The Feral King's Assassin Bride

Episode2

AELIRA

I took my place beside him, as the officiator began the old words of the joining bond, as Emrys stood beside me with the particular stillness of something that has decide to be patient.

Whatever was happening inside him at the moment was no concern to me. Tonight, whe the palace settled and he retired to his chambers, I would finsh what i came to do.

I felt his eyes on the side of my face throughout the entire ceremony. I didn not look back. The bond completed with final words of the officiator and when the hall exhaled around us I felt something settle in the air between us.

Emrys didn't speak to me at the wedding feast. He even barely looked at me. Or rather, he looked at me the way i imagined he looked at everything in his kingdom. Briefly, with a particular detachment. I sat beside him at the high table and ate nothing and watched the court everythig going on from behind the veil and waited.

The nobles watched me with careful, sideways attention of people who wanted to stare and had learned better than to do anything that Emrys might notice and disapprove of.

I became a curiosity, the woman their king agreed to take, face still covered, eerily still beside a man that most of them would have struggled to sit within arm's reach of.

His aura was present. A sovereign beast's dominance is not something you see or hear. When you have that awareness that something in this room is more powerful than you and your beast.

For me, I felt nothing.

I sighted Lord Braylen at his table, he smiled at me and I bowed in the way only him knows.

The feast went on. Emrys spoke when spoken to which was rarely, and in the most short and final way.of a man who thinks conversations are inflicting. The nobles make sure they angled their bodies slightly away when enaging him in conversation.

But I was comfortable near him.

>

The feast ended and he stood without ceremony and left. Not even an announcement or fomal retirement. He simply rose from the high table and walked out of the hall, leaving me all by myself. The court parted around him like water and closed behind him like he had never been there.

I sighed and waited for a while. Soon, I was escorted by palace attendants to the chambers that had been prepared for me, adjacent to his. And there was a connecting door to both room.

But i knew he did not share his space with anyone. The opportunity i had been counting on.

Two hours, I waited. Then, changed into a thin, unremarkable nightwear Seraphine had packed, It hugged my curves, stopping right half of my thigh and strapped the blade that I had soaked in silver-ashveil—three coats of it and enough to shut down even a sovereign beast's healing before it could compensate—to my forearm beneath the loose sleeve and wnet to his door.

I knocked softly once. No answer.

I opened the door.

His chambers were dark. No candles lit. Like he deliberately preferred the dark. Like he had arranged his space to specifially suit his beast that did not need light see.

Curtains heavy, windows sealed, the room larger and almost entirely empty of anything called decorations. Like it was not necessary.

Just a bed. A chair. A table.

He was in his bed, on his back, one arm across his chest and breathing in the slow and even rythm of sleep.

Emrys Kraelvyn Vorkan I know, was not a man who left himself genuinely vulnerable, ever, not even in his own chambers.

I moved anyways. Across the room, silently. Every steps i took placed with precision and making sure there is no sound, nothing to disturb the air and I reached the bed and stood over him.

Slid the blade from the its place at my forearm and let it settle into my grip.

For Morwyn.

I raised it. And made to descend into his—

His hand closed around my wrist with his eyes still closed.

For three heartbeats, it was just there. Then, he opened his eyes. His fingers gripped my wrist tightly but careful enough not to break the bone. And he sat up.

He yanked me onto his lap so quickly that my mind barely had time to catch up. A sharp breath caught in my throat, my nightwear had already slipped high up my thigh—one more pull, and there'd be nothing left to hide. He looked at me, and in the dark his eyes were gold, lit from within, the beast right behind them and watching.

Then he said:

"I've been waiting for you to finally show yourself. You've stalked me long enough to know how to come closer." His voice was low. "You're so dedicated. I'll give you that."

I said nothing. Instead, I was calculating exists, angles, the distance between us. His grip on my wrist was immovable.

"Who sent you?" He asked.

I met his eyes through the dark. "No one." I answered. "I sent myself. And I will make sure to kill you."

>

EMRYS

I did something close to a smile. My grip still tight. And i pulled her more closer, her flimsy excuse of a nightwear pulling taut between us, her bare skin warm against me. The scent of her even from a distance—soft, feminine, intoxicating and laced with someting that made my beast restless, sometimes possessive and my own control slip, just a little. This woman's scent had tormented me without even knowing it. Long before she made that decision to come close to me.

She had never been invisible to me. And she made a mistake stepping in to become my woman. Whtever her reason is, whatever she thought she was accomplishing by taking Seraphine's place, she had walked directly into the one position from which there was no chance of her escaping. I had almost lost control of my beast entirely when my eyes found her at the aisle and I recognised that scent. Not of Seraphine but hers.

It was suprising that i had not given in to one of my feral episodes at that moment.

And now here she was, sitting in my lap with a silver-ashveil blade and the audacity to tell me she intended to use it on me.

I knew I had uncountable enemies but who was she to have made that surprising bold move to come to me herself and decide to kill me.

"I will ask you one more time," I said. My free hand found her inner thigh with my claws extending slowly and controlled and I pressed deep enough to draw blood. She winced.

Her blood welled against my fingers. What would it taste like?

My beast lurched toward the sight of blood with a violence that caught even me off guard. Because I was hurting her? I care less and pressed deeper and drew more, and my beast hit the surface like it had been behind a door and just decided to kicked it open.

This time I did not have the strength to fight it back.

I let it take over.