The Night Prince (The Wolf King, #2)(121)

He’s working for Night. He has been all of this time. He’s been looking for me.

I’m always pretending, he told me once. I should have listened more closely.

I know he’s acting now. I can see it. His hands tighten on the arms of the chair. His back ever so slightly straightens. I feel that coil of wariness as it tightens around my soul. For so long, he has felt like a spring, wound tight. I think this is the moment when it finally snaps.

I know his secret.

My pulse becomes a cacophony in my ears.

Does he know that I know?

He stares at me, and there’s the hint of a challenge in his eyes. Say it, he seems to dare me. Bite.

My breathing quickens. I need to get away. I need to warn Ryan. James, too, I suppose. I need to warn the whole bloody kingdom, and my people, too. I need to stop him from using me to release his master. My gaze darts to the door, but I know he’d catch me.

I force myself to relax. To release a breath. To smile. He hasn’t hurt me yet, so he must be waiting for something before he makes his move. I have time. There has to be more time.

I can pretend, too.

“I had the strangest dream that I was being chased through a forest,” I say. I settle back down on my pillows. I’ll put him at ease, wait for him to go back to sleep, then I will run.

He blinks. Once. Twice. “That sounds frightening.”

He shifts in his chair, and I try not to flinch. He puts his foot on the edge of my bed, and I think it’s to barricade me in. But then the bottom of his breeches rides up. Too late, my eyes dart to the exposed flesh, and I realize his intent.

The mark I saw there, when I hid beneath his bed, is no ordinary scar. A key with two crescent moons in the bow has been burned into his ankle—the flesh around it is angry and mottled. Elsie and Alexander had Night’s mark inked onto their wrists, but this. . . this is different. A fresh wave of horror crashes over me as I remember the book of drawings depicting Night’s monsters. They were branded like this, too.

He’s showing it to me. He wants me to confront him.

I look away hurriedly, and pretend I didn’t see.

He sighs and slides his foot back to the ground. His boot hits the floor with a thud.

“Let’s not play this game anymore.” The way he says it—as if I am the tiring one, as if I have been caught doing something wrong—stokes a fire inside me that flushes away some of the coldness. “Let us be honest, for once.”

“Honest?” The word tears from my lips. “You want to be honest?”

“Yes,” he says as my gaze darts toward the door. “I know what you’re thinking, so say it, and I can explain.”

Power coursed through my veins earlier, but I feel anything but powerful now. Even if I understood how the power of the moon worked, what could I do with it? Turn him into a wolf, and make him an even bigger threat?

I clench the sheets. “You can’t hurt me because of the bond,” I remind him.

“That’s not the reason I won’t hurt you.”

“You’ve been working for Night.”

I wait for him to deny it. I want him to deny it. “Yes.”

My breath catches. My soul splinters. My fear spikes. “The rumors that someone was trying to free Night and create him an army, they were about you. You’re the Night Prince.”

“Yes.”

My pulse is beating so quickly now, it drowns out the sound of anything else. Adrenaline surges through me. Run. Run. Run.

“Aurora, we don’t have time for this. Don’t—”

I lurch across the bed toward the door, and the bedsheets tangle around my thighs. The glass of water on my bedside table spills. He grabs me around the waist, and throws me back onto the mattress. I open my mouth to scream, but he pins me down and clamps his hand over my mouth. He climbs on top of me, and his thighs clench against my hips. His scent floods my senses. I grab his wrist and curl my fingers into his bone. I taste the salt of his palm. Bite, Bite. Bite.

“Don’t.” The wolf flashes in his eyes, feral and beautiful. “Listen.”

His essence floods me, dark and powerful and suffocating. It strokes and coaxes and is laden with such intense dominance that I almost whimper as I try to push it away. Something inside me wants to yield to it, to submit.

He is using the ?ithne, like before, but fear cools my blood. He is more powerful than he was letting on the last time he did this. All this time, I thought it was Callum who was holding back with me. I see now it was Blake. Sweat beads on my brow. His words, spoken in his chambers at Madadh-allaidh, come back to haunt me. When the time comes, little rabbit, I will give you everything I have. I promise.

Is this it? Is this his glorious defeat?

“Stop fighting, Aurora. Listen.”

My own power rises to meet his. I reach deep inside of me and grab his shadowy fingers. His grip tightens, and I gasp as I’m held within his grip. Still, I think I could fight him off. As the telltale dots appear across my vision, and my breathing becomes rapid, I know that all I need do is let go.

I think he knows it, too. I think he’s giving me a reason to acquiesce to him, a way for me to pretend that he forced me into submitting to him. Because he knows my truth, even if I can’t stomach it.

I want to know what he has to say. I want to trust him. I want him to tell me this is a mistake, and that I wasn’t wrong to save his life.