Princess Dia had spent twenty-three years avoiding the slave auctions. Today, her luck ran out. The stench of the auction house hit her as she followed her sister through the narrow stone corridor—sweat and fear and unwashed bodies packed too close together. “Are you certain you want to do this?
” Fana asked. “We can still turn back, sister. No one would think less of you. ”
Dia’s throat tightened.
That was a lie, and they both knew it. Her father, the king, would think less of her. “I’m fine,” Dia said. They emerged into the main auction hall, and Dia’s breath caught.
The space was vast, a stone chamber with tiered seating rising on all sides, aristocrats filling every seat. Below, at the center of it all, stood a raised wooden platform lit by torches—the auction block. Dia’s steps faltered. The auctioneer’s voice carried over the crowd’s jeers and catcalls as he called out numbers.
“This way. ” Fana guided her toward the royal box. Their father was already there, King Addis seated on a throne-like chair with his advisers flanking him. He didn’t look at Dia as she approached.
He rarely did anymore. Dia sank into her designated seat and forced her face into the mask she had been practicing for months. The ice princess, the servants called her. Cold and untouchable.
Below, a woman was sold to a leering merchant who yanked her off the stage by her chains. Dia swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She could feel Fana watching her, assessing her. More slaves were brought forward.
Men, women—each one treated as less than human. Their bodies inspected like horses at market. Their defiance beaten out of them with whips and chains. “You’re doing wonderfully,” Fana whispered, leaning close.
“See, it’s not so terrible. ”
Dia only nodded, not trusting her voice. The auctioneer’s voice rang out again, announcing the next lot. Something in his tone was different now—a mixture of fear and excitement that made the crowd lean forward.
Dia’s father straightened in his chair. “Shifters! ” King Addis said, and the word dripped with such hatred that Dia felt it like a slap. The crowd erupted.
People rose from their seats, shouting and jeering, straining to see. Dia’s heart hammered as two figures were dragged onto the stage. Two men, both in chains so heavy they should have been unable to stand. The first was built like a warrior who could break a man in half with his bare hands.
His golden hair caught the torchlight as he struggled against his chains, every muscle straining as though he wanted nothing more than to tear free and slaughter everyone in the room. His eyes burned with rage, flicking protectively toward his companion every few seconds. The second man was tall, all lean muscle and sharp angles, his hair nearly black. When he lifted his head, his eyes were the most striking blue she had ever seen—pale as winter ice.
Those eyes swept across the crowd with utter contempt, as though everyone here was beneath his notice. Where the first man was barely leashed fury, the second was cold disdain. Dia’s breath came faster. She had heard stories about shifters her entire life.
Monsters, her father called them. But these two men didn’t look like monsters. They looked like warriors. Powerful and dangerous and utterly magnificent, even in chains.
“Mindless beasts,” Fana muttered beside her, waving one elegant hand. The crack of a whip split the air. Both men jerked as leather bit into their backs. The dark-haired one didn’t make a sound, but his jaw clenched so hard Dia could see the muscle jumping.
The golden-haired one snarled and lunged forward. Another crack drove him back. Dia’s hands clenched into fists beneath the table. Showing horror would help no one.
She had learned that lesson years ago, watching her father’s transformation from loving to cruel. “Sister. ” She turned to find Fana watching her, those striking green eyes searching her face. “You’re being so strong.
Not long ago, you would have cried for these monsters. ”
She reached over and squeezed Dia’s hand, then turned to their father. “Right, father? Isn’t Dia doing wonderfully?
”
Dia glanced at him, searching against her better judgment for some trace of the man who had once read her bedtime stories, who had gifted her a pet fox and shown her how to care for it with gentle hands. King Addis barely spared her a look. “Indeed,” he said, cold and impersonal. Dia looked away, swallowing past the tightness in her throat.
“Now then. ” The king leaned forward. “What to do about these rebel scum? ” He stroked his beard.
“Too dangerous to let live, perhaps. I’m not sure I want anyone buying them. ”
The crowd murmured in agreement. “Father.
” Fana’s voice was smooth. “Dia should have one. Her own slave to break. She’s ready for it.
”
Dia’s heart stopped. “Dia? ” A harsh laugh escaped the king. “She wouldn’t even hurt a pet bird.
”
“I am entirely serious. ” Fana’s smile never wavered. She turned to Dia, her green eyes bright. “Go on, sister.
Pick one. ”
Dia stared at her, unable to move. Pick one. Pick one of those men like they were horses at market.
“Well. ” The king’s gaze settled on her. “If you think you’re ready. You did show up today without crying, I might add.
”
“She won’t cry, father. ” Fana’s voice was firm. “Go on, Dia. ”
Dia’s legs felt like water as she forced herself to stand.
The hall seemed to tilt around her, hundreds of faces turning to stare. The king’s voice boomed across the hall. “My firstborn will choose one of these beasts to serve as her slave. ”
On the stage below, both men turned to look at her.
The golden-haired one spat something in a language she didn’t understand—words that could only be curses. Dia looked to the dark-haired man. The one with the blue eyes. And those eyes found hers.
Her breath stopped. For one impossible moment, the chaos of the auction hall faded. The jeering crowd, the stench, the horror of it all—everything disappeared except those pale blue eyes locked on hers. His expression shifted just for a heartbeat.
The cold contempt flickered, replaced by something she couldn’t name. He stared at her as though she were a puzzle he couldn’t solve. Then guards descended on them, armored hands forcing both men to their knees. “Which one would you like as your pet, daughter?
” Her father’s voice made her flinch. His next words turned her blood to ice. “And which one would you like to die? ”
Dia froze.
“What? ”
The king’s smile was cruel. “I’ll spare one for you. But I will not keep a second in the palace.
Too much risk. ” He paused. “So pick which one lives, daughter, and which one dies. ”
“Father, I—”
A memory flashed: her father reading to her by candlelight when she was small, his voice gentle as he turned the pages of her favorite storybook.
Her father who had loved her once, before he had become this stranger wearing her father’s face. Fana’s voice cut through it like a knife. “Go on, sister. Pick one.
”
Then Fana rose from her seat, a radiant smile spreading across her beautiful face, and began to clap. “Pick one,” she called out, laughing. A few nearby joined in. Then more.
Then more. Within seconds, the entire hall had taken up the chant. “Pick one. Pick one.
Pick one. ”
Dia looked down at the stage, at the two men kneeling in chains, both bleeding now from the guards’ rough handling. One of them would live. One of them would die.
And she would be the one to choose. —
The chanting pounded in Dia’s ears like war drums. Pick one. Pick one.
Pick one. She stared down at the two men on the stage. One would live. One would die.
There had to be another way. “Which one, daughter? ” her father said. The dark-haired man’s eyes were still locked on hers, and she could not look away.
Then his companion lifted his head, and his voice carried across the silent hall. “It doesn’t matter which one of us dies today, human king. ” He bared his teeth in something that was not a smile. “We will not stop.
Your tyranny ends. ”
Her father’s face purpled, but before he could speak, Fana laughed. “Oh, I like this one. ” She leaned forward.
“I’d keep him. He’d be much more fun to break. ”
The king nodded slowly. “This one, then.
” He gestured to the golden-haired man. “Kill the other. ”
“No. ” The word tore from Dia’s throat before she could stop it.
The hall fell silent. She had spoken on pure instinct, and now she had to make it mean something other than weakness. “Both,” she said, forcing her voice cold as winter ice. “I’ll take them both.
”
Her father opened his mouth, but she pressed on. “I’ve never been interested in breaking a man before, but I thought it might amuse me to break two beasts instead. Surely that proves my strength better than one. ”
The crowd murmured, intrigued now rather than jeering.
Her father’s suspicion melted into something almost proud. He nodded to the auction master. “Very well. Both slaves to the princess.
”
Relief flooded her so suddenly she felt dizzy. She turned to Fana and forced a smile. “And you can always help me with one of them, sister. If I find myself overwhelmed.
”
Fana’s smile was radiant. “We’ll see. I’m sure you’ll do wonderfully on your own. ” She squeezed Dia’s hand.
“I’m so proud of you. ”
The words should have warmed her. Instead, they sat like stones in her stomach. —
An attendant led her through the winding corridors beneath the auction house, the crowd fading into the drip of water and the distant echo of screams.
Dia clasped her trembling hands and tried to look confident. She had saved them. That was the important part. Except she had no idea what to do with two wolf shifters who looked at her like she was everything they hated.
No idea how to help them without revealing it, which would get them killed the moment Fana or her father discovered the truth. The attendant opened a heavy door onto a preparation chamber—stone walls, iron rings, chains. Both men were there, being bound by guards with weapons drawn. The golden-haired one was still struggling, his muscles straining, his body radiating raw power.
The dark-haired one stood beside him, and Dia’s breath caught. Something was wrong. There was a glassiness to his pale eyes, and when a guard jerked his chains, his balance wavered before he caught himself. The golden-haired one noticed too.
“Hector,” he said, low and urgent. “Brother, you need to—”
A guard backhanded him. “Silence. ”
When the dark-haired man’s gaze landed on Dia, she felt it like a touch.
Heat blooming in her chest, the chaos of the room falling away. But she could see the fever brightness in his eyes now, the tremor in his hands. He was ill, standing there proud and defiant, pretending to be fine. An attendant bowed.
“Your Highness, what would you like us to do with them? ”
Dia’s mind went blank. “Princess Fana would typically take them to the dungeons first,” he offered. “To establish dominance.
”
“Or let them starve a few days,” said another. “Makes them more manageable. ”
She opened her mouth, closed it. “Unless you’d prefer to use them as your lovers,” the first said, casual as the weather.
“Princess Fana enjoys the attractive ones that way. ”
Heat flooded her face. Her eyes flew to the dark-haired man before she could stop them. His gaze traveled over her—not leering, but assessing, as though suddenly seeing her as a woman rather than an enemy.
Even fevered, the look sent heat coursing through her. “I—I don’t—” Mortification stole her words. Then he swayed more noticeably. His hand shot to the wall, his lips parted as though to speak, and then his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.
“Hector! ” The golden-haired one lunged, chains snapping taut, jerking him back. Dia’s heart lurched. She crossed the chamber toward the fallen man without thinking.
“Don’t touch him,” she cried out. “I’ll—” She hesitated. “I’ll take him to my chambers. I’ll use his wounds against him.
Perhaps I’ll learn a thing or two about shifter constitution. ”
A guard glanced at another. “It’s not like he can shift with the collar on, Your Highness. ”
Dia knelt and reached for Hector’s throat to check his pulse.
It raced beneath her fingertips—far too fast. The golden-haired one’s voice cracked with fury and fear. “Get your hands off him, you monster. ”
Dia looked up, trying to convey with her eyes what she could not say.
*I’m going to help him. Please understand. * But he only looked more furious, struggling until blood ran down his wrists. “We’ll break this one for you in the meantime, Princess,” a guard said.
Three of them held the golden-haired man’s chains now, straining. “No. ” Dia stood. “It’s up to me to break him, not you.
”
“It’s your first time, Your Highness. And this one is strong. ”
“They’re right, sister. ” A feminine voice cut through.
Dia spun. Fana stood in the doorway. “Don’t start with two at once,” she said gently. “It’ll be too much for you.
” She turned to the guards. “Take this one to the cells. ”
Dia looked at the golden-haired man, at the wildness in him, then down at Hector, vulnerable at her feet. *I want to help you both,* she thought.
“Keep him locked up,” she said, forcing steel into her voice. “But don’t hurt him. ”
Fana raised an elegant eyebrow. “I want to break him myself,” Dia scrambled.
“I said I would. ”
Her sister softened at once. “That’s very brave of you. ” She crossed to the golden-haired man and seized him by the chin, forcing him to meet her gaze.
He growled low and dangerous. Fana only smirked. “Take him to the cells. Be careful with this one.
”
As the guards dragged him out, he looked back at his fallen friend. “Hector, I’ll come for you. Just hold on. ”
Then he was gone.
Fana leaned close, her voice dropping. “If you need advice on how to break a man, sister, you know where to find me. ”
—
Dia’s chambers felt different with an unconscious wolf shifter sprawled across the floor. The moment the door closed, she dropped to her knees beside him.
“Wake up,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Please wake up. ”
He did not respond. He was shaking badly, his breathing shallow and rapid, his lips faintly blue.
She pressed her hand to his forehead and nearly jerked back at the heat. Fever—dangerously high. She ran for water, lifted his head, got a few sips into him before his head lolled. At first, she wondered if the collar was hurting him, but his friend had worn one too and seemed fine.
This was something else. She began unlacing his torn trousers, her hands clumsy. She had never undressed a man before, but this was life and death. She peeled the fabric away, and despite the fear clawing at her throat, she could not help noticing the body beneath—all lean muscle and smooth skin marked by scars.
Heat crept into her cheeks. She had never felt anything like this. This pull toward a man’s body, toward *his* specifically. The intensity of it frightened her.
She forced herself to look past it. There, just beneath his ribs on the left, a wound she had almost missed. Dark and seeping, the flesh around it angry and swollen. “I’m no healer,” she told him, her voice breaking.
“I’m sorry. I’ll do my best. ”
She cleaned the wound as gently as she could, wincing at each whimper she drew from him. Hours passed.
Cool cloths, more water, fresh poultices. Nothing helped. If anything, he worsened. She wondered if he’d been poisoned.
His friend—the golden-haired one who had called him brother—would know what shifters needed to heal. She was pressing a fresh cloth to his forehead when his hand shot up and caught her wrist. Dia gasped. His eyes had opened—striking blue, but unfocused now, glazed with fever.
“Who? ” His voice was barely a whisper. “Who are you? ”
She should say something cold.
Instead, she answered honestly. “I’m trying to help you. ”
His eyes searched her face. Then something flickered there, and his grip tightened, desperate.
“I know you,” he breathed. “No,” she whispered, even as her hand covered his, pressing his palm to her cheek. “We’ve never met. ”
But his thumb stroked across her cheekbone.
“I know you. I’ve always known you. ”
Then his eyes rolled back, his hand fell away, and he was unconscious again. Dia sat frozen, her wrist tingling, her cheek burning.
—
Dia did not sleep. She sat beside Hector through the night, changing the cloth on his brow. By gray light, she had made her decision. She could not save him alone.
The thing in that wound was beyond her. She needed someone who had stood in battle beside this man, who would know what blade had opened his side and what poison had been left in it. She needed the golden-haired one. But the guards reported to her sister, the servants reported to her sister, and her sister had ordered him to the cells.
If Dia breathed the golden man’s name to an attendant, Fana would know. So she would not ask quietly. She would demand him in front of everyone. Her father sat ruddy with wine, Fana at his right in crimson.
When Dia entered, for once his eyes did not slide past her. “There she is, my new huntress. Come, sit. ”
She let them eat, laughed in the right places.
Then she set down her cup with a deliberate click. “I find I am bored, father. My new pet has been a disappointment. ” She turned the cup idly.
“But I bought two, and tonight I have an appetite for the other. ”
Her father barked a laugh. “There is the spirit I have waited twenty years to see. ” He snapped his fingers at the steward.
“Bring up the second wolf. ”
They brought him in chains. Four guards—and even four did not make it look easy. He came through the doors with his head high.
Then his eyes found Dia, and the contempt turned to something far worse. *I am on your side,* she wanted to scream. *Please understand. *
She lifted her chin and let her painted mouth curve.
“There he is, my fierce one. ”
The guards forced him to his knees a few feet from her chair. She rose, took the chain at his collar, and wound it once around her hand. “You are not whimpering yet,” she said.
“I am almost impressed. ”
“Touch me again,” he said very low, “and I will take your hand off at the wrist. ”
He meant it. She made herself smile.
“You see? ” She glanced back at her father. “He still has some fight in him. I do prefer them with a little fight.
”
She tightened the chain, drawing his face up an inch, and lowered her voice. “Let us see how long it lasts. Kiss me. ”
Incredulity broke through his fury.
“What? ”
“You heard me. ” She pulled the chain tighter and felt the absolute refusal in every line of him. He would die before he did it.
She leaned down close, as though to murmur a last cruelty in his ear. “Please,” she murmured, “for your friend. He is alive, but I cannot save him alone. I am begging you.
”
She drew back. His eyes had changed—the fury still there, but behind it the first faint crack of doubt. She let him see, for one unguarded instant, the terrified girl beneath the paint. Then he closed the distance and kissed her.
It was careful and deliberate. His mouth startlingly warm, soft where the rest of him was hard angles. His chained hands did not move. He kissed her in a way that looked to every watching soul like submission.
It did not feel like submission. Her eyes fell shut without her permission, heat rushing through her—sudden and shameful. The hall erupted in laughter and applause. She did not hear most of it.
“Well. ” She turned to her father, amazed her voice worked. “I think I shall take this one to my chambers after all. He shows promise.
”
Fana’s eyes flashed. For a long moment, Dia thought she would refuse. Then her sister smiled. “As you wish.
But do be careful. That one bites. ”
“I am counting on it,” Dia said, and let him out. She kept her spine straight all the way through the corridors, aware with every step of the enormous silent presence behind her—the fact that he could break the chain and break her with it, and had not.
She reached her chambers, drew him inside. “I am so sorry,” she said in a rush. “The kiss, the chain, the things I said. I had to.
I could not ask for you quietly. My sister had forbidden it. ”
He stared at her as though she had begun speaking a foreign tongue. Then his gaze moved past her, to the man on the rug—dark hair clinging to a fevered brow, chest rising and falling in shallow, rattling breaths.
Everything in his face changed. “Hector. ”
He was across the room before she could speak, dropping to his knees with a sound half a name and half a sob. “I’m here.
I’ve got you. ” He pressed two fingers beneath Hector’s jaw, found the pulse, and his shoulders shuddered with relief and terror both. “Gods, what have they done to you? ”
“It is a wound beneath his ribs,” she said.
“It has gone bad. I do not know what shifters need, what blade did this, whether there was poison. ” Her voice broke. “He woke once.
Only once. ”
The golden-haired man looked at her across his dying friend’s body. “You truly are trying to save him,” he said. “Yes.
I swear it. Will you help me, please? ”
For a long moment, he simply looked at her. Then he turned to Hector, his hands going to the bandage with the swift, sure confidence of a man who had done this on a hundred battlefields.
—
The poison had a name. The golden one, whose name was Ajax, gave it to her. “Nightshade,” he said. “They’ve blooded their blades with it.
We’re not saving him by draining the wound. We’re only buying him time. ”
“Then what saves him? ” she asked.
“An antidote for the poison. Any alchemist worth the name would have it. ” He paused. “Of course, any alchemist in this palace would sooner spit on a dying wolf than cure one.
”
“I’ll get it,” Dia said. “Whatever it is. ”
He studied her a long moment, then huffed something almost like a laugh and turned back to Hector. “Get some rest, Princess,” he said.
“I’ll watch him. ”
She did not rest. She woke to sunlight and a new problem. Two maids came each morning to tend her fire.
Dia sat bolt upright. “Ajax—the maids. They come in the mornings. They’ll be here any moment.
”
He raised a golden brow from where he sat against the bed, insultingly relaxed. “All right. ”
“And when a noble woman buys a slave like you, they assume you are not for breaking,” she said. “That you are for—” She paused.
“For her bed. ”
A slow, delighted grin spread across his face. “They think I’m your bed slave? ” He asked.
“And we have to make them go on thinking it? ”
“Yes,” she groaned. “Will you stop enjoying this? ”
“No,” he said.
His eyes traveled over her. “The question is whether you can pull it off. Forgive me, but you don’t smell like a woman much acquainted with a good time. ”
“You cannot smell—”
“I’m a wolf,” he said.
“I can smell a racing heart. Yours is racing now. And not because you’ve ever once had a man on his knees for you and meant it. ”
“I can do it,” she said, and it came out high and fast.
“If we can’t make this look right—because if not—” His voice gentled. “Breathe, Princess. ”
She stopped. She was very nearly in tears, and the great warrior on her floor was looking at her with something softened out of mockery.
“You’re really not doing this for sport,” he said quietly. “No,” she said. He sighed. “All right.
You’re the Princess. You own me. You just have to look thoroughly satisfied and not at all surprised about it. Can you manage smug?
”
“Possibly,” she said. “Think of something you’re proud of,” he said. Despite everything, a small hysterical laugh escaped her. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
“There, that,” he said. “When they come in, you let me do the work. All you have to do is not blush like a maiden at her first dance. ”
The latch rattled.
Ajax moved—fluid and certain—sinking to his knees at her feet, golden head bowed, one hand circling her ankle through her skirts. He turned his face up with such open, hungry devotion that her breath caught. It was a performance. Her body did not appear to know that.
“My lady,” he murmured, his thumb stroking the bone of her ankle. “Tell me what you want. ”
The maids had frozen in the doorway. Dia found the laugh still under her skin and let it tilt her mouth into something almost smug.
“Later,” she said. “I am not finished with you yet. ”
One maid made a small sound. They busied themselves with the fire, cheeks pink, and within minutes they had fled, whispering.
The instant the door closed, she snatched her hand off his head. Ajax looked up with the most enormous, wicked grin she had ever seen. “‘Later, I’m not finished with you yet,'” he repeated, savoring it. “Not bad, Princess.
”
“Do not,” she said, pressing cool hands to her burning face. “Ever speak of this again. ”
He laughed, full and warm. She did not tell him she liked the sound.
—
Getting the tincture, Ajax decided, meant bargaining, not buying. “Find a maid who runs errands outside the palace,” he said. “Offer her an evening with me. She fetches your tincture, no royal name attached.
”
“You would do that? ”
“I’d do considerably worse,” he said seriously, looking at his friend. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Nothing.
” The grin flickered back, gentler. “Besides, I’m told I’m very charming. ”
They staged it for the afternoon maid, Pel. When they heard her footsteps, Ajax pulled Dia onto the bed, and then somehow she was straddling him, chains pooling on the coverlet, his huge warm body bare to the waist beneath hers, the door opening.
“We have to make it believable,” he murmured, his hands settling at her waist. “Breathe. You’re doing fine. ”
She was not doing fine.
She was acutely aware of the heat of him, the hard muscle under her hands, the strength in the fingers at her waist. He looked up with that hungry devotion. But they were close now, and somewhere in the looking, the performance and the thing itself blurred. His thumb moved against her waist.
She did not think it was for the maid. The door clicked shut. She started to climb off. “Wait,” he said.
His hands held her. “She’s still in the doorway. Stay a moment. ”
So she stayed and felt his heart beating under her palm, and she did not look at his face because she did not trust what her own would do.
The tincture came two days later, and it worked. They gave Hector the antidote at dusk—Ajax cradling his friend’s head in one massive arm with a gentleness that broke something open in Dia’s chest. “He’ll live,” Ajax said quietly. “Thanks to you.
”
“Thanks to us,” she said. And because there was nothing left to do but wait, they talked. “Why does your king hate us so much? ” Ajax asked.
Their backs were against the bed, Hector asleep beside them. “He hates us like a man hates something that was done to him. And I can’t work out what we ever did. ”
“He was not always like this,” she said.
“When I was small, he was kind. He read to me. He kept an injured fox we found in the gardens and told me a king’s first duty was mercy. ” Her voice wavered.
“And then—he changed so slowly I almost did not see it. The mercy went out of him. It is as though something reached inside him and left a stranger wearing his face. ”
“We’re not what you’ve been told,” Ajax said after a moment.
He looked at Hector. “We’d die for the ones who are ours. Especially him. He carries the whole weight of our people and never asks to put it down.
”
“He nearly died coming here. ” He stopped. “My prin—”
Dia looked at him. *Prince,* she thought.
*He nearly said “prince. “*
“I know he is worth saving,” she said quietly. “Both of you. Which is why, when he can run, I am going to get you both out of here.
”
Ajax went still. “You’d do that,” he said. “I would. ”
He had shifted closer without her seeing.
“Most people know what’s right and do nothing because it’s hard,” he said. “But you—” He leaned in. Her eyes drifted closed. His hand came to her cheek, his thumb brushing her jaw, and she tilted her face toward his.
“And what? ” said a voice like cracking ice. “What is happening here? ”
They sprang apart.
Hector was awake, his pale blue eyes moving between them with a cold, dawning fury. —
Ajax broke first, scrambling to Hector’s side. “You’re awake. You’re really awake.
Gods, Hector, you’ve been burning up for days, I thought—”
“I asked a question,” Hector said. Ajax flinched like a boy caught out by someone whose opinion mattered more than anyone’s in the world. “It’s not—she’s been helping us, Hector. You’d have been dead days ago if she hadn’t.
”
Hector turned his head and looked at Dia for the first time since he had woken. She had been waiting for it. She had been braced for it, and still it hurt. There was nothing of the auction stage in it now—none of the confusion, none of the unwilling fascination, none of the desperate, fevered tenderness.
He looked at her the way her father looked at the things he meant to be rid of. She gathered herself. “I am glad you are feeling better,” she said. “Does your wound still pain you?
I could change the dressing if—”
“What do you want? ” Hector interrupted. Dia blinked. “What?
”
“What do you want? ” Hector’s gaze did not waver. “Ajax may believe you. He’s always been easily led by a pretty face, but I am not him.
No one does anything for nothing—especially not your kind. So tell me plainly, Princess. What is it you want? ”
Dia gaped.
“Nothing,” she said. “It—it just seemed like the right thing—”
“The right thing. ” Hector said it as though the words were absurd. “Enough,” Ajax said.
He turned to Dia, and to her surprise, the easy confidence was gone. “Sweetheart, could we—” He stopped. “Could we have a moment? The two of us, to talk alone?
”
“Oh. ” Dia glanced between them. “Yes, of course. ”
Hector pushed himself up another inch.
“You’re going to leave two enemy shifters alone together in a room while neither of us is so much as bound? ”
Ajax’s grin came back. “She will,” he said. “Because she’s nice.
Have you heard of ‘nice’? It’s a thing some people are. ”
“You are entitled to your privacy,” Dia told Hector quietly. Hector’s gaze snapped back to her.
“And would you say we’re also entitled to our freedom, Princess? ”
“Yes,” Dia said. “And I am going to give it to you. Both of you.
”
For just a moment, something flickered behind the ice in Hector’s eyes. Surprise, perhaps. Then his jaw set. “Leave us,” he said.
Dia could hardly wander the palace at this hour, so she did the only thing she could. She stepped into the adjoining dressing room. “I cannot believe you,” Hector said. “I’m out for two seconds, and I wake to find you tangled up with the human princess like a lovesick pup.
”
“I was trying to save your life,” Ajax argued. “You were dying, Hector. Do you understand that? And Dia—she’s been bleeding herself dry to keep you alive.
Why are you being like this? ”
“Why am I? ” A sharp, disbelieving breath. “Are you serious right now?
Have you forgotten why we’re here? ”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” Ajax said, quieter now, almost stung. “Then keep your focus. And stop messing around with the first warm body that smiles at you.
” A beat. “It’s beneath you. ”
Silence. When Ajax spoke again, the swagger had drained entirely out of him.
“Yes, Alpha,” he said, then recovering some of himself: “And you’re welcome, by the way. ”
“Ajax—”
“No, truly. Your gratitude is, as always, overwhelming. Truly, I’m moved.
”
“Fine,” Hector snapped. “I’m grateful. Are you content? ”
“You don’t sound grateful.
”
Dia heard a groan. “What? ” Ajax pursued. “It was difficult getting that antidote, I’ll have you know.
Required a great deal of personal sacrifice on my part. ”
There was a beat of silence. “You slept with some maid in exchange for it, didn’t you? ” Hector asked.
“No,” Ajax said immediately. A pause. “Well. Maybe.
”
The silence that followed was so complete that Dia held her breath. And then, finally, stripped of all the ice, all the disdain, came a tone that she suspected very few people had ever been allowed to hear:
“Thank you. ”
“You’re welcome,” Ajax said softly. A pause.
“Now—thank Dia. She’s obviously listening at the door. She’s far too nice to actually leave. ”
Dia clapped both hands over her mouth.
There was a long, eloquent silence from the other room. —
The days that followed were, Dia decided, the strangest of her entire life. She was a princess of the realm with two enormous wolf shifters living in her bedchamber. She could not get rid of them, and she had not the faintest idea how she was going to get them out of the palace alive.
Beside that, there was the tension between the two wolves. Hector and Ajax circled each other with a low, constant friction—Hector cold and withholding, Ajax needling him one second and going quiet and wounded the next. The two of them like a long-married couple in the middle of a quarrel neither would name. “You stare at him a great deal,” Ajax observed one evening, sprawled against the wall, watching Dia watch Hector across the room.
Dia startled. “I—no. ” She cleared her throat. “I am only checking whether the wound is healing well.
”
Ajax grinned. “Well enough for what, though, sweetheart? Well enough to be your next bed slave? ”
Across the room, Hector’s head came up.
His pale eyes found Dia’s and held them. The worst part was that she could not look away. “No,” she croaked. “For the escape.
So I know when he is strong enough to run. ”
“The escape? ” Ajax repeated, delighted. “Of course,” Hector growled, low and short, aimed at the charged space between all three of them.
Ajax’s grin widened as though it confirmed something. “I do not understand the two of you at all,” Dia said. “No,” Ajax agreed cheerfully. “You don’t.
”
—
She woke that night with a dry throat. The room was washed in thin blue moonlight, and Dia slipped from bed and crossed the cold floor in her nightgown. Ajax was asleep in the far corner, sprawled and dead to the world. She stepped around him toward the table where the water stood.
She did not hear Hector move. One moment she was reaching for the carafe. The next there was a hand around her wrist. Her back met the wall, and Hector was there, caging her.
“What do you want? ” he said. “No performance, no audience. Just you and me.
What do you really want from us? ”
“Nothing,” she replied. “I want to help you. ”
“Why?
”
“Because it is wrong, what is being done to your people. ” She lifted her chin. “Because I have watched it for years and hated it and been too frightened to do anything. And for once I can do something.
That is all. ”
Hector frowned. His pale eyes kept dropping—against his will, it seemed—from her eyes to her mouth and back again. “Stop it,” he said.
“Stop what? ” she asked. His thumb brushed across her lower lip—slow, disbelieving, as though his hand had stopped taking orders from the cold and furious part of him. Dia’s whole body went still and warm and trembling at once.
For one suspended moment, they stood there. He swayed toward her, and Dia’s eyes drifted closed. Then he wrenched himself back as though she had burned him. He let go of her wrist, stepped away.
“Stay away from him,” Hector said. “From who? ”
“Ajax. ” His pale eyes glittered in the dark.
“Whatever you’re playing at with him. Stop it. I mean it, Princess. ”
Then he turned, went back to his place on the floor, and lay down with his back to her.
Dia stood against the wall for a long time. —
Dia had spent two days trying to think of a way to get them out. The outer gates were locked at sundown, and two enormous men—however cleverly hooded—would be marked by every farmer and patrol from here to the border. Wolves, on the other hand, could run.
“It is the collars,” she said. “Everything else I can imagine a way around. If you could shift, you could be gone in a night. ”
“But the king keeps the key,” Hector said.
“How would you know that? ” Dia asked. “Because that is where I would keep it, if I were a tyrant who wanted no man to free his wolves. ” He paused.
“Right? ”
Dia cleared her throat. “So we need the key off my father’s belt. ”
“Which means getting close to him,” Ajax said.
Dia pressed her fingers against her eyelids. She did not know how. Luckily, Fana swept into her chambers an hour later with an opportunity. “Sister.
” She pressed a cool kiss to Dia’s cheek. “One begins to wonder if she has lost you to her new amusements. ”
“You were the one who told me a new slave required attention. ”
“I suppose so.
” Fana tilted her head. “Tell me something. Your golden pet spent an evening last week with a chambermaid named Pel. And on that same day, little Pel paid a visit to the apothecary by the south gate and purchased the specific antidote to a particular blade poison.
” She smiled. “If I did not know you better, sister, I would think you were healing that wolf. ”
Dia’s mouth was very dry. “I wanted him alive,” she said.
“He will die in his own time, when I am done with him. Not before. ”
Fana studied her for a long moment. “How very practical of you,” she murmured.
“But this gossip cannot stand, my love. ” She took Dia’s hands in both of hers. “So I am going to help you. Tonight we dine with father.
You will bring both your slaves to court and let the whole hall see that their princess has not gone soft on her new amusements. ”
This was a test. If Dia flinched even once, Fana would know, and that would be the end of Ajax and Hector. “Of course,” she said, and made it warm.
“I would be delighted. ”
“Splendid. ” Fana smiled. “Father has been so very pleased with you since the auction.
Do not disappoint him. ”
She was gone before Dia could answer. “She knows,” Dia whispered to her shifter guests. “She means to corner me in front of the entire court and see what I do.
”
“Or she means to put her enemies in one room with the king and watch what falls,” Hector said slowly. “Either way,” Ajax said, “tonight is when we are tested. ”
“Tonight,” Dia said, “is when I take the key off my father’s belt. ”
Both wolves turned to look at her.
“It is our best chance. I rarely see my father. And without the key—” She looked at Hector. “You cannot run.
”
Hector held her gaze. Then he inclined his head. “I will need a distraction at the moment you lift it. ”
“What if he turns his head and feels my hand on the wrong ring?
”
“He will not,” Hector said. “We will give you the moment. ”
—
They got ready for dinner. They dressed her like a queen, the wolves in their collars.
She had to clip the chains to their throats herself and look them in the eyes while she did it. Ajax let her do it without comment, going to one knee and tilting his chin obediently, his warm eyes meeting hers when she fastened the lead. Hector was harder. He stood very still while she approached with the leash, his pale eyes never leaving her face.
He did not kneel. He waited, made her come to him, made her reach up to his throat to clip the lead in place. And his eyes, the whole time, were burning. “Princess,” he said, very low.
Dia’s hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the chain. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. ”
His jaw worked.
Then he went slowly to his knees. It looked like a king holding still beneath a coronation. “All right,” Dia breathed. “We can do this.
”
The hall was full to the rafters by the time they entered. Word had spread—the princess and her two beasts at the king’s table. Not a soul in the palace would have missed it. Dia walked between her wolves with the leashes wound around her hands, and the eyes hit her as she crossed the threshold.
Hundreds of them. She made her chin lift and her face perfectly cold. Ajax played the part as easily as breathing, his golden head lowered just enough. Hector walked like a man who had chosen to walk there—a wolf electing not to bare its teeth.
The courtiers nearest the door stepped back. “Smile,” Dia hissed under her breath. “No,” Hector replied pleasantly. She gave up and walked.
Her father waited at the high table with a cup in his hand and Fana at his right. “My daughter, how magnificent you look. Come, show me what you have brought. ”
She bowed and came up onto the dais.
“My pets,” she said, letting her voice carry. “I thought you would like to see them, father. ”
She sat at his left. Ajax knelt easily beside her chair, looking for all the world like a great golden hound at heel.
Hector knelt on her other side. The wine was poured, the food served. The court resumed its noise. But when Hector shifted just slightly, his shoulder brushing her knee, the heat of him burned straight through her velvet skirts.
Dia made herself smile at something her father said. She had to play her part. So she settled her fingers in Hector’s dark hair and combed them slowly through the strands at his nape—and felt a long shudder move through him. A small catch of breath only she could hear.
His head tipped back, barely, into her hand. Heat bloomed low in her belly, sudden and shocking. “He has gone tame for you,” her father observed. “After all that snarling at the auction.
Remarkable. ”
“He has learned what pleases me,” Dia said, though it sounded breathless. Hector’s chained hand moved. Slowly, hidden by the slope of the table, his fingers came to rest against her ankle—heavy and warm.
She drew her fingers slowly from his hair and rested her hand against the side of his throat, above the collar. She felt him swallow against her palm. Somewhere behind her, Fana had crossed to Ajax’s kneeling form. “So you’re the one keeping our chambermaids awake at night,” Fana said.
Ajax’s grin tipped up. “Famous, am I? ”
“Notorious, perhaps. ” Her pale fingers brushed his chained ones.
“I should like to know what the kitchen maids find so compelling. ”
“Whenever Her Highness pleases. ”
There was something happening there—Fana’s silver voice and Ajax’s easy boldness. But Dia did not have the spare attention to track it, because Hector’s hand was moving up her leg.
“Dia,” her father said. She turned. He was looking at her strangely. The expansive warmth had drained from his face.
His eyes had gone flat and glassy. She had seen this before. Him staring at nothing, lips moving around words not his own. The episodes never lasted long.
The servants had learned collectively to act as though nothing was happening until he came back. “Father,” she said softly. “Father, are you well? Here, drink some water.
”
Hector shifted—a small, deliberate movement, his shoulder brushing her father’s chair. Just a slave settling his weight. Her father’s glassy gaze drifted toward the movement, slow and incurious. “Now.
”
She leaned in, pressing the cup gently into her father’s hand, her hip brushing his side. And her fingers, under cover of pouring, passed briefly against the second ring at his belt. The key was small, cold. It slid free with a softness that astonished her.
She pressed it into her palm. “Drink, father, please. ”
He blinked at the cup. She did not look down at what was folded in her palm.
She did not look at Hector. “Forgive me. ” Her father blinked. “I am tired tonight.
”
“It’s all right, father. ”
She made her excuse and rose and led her pets off the dais and across the great hall, with every eye in the kingdom on her back. Her face was cold. And hidden in the folds of her skirt was a small, cold iron key.
—
Dia pressed her hand on the panel behind her father’s library, and the wall swung inward on hidden hinges. Her father had shown her the passage once when she was nine. She’d thought it was a game then. “Well,” Ajax murmured, “you’re full of surprises.
”
“After you,” Dia said. The passage went down past the cellars. She stumbled on the uneven steps. Hector’s hand caught her elbow.
Then the moment her foot landed, he let go. They came up into the old orchard through a hatch beneath an apple tree. This was goodbye. “Go,” Dia whispered.
Ajax turned to her. Hector did not. He had already moved into the shadow of the trees. “Hector.
” Her voice cracked on his name. He didn’t turn. After everything—healing him, fighting for him, risking everything to free him—he couldn’t even look at her. “Hey.
” A warm hand came to her cheek, turning her face away from him. “Ajax, thank you,” she said softly. “There are not many like you in the world, Dia. Not human, not wolf.
”
Her eyes filled. The tears spilled anyway. “And you are not what they say you are either,” she whispered. “I see that now.
I wish I could do more. ”
“You have done more than enough. ”
Then he kissed her—slow and warm and achingly real. And Dia let herself have it, let herself pretend just for these stolen seconds that she wasn’t losing them both.
She gripped his shoulders. Until pain lanced through her chest. Rage and hurt and betrayal so visceral it stole her breath. She pulled her mouth from Ajax’s with a shocked sound and turned her head.
Hector stood at the edge of the trees, his expression carefully neutral. But his hands were clenched into fists, and something in his pale eyes blazed. And in her chest—that opened-door place—the hurt was deafening, as though she were feeling *his* emotions. Impossible as that was.
“Ajax,” Hector said, too calm. “We are leaving now. ”
Ajax let her go, stepping back reluctantly. “Right.
Sorry, Alpha. ” He looked at her one last time. “Take care of yourself, sweetheart. ”
Then they were gone.
Both of them, swallowed by the dark. She didn’t remember climbing back down through the passage. When she closed the door to her chambers, the room felt enormous. The rug where Hector had lain was still rumpled.
The pillow on the chaise still held the shape of Ajax’s head. She sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed a hand to that place in her chest where the pain had bloomed. *What was that? *
The feeling had been so vivid—and it hadn’t been hers.
When Ajax kissed her, the desire had been her own. But that rage and hurt had felt like Hector. And that was impossible. Unless—
She thought of the way Hector looked at her sometimes, when he thought she wasn’t watching.
It didn’t matter now. He was gone. A scream cut the air. Her head jerked up.
Then another, closer—and beneath it, the long rolling note of the alarm horn. Footsteps thundered in the corridor. Shouts. The clash of steel.
She crossed to the window on legs that felt like water. Down on the southern terrace, fire bloomed against the dark. By its light, she saw guards scrambling in disarray. And among them, something larger.
Several somethings larger. Wolves. A man on the terrace looked up and saw her lit in her window. He pointed, shouting.
Dia ran. Her slippers skidded on polished stone. Bodies littered the floor. A steward she’d known since she was small lay sprawled across a threshold.
*Don’t look at his face. *
Behind her, she heard footsteps. Not boots on stone, but something softer. Padded.
She ducked behind a tapestry in the long gallery. Through the fabric, she could hear the wolves coming closer. She understood now what her father had meant when he called them beasts. They didn’t need to see her.
They could smell her. The tapestry was wrenched aside. Dia’s scream died in her throat as a hand fisted in her hair. “Little human.
” The accent bent her own tongue into something feral. “Do you know what your father did to my sister? ”
“Please,” she whispered. “I didn’t do anything.
”
His grip tightened, forcing her head back until her neck was exposed. She felt his breath against her throat, the scrape of teeth against her skin. A snarl tore through the corridor. It was not a sound a man made.
Deep and resonant and absolutely furious. The shifter froze. Then something enormous slammed into him from the side. He was gone, torn off her, his hand ripping free of her hair so fast it took strands with it.
She crumpled to the floor, her legs refusing to hold her. When she forced her eyes open, Hector had the shifter by the throat, pinned against the wall with one hand. His pale eyes blazed with a fury so cold it burned. And when his lips pulled back, Dia saw fangs.
“Vakran,” he said, low and terrible. “Alpha,” the man choked. “Alpha, I did not know—”
“Look at her,” Hector said. “Look at what you have done.
”
Vakran sagged, his head dropping. “My prince, forgive me. I did not know she was yours. ”
“On your knees.
”
Vakran went down in a way Dia had never seen a grown man go down. His neck folded. “She is to be unharmed,” Hector said, lower still. “If one of you even looks at her wrong, I will have your throat myself.
Do you understand? ”
“Yes, my prince. ”
“Go. ”
Vakran went on all fours, his body rippling and reforming mid-stride.
Then Hector turned to her, dropping to his knees, his hands hovering just shy of touching. “Dia, look at me. ”
She was shaking so hard her teeth knocked together. “Where did he hurt you?
”
She couldn’t reply. His thumb came up and traced, feather-light, the place on her scalp where Vakran’s hand had been. “I am sorry,” he murmured. “No one touches you again tonight.
I will kill them first. ”
Something in her chest loosened. “You came,” she said. It came out very small.
His eyes closed for a heartbeat. “Did you think I could walk away and leave you here? The moment the attack started, I felt your fear. ”
“How?
” Dia whispered. “I cannot explain it. ” He breathed. “But I would burn this kingdom to ash before I let anyone hurt you.
Do you understand? ”
“Hector—”
“Come with me,” he said, pulling her up. “Do not look at the bodies. ”
He brought her to the lower council chamber.
Inside was her father, bound to a chair, his crown on the table beside him. His face was empty, glassy, slack. His lips moved faintly around words she could not hear. He did not register her at all.
“Father. ” She broke from Hector and ran to him. “Father, please look at me. ”
Footsteps behind her.
The wolves dropped to one knee in unison. The man who entered was tall and lean and dark-haired, with the same pale eyes and hard jaw as Hector. Ajax came in behind him. “My son,” the older man said, clasping Hector’s shoulder.
“Thanks to that passage, we took the inner walls without losing a wolf. ”
Dia’s stomach went out from under her. Through the passage from her childhood—she had saved them and opened her father’s house to an army. “Addis.
” The Alpha King turned to her father. “Look at me. ”
Her father’s lips moved. No sound came.
“Do you know me, brother? Twenty winters ago, we rode against the serpents together. You stood as godfather to my son. And then one spring you closed your gates against us.
The next, you took the first of my wolves in chains. And you never once told me what we did to deserve it. ” His voice cracked. “Speak, Addis.
Tell me why. ”
Her father did not speak. His eyes drifted slowly away. The Alpha King looked down at him.
Then he drew his sword. “Please! ” Dia screamed. “He is not even here!
He cannot answer you! ”
“Princess. ” The Alpha King did not look unkindly at her. “Your father has signed the death warrants of seven thousand of my people.
Whatever has been done to him does not undo what his hand has done. ”
Ajax’s arms came around her from behind. He lifted her gently away. “Close your eyes, sweetheart.
”
She closed her eyes. She heard the sword. A single clean stroke. Dia made a sound she did not recognize.
Her knees gave out, and Ajax took her weight without a word. She wept for her dead father—and for the father she had lost a very long time before him. —
Dia awoke with her hands bound. The sash of one of her own scarves had been wound around her wrists with a careful tightness that did not bite the skin.
Another, looser, kept her ankles to the bedpost. A third had been pulled across her mouth. The palace seemed very quiet. Then the latch clicked, and Ajax came in.
He stood in the doorway for a long moment, his big shoulders filling the frame, a careful, beaten look on his face. “Hey, sweetheart. ”
He closed the door behind him and crossed to the bed. She turned her face away.
“I know,” he said. “I know. I’d be furious with me too. ” He did not untie her.
“I had orders,” he said low. “The bindings, the gag—that’s the Alpha King’s order. Not mine. Not Hector’s.
” He said the king’s daughter would be bound until he said otherwise. “And so—” Ajax spread his big hands once, helpless. She did not look at him. “There’s something else I owe you the truth on.
” He drew a slow breath. “Hector and I let ourselves be taken at the auction. Sweetheart—the whole point was to learn the palace from the inside out. To find a way for the army to come through.
”
Dia closed her eyes. She had known. Of course she had known. The Alpha King had said it last night in the council chamber, and she had understood it then.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Ajax said. She turned her head further into the pillow. “Princess, please. Please look at me.
”
He waited. She did not. “You saw what your father was. You saw what they did to my people.
He had to be stopped. ” His voice caught. The gag was very tight. Her eyes filled.
Ajax made a small sound. “I’m sorry,” he said again. The door opened. The Alpha King came in.
Hector came in behind him. Hector’s eyes went to her at once—to the bindings, to the gag, to the wet on her face—and Dia watched something pass across his face. She could not read it. “Ajax.
” The Alpha King’s voice was mild. “What are you doing here? ”
Ajax rose at once. “I was making sure she’d come around, sire.
”
“The girl is a prisoner of war,” the king reminded. “One you were right to insist on taking, my son. ”
The pale eyes turned to Dia. “Sit her up.
”
Hector moved before Ajax did. He crossed to the bed and slid an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her up against the pillows with a care that did not match anything else in the room. His hand brushed her cheek once, briefly, as though by accident. “Princess.
” The Alpha King came to the foot of her bed. He was very calm. “Your sister has declared herself queen of your kingdom. As of dawn this morning, she has raised an army out of the southern provinces.
And she has sent terms north on a fast rider. She wants you back. ”
Dia’s eyes widened. Fana had declared herself queen.
But she couldn’t—
“Why? ” Hector said very quietly. “You look surprised. ”
She looked away.
“Answer him,” the Alpha King said. Dia flinched. “Father,” Hector said. “Scaring her is not going to make her speak any faster.
”
The Alpha King’s pale eyes flicked to his son. They did not soften. But after a moment, he inclined his head. Hector went down on one knee beside her.
His hand lifted to the knot of the gag at the nape of her neck. “Dia,” he said softly. “Why are you surprised? ”
“I am not,” she replied.
Hector did not press. Neither did Ajax. The Alpha King broke the silence. “Tell me about her,” he said.
“The new queen. ”
Dia shrugged. “Small and sad. Very beautiful.
”
“Very cunning,” Ajax cut in. Hector rolled his eyes. “She is hard to read. Her scent is always carefully subdued,” he said.
“Subdued,” the king repeated. “It is as though she does not smell like anything,” Hector explained. The Alpha King was silent a beat too long. “Princess,” he said.
“Your father only had one daughter the last time I came to this palace, and your mother had already passed by then. ” A frown gathered between his pale brows. “This would make your new queen a bastard child. ”
Dia’s chin lifted before she could stop it.
“Fana is not a bastard,” she said fiercely. “My father adopted her officially. She is my sister. ”
“Adopted?
” The Alpha King asked. “Some random child. Why would he do that? ”
“My father loved her,” Dia said.
“He loved Fana. ”
“Child? ” The Alpha King interrupted. “Your father was a king.
A king knows the intricacies of succession. He would not have adopted some random orphan. Made her a ward of the crown, yes. Taken her in, yes.
But to put her in the line of inheritance—to make her your equal in his will—” He shook his head slowly. “That is not a thing a king does for love. ”
He began to pace. Ajax was watching him.
“It makes sense, though, that she was adopted,” he said slowly. “Now I think on it. They do not look very much alike. ”
The Alpha King’s frown deepened.
“What? ”
“Well, Dia is—” Ajax gestured at her vaguely. “Cute. Kind.
Looks like a person you’d want to bring home and feed. ” His mouth twisted. “The sister, though—she is a piece of work. ”
“Look there.
” He pointed. There was a painting on the back wall of Dia’s chamber, a small one. It had hung there since she was twelve. It was the two of them—Fana and Dia, side by side in a garden.
Fana a head taller, her black hair down her back, her green eyes already too clever for her face. The Alpha King crossed to it and stared. His face did not move at first. Then he paled.
“Father? ” Hector asked. The Alpha King did not answer. He stepped closer to the painting.
“Is that her? ” he asked. “The sister? ”
“Yes,” Hector said.
The Alpha King said a word in another tongue—a short, low, ugly word. “Father? ” Hector was on his feet. “What is it?
”
The Alpha King turned. He turned and looked at Dia, and there was a kind of grim, sorrowful comprehension on his face. “Yours have hunted mine,” he said quietly. “And yet your father adopts a shifter child.
”
Dia stared at him for a heartbeat. His words did not arrange themselves into any meaning at all. “What? ” She shook her head.
“Fana isn’t—”
“Of course she is,” the Alpha King said. “I knew her mother. She looks exactly like her—down to the green of the eye. ”
“I do not understand,” Dia whispered.
The Alpha King straightened. “Hector. Ajax. With me—now.
”
“Father,” Hector said, looking at Dia. “Now, my son. We have miscounted the board badly. ” He looked at her.
“The girl on this bed is not the prize. She is the bait. ” His voice hardened. “The new queen is not riding north to rescue her sister.
She is riding north to draw us out, where she can finish what her mother started. Is that clear? ”
A long pause. “Yes, Alpha,” Hector said, very low.
He looked at Dia the way he had looked at her across the orchard last night, when the door in her chest had opened. “I will come back,” he said. It was barely audible. Then he was gone, and Ajax was gone, and the Alpha King’s footfalls were gone, and the door closed behind them with a small, dry click.
Across the room, on the back wall, Fana smiled down at her. —
They brought her to the throne room at dusk. It was her father’s throne room, and it was not. The banners were torn down.
Wolves in human form lined the walls, and wolves in their true shapes lay along the foot of the dais like gray and brown hills. And her father’s great carved chair stood empty, the Alpha King standing before it rather than sitting—as though even he would not take that seat. Dia was made to kneel at the bottom of the steps, her wrists still bound. Hector stood at his father’s right hand.
Ajax stood a pace behind, his warm eyes never leaving her. “Princess,” the Alpha King’s voice carried. “You asked me this morning what you did not understand. I will tell you.
You have earned that much. ”
She lifted her chin and said nothing. “Twenty years ago, there was a clan of serpent shifters in the south. Their queens were born with a gift in the blood.
Influence. ” He paused. “They could not force a man to act against his will. But they could lean on him.
A whisper here, a doubt there. Drop upon drop, until he could no longer tell which thoughts were his own. ”
His pale eyes were steady. “We went to war with them.
Your father rode beside me. We scattered them. We believed we had ended the line. ” A pause.
“We were wrong. The queen had a daughter. She survived. She found her way north, to the one house best placed to take her revenge.
The house of the human king who had helped destroy her people. ”
Dia gaped. “She came to him as a tragic, motherless child. And he took her in.
And then slowly—drop upon drop—she began to lean. ” His voice did not rise. “The paranoia. The cruelty.
The war on my people, who had been your father’s allies. None of it was his. It was hers, worn on his face. ”
“I asked him last night to look at me and name me, and he could not, because there was almost nothing of him left to do it.
” He sighed. “The glassy eyes. The empty repeating. That was not illness, child.
That was the working, showing through the cracks. ”
Dia closed her eyes. “He did not stop loving me,” she whispered. She bent over her bound hands and wept silently, the tears falling on cold stone.
The Alpha King let her have a moment. Only a moment. “Which brings us to the war riding toward us. Your sister has named herself queen and demanded you back.
She wants the war. The cleanest way I have to deny it to her—” His voice did not soften. “Is to send her back your head. If you are dead, she has no banner.
The southern lords rallied to save you. ”
He drew breath. “I do not enjoy it. But I am a king.
I am sorry, child. ”
“No. ” It was Ajax. He stepped from the line and went to one knee on the steps, golden head bowed.
“Sire, give her to me. Let me claim her. A claimed mate of the Beta line is not a prisoner of war. She is pack, under our protection.
”
“No,” the Alpha King said. Ajax’s head came up. “You are fond of her. You would die for her, I don’t doubt.
But fondness is not a fated bond. ” His eyes were steady. “I will not let you throw yourself on the blade for a thing you only wish were true. ”
Ajax’s jaw worked.
“But—”
“Enough,” Hector said, coming down the steps past his father. “Stand up,” he said softly to Dia. Her legs would not. So he knelt instead, and he took her bound wrists in both his hands and began to work the knot loose with his thumbs.
“Hector,” the Alpha King said. “What are you doing? ”
“Father? Killing her is the small move.
Dia is not a pretext. She is the true heir—the only trueborn child of King Addis. You have the rightful queen of the South standing against the usurper who poisoned her father. ”
The Alpha King studied him.
“She will see it coming. The instant we name your princess our ally, Fana names her a traitor. A wolf-bewitched puppet who opened her own father’s gates to the enemy. ” A flat pause.
“Which, my son, your princess did. ”
Dia flinched. Hector did not let go of her hands. “Then we make it more than an alliance,” he said.
The room went quiet. “A claim is not a banner she can tear down with a clever word. A claim is sacred. Dia is mine, and I am hers.
And there is not a wolf or man or serpent alive who can say otherwise. ”
“No, I suppose not,” the Alpha King said softly. “If it is true. ”
Hector turned and looked at Dia.
“It’s true,” he said. His pale eyes were bare. Everything he had spent a fortnight burying was simply there in them—naked and unguarded—and Dia could not look away. “I felt it the moment I saw her in chains,” he said.
“I told myself she was the enemy. That it was a trick. I walked out on her without looking at her, because I did not trust myself to look. ” His voice roughened.
“And then I felt her in danger from half a palace away, and I knew. She is my mate. There is no part of it that is a lie. ”
Dia’s breath shook out of her.
She felt him—the terror and the want—and she felt how true it was. It poured through her, warm and undeniable. “I claim you, Dia,” he said low. “If you’ll have me.
If she’ll have him. ”
As though there had ever been a choice. As though her body had not turned toward his in the dark every night this past week without her leave. As though she had not felt, since the moment their eyes met across a stinking auction floor, like a compass needle that had finally found its north.
“Yes,” she said. Her eyes went just once, helplessly, to Ajax kneeling on the steps. He gave her the smallest nod. “Go on, sweetheart.
”
She turned back to Hector and smiled. “Yes. I will have you. ”
The door in her chest and the door in his swung wide in the same instant, and something passed between them that had no words.
The Alpha King let out a long breath. “A bond cannot be denied. Not by me. ” He looked at the two of them.
“It legitimizes her. It puts the true queen of the South on our side, by sacred law. You have given me my better move, Hector. I will take it.
”
He turned away, already calling for his captains. And on the cold floor of her father’s ruined throne room, Hector drew Dia up into his arms and held her the way he had held her in the corridor—hard, both arms, his face in her hair. Ajax watched them, and the look on his face was glad and grieving at once. Glad for his brother.
Grieving for himself. Dia, her cheek against Hector’s hammering heart, reached one hand toward him. He came. He folded his big hand around hers and did not let go.
And the three of them stood together in the wreckage. —
Dia awoke to a cold hand stroking her hair. For one warm, half-dreaming moment, she thought it was Hector. Then she smelled something sweet that did not belong in their tent, and her eyes flew open.
Fana sat on the edge of the cot. “There you are. ” Her voice cracked. “I have been so frightened.
I have not slept since they took you. I raised half the South in a fortnight, Dia. ”
Dia’s throat closed. Then she noticed that beside her—despite the noise, despite the intrusion—Hector did not stir.
He lay deep and still, his breathing slow. Cold dread closed over her heart. “What did you do to him, Fana? ”
“Nothing he will not wake from.
” Fana’s hand found Dia’s face. “Come home with me. I have a horse, a clear road south, a kingdom that is yours. ” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“I cannot lose you too. I have lost everyone. Mother, father—everyone I have ever loved. ”
Dia took her sister’s shaking hand in both of hers.
“I cannot,” she whispered. Fana flinched. “Because of them? They are monsters, Dia.
They killed our father. ”
“Our father was gone long before they came. ” She made herself say it. “I know what you did to him, Fana.
I know what you are. I know about your mother and the war. ”
She watched her sister go white. “He destroyed my people,” Fana implored.
“I was five. I watched them burn. The wolves did that, Dia. ”
“They are not monsters,” Dia said.
“I know it is the hardest thing in the world for you to hear, but it does not have to be war. ” She pressed her sister’s hand to her wet cheek. “You loved father—the real one. The one who took you in, who read to us, who was kind before either of us understood what your powers did to him.
I know you loved him. And his kindness. Stop chasing war, Fana. Choose kindness instead.
”
For a long moment, her sister was utterly still. And behind the green of her eyes, Dia saw the frightened child who had decided revenge was the only safe thing left. “At least talk to me,” Dia said. “Meet with me.
Let us see if there is a way to peace. Please. I am still your sister. ”
Fana looked at her a long time.
Then her gaze drifted past her, to the sleeping man on the cot, and the way Dia’s body curved protectively in front of him. “You love him? ” she said. “Yes.
”
It was the easiest word Dia had ever spoken. She thought of the door in her chest that never closed now. Of waking warm and tangled and watched. Of his low voice in the dark.
“With everything I am,” she said. “I love him. He is mine. ”
Something in Fana’s face went soft and sad and almost glad.
Then it changed. All at once, the grief tucked away like a blade going back into its sheath. And she tilted her head, and her red-rimmed eyes lit with something almost playful. “And the other one?
” she asked, light as anything, as though they were girls again, trading secrets behind a curtain. “What of him? ”
It made Dia frown. “What other one?
”
“The golden one, unconscious by your tent. ” Fana’s smile curved. “Don’t be coy, sister. I have eyes.
”
Dia’s stomach dropped. “Ajax? Did you hurt him? Fana, did you hurt him?
”
She heard how shrill it came out and could not stop it. Because if Fana had—there would be no meeting, no flag, no peace. Hector would tear the South apart stone by stone and never look back. And Dia was not sure she could forgive her sister either.
“Well, I did have to get past him, didn’t I? ” Fana snorted. “Relax. He sleeps.
He is far too pretty to kill quickly, that one. ”
Dia did not like the way she said it. “The meeting,” she pressed. “Will you come?
”
Fana rose and drew her cloak around her. “For you,” she said very low. “I will come. ”
Then she was gone, and Dia stood in the empty tent with her face wet and her heart in pieces, grieving her sister.
She went out. Ajax lay sprawled in the grass, fast asleep, entirely unharmed. She dropped down beside him and pressed her hand to his warm cheek and breathed. Neither he nor Hector would wake for hours, so she sat between them in the gray hour before dawn and waited.
There was still a war. Still the old wound behind Fana’s eyes. But there was hope. And for the first time in her life, Dia did not feel alone.
Some bonds were fated. Some were chosen. Hers were only beginning.
