Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

All day the chain had been collapsing across eight hundred miles of bullshit. Domino fourteen was buried twenty feet deep and had been edging for this moment. Every elder he passed on the way down added something to the pile. By the time Renwick Lunaris hit the stairs, the pile was on fire.

DOMINO 14: THE WRITE-OFF

LUNARIS DUNGEON - 7:10 PM

More than an hour of stalling. Cassian was finally ready to confront whatever hell had visited his keep. Stood. Stretched. Back-pocket key grab. Then he immediately turned into a statue.

Footsteps.

Renwick materialized at the end of the hallway. Stopped dead at Cassian’s bars. Took in the full horror show on his son’s face: the burn, the handprint branded through skin and skull, and didn’t so much as wince.

For one second, relief broke across Cassian’s face like sunrise through clouds. His father was back and would magically unfuck this disaster. Cute.

”Father.”

”I’m going to ask you this once. Why?”

Cassian didn’t flinch.”Treason.”

”Lunaris law requires a written charge, witnessed by two elders, before punishment can be administered for treason. You’ve studied this. I made you study this. Did you file the goddamn charge?”

”Obviously not. Every elder in that room watched her walk in,” Cassian said. ”Every elder saw what I saw. You taught me that when evidence is visible to the court, the charge is redundant. Your words.”

Renwick nodded once.

”So you felt the need to whip her with no charge.”

”False. Article twelve,” Cassian retorted. ”Violation of a ratified contract by a member of the ruling house equals treason against the sovereign and the allied party. I didn’t write the fucking law, Father. You did. I enforced it.”

”Enforced it,” Renwick repeated.

”Yes. She broke a contract with the most powerful military in the world. Not a trade deal. Not a marriage of convenience. A military contract. The penalty for deserting or violating under Lunaris law is flogging or execution. I went with the version that didn’t leave a corpse.”

”Every single step you ignored made the charges dead on arrival,” Renwick replied. ”You had a clean case and you still handled it like a fucking thug.”

”A thug implies I followed no procedure,” Cassian countered. ”The whipping I ordered is legal under the Sovereign Right of Correction. I didn’t order it right out of the gate. It happened after she was blatantly disrespectful and refused to answer a single fucking question in front of two hundred witnesses. She left me no choice. You’re standing there telling me I was too harsh?”

”I am not saying you were too harsh. I don’t care that you hit her. If you had filed the charge, I could defend you. If you had done it privately, I could deny it.”

Cassian opened his mouth. Renwick held up his hand.

”You gave me nothing to work with and two hundred people to work against. You punished her without the paperwork. That means legally, you didn’t punish a traitor. You assaulted a princess and the future queen of Velkaris.”

Cassian’s jaw flexed. ”If I punish her privately, the pack hears rumors. Rumors mutate. Half the Keep thinks she’s a traitor and the other half thinks I covered for her.”

Renwick’s expression didn’t change. Zero reaction. Absolute ice.

”You spit in her face as well.”

”She wouldn’t answer any questions,” Cassian replied. ”Full court watching. Right after the lashes. Then she decided to start dropping proverbs on me. What would YOU have done if a subordinate violated a military contract, refused to answer or give any context, and was acting defiant during sentencing?”

”I can spin a whipping as justice, Cassian. I cannot spin spit. One is policy. The other is personal. Which one do you think they’ll remember? You spit in the face of a woman who was cuffed, bleeding, and on her knees and whose husband commands an entire continental army.”

Renwick paused, letting out a breath. ”Every mark you put on her is a line item in a negotiation I now have to win twice.”

”She showed up in the arms of a man who wasn’t her husband wearing HIS clothes,” Cassian snapped. ”Do you understand those political ramifications if I would have allowed it? I had to make a decision with what I had, and what I had was a missing princess, a broken alliance, an Alpha missing, and two hundred wolves watching to see if their regent had a spine.”

Cassian’s breathing was getting faster. His hands were in fists.

”A spine, maybe. Except half of your face is burned as a receipt. Every person who sees it will ask how you got it. Every answer leads back to what you did. You’re a walking billboard for your own fuck-up, and your own idiocy put it there.”

Cassian’s eyes were filling. His jaw was shaking. The burn on his face was pulling at the muscles underneath and the pain was visible.

”You always favored her. I’ve been to war and have bled for this pack. She has done nothing.”

Cracked. Broken. Straight-up wrecked. The voice of a son who’d been rehearsing this for two decades and decided now, right goddamn now, was the perfect time to drop it.

”She stutters through a sentence and you build her a tower. I run your kingdom for three years without a single failure and you don’t even mention it. I have fought and bled for this kingdom since I was fifteen years old. Meanwhile she was lying about even having a wolf and we both know it. I have my face burned and have been in a dungeon and it cancels out the battles, the military service, the duty I have upheld for my entire life.”

Cassian was tear-streaked and yelling at this point.

Renwick stood motionless through the entire eruption.

”I didn’t favor her, Cassian. I raised you as the heir. I raised her as an investment. She needed protecting and you needed managing. Protecting is an investment. Managing is an expense. At this point, you are a sunk cost. And I don’t hold sunk costs.”

He turned and moved back towards the steps, done with this conversation.

”Correction,” Cassian shot back. ”She was just the dividend you couldn’t let go of because every time you look at her you see that woman.”

His eyes were wet but his face was furious, and the two were at war with each other.

Renwick stopped, but did not turn around. ”You are no son of mine.”

Six words. Delivered to the dungeon wall. He continued walking towards the stairs.

He was halfway up the steps when Cassian screamed after him.

”If I’m a sunk cost, then I have nothing left to lose. And men with nothing to lose are the ones you taught me to fear.”

Renwick didn’t pause for even a fucking second.

Cassian held his ground in the cell, sucking wind, staring at the empty stretch of hallway with the face of a man who’d just watched his last hope walk out and not look back.

Two minutes of silence passed. The prisoners didn’t speak. The torch on the wall crackled once.

Then he pulled the key from his pocket.

The lock turned. The door swung. He hit the stairs at Alpha speed.

DOMINO 15: DIBS

GREYHALL CROSSING - EAST WING - 7:20 PM

The chamber doors parted and Guinevere understood immediately she was trespassing in someone else’s fantasy. Every surface, every object, every last arrangement had been staged for a prince currently cooling his heels in a dungeon cell.

It was the largest chamber in the wing. Central. Corner position with large bay windows. A bed built for a king. A bathing chamber larger than her quarters in Lunaris.

On the bright side, their supplies had arrived after all. Cassian hadn’t fucked that up. Bread. Cheese. Wine. Dried meats.

Cassian’s armor was on a stand beside the wardrobe. Full ceremonial. Blade included. The kind of armor a prince wore to a summit. His crown was laid out next to it, along with his green Lunaris cape.

What Guinevere wasn’t aware of was at this exact moment, eight hundred miles away, her brother was just written off by her father, and her brother was about to do something extremely fucking stupid.