Chapter Fifteen: The Pool 1

Darren looked a few years younger than Varul. Sandy-haired, sharp-eyed, with a scar across the cheek that gave his face an asymmetry that was almost interesting. But not as hot as my husband, my inner possessive bitch whispered, forgetting that she barely even knew the man enough to think of him as her anything.

Anyway, I refocused on Darren.

I had been around enough guarded people in my life — starting with my father in the years after my mother died, when watching someone's face meant learning to read what they were hiding — to recognize the quality of Darren's attention. He was not hostile. He was just guarded.

"You were at the wedding," I chirped conversationally.

There was a tick in his jaw. "Yes, Your Highness."

"You're my — Varul's second-in-command, right?"

"Yes, Your Highness." Still not looking at me. Okay. I took the hint and shut my mouth.

It was obvious that Rita and Conny were going to be the only friendly faces I'd be privy to in this new Northern kingdom. I smiled, remembering that they were riding at the rear in the "servants' wagon". I sighed. I, for one, could kill for a wagon. This horseback thing was really not for me.

I glanced around, searching for Varul, and I saw him a few rows ahead. A part of me was disappointed that he'd obviously appointed his second to ride beside me. Why was I disappointed? Well, I didn't care to analyze that.

We rode in silence for a few more hours. The landscape was changing. The cultivated farmland south of the capital had given way to wilder country: rolling hills covered in frost-stiff grass, stands of trees that grew denser and darker as we moved north. The road was still maintained here, still cobbled in stretches, but the forest was closer than it had been that morning, the canopy higher and older, the shadows between the trunks deeper. My hands itched for a charcoal stick to put this beauty on paper.

We made camp as the light began to fail.

The pack did this with uncanny efficiency— horses seen to, fire built, tents erected, watches assigned, all without apparent discussion or direction that I could hear. It was like watching a machine that had been calibrated over years to do exactly this, in exactly this order, in exactly the time it took.

I stood in the middle of it and tried to be useful and mostly succeeded in being in the way. It was like watching a scene from Game of Thrones come to life.

"Here, Yer Highness. I'm Veera," One of the younger pack members — a woman whose name I hadn't learned yet, with close-cropped dark hair — appeared at my elbow and steered me gently but firmly toward a tent at the eastern edge of the camp. "Yer tent."

It was a proper tent, not a bivouac, with a bedroll and blankets and a small oil lamp that the woman lit. The canvas was thick enough to block the wind. The bedroll was, against all reasonable expectations, relatively soft. I sat down on it and looked at the low ceiling and took stock.

Outside: the sounds of camp. Low voices. The fire crackling. The movement of horses. Somewhere, someone was cooking something that smelled like meat and herbs and turned out, when one of the other pack members brought a bowl to my tent flap with a brief knock, to be a stew that was substantially better than anything I'd eaten at the wedding feast.

I ate it cross-legged on the bedroll. I asked about my ladies (I refused to call them servants), and was told that they were also settling in for the night, and that "the care of our Luna will be handled by our female pack members."

Varul's tent was adjacent to mine. Larger. Dark canvas. Close enough that from where I was sitting I could see the lamp-shadow moving through its wall. A wolf called somewhere distant in the trees — a long, low sound that echoed off the dark hills and faded — and the pack didn't react, which meant it was one of theirs. A scout, maybe, or a patrol. Totally normal shit.

I put my empty bowl aside and lay back on the bedroll and stared at the canvas ceiling and listened to the camp settle into night around me.

*

After a little tossing and turning, I got up and wandered outside the tent. It was quiet. Everyone seemed to have gone to bed. The atmosphere was damn cold. I hugged my woollen blanket tighter around my chest. I eyed the Varul's tent, but the light was turned off. Maybe he's gone to sleep, I thought. I moved across the rows of smaller tents, careful not to make noise. The grass felt mushy and cool under my feet. The sky was bathed in the faint glow of the moon.

My wanderings led me into the thick of the forest. In the distance, I could hear howls. My mind screamed at me to turn back to the safety of the pack, but I stubbornly ignored it.

Maybe I was actually searching for death, something that would take me back to the real world. I wanted no part of this world with its strange alpha wolves and honest-to-God servants and a mother who had barely spoken ten words to me on the morning of my departure from what was supposed to be my ancestral home. Seriously, the Queen had literally just told me to "behave in your new household."

No hugs, no teary I'll miss you. The woman wasn't even my real mom, but damn if it hadn't hurt like a bitch.

Deep in my sulky thoughts, I failed to notice that I'd come to an open clearing with a pool of water at its center. Another thing I'd failed to notice was the man who was in the water and was watching me.

"Princess."

My head snapped up and my heart did a full Olympic sprint. Varul. Waist-deep in the pool, arms resting along a flat rock at the water's edge, watching me like an apex predator. The man probably heard me coming from the moment I left my tent.

The water was dark and still around him. The moonlight caught the lines of his shoulders, the broad planes of his chest, the wet gleam of his collarbones above the waterline, the gleaming silver link around his neck, and the wolf pendant resting on his chest. My lips parted at the intricate, swirling black tattoo of a growling wolf on his left pec. My eyes trailed low. Lower. To the stacked packs on his stomach, and lower to the healthy, masculine V that ran from his waist and disappeared into the water. My mouth went dry at the thought that he was naked. Naturally, I started rambling.

"I—" I started. Stopped. Tried again. "I didn't know anyone was — I was just walking—"

"In the forest," he said. "Alone. At night." He didn't sound too pleased.

"I couldn't sleep," I explained, with as much dignity as the situation allowed, which was not very much.

He looked at me for a moment. Then he looked at the tree line behind me, then back at me, with the expression of someone performing a very short and very unflattering risk assessment.

"There are wolves in this forest," he bit out.

"You're a wolf," I pointed out.

"I am aware."

"So technically I found the wolf," I said like a smartass. "Which means I'm safe."

He cocked his head at me, a slow smile spreading across his lips. "Are you?"

I swallowed and shifted on one foot, tightening my blanket around me. "Um, I-I hope so...? Anyway, you're right—it's night, and I should be sleeping, s-so I'm just going to return to my tent a-and —"

"Get over here, Princess," he drawled quietly.

"No," I said with as much defiance as I could muster. I raised my chin. "Why?"

One side of me — the sensible side — was pointing out, quite reasonably, that I was standing barefoot in a forest at midnight, in a world that wasn't mine, in a body that wasn't originally mine, considering getting into a freezing pool of water with a man whose last name I didn't even know.

The other side of me was stuck staring at those amazing collarbones. He made it very easy to forget the things I was supposed to be holding onto. And I wasn't sure yet whether that was a gift or a danger. Maybe both. Maybe in this world, those were the same thing.

I looked at the water. I looked at him.

Come on, babe. You don't belong here, I reminded myself quietly. This isn't your life.

His eyes sparked with heat and challenge as he watched me silently. Then— "Don't make me come get you, Princess."