ANSEL PARADED me down the hall against my will and I tried to scream and thrash, but it was no use. My breathing came out ragged, but nothing more. Halfway down the hall his wife disappeared into another room and I wondered how long his hold on her lasted. Was it based on distance? Or did he merely have to think about her to control her? Were Axil and the queens of Avalier still under his control? It had to exhaust some well of energy within him to use this power, but if it did, he didn’t show it. One leg moved in front of the other and no matter how hard I tried to fight it, I walked right into a bedroom with him.
No. No. No.
He closed the door behind me and then spun me around to face him.
“Tell me, did you pine for my brother all those years I had him locked up?” he asked, and I felt my throat loosen. He was allowing me to speak, if I could just keep him talking and not unbuttoning his trousers maybe I could find a way out of this.
“Yes. Since I was fifteen.”
Ansel shook his head, looking disappointed. “Love weakens. I tried to teach him that and yet you still ended up together somehow.” He removed his tunic, causing my breath to come out in ragged gasps. I was frozen to the spot, unable to move a single muscle except to speak.
“He’s my mate,” I told Ansel. “Love was the only path for us.”
Ansel looked at me sharply then, his eyes narrowing. “The Queen Trials aren’t about love, they’re about strength. They’re about marrying the strongest woman of our kind.”
Keep him talking, I told myself. Just keep talking.
“Can’t one have both?” I questioned as he kicked off his shoes. “Love, and the strongest woman?”
His eyes went half lidded then and my stomach tied in knots. “I don’t think I’m capable of love, but you can sure try.”
I opened my mouth to speak again only to find that he’d cut off my words and then I was moving, against my will to the bed.
No.
Reaching down, I grasped the hem of my tunic and pulled upward, stopping halfway as pelts of fur rippled down my arms.
He was undressing me. No. He was forcing me to undress myself. A low rumble sounded in my throat, breaking through his hold on me but then an intense sharp pain sliced through my head and I screamed, reaching up to grab my skull as he allowed.
It was like a hot blade had been stuck inside of my ear and twisted. I panted as the pain came in waves and then just as quickly as it started, it was gone.
My chest heaved as I fought to catch my breath.
Ansel was standing before me in only a loin cloth, grinning. “I like a feisty female,” he stated and I saw red.
I lunged forward, breaking his hold for only a few seconds but it was long enough to land a slap on his cheek. Then I was frozen in the air, held in place by his power as he seethed at me.
The skin of his cheek was pink from where I’d hit him, his eyes wide in fury as his pulled his lips back into a grimace.
“I’m going to enjoy putting a pup in your belly,” he growled and then stepped forward. I braced myself for his assault, but his face suddenly slipped into panic. Eyes wide, he clawed at his throat while he stared at me in shock.
I was so confused. My slap couldn’t have had that kind of effect, right?
He was turning purple.
What in Hades?
A slight wind rushed through the air, picking up my hair like a calling card.
Madelynn was here. This power was unique to the fae queen.
As Ansel’s power over me slipped and began to fade away, I slowly regained control over my muscles.
This bastard was going to pay for his treatment of me and the others. I immediately started to shift forms, allowing my head to be the first to turn to beast.
The bedroom door burst open and I didn’t even wait to fully shift before I lunged forward. I wanted to be the one to finish him and with the fae queen taking his breath, he was too weak to fight back. I grasped Ansel by the back of the neck with my hands that were shifting to paws and then took his throat into my wolf’s mouth. With one clean yank, I ripped it out. Axil had been the first one to burst through the door in his wolf form and now he stood wide-eyed before me and his brother, staring at the scene before him. I spat Ansel’s flesh onto the floor in front of Axil’s wolf and then Ansel’s body hit the ground with a thud. I forced myself back into human form, not fully completing the shift. Then I fell to the ground in front of Axil, pulling his wolf onto my lap.
Axil whined, nuzzling his wolf’s snout into my neck.
“I’m okay,” I whispered to him.
The three queens were standing in the doorway and looked down at us.
“Are you hurt?” Madelynn asked.
I peered up at her and shook my head.
“Let’s give them some time alone,” the dragon queen said. “We’ll be in the hall.”
Then the door closed, it was just me and Axil alone with his brother’s corpse. After a full minute of holding him, my heart frantically beating against his wolf, I gently nudged him off and stood. Axil started his shift back into human form and I walked over to a set of drawers at the far wall, throwing clothes on the floor at Axil’s feet. I then went into the attached bathroom and washed the blood from my face and mouth, scrubbing my teeth with a brush.
I couldn’t believe I’d just killed the wolven king.
Axil’s brother.
When I finally came out of the room, Axil was standing before me in low-slung trousers of his brother’s that were too short and a tunic that was too tight.
“I … I’m so sorry,” he said.
I walked slowly into his arms and he wrapped them around me, holding me tightly as the realization of everything that had just happened hit me.
“Did he touch you? Tell me the truth,” Axil growled.
I shook my head, peering back to look at him. “No, but if he did would it matter? He’s dead.”
Axil’s blue eyes threaded through with yellow. “Of course it would matter. I’d piss on his corpse and then feed it to a bearin.”
I chuckled a little, feeling the mood lighten even if it was in a dark way. “I mean we could still do that. He was a sadistic maniac.”
We both turned to stare at the dead purple face of King Ansel, his throat ripped clean out.
“Did you get the power back? Are you king again?” I suddenly looked at Axil. I didn’t know how that worked. Before, the brothers had to transfer it to each other through blood. But now …
Axil nodded but seemed unsettled.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are you mad I killed him? I know he was your brother but …”
He took in a deep breath and then leaned into me, exhaling against my neck which sent shivers along my spine.
“There have to be two living heirs of the royal bloodline otherwise—”
The door burst open and his words were cut off. Axil pulled away and stepped protectively in front of me.
Two red-robed royal wolven advisors were standing in the open doorway and they stared at King Ansel’s body in shock.
“Who did this?” the older one with a graying beard asked.
“I did,” Axil lied.
My gaze flicked out to the hallway to see the three queens waiting at the ready behind the men.
The advisor sighed. “You should have kept him alive and imprisoned him. Now you’ll have to endure the challenge.”
The challenge?
Axil shrugged. “He was too dangerous to keep alive.”
The advisor nodded as if in agreement. “Well, I will go make an announcement to the pack.” Then the advisor looked at me. “Your alpha and friends have been harassing the front guard and inquiring after your whereabouts. I’ll let them know you are okay and Axil is back in power.”
Wow, I was kind of amazed at how casually they were taking the news that Ansel had just been murdered. But if they’d seen any of what had just transpired over the last twenty-four hours, then they knew and agreed that Ansel was too dangerous to let live.
“What’s the challenge?” I asked as one of the advisors left to tell the pack the news but the other stayed. I’m sure Eliza and Cyrus and my little brother were worried but I didn’t care about that right now.
The remaining advisor cleared his throat and he held his head high. “Axil will have to openly fight each pack member who challenges his strength to lead. If there are no longer two heirs of royal blood, then the strongest will lead us.”
“Axil is the strongest,” I growled, feeling my wolf come to the surface.
Axil reached out and threaded his fingers through mine. “It’s okay, love.”
But it wasn’t. He was still weak and injured from hanging on a hook all day. I looked down at Ansel’s body, horrified to find that in my killing him, I’d forced Axil to now have to fight to keep his birthright. I had known about the two-heir thing but hadn’t really thought it through or known the repercussions if one died.
“He needs a decent meal and a good night’s rest before he fights,” I declared to the advisor and dared him to challenge me on that.
He gave me a curt nod. “We will announce that the challenge fights start tomorrow morning.”
My heart shattered in that moment. We were so close, so close to our happily ever after. Just as I had to fight to be with him, now he would have to fight to retain his position as king.
The advisor left and the three queens entered the room looking upset by the latest news.
“I’m sorry there will be a delay in our agreement,” Axil told the women. “Tomorrow, after I win my place back as king, I promise to uphold my end of the deal and fight alongside you in the war.”
The war? The one the queens asked Ansel to help with?
I stared at Axil perplexed and he stroked my palm with his thumb. ‘The Nightfall queen is attacking the fae, elvin and dragon-folk as we speak. We will be next if we do not help stop her. They saved you. I owe them everything.’ Hearing his voice in my mind never got old and it was confirmation that he did indeed have his king powers back.
I nodded my agreement and then faced the three women. “Thank you for …” I looked at Ansel’s dead body on the ground, now lying still in a puddle of his own blood.
Madelynn stepped forward. “Of course. We weren’t going to let him hurt you.”
My heart swelled. These women didn’t even know me, and they’d broken Axil out of that dungeon and stolen the very breath from a reigning king’s lungs in order to keep me from being defiled.
“Can you stay the night?” I asked them. “We’ll have a nice meal prepared for you all. You must be famished from the trip.”
Axil and I hadn’t eaten and neither had these women. Instead, they’d been thrown in a cell upon their arrival and that was no way to greet visiting royalty. The low growl of a stomach grumbling filled the room and the elf queen giggled. “I could eat.”
We all laughed then and the women left the room as Axil pulled me next to him to follow. Glancing over my shoulder, I looked back one last time at the dead body of Ansel Moon. If they hadn’t saved me, that would have been a really bad situation.
Now I had other things to worry about. Like my man getting killed tomorrow for fighting to keep his crown.
