All Chapters of THE WOLF’S PRINCESS : Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

The wagon smelled like fear before anyone said a single word.There were six of us packed into the back, wrists bound with rope that had already rubbed my skin raw, our knees pressed together because there wasn’t room for anything else. Six women, six kingdoms, six sets of eyes that wouldn’t quite meet each other. Nobody wanted to be the first to admit how frightened they were. I understood that. I was doing the same thing.Outside, the road had changed hours ago. The soft green hills of Elaria had given way to something darker, taller trees, colder air, mountains in the distance that didn’t look like they belonged to any kingdom I’d ever heard described in a storybook. Every mile felt like it was pulling me further from anything familiar, and I found myself memorizing small, useless things the color of the sky, the shape of a bird overhead as if I needed proof, later, that another world had existed before this one.It was the woman across from me who broke the silence first. Older th

I don’t remember being carried out of the arena.I remember waking up somewhere quieter, my shoulder wrapped tight enough to ache, and I remember the fear that came rushing back the second I understood where I was not a cell, not a healer’s room, but somewhere close to the throne, close to him.They dressed my wound, gave me barely enough time to stop shaking, and then two guards walked me down a corridor lined with black stone and silver banners, straight toward a set of doors taller than any I’d ever seen in my father’s palace.The throne room was full when they brought me in. Nobles, guards, court officials, all of them turning to look at me the moment I crossed the threshold, and I understood immediately that whatever had happened in that arena had already become the only thing anyone in this palace wanted to talk about.Lucas stood near the base of the throne, not seated, still in the black and silver of the court now instead of fur and blood, and if I hadn’t seen it with my own

Lucas had Damon by the throat before I even understood he’d moved.He slammed his brother into the stone wall hard enough to crack it, and I heard the air punch out of Damon’s lungs and saw his feet leave the ground entirely. I’d expected shouting. I’d expected the kind of argument brothers have loud, ugly, over quickly. This wasn’t that. Lucas’s face had gone utterly still, and somehow that stillness was worse than any rage I’d ever seen.“Lucas” Damon choked out, clawing at the hand around his throat. “It’s me. It’s just, I was only”“Touch her again,” Lucas said, quiet enough that I had to strain to hear it, “And I’ll forget you’re my brother.”The words landed in the room like something physical. I watched Damon’s face change the shock in it, real and raw, stripped of every ounce of his usual charm.“You’ve never” Damon’s voice cracked. “You’ve never once cared what I did with a woman. Never. Not in thirty years.” He said it like a wound reopening, like this was less about