His Human Queen

Into Arthos

I woke to warmth, to a deep, settled contentedness that seemed to seep into my bones. I stretched with a sigh, waking just enough to realize I was moving; not only was I moving, I felt the warmth of the sun as much as the warmth from the giant beast swaying with swagger beneath me.

“Let me down,” I snapped, pulling the fur at the nape of Caspian’s beast’s neck, but he only continued with a growl.

I was barefoot, nearly swaddled in my cloak.

“Where are my boots?” I tried to slide off his back, but was met only by his defiant snarl.

“I demand you turn back into a human and tell me where my shoes are. I don’t need you to carry me, Caspian!” I yelled, causing the mountains to echo like a creaking door. He huffed at that, an amused sound slipping his maw as I tried to look around for my shoes until it dawned on me that I had been leaning forward on my bag. Inside, still beaten and torn, were my boots. I quickly slipped them on and jumped from the back of his beast with a whimper that I forced to stay in my chest the moment my sore feet hit the powder again.

That made him shift back, made him back me against a boulder with rage clouding his features.

“Get back on my back, Maeve. Now.” I only laughed at that.

“You’re not my boss, you demand nothing from me, Caspian.” I stood straighter despite the weight of his burning amber eyes pushing into me.

“Actually, Maeve, I am. I am your boss now. I am your king, your alpha, and you will obey me.” It took every fiber of my being not to break down and listen to him, to climb back on his bare back and wait for him to shift into that powerful creature beneath my thighs. Instead, I stood my ground and merely shook my head.

“No,” I said quietly.

The word tasted reckless on my dry tongue; it made Caspian’s jaw tick, a single muscle jumping like he was chewing back the urge to unleash something awful. Instead, he exhaled a slow, sharp breath that clouded between us like steam from a boiling cauldron.

“Maeve,” he warned.

“No,” I repeated, more firmly this time.

He stared at me for a long, searing moment, long enough that the air itself seemed to freeze over. Then something inside him snapped. Not dramatically. Just a subtle shift, like a giant settling his weight before standing.

“Fine,” he growled. “You want to walk? Then you’ll walk properly.”

Before I could react, he bent, snatched up my bag, and slung it over his shoulder as if it weighed nothing. I lunged after it, but he lifted a hand—not touching me but halting me all the same.

A warning, a command.

“I am done arguing with you,” he said.

I crossed my arms, ready to spit something sharp—until he pulled open the flap of my bag and reached inside.

“Don’t you dare go through my—”

But he wasn’t touching anything of mine.

He was pulling out clothes.

His clothes.

Shirt. Trousers. Thick fur-lined outerwear, and then it hit me with horrifying, melting clarity:

He was naked.

I had been yelling at a naked man.

Face to face, at dawn, on a mountain.

Heat slammed up my neck and into my cheeks so fiercely I thought the cold might steam off my skin. My eyes shot anywhere, everywhere, except him.

He noticed. Of course, he noticed.

A low, smug sound vibrated in his chest. “Something wrong?”

“I, no, I just—” My words tripped over themselves violently. “You could’ve warned me!”

“I did,” he said, pulling on his trousers with slow, infuriating steadiness. “You just weren’t listening.”

I spun around so fast the world tilted. My face burned so hot it rivaled the fire he had made last night. “You were naked,” I hissed at the boulder in front of me. “And I was looking, I mean, not looking, but looking before I knew I was looking—” He chuckled.

Chuckled.

“You’re fine, Maeve,” he said, voice warm and amused in a way that made me more flustered. “You didn’t see anything scandalous.”

“I saw way too much!”

“You saw my back.”

“That’s not the point, Caspian!”

He didn’t answer. I could hear the rustle of cloth, the tug of boots being laced, the heavy settling of someone who had entirely too much control over himself—and me. Then something hit my shoulder.

I turned, startled, and caught the object before it fell.

Socks.

His socks.

Thick wool, still warm from being inside the bag with his clothes.

“Put them on,” he said.

“Ew.” I wrinkled my nose instinctively. “They’re yours.”

“And you’re freezing,” he countered. “Put them on.”

“No.”

“Maeve.”

His voice slid down my spine like a hand closing around it—firm and unyielding. Something deep and instinctive inside me bowed before I could stop it. My knees went weak; my breath was punched short.

Alpha.

He wasn’t bluffing.

My fingers tightened painfully around the socks as my body betrayed me—slowly, stiffly sinking to sit on a flat stone. My heart hammered with humiliation and fury.

“That’s not fair,” I whispered.

“No,” he agreed softly. “But it’s necessary.”

I glared up at him, but the command still thrummed through my limbs—a tether I hated. Yet my hands moved anyway, pulling off my thin, half-frozen socks and replacing them with his thick ones.

They swallowed my feet, warm and scratchy and infuriatingly comfortable.

When I finished, he crouched in front of me, meeting my eyes with a steadiness that made my breath quiver.

“You keep fighting me like this,” he said quietly, “and this mountain will kill you before noon.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” I muttered.

Something darkened in his gaze. Not anger, something heavier, something like regret, sharpened into determination.

“No,” he said, his voice dropping. “It’s not. If you die on this mountain, so does your family.” I nearly spat fire, I was so angry, but before I could so much as growl, he snapped.

“Move, Maeve,” he said. “You’re walking.”

I swallowed hard, stood, and followed—my feet wrapped in his warmth, my face still burning, and my pride bruised beyond repair.

The Eupine winds howled, but the only thing I felt was the weight of his command lingering in my bones.