The Night Prince (The Wolf King, #2)(96)

“You want to end things between us, don’t you?” I should feel hurt, yet a strange calmness settles over me.

“It's the last thing in this world that I want. You’re bound to him, regardless of my desire.” Tears glisten in his eyes as he strokes my cheek. “If things were different. . .”

I incline my head as my decision solidifies. “The moon’s power can break the bond, Callum. I’m going to find the Heart of the Moon. I’ll use it to break the bond, then I’ll bring it back to you.” A soft smile graces his lips, though there is a glimmer of disbelief in his eyes. “You don’t believe me?”

“I don’t believe the bond can be broken, Princess.”

My jaw hardens. “I have to try.”

He pushes his forehead against mine. “Fearsome creature.”

“Wolf.”





Chapter Fifty-Two





I wake sometime in the morning.

The fire has died, and there is only ash in the hearth. Darkness stains the floorboards, and the rain patters against the window. Still, I’m not cold.

Callum lies on his front. His heat sears me, and his scent is overpowering. I think I must be finally accepting that wolf part of myself, because I smell him all over me. Mountains and the dawn light, a hint of woodsmoke. His hand is inches from mine on the mattress, as if he reached for me in his sleep but fell short.

He seems so close, yet further away than ever. I understand now what plagues him. I understand how this bond—this unbreakable bond—with Blake tortures him, just like it tortures me. I understand that for him, it changes things. Things have changed, I suppose, for me, too, though I like to think that if things were reversed, I would at least fight for him.

Perhaps it’s because I’m not a wolf, or not a full wolf anyway. I’ve not grown up in the light of the Moon Goddess. Breaking a bond she has made doesn’t seem like sacrilege to me.

In spite of everything, a strange peace settles over me. There’s something growing in me that I don’t understand. Something awoke within me long before I was bitten by James. The night I took Callum’s hand, and came with him to the Northlands, it burst into existence, and it has been agitated since.

I’ve struggled to find my place here. I’ve always been defined by my relationships to other people. Even now, that is the case. The Wolves see me as either the daughter of their enemy, or the consort to their king, and—if the truth about the bond comes out—they will define me by my connection to Blake as well.

It’s stifling. Constricting. I wish, for a short time at least, to be free of it all. To find out who I am outside of that cage. Blake was looking into my ancestry, Philip has made a strange allegiance with the Snowlands queen, and my mother. . . Lochlan thinks she had the Heart of the Moon at some point.

I want to do something for myself, for once. I want to learn about where I came from, and what happened to my mother. I want to break this damned bond.

I don’t want the day to start. I want to stay like this, sore and sated, while he sleeps. I want to memorize his face, soft in a way most will never see. I want to trace the muscles in his back, revealed since the covers are bunched at his waist. I want to kiss the bullet scar in his shoulder and run my fingers through his hair—the color of wet sand.

He opens his eyes, as if he senses me watching him. “Morning, Princess.”

“Good morning.”

If he’s embarrassed about last night, he doesn’t show it. He smiles. It’s the first sincere smile he has offered me since we arrived here, and it lights up his face. It makes him seem boyish. Mischievous. I can’t help the twitch of my own lips.

“Last night was fun,” he says, voice rough with sleep.

Visions of him pinning me to the rug as he thrust inside me flood my mind. “Yes, it was.” We stare at one another. The light in his eyes dims, and I know he’s remembering the conversation we had afterward. The warmth inside me ebbs. I sigh. “We need to talk about—”

“Aye.” He exhales. “Aye. We do. There is something I must do first.”

He rolls onto his back, then slides out of bed. Naked, he pads across the room, wraps his kilt around his waist, then slips on a shirt. A grim expression is etched onto his face when he throws open the chest at the foot of his bed and pulls out a couple of swords. I jolt upright.

“Callum, what are you. . .?”

He strides across his chambers and heads into the corridor. “I shall be right back, Princess.”

I throw myself out of bed. I grab one of my simple dresses that hangs in his armoire and almost fall over as I pull it on. My messy hair gets caught in my mouth.

He can’t kill Blake without me dying too. He knows this. “Callum! Wait!”

He’s already rounding the end of the corridor when I stagger out of his bedchambers. I run after him, heartbeat pounding. I presume the dungeons are beneath the castle, but he strides past the stairwell and down another corridor, throwing open a door. I jerk to a halt beside him.

“Up. Now,” Callum commands.

Philip groans, rolls over, and staggers out of the small bed by the window, arms outstretched. His copper hair is messy and it glints in the light of the low fire in the hearth. He wears a long-sleeved white cotton top, his tattoos covered. He blinks a couple of times as he turns to face us, as if confused. Yet when Callum tosses him a sword, he catches it with one hand.