He stepped toward me.
My arm shot sideways. My hand found the iron candlestick on the side table and swept it off the edge. It hit the stone floor with a crash that echoed through the chamber like a cannon shot, bouncing twice, ringing off the walls and down the corridor.
Calvin froze.
Footsteps in the hallway. Urgent voices. A knock. “Luna Princess? Is everything all right?”
His jaw clenched so hard the muscle jumped in his cheek. He scooped his shirt from the floor, yanked it over his head. By the time the servant cracked the door, Calvin was standing three feet from me, hands in his pockets, expression pleasant and vaguely concerned.
“She tripped,” he said. “Knocked the candlestick over. You know how she is – clumsy.”
The servant looked at me. I was shaking, flushed, tears streaming. I probably looked exactly like a clumsy girl who’d scared herself.
“I’m fine,” I managed. “I’d like to go back to my room.”
They escorted me toward the door. Calvin fell into step beside me, and his hand closed around my upper arm – casual, possessive. His grip was iron.
“Say one word about tonight,” he murmured, close enough that only I could hear, “and I’ll destroy your family. Your father’s already mine. But your brother – Ronan, twelve years old, still dreaming about becoming Beta someday?” His voice dropped even lower. “One word from me, and that dream dies. Along with everything else.”
My hand flew to my locket – instant, maternal, as if grabbing the one thing I had left of someone I loved could protect the other.
The blood drained from my face so fast the hallway tilted.
“Be a good girl, Lillian.” He released my arm with a little pat on the shoulder. “And your brother stays breathing.”
He smiled at the servant, nodded politely, and walked away down the corridor whistling.
…
The walk back to the Prince’s chambers was a blur of stone walls and candlelight and my own heartbeat screaming in my ears.
Ronan. My baby brother. Calvin had him – or could get to him. That was all I needed to hear. Whatever Calvin had done or was willing to do, I couldn’t risk finding out by calling his bluff.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. But I had to think, because Ronan’s life depended on it.
The drug was getting worse, not better. Heat pulsed through my body in rolling waves, and my skin burned like I’d swallowed something alive and it was trying to claw its way out through my pores. My wolf thrashed behind the walls my mother had built – frantic, wild, desperate – and the walls were cracking.
I stumbled through the chamber door. The room was dark. The Prince lay exactly where I’d left him, motionless, the faint blue glow of his wolf shimmering at his side.
I didn’t choose to go to the bed. My legs carried me there – not the drug, or not only the drug. Something that had started earlier than that. His body was warm and solid and the only thing in this entire palace that felt safe. My burning skin screamed for touch.
I crawled onto the mattress. I hadn’t taken a full breath since Calvin’s cloth hit my face. I took one now.
Pressed myself against his side. Buried my face into his shoulder and breathed in the clean scent of him – winter air and cedar and something underneath that was just skin, just warmth, and my wolf keened behind her walls, desperate and raw.
My fingers gripped his shirt. My cheek rubbed against his chest. A whimper slipped out that I couldn’t have stopped for anything.
“Please,” I whispered into the dark.
A hand closed around my wrist,”How dare you.”
GRAYSON
I’d been awake for eleven days before the girl arrived.
The ambush that put me in this bed was no accident. Rogue wolves don’t coordinate attacks on the Crown Prince’s route unless someone inside the pack feeds them the schedule. Someone close.
So I kept my eyes shut. Let the doctors prod. Let my parents talk succession plans like I was already dead. My wolf maintained the translucent projection – a guard dog convincing enough to keep everyone distant while I listened and catalogued every voice that entered this room.
Nobody could get close enough to realize the comatose Prince was breathing a little too steadily.
Then the girl walked in. And my wolf – the same beast that had shattered a duke’s daughter’s ribs and broken three Beta warriors’ arms – lay down and wagged its tail like a puppy.
I’d heard the briefings. Lillian, Gamma’s daughter, Shadow Creek Pack. Calvin’s former girlfriend, now his cast- off. Meek. Compliant. A perfect, harmless surrogate.
Harmless girls don’t make my wolf roll over.
I cracked my eyes open for half a second when she first stood over the bed. Cotton dress, bare face, cloth-wrapped boots. She was clutching a locket like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Not what I expected.
Then she told everyone I’d opened my eyes, and I spent the next hour willing her to shut up before she ruined everything. Nobody believed her. Small mercies.
The real problem started tonight.
The chamber door opened. She stumbled in, and the smell hit me before she reached the bed.
Chemical. Sweet and cloying, layered under her natural scent. And something else – feverish heat pouring off her skin that my wolf locked onto like a scent trail in fresh snow.
Drugged. Someone had drugged her.
She crawled onto the mattress. Her fingers gripped my shirt and she pressed her entire body against my side, face burrowing into my shoulder. Shaking. A whimper escaped her throat – small and broken- and my wolf surged so hard I nearly lost my grip on the act.
Mate, my wolf growled. She’s ours. Help her.
I told him to shut up.
“Please,” she whispered against my chest.
She was burning. Her hips shifted against my side – not deliberate. Involuntary. The drug was working through her, and she was losing the fight.
I grabbed her wrist. Hard.
“How dare you.”
Her eyes flew open. Glazed, pupils blown, barely tracking.
I hauled myself upright and pinned both her wrists above her head. She was small under me. Flushed from her collarbones to her hairline. Her cotton dress had ridden up her thighs.
I shut that thought down.
“Who drugged you?”
Her eyes widened. Fear cut through the haze, and she twisted away.
“N-nobody. I don’t – I wasn’t “
Lying. Badly. Her pulse hammered under my fingers, and whatever name she was protecting scared her more than I did.
Her hips rolled up against my thigh. Not at me. Not on purpose. The drug was pulling her muscles into involuntary contractions. My jaw clenched. Blood rushed south. A coil of heat tightened low in my stomach. My wolf was no help – panting inside my skull, feeding me her scent in concentrated bursts.
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