The Wolf King: A Fantasy Romance

Something seems to pass between the two males.

Blake inclines his head. He walks back toward the castle, the breeze ruffling his dark hair.

In the distance, I hear shouting and the thunder of hooves.

“If Magnus tells anyone who she is, I’ll kill you.” Callum is breathing hard, his teeth gritted and his jawline tense.

Even a hundred feet away, Blake hears him, looks over his shoulder, and arches an eyebrow. He says something I can’t hear, and a low growl vibrates in Callum’s chest.

“Don’t you think I know that?” he says. “Just get on with it and be quick.”

Blake’s lips curve, but he walks a little faster and disappears around the castle walls.

Callum is breathing fast. “Stay close to me.”

We hurry across the grass, Callum taking care to keep stride with me. When a cry of pain rattles through the air, he breaks into a run. I chase after him.

I stumble into chaos when I reach the courtyard, and I lose sight of him.

The air is loud with raised voices, and Wolves are gathering. It feels like the hours before a storm—when the air is thick and static—and something is about to break.

A voice to my left shouts something derogatory about my father, another promises to take something from Sebastian and kill it slowly. Another yells that all Southerners will die.

The skin on my arms turns to gooseflesh. The crowd has swallowed me, my shoulders are knocked by big muscular arms, and I catch flashes of weapons and clan colors and eyes filled with hate. I need to find Callum. If these Wolves realize I’m the king’s daughter, I’ll be torn apart.

I don’t think a collar will save me now.

I’m not sure even Callum can. A part of me wonders if he will even notice if they descend upon me. Someone from his clan has been injured. He is distracted. He has more important things to be worrying about than me.

I push toward the center of the crowd and the metallic scent of blood hits me in a wave. My stomach turns. Crimson paints the cobbled stones ahead.

Callum stands deathly still in the eye of the storm.

He says something to Fergus and Becky, the young kitchen maid rescued from Sebastian’s castle. He grabs the pale body slung over one of one of two horses, and holds it over his shoulder. Becky lets out a cry that’s audible, even over all the noise. Her face is streaked with tears and blood.

My heart stills. Ryan.

He is barely breathing. His eyes are closed, and there’s a purple mark across his cheek where he’s been struck. His shirt is drenched with blood and his copper hair is slick with sweat.

I hurry closer, causing a male in a blue kilt closest to the horses to curse at me.

“Watch where you’re going, lass. You—” His nostrils flare, then his features harden. “Human. Hey!” He looks around him. “There’s a southern bitch –”

Callum turns around, and time seems to stop.

A low growl reverberates from his chest, vibrating at such a frequency it rumbles around the courtyard. He has growled a few times in my presence, but this time, it is pure animal.

It reminds me of what he is. A wolf. A killer.

An alpha.

A hush falls over the courtyard.

Eyes flick toward the source of Callum’s displeasure, and the wolf in the blue kilt steps back. The mob looks at me.

The hairs on the back of my neck raise as a whisper passes from mouth to mouth. Human.

I want to run, to hide, but I can’t. I’m surrounded.

A gust of wind sweeps my hair out of my face, exposing my neck.

And the collar.

Another current of emotion passes through the crowd. Someone growls. A female spits on the floor.

“She’s mine,” says Callum.

My mouth dries at the power he commands.

His gaze seeks mine, and I raise my chin. He nods, and I nod in return.

Then time speeds up again. With Ryan over his shoulder, Callum strides toward the castle doors.

“Fergus, go get the healer.” Callum says the word healer as though it tastes bad. “Isla, look after the lass—”

“I’m going with you,” growls Becky.

Isla darts forward, but Callum meets Becky’s determined gaze, sighs, then inclines his head.

“Rory,” says Callum. “This way.”

Isla’s eyes turn to ice when they drop to the collar around my neck. Her lips pinch together.

Callum doesn’t need to tell me twice. Even if I wasn’t surrounded by Wolves who wanted to kill me, I would follow.

Not because of Callum’s stupid collar. Because of the body in his arms—dripping with blood.

I am connected to that boy.

I spared his life, in the dog-fighting ring. I tended to his wounded arm in the kennels. He put me on this path that led to the Kingdom of Wolves. And it was surely my people, looking for me, that did this to him.

He cannot meet his end this way.

“Slut,” Isla mutters as I pass.

I bite back a retort, not wanting to add fuel to an already inflammatory situation.

I feel the eyes of the surrounding Wolves burning into my back as I hurry through the castle entrance. The big oak doors swing shut behind me.

***

I follow the group through the castle.

We pass the kitchens, then head down a stairway to a dark room beneath the castle. We must be in the infirmary. There are shelves filled with small jars and pots along the walls, and a workstation littered with books and herbs and glinting metal tools against one wall.

There are a couple of cots, and Callum gently places Ryan onto one of them. He kneels down beside him and presses against the wound in his side. Blood spills between his fingers.

Ryan’s breathing is raspy, each shuddering breath sounding like it could be his last. Callum looks like he’s in pain.

There’s a strange scent in the air, and the walls close in on me as I recognize it. It smells like death. The pain and the grief and the inevitability of what will come hangs like a shroud over us, and reminds me too much of those hours I spent with my mother before the end.

My heart pounds against my ribs. I don’t know what to do.

Becky, grasping onto Ryan’s hand on the other side of the bed, starts to cry. It’s as if she has realized what is going to happen too.

“Ghealach!” curses Callum. “Why isn’t he healing? He shouldn’t be bleeding this much. Where the fuck is—?”

The door opens, and Blake enters. Despite the obvious animosity Callum holds for the male, some of the tension seems to leave his shoulders.

It’s strange—the power seems to shift in the room, too. Even though Callum is the more muscular of the two males, he seems smaller, somehow, as Blake stalks forward.

“What took you so long?” says Callum.

“Magnus took a little persuading.” Blake kneels beside Callum, and Becky growls as he lifts up one of Ryan’s closed eyelids. “Make that noise at me again and I’ll rip out your tongue.”

Becky looks as if she’s about to launch herself over the cot at him, but Callum raises a blood-slicked hand.

“It’s alright, Becky,” he says. “Blake’s our healer here at Castle Madadh-allaidh.”

I distinctly recall Callum referring to the castle’s healer in a derogatory manner on the way here. Now I know why.

Blake is not what I expected of a healer. He is nothing like the fusty old men who worked for the High Priest and did little to ease my mother’s suffering.

I watch as he unbuttons the cuffs of his sleeves, then rolls them up—revealing corded forearms, and a nasty scar just beneath his elbow.

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask, thinking back to that horrible book of experiments I found in my chambers. “I thought Wolves healed quickly.”

Candles flicker in the infirmary, and the light dances across Blake’s chiseled features. “Come on, you know the answer to that, little rabbit.”

“Why should I?”

Blake clucks his tongue. “So, you’ve wandered into a den of Wolves with no idea what weakens us? That’s not very smart, is it?”

“Now’s not the time, Blake,” growls Callum.

“I expect stupidity from him,” Blake continues. “You. . . no. Small and fragile things cannot afford to be stupid. They’re too easy to break.”

If Callum didn’t have both his hands pressing into Ryan’s side, I think he would have broken Blake. He certainly looks like he wants to—his jawline is hard.

Yet, oddly, beneath the thinly veiled threat, it feels almost as if Blake is trying to give me a piece of advice.

His eyes are glinting as if he’s challenging me to find the answer.

I think back to that book again. There was an experiment that declared a substance that affected a wolf’s ability to heal, and, in large doses, was deadly.

Dread fills me.

“Wolfsbane,” I say.

“Good girl,” says Blake.