The Night Prince (The Wolf King, #2)(101)

You’re looking better than the last time I saw you. Philip had said that to Blake when we were at Madadh-allaidh. “He’d been tortured.”

“Yes. So you can imagine how my fear of discovery grew, on finding him and the other prisoners down there.”

I shake my head, disgust writing within. “You did nothing.”

“Would you have done differently, little sister?”

“I. . .” I shake my head. I like to think that I would have tried to help, but perhaps that is fanciful thinking. Perhaps I’m as much a coward as my brother. “I don’t know, Philip.”

“I tried to distance myself from what I’d seen. I tried not to think about it. It haunted me, though. It would be my fate if Father ever discovered what I was. Honestly, it had never occurred to me that you would share the same affliction, the same fate. I was too wrapped up in myself. The only saving grace was that I knew I was a half-wolf, and I had not yet been bitten.”

“What changed?”

“The night of the full moon, I felt. . . restless. I snuck out to the docks, and drank so much I could barely stand. When I returned to the palace. . .” He shakes his head. “I was overtaken by a sick curiosity. I wanted to know what they looked like when they transformed.”

“You went back to the dungeons.”

A sorrowful look flickers across his face. “There were five of them in the cells. I was barely conscious, I was so drunk. I taunted a couple of them through the bars. I was bitten. I deserved it, I suppose.”

“Blake said he knew the wolf who bit you.”

“Yes. He’s at Madadh-allaidh now.”

My eyebrows raise. “Who?”

He snaps his gloved fingers, as if he’s searching for the name. “The man with the dreadlocks and the southern accent.”

“Jack?”

“Yes, that’s right. Jack.”

Shock blooms inside me. I had never asked how Blake met his right-hand man, but I didn’t expect them to both have been prisoners within my father’s palace. Darkness spreads inside me as something else occurs to me. “Jack is part of Blake’s clan. That makes Blake your alpha.”

The thought that Blake is playing a bigger game intensifies. It can’t be a coincidence that he has managed to become alpha to both the prince and the princess of the kingdom that entrapped him. As much as I protest that Blake is not my alpha, his bite still marks my shoulder.

Philip shrugs. “He certainly thinks he is. He tried to use the ?ithne on me when he had me in the infirmary.”

“It didn’t work?”

He shakes his head. “No. Although I let him think it did.”

“I did the same thing.”

A dimple creases his cheek. “After that, I realized I had to get out of the kingdom before the following full moon. Shifting in front of Father? Can you imagine?”

Despite my ill feeling toward my brother, the corner of my lip twitches.

Philip grins. “No, I decided I would spare myself that experience. I told Father I was ready to go to war. I took the guard who had told me about the Wolves in the dungeons with me, and—as soon as we had arrived at the war camp—we set off to the Snowlands in search of answers.”

“Did you find them?”

“I found a divided kingdom. I found the fear of the God of Night.” There’s a distant look in his eyes. “And I found Ingrid.”

“You love her,” I say softly.

“It doesn’t matter how I feel about her. It’s unrequited, I assure you. I did little to warm her to me when we first met. She is. . .” He bites his bottom lip, his face uncharacteristically serious. He looks almost like the prince he should be. “She is quite extraordinary.”

“Is that why you’re looking for the Heart of the Moon?”

He laughs. “Nothing escapes you, Sister.” He shrugs. “Yes, I’m looking for it. It wasn’t my primary reason for coming here, but I spoke to a tribe in the Snowlands who said it was sent here, years ago. Although they have a different name for it there. It translates to Blood of the Moon. I thought Ingrid might forgive me of my sins, if I found it.”

“The Blood of the Moon?”

“Yes.”

I bite my bottom lip. “And you decided to try and arrange a marriage between this extraordinary woman and the man I am. . .” The words die in my throat, and I shift on the boulder. I will return to Callum, and I’m going to fight for him, but he still wanted to end things between us. “The man I was courting. How brotherly of you.”

A dimple punctures his cheek. “What does it matter, little sister? Blake is your—”

“Don’t.” I push down the rise of panic. “How did you know about. . . about the bond?”

He pulls a face. “Aside from the fact it’s blatantly obvious?” He shrugs. “Every time you were both in the same room, he couldn’t take his eyes off you. Be careful around him, though. He’s changed since I met him. Back then, there was. . .” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. There was something ‘off’ about him. He hides it now.”

I agree that he’s hiding something, yet I feel a little indignant on Blake’s behalf. “Perhaps that’s because you met him when he’d just been tortured, Philip.”