Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
“You can have this back when you behave yourself.”
When he pockets it, I kick his chest. He grabs my ankle, putting a hand on my lower back to steady me. Our eyes meet, and my breath hitches at the intensity of his expression.
“What do you want with me?” I ask.
“I think you can help me end this war.”
I shake my head. “Kidnapping me will only worsen it. You’re going to get yourself killed, you fool.”
“If that is the price I must pay to save my people, I will gladly pay it. So, what will it be, Princess? Will you grab your cloak and walk out of this room with me? Or am I going to throw you over my shoulder? You have a choice. It’s not a very good one.” He mimics my words from earlier, a grim smile on his face. “But it’s a choice nonetheless.”
“You bastard.” I shake my head. “You can’t possibly think you’ll get all the way out of the castle.”
I can hear shouting and the thunder of hooves in the grounds below.
“See? They’re coming for you.” I jerk my head toward the window, and a strand of red hair catches in my mouth. “If you go now, you have a chance to-“
Before I know what’s happening, he’s on his feet, and I’m over his shoulder. I shriek, punching his back.
“Are you insane?” I snarl. “They’ll skin you alive for-“
He throws open my wardrobe and the words die in my throat at the inopportune moment for my threat.
In the current circumstance, guilt should not flood so powerfully through my chest at the sight of the wolf coat that hangs there. Nor should I want, desperately, to tell him that it was there when I arrived.
The Wolves have been attacking my people for centuries, yet I can’t bring myself to agree with some of Sebastian’s more barbaric practices.
He stills, the muscles in his back tightening.
Then he grabs a different fur and heads out of my chambers.
I punch him between his shoulder blades again, but I do not put my full force into it.
Perhaps it’s because his mood has darkened and I’m afraid. Or perhaps it’s because a small part of me is glad I’m being taken away from my fate with Sebastian, despite how frightening this wolf may be.
“You won’t get away with this,” I growl, regardless.
“I will. Now be quiet.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home.”
Chapter Four
Shouts fill the castle and torchlight flickers as I’m carried through a labyrinth of stone corridors.
I struggle against my captor, but his thick arm only tightens around my waist.
I do not know where I’d run to even if I did escape him. Sebastian? My father? Would that be any better? Would it be worse?
Trapped as I am, something wild seems to have knocked loose inside me. It rattles around in my chest and I do not feel the hopelessness I should be feeling. The anger I have caged since my mother died surges hot and free through my veins.
I am not stone. I am not a statue.
I am fire.
And somehow it has taken this man, this beast, to make me see it.
I pound against the alpha’s back. “Get off me, you bloody horrible brute.” My hair catches in my mouth. I kick my bare feet and hit nothing but air. “Get off me. You’ll die for this, you horrible-” I cut myself off as we turn a corner.
There are two guards lying in a pool of blood. The alpha steps over the bodies, and I’m forced to stare down at their lifeless faces as he continues onward.
The reality of my situation slams fully into me.
These men are dangerous. They’re killers. They’re Wolves.
Of course being taken away from my homeland by the enemies of my people is worse than staying. Of course it is. And yet. . .
The alpha cuts through one of the servants’ passageways, almost as if he knows where he is going, even if I am lost, and a scream from a lady-in-waiting pierces my ears. She catches my eye as we pass, then runs in the opposite direction, her dark hair falling free from her cap.
The alpha won’t make it out of here.
They’ll imprison him until the full moon, then skin him alive.
The thing that’s knocked loose in my chest becomes frantic. My heart pounds wildly in my chest.
“She’s gone to get help, you horrible brute,” I hiss at him. “There are guards stationed only a couple of minutes away.”
“Aye?” he says, his voice low. He quickens his pace, half running down the servants’ staircase. “Thank you.”
I cling onto his shoulders, my fingers digging into his muscles, my body jolting against his back. “I wasn’t. . . I wasn’t trying to help you!” I say, shrilly.
Although I wonder, as I say it, if that is entirely true.
The alpha goes left, then right, bursting into a wider corridor. I recognize the mural of warriors slaughtering Wolves on the wall. It shows our victory in the Battle of the Beasts a century ago, and it is close to the western entrance hall.
He is almost free of this place. I am almost-
“Halt.” A male voice cuts through the quiet.
The alpha stills. Two guards block the corridor ahead. They have the sigil of the Southlands, a sun, painted onto their shields. My father’s men.
“Is that the princess?” one says incredulously.
The other chuckles. “Oh, I don’t envy you, dog. Do you know what they do to your kind up here?”
The rattle of swords signals three more guards stepping into the corridor behind us. I breathe in sharply.
“Don’t kill it,” says one of them-a burly looking man with the silver star of the Borderlands on his breastplate. “Lord Sebastian will want to spend some time with this one.”
The alpha’s body stiffens. “I’m going to need to put you down for this, Princess,” he says softly.
My breath hitches as he slides me down his front, and places me on the flagstones. The guards are charging, but everything feels still. His eyes bore into mine and they are as green and alive as the forest.
Don’t run, he seems to be telling me.
Don’t run.
He pushes me aside. I flatten myself against a mural as he dodges the swing of a sword. He grabs his attacker’s head and twists. A sickly crack fills the hall before he hurls the body into the next soldier, who skids into the wall. He roars, and charges.
Blood and muscle and steel blur in front of me as he takes on three men at once.
He is a force of nature. He swings, and blocks, and dodges each lethal blow that comes his way. He impales one soldier on his own sword, then rams another into the far wall-smashing his head against the stone with such force that the chandelier above trembles.
My body trembles as though the decision that’s rattling inside my body is a tangible, living thing.