Chapter 433: The Wolf Made Him Do It

Kael watched his mate hold the hand of the king she had been imprisoned for almost killing.

"Do you know of any Luminari bitten by a wolf?" Guinevere asked Kael, without looking away from Landon.

"I am Luminari, partly, Guinevere. You bit me. I didn’t get a wolf."

"I know that, Kael, but you are also dragon first. Whatever my bite did to you gave you runes." She turned back to Landon. "King Solveil has nothing but his light. I gave him the runes and I also gave him a fever and a coma, along with whatever is growling under his ribs right now."

Kael pinched the bridge of his nose. "Honey, we just left prison. Let’s not incriminate ourselves again when we don’t know for sure what it is."

"I think I know, Kael. I feel it. The thing living inside of him is because of me."

"Guinevere. Sweetheart. Quit telling the foreign king that something is gestating in his ribcage like a midwife delivering the news. And please quit confessing to biological warfare in front of the victim. While I’m standing here. As your accomplice. We’re not doing that."

"You’re not my accomplice."

"I am now. You just made me one."

The old healer placed his hand on Landon’s chest. His palm glowed. He held it there for five seconds. Ten. Then he pulled it back and looked at his own hand with a confused expression.

"There is something beneath the light. I cannot identify it," he said after a moment.

Landon looked at Guinevere. Then at Kael. Then at his own chest. Then back at Guinevere.

"You gave me a wolf," he said, like he was testing the words.

"I may have given you a wolf," she clarified gently. "And I want you to know that I take full responsibility and I will do everything in my power to help you through whatever comes next."

She moved to his bathing chamber and came back with another damp cloth. Folded it into thirds. Swapped out the current damp cloth on his forehead.

"Does it hurt right now?" she asked.

"A little."

"Show me where."

Landon placed her hand on his chest. Over the growling. Her palm pressed flat against his sternum and her face went soft and focused and she looked like a woman listening to a heartbeat through a wall.

"I can feel it," she whispered.

Behind them, Kael watched this while his dragon rumbled.

"I have been experiencing episodes." Landon’s voice dropped half a register. "It’s growling but I don’t know what it wants. You’re the only one who might understand what’s happening to me."

"I’ll stay. As long as you need."

"It’s restless, but it’s not dangerous. It’s just confused."

"Like me," Landon said, and the timing on that was so good Kael wanted to throw something.

"Not like you. Sometimes the emotions of our wolves blur into our own, but you will get used to it and know the difference. Your wolf is a bit overstimulated. It’s adjusting," she explained.

Kael stared at the ceiling for a long time. His dragon was silent. His brain was loud. The woman he loved had just told the King of Light that she had infected his entire bloodline with a hereditary condition through a bite she did not remember and was now kneeling in front of him and apologizing for it like she had gotten him pregnant.

"For fuck’s sake," he snapped.

Landon winced. The wince was subtle. Perfectly timed. Placed at the exact moment Guinevere looked like she might follow Kael toward the door.

"It really calms when you’re near. It’s... difficult when you’re not. I feel it."

Kael watched the most sophisticated guilt trip in diplomatic history unfold in real time. The king was reeling her in with symptoms the way a fisherman reels with bait, slow and patient and with absolute confidence in the hook.

"It frightens me," Landon added quietly. He was not frightened. Kael could see it. The King of Light was about as frightened as a shark spotting tourists.

"I’m not going anywhere," Guinevere stated, face full of determination.

The trap was executed so flawlessly Kael almost applauded.

???

DRAKENCREST - INFIRMARY

Sterling Emberfell’s consciousness returned in stages, like a man climbing a staircase where every step was a different flavor of pain.

The first thing he registered was Maddox’s voice.

"How is he?"

The tone carried the clipped concern of a king who needed his Third back online and was asking the healer for a timeline the way a man asks a mechanic when his carriage will be ready.

"Concussed, Your Grace. Three impact sites. Stacked. The first was dark magic. The second and third were blunt force from what appears to be the same source, administered approximately four to six minutes apart."

"The same source hit him twice."

"Yes, Your Grace. Based on the bruising pattern, the second and third impacts occurred while he was already unconscious. The positioning suggests he was lying on the ground and his head made contact with the floor and something else during that window."

Maddox said nothing because Maddox had already been briefed on what happened in the closet.

Sterling kept his eyes closed because opening them required commitment and commitment required energy and the three knots on his skull had consumed all of it.

Then the growling started, low and deep and vibrating through the room from approximately six feet to his left, a dragon beneath someone’s ribs making an argument its host was losing.

"No," Maddox said out loud to his own ribs.

The growl climbed in pitch and stretched into a sustained, rolling protest, a war drum operated by something that had strong feelings.

"No, we don’t."

The dragon answered with a growl that shifted into something closer to a whine layered beneath the rumble, the draconic equivalent of being told no and choosing to escalate rather than comply.

"You heard my answer."

The dragon growled louder.

Maddox grunted again, harder, because his dragon was winning by volume and was prepared to keep winning until his jaw locked permanently or he caved, whichever came first.

"If we go, we go through a portal. In disguise. We are inside a goddamn building. We do not shift indoors. That is how we kill somebody."

The dragon grumbled beneath his ribs. The grumble was unhappy. The grumble accepted the terms but the acceptance was conditional and temporary and the conditions were going to change the second the dragon saw an opening.

"I hear you."

The rumble intensified.

"I said I hear you. Hearing you and agreeing with you are two different services and I am only providing one."

The dragon whined.

"Don’t."

The dragon whined louder.

"Do not weaponize the whine. I invented the whine. I know what you’re doing."

The dragon shifted from whine to growl. The transition was seamless and manipulative.

"That doesn’t work either."

The dragon tried a third sound. Something between a purr and a groan that Sterling had never heard before and that communicated pure, undiluted, operatic misery.

"That’s new. I hate it. Stop," Maddox said to it.