Chapter 5

TAYLOR'S POV

The chamber door had barely closed behind us when it burst back open.

Elders poured in like they had been waiting right outside with their ears pressed to the wood, all of them talking at once in that language I did not understand, all of them pointing at me with expressions that made it very clear I was the problem they were here to solve.

I leaned toward Caius. "Are they angry?"

"Yes," he said.

"At me specifically?"

"At the situation," he said carefully.

"So yes," I said.

One elder stepped forward and pointed directly at my face and delivered what was clearly a very long and very passionate speech in their language. I waited until he finished then looked at Zed.

"What did he just say?"

"You do not want to know," Zed said.

"I absolutely want to know," I said.

"He said you are a wandering soul with no sacred place in this world and your presence at the altar is an abomination against the bond," Ryun said from behind us, completely expressionless.

I turned to face the elder. "Sir with the greatest respect I did not choose to be here. I was minding my own business dying on a pavement in Colorado and a woman with gold eyes and claws told me to live the life she could not. So if you have complaints I suggest you take them up with her."

The elder stared at me.

The other elders stared at me.

The entire chamber went completely silent.

Then all of them started talking again at the same time, louder than before, and a tall sharp faced woman with silver markings climbing up her neck reached out and grabbed my arm with a grip that was surprisingly strong and started pulling me toward the door.

"Excuse me!" I said. "That is my arm!"

She did not let go.

Ryun moved.

I did not see him move. One moment he was standing across the chamber and the next he was between me and the elder woman and his voice came out so low it did not sound like it belonged to anything human and it vibrated through the stone floor and up through the soles of my feet and every single elder in that room took one simultaneous step backwards.

I looked at his eyes and they were gold like fully gold and also they were glowing in the dim light of the chamber like two small flames.

I looked at his hands.

Claws. Long and dark where his fingernails had been.

I looked at his face. He was still Ryun the quiet and dangerous one. But something ancient and enormous looking out through his eyes that had absolutely nothing to do with any human being I had ever met.

"Ryun," I said very carefully.

He did not look at me.

"Ryun," I said again.

He turned and his gold eyes met mine and something hit me in the chest like a door being kicked open, warm and pulling and completely uninvited, and I grabbed the wall behind me to stay standing.

Ryun went completely still.

Every elder in the room saw it happen and the silence that followed was the loudest silence I had ever stood inside.

"What was that?" I asked, pressing my hand flat against my chest. "What just happened to me?"

"The bond," Caius said quietly.

"The bond did that?"

"It is already pulling," he said.

"Make it stop," I said.

"We cannot," Zed said.

The oldest elder, a small ancient looking man with markings covering every visible inch of his skin, stepped forward and looked at me with eyes that had seen a thousand years of things I could not imagine and said in perfect clear English, "You have one hour."

I looked at him. "One hour for what?"

"To agree to the ceremony," he said. "After one hour the bond completes itself with or without your consent and the pull you just felt will be the least of what you experience."

I looked at Caius. "Is he serious?"

"Yes," Caius said.

"And if I refuse the whole time?"

"Then the bond tears itself apart," the old man said simply. "It takes the three kings with it. It takes you with it. It takes everything."

The chamber went very quiet.

I looked at Ryun who still had gold eyes and claws and was watching me with that expression that made the pulling in my chest worse just from looking at him.

I looked at Zed whose jaw was tight and whose silver eyes were giving absolutely nothing away.

I looked at Caius who was watching me with the patience of a man who had run out of good options and knew it.

"One hour," I said slowly.

"One hour," the old elder confirmed.

"To decide whether to marry three werewolves I met twenty minutes ago or destroy an entire kingdom."

"That is correct," he said.

I laughed not because it was funny. Because it was so far beyond anything I had ever imagined happening to me that laughing was the only response my body had left.

"Flynn Ashville," I said to nobody in particular, "could never."

"Who is Flynn Ashville?" Zed asked.

"Nobody important," I said, straightening up and looking at all three kings. "Alright. One hour but I have conditions."

Caius blinked. "You have conditions."

"I have conditions," I said. "First somebody is going to explain everything about this bond and this kingdom and what being married to three werewolf kings actually means in practical terms. Second nobody grabs my arm again." I looked at the silver marked elder woman who was still standing nearby. "Nobody. Third and most importantly somebody is going to feed me because I have been dead and reborn and dragged through a supernatural wedding and I have not eaten since yesterday morning and I cannot make the most important decision of my life on an empty stomach."

The entire chamber stared at me.

Then Ryun, quietly and without any expression whatsoever, turned to one of the younger attendants by the door and said something in their language.

The attendant disappeared immediately.

"Did you just," I started.

"You said you needed food," Ryun said simply, turning back to face the room like he had not just done something surprisingly reasonable in the middle of a supernatural crisis.

I looked at him for a moment and I noticed his gold eyes were back to normal dark eyes and his claws were already gone.

"Thank you Ryun," I said.

He said nothing and turned back to face the room like feeding a dead woman who had just been told she had one hour to marry three werewolves was a completely normal part of his evening.

Maybe in this kingdom it was and I had one hour to find out.