Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Every domino so far had been a move. Betrayal. Confession. Murder. Deal. This one wasn’t any of that shit. This one was going to bend every last Beta of Nyros over and make them thank it.

Hold that thought.

Nicholas Shadowfell was running a lockdown the way a wrecking ball runs a birthday party.

Playtime is over motherfuckers.

Louder, for the ones trying to climb out a window.

Every passageway, stairwell, and chimney big enough to hide a body got plugged in Greyhall Crossing.

EXITS? Sealed. Fire hazards.

GATES? Barred like a bankrupt casino.

WINDOWS? Locked. Freedom has been cancelled.

Nobody in. Nobody out. End of discussion.

Forty-seven Alphas who’d just set the continental high-water mark for getting shit done were now experiencing the purest form of institutional blue balls the continent had ever engineered.

Wolves who had been mid-handshake were told to sit the fuck down. Wolves who had been mid-exit were turned around at the gates. Two Betas who had been mid-piss were informed that they could finish, but the door stayed open.

Nicholas’s twelve men and his staff at Greyhall Crossing were not fucking around and the cooperating Alphas filled in the gaps. The uncooperative ones were not stupid enough to challenge it.

Damon: Floors one through three cleared.

Reed: Fourth and fifth are cleared. Found a wheel of cheese just chilling in the hallway.

Damon: Whose cheese?

Reed: Mine now. Focus.

Nicholas was on the fifth floor, moving room to room, checking every shadow like it had just asked him if he was ’sure about that.’

The silence inside his skull was worse than the howling. Howling was just noise. Silence meant the wolf was cooking up something truly fucked.

Every minute she stayed gone was another brick on a coffin lid that was already bowing inward.

He never got to tell her he was sorry or hold her. That’s what his mind kept going back to: him getting to finally lay with her, holding her, then leaving for that council meeting. He didn’t want to leave then. His gut told him no but he did because he had called that damn meeting, the healer was on his way, and she had eight men guarding her door. It should have been fine. But it wasn’t.

He should have put guards in the room with her while he was gone.

He didn’t, because she deserved privacy and that would be over the top. Eight guards was already overkill. That’s what he thought, which was fucking hilarious considering her track record. Overkill his ass.

✦✦✦

DOMINO 53: CSI GREYHALL

GREYHALL CROSSING - STONEHOWL WING 10:35 PM

Reed regarded Gavyn with the mild curiosity of a man observing a puppy square up to a dragon.

Beta boy was insisting on clearing the quarters of an Alpha King who had been expelled from the summit. Bold career move for a man whose rank had been invented this morning.

”They left,” Reed replied.

”Then it’ll be a quick sweep. He openly threatened her. I insist.”

Reed considered this. The kid had a point. Quick sweeps of empty quarters were easy to approve and impossible to argue against. And Reed liked the kid’s energy.

”Knock your socks off. Nick, you want to come for this one?”

Asking Nicholas Shadowfell if he wanted to search the quarters of the man who’d put a blade to his mate’s throat was like asking a starving dog if it wanted the steak. The answer was teeth. And sweeping Stonehowl’s wing beat the hell out of punching another hole in the wall.

Three men hit the Stonehowl corridor at a pace that said one of them was looking for a fight, one was looking for evidence, and one was looking for an excuse to break something that belonged to Tharos Stonehowl.

The wing was empty.

Beds stripped. Wardrobes cleared. Personal effects gone. Armor stands bare. The whole operation had the scrubbed-clean feel of a pack that had vacated with purpose and speed.

Gavyn stopped in the main chamber. Looked around. Something itched.

”How fast did they leave?” he asked.

”Tharos was expelled around eight,” Reed replied, cracking his neck to one side. ”Lockdown went up at ten-thirty.”

”Two and a half hours to pack an entire delegation. Gear, armor, weapons, provisions, and clear out. A pack of that size? That’s fast,” Gavyn said.

Nicholas’s eyes were already doing the math. His jaw was already tightening around the answer.

”That’s suspicious as fuck is what that is,” Reed corrected.

Gavyn ran a hand along the nearest shelf. Clean. No dust disturbance pattern. No rings from cups. No impressions from armor. The room looked like it had never been occupied, which was the problem because it HAD been occupied four hours ago.

”They must have already been packed,” Gavyn said slowly. ”Packing fast always leaves something. This room was cleaned.”

Reed crouched by the hearth. Cold. The ash had been swept.

”The cleaning crew is scheduled for tomorrow,” Reed said. ”Who the hell sweeps a hearth when leaving a summit?”

Gavyn met his eye. ”Someone trying to erase a trail.”

”Bingo.”

Nicholas hadn’t spoken. His fist hit the corridor wall before he made the decision to swing. Stone cracked. His knuckles split. Blood on the wall matched the blood already on his conscience.

”I should have killed the bastard.”

The second that blade touched her throat, he should have killed the fucker. He wanted to then. He was white-knuckling the restrain. But he kept trying to play king while his wolf howled for the axe.

Diplomacy. Coalition-building. The greater good.

The greater good could suck his entire cock because his mate was gone and the man who should have been dead was out there somewhere with a head start.

Reed: He punched another one.

Damon: When we find her, one of us keeps eyes on her at all times moving forward.

Reed: Done.

The Gamma and Beta of Shadowfell said that with the unshakable confidence of men who had never met a problem they couldn’t punch into submission.

Nicholas shook his head.

”I should have killed him.”

”You made the right call at the time,” Reed said, because someone had to and Damon wasn’t in the room.

”No, I should have gone with my gut. I didn’t. I was wrong on that.”

Reed pinched the bridge of his nose. ”So next time, gut first, diplomacy second?”

”Next time there won’t be a next time because I’ll have already killed him.”

”Fair enough.”

Gavyn stood three feet away, watching the most powerful Alpha on the continent bleed on his own walls over a woman Gavyn had also bled for, and felt something shift in his chest.

This man had failed Guinevere in the council chamber. Gavyn knew that. Every Lunaris wolf knew that. But the man standing in front of him wasn’t making excuses. He wasn’t spinning it. He was bleeding and calling it what it was.

Gavyn had never seen an Alpha do that and was starting to understand why every Shadowfell wolf was Nicholas Shadowfell’s ride-or-die.

Reed moved to the third room. Crouched. His boot had nudged something dark on the stone near a writing desk.

A black feather. Long. Unnaturally glossy in a way that caught the torchlight.

”Those bastards,” Reed gritted.

Nicholas’s eyes landed on the feather and his blood ran cold.

Gavyn had already moved to the next room. Thoroughness was the one trait Kael had beaten into him that stuck harder than the rest, and he wasn’t leaving a single door unchecked while his blood was still running hot.

He was halfway through when his nose caught it. Faint. Buried under cold stone and swept surfaces. Something organic, sour, and very fucking wrong.

”What the hell...” he muttered to himself.

He followed it to the closet. A trunk had been shoved in front of the doors, casual enough to pass for lazy packing, deliberate enough to keep them from swinging open.

He moved the trunk. Opened the closet.

”Reed.” His voice carried down the corridor, flat and controlled. ”Alpha Shadowfell.”

Reed’s head appeared in the doorway. ”What.”

Gavyn didn’t look away from the closet.

”There’s a dead Beta in here.”