me around and lifted my arms high above my head, his hands were soft as he worked them up my arms toward the metal on my skin.
His breath was on the back of my neck as his hands expertly stretched the metal apart at my wrists, freeing me. The chains dropped to the floor in a crash of sound, almost loud enough to break the tension in the room. Xander let out a sigh. “That’s more like it, princess.”
I felt his arms traveling back down my skin, sending goosebumps rocketing to the surface. Moving my hair to the side, the Alpha wolf breathed against the back of my earlobe. “We want to thank you, and there’s only one way I want to show my appreciation to my mate.”
My breath shuddered as his hands roamed down my waist, his fingers were spreading over my skin and leaving trails of lust in their wake. “Xander, if you don’t do something soon, I’m afraid I will.”
He chuckled, his laugh dark and sensual. “Princess, you can’t do a whole lot in the position you are currently in. I can sense how much you want me.”
I moved my head to the side quickly, and this stunned him, forcing him to look up at me. I knew I needed to take advantage of his shock while I had the upper hand. I raised my arms around his neck, linking my hands together behind his head. I sighed, melting against him before kicking my legs out from underneath me. Within seconds, I had wrapped them around his waist from behind me. He sucked in a breath and moved his hands lower on my body.
“You’ve only made my work here easier,” he said, pulling up my nightdress. His hands were on my thighs, but he didn’t stop there. He fell down to his knees, taking me with him and parted my legs with his head from behind, his fingers rubbing at the slickness of my core.
He was inching closer and closer to the one place I needed him more than anything. I was on my hands and knees, knowing if he stopped moving closer, I’d push back and finish the job for him.
He snapped his head back, his tongue licking the path that his fingers had just made, his hands were holding my waist, preventing me from taking advantage of the position. I was withering on my hands, begging to spin around, to touch him. He laughed, and the feeling of his hot breath blowing against my clit was almost too much.
I was about to open my mouth and say something but he plunged his finger inside of me to stop me from talking. I whimpered as his second finger joined, stroking, soothing, and teasing the inside of my pussy.
It wasn’t enough.
I didn’t think it would ever be enough again.
I threw my head back and let out a moan as he hit the sensitive spot deep inside my core. He pumped his fingers in and out of me, moving against my skin again and again at a painfully slow rhythm. His tongue was still flicking against my clit, blowing breath over the places that were already soaked and making my shiver.
A growl ripped from his throat. “We want all of you.”
I looked back into his eyes, my arousal taking hold of my consciousness, and muttered the words, “Take me then.”
He lifted me from my hands off of the floor and pressed me tight against his chest. Once he had me positioned, one of those talented hands secured me in place while the other ripped my nightdress down the center. The shredded pieces fell to the floor like the fading licks of flames from a fire. He grabbed onto my ass and pulled my legs further against his waist. With his hardness pressed tightly against my backside, he gripped my underwear in his hand and ripped it apart, throwing the ribbons of lace to the side in an instant.
“I want to be gentle with you, but my wolf is making it very difficult,” he growled gruffly.
“I want you to enjoy yourself.” I tipped my head back so that my lips were next to his and whispered, “Both of you.”
He grinned, his canines clearly out and sharp. “I’m going to make sure you enjoy yourself, Aria. You’re never leaving and you won’t want to.” In an instant, he’d changed our position, pulling me up with him so that we were both standing. He unbuckled his pants and shoved them down in haste. When he kicked them to the side, I waited in anticipation to feel him.
Moments later, he pressed his chest against my back and his dick against my ass. I never wanted to leave his arms, I was bound into submission. No way was I ever a match for this guy. I’d willingly do whatever he asked of me, and I would enjoy it.
He teased the entrance of my pussy with the head of his cock, before positioning himself and sliding inside slowly. I clenched around him as he filled me in ways I had never been touched before. He rubbed my shoulders with his hands and leaned me backwards to kiss my neck. My whole body tingled from the sensation, and soon, Xander was moving in a steady rhythm inside me. The way his hips hit my ass over and over again with his consistent pushing drove me wild.
He was inching me further forward toward the wall where I could lean against it for support. As soon as my chest hit the wood, he didn’t hold back. Sweat dripped between my breasts as he pounded inside me, growing breathless and shaky as he did.
Something inside me started to swell. My head felt light. A tingling sensation made its way up through my body. I gasped as his fingers found my clit again, rubbing in circular motions as I came undone.
I snapped my eyes shut but Xander gripped my jaw and forced me to watch him.
It was too much. I was going to… I was so close to…
White light shot through my head, and a ringing raged in my ears as I gasped out for air. Wave after wave of pleasure rushed through my body. I shivered as my trembles slowly started to come down from their high.
Soon after, Xander buckled against me and roared into the night, filling me with everything he had.
I took it willingly.
My mate, I thought to myself.
He moved back slightly as he came down from his pleasure high. I moved back, not wanting him to ever leave my body and he captured me in his strong arms. He kissed my wrists where the metal had been previously, his lips lingering on my skin. “You are mine, Aria. You belong to my family, and I promise, I will take care of you. No one will ever chain you again.”
My heart swelled. I had never felt this appreciated before, not even with my own family. I supposed now I had a new home with a man who would always love me. My eyes roamed over his body.
This brave and loving man my parents once called a beast was mine.
And I refused to leave him.
If you loved Princess and the Wolf King you can find more alpha goodness on Emilia’s website and fall into the incredible worlds she creates.