Wolf King

4

Marco’s was already busy, despite the afternoon hour. Outside the door, I palmed a coin to a street boy and asked him to fetch Griffin. There was no way a woman of my standing—dressed as a commoner or not—would be caught in a place like Marco’s. Even if Griffin enjoyed spending time there, often to my dismay, I refused to go inside.

I stepped into the alley to wait for him as I usually did. I peeked in through the back door, careful not to rouse any attention. Marco’s was busy. Inside, sturdy wooden tables were populated with rough-looking wolves, occasionally baring their teeth at each other over games of dice and cards. I tried not to cringe. I didn’t like that Griffin went in establishments like this but at least he didn’t get awfully drunk like the wolves already spilling beers on the bar in broad daylight. Small favors.

Griffin was in the far corner, at a darkened table with three other men, all a bit larger than he was. I smiled when I saw him and watched with affection as the boy ran up and whispered into his ear. Griffin nodded, then spoke to the men at the table and levered to his feet. He was without a doubt the most handsome wolf in the room—tall, slender, with his deep red hair pushed rakishly off his forehead and a smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose.

He was a member of the court as well. Griffin worked under the duke, focused mostly on trade taxation. He was smart, ambitious, and had priorities similar to my own: We both wanted more than the lives we were offered here in Daybreak. Out of everyone in this town, Griffin was the only one who saw me as more than a Lady of the Court—a pretty face and fine manners.

After a moment, Griffin stepped into the alley. He looked a little worse for the wear, with bags under his eyes and his lips turned down into a grimace.

“Not going so well in there, I take it?” I asked.

He sighed and combed his hand through his hair. “Yeah, we’re just getting started. I’ll earn back what I lost.”

“Right,” I said, biting back a smile. That never really went the way Griffin thought, but he enjoyed the game, so I held my tongue.

“What’s up?” he asked. “I thought you had court duties today.”

“I do,” I said. I tugged my hat off and held it at my side, trusting that no one would look down this narrow alley where we were hidden in shadow. “I just… I needed to see you.”

He must’ve seen something in my face, because his expression softened, and he stepped a little closer. I leaned my back against the brick wall of the alley and set my free hand at his hip. Ducking my chin, I gazed down at our feet. His presence always grounded me—made me remember that there was more to life than the political demands of the court.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“The duke summoned me to his study today.” I looked up, meeting Griffin’s eyes.

He raised his eyebrows. “The duke? He hasn’t asked for you specifically in… Gods, in years.”

“I know,” I said. “He got a dispatch from Efra.”

“From the king?”

I nodded. “He’s holding a King’s Choice.”

Griffin was silent. He set his hand at my waist and squeezed like he knew where this was going. “Reyna… You don’t mean…?”

“Yes.” Somehow saying it to Griffin made it more real. Anxiety curled in cold in my chest. “I’m to go as the representative from Daybreak.”

Griffin stepped back and pushed both hands through his hair. “You can’t. Reyna, you can’t go to the Court of Nightfall.”

“I don’t exactly have a choice here,” I said. “I’m a Lady of the Court, and the duke has ordered me to go.”

“f**k the duke,” Griffin said low, through clenched teeth. “We can talk to him—there has to be something—”

“He can barely stand to look at me,” I said with a disbelieving laugh. “Do you really think he’d listen to anything I had to say? I tried to get him to consider other women who could go, but he wouldn’t hear anything.” I frowned. “He even bared his teeth at me.”

Griffin sighed heavily. “Bared his teeth? Immediately?”

“Immediately,” I said.

Griffin swore under his breath. I didn’t love the obscenity, but I understood his anger. I felt the same way. Neither Griffin nor I shifted often, and he also considered brazen shows of one’s wolf to be rude and lacking control. He knew that if my father was revealing his wolf with such little provocation, there would be no getting through to him. He’d made up his mind.

“We’ll run,” Griffin said. “We’ll leave Daybreak. We can leave tonight.”

“Don’t be naïve.” I tugged him closer with my hand on his hip. “You know my father would come for me.”

My pack was a seafaring one, and once upon a time, we’d been a pack of explorers, too. We knew how to travel and how to track. If I ran, my father’s wolves would find me with ease.

“Then what?” Griffin asked. “You just go?”

I nodded. “That’s exactly what I do,” I said. “I’ll go. I’ll compete in the King’s Choice, and I’ll lose.”

“You’ll be disgraced if you do that,” he said. “You won’t be able to show your face in the court.”

“Exactly,” I said. “If I lose, we’ll be able to get out of here—for real. We can start our own lives.”

“You make it sound easy,” Griffin said. “Like you’re not going directly into the Court of the Bloody King himself.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, even if I only halfway believed it. “I know how to hold my own. Even if it is the Nightfall wolves.”

Again, Griffin sighed. He knew I was stubborn, and he knew he wasn’t going to win me over in this discussion. Not when I’d already made up my mind about how I was going to play this. “You know it’s not as simple as losing. If you offend the king, he’ll do worse than kick you out.”

“I know,” I said. “I can walk that line, Griffin.”

He didn’t look convinced—and honestly, I sounded more confident than I felt.

He was right. I had to remember that the king wasn’t above making an example of a wolf who offended him.

“I trust you,” Griffin said, “it’s the king that scares me.”

“Me too,” I admitted in a small voice.

Griffin wound his arms around me, pulling me close to his body. I wrapped my arms around his slim waist and rested my cheek against his shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent tinged with the inescapable stale beer smell of Marco’s. He brushed his nose against the crown of my head, careful not to disturb my braid.

“But I won’t let anything happen to you,” Griffin said. “If the king tries anything—I’ll come for you, Reyna.”

I nodded, hugging him a little closer to me. Even if that didn’t seem possible, my heart wanted to believe that. That there was someone in Frasia who cared enough to come for me if the king decided I wasn’t worth keeping alive. And Griffin and I still had so much to do together. We’d been together for a long time, but we’d only kissed once—at the solstice party, on the rare occasion of my being drunk on wine. I wanted to be married before we did anything more than that. I was a lady, after all. I wanted our first time to be special—I wanted it to be the beginning of the rest of our lives together. And I wanted to know that he was the kind of man that would wait until I was ready. A man who would commit to me for me.

I had high standards for the company I kept. I knew that to some members of the Daybreak pack, that made me seem standoffish and cold—and I knew they called me the Ice Princess behind my back because of it. My pale features certainly didn’t help, either.