Alle Kapitel von THE ALPHA KING'S WIFE WAS NEVER HIS MATE: Kapitel 11 – Kapitel 16

What are you?I looked at the king of Valmoor, sitting up on a heap of dyer's sacking with four fresh scars across his ribs, and I did the only thing I could think of.I asked a question of my own."How do you feel?"His eyebrows lowered. "That is not an answer.""It is a reasonable question. You were dying last night.""I was bleeding.""From iron wounds. They do not close on their own." I folded my hands behind my back, where the last silver light on my fingertips was finally fading. "You were healed. That is what matters.""It matters," Kael said slowly, "who did it.""Does it?""Elena.""I am a clerk's daughter. I grew up in a village full of wolves, and I learned a few old remedies from the women there." It was a lie built on a scrap of truth, and I told it as smoothly as I could. "Moss, honey, a little pressure. I was lucky.""Moss does not glow.""It does in the dark.""Elena."He pushed himself up onto his knees, one palm pressed against his ribs, and I saw him take in the dim

Kael did not say a word.He did not ask what I had meant. He did not demand to know how I could tell a leashed man from a free one. He only stepped past me, very slowly, and planted himself between my body and the grey-coated man at the post. His shoulders were rigid. His sword hung loose at his side."Let them go," he said."Majesty?""The leashed ones. Every one of them. Let them go, or I will take your head, and then I will find the hand that holds the other end and take that, too."The man's pleasant smile did not waver. "I do not hold the leash, Majesty. I am only a messenger.""Then you are a dead one.""Perhaps." The thin man shrugged. "But I think you will find it difficult to kill us all without hurting people who did not choose this. That is what the lady said, is it not? He is not choosing this." His gaze slid past Kael's shoulder to me. "A very instructive observation."My stomach turned.The man raised one hand, palm outward, as though calling for silence. And every grey-

The council called it madness.Lord Varek said so loudly. Lord Hollis said so quietly, which was worse. Ezekiel said nothing at all, but the smile on his face had thinned into something I could not read. Only Kael seemed unbothered. He listened to every objection, nodded once, and said, "Ten minutes. In the east anteroom. Rhys will guard the door.""With the Ironfang envoy?" Hollis said. "Alone? After yesterday?""She will not be alone. She will be with her husband and her king."It was a masterful answer. It was also an order.So ten minutes later I found myself standing in a small, bare, windowless chamber off the Hall of Moons, with a single lamp, a plain table and four hard chairs. Dorian leaned against the far wall with his arms folded. Isolde stood near the door in her fur-lined cloak, so rigid that she looked carved from ice. Between them was a gap of ten feet, and the bright, flawless thread that ran across it like a taut wire."A forged bond is a counterfeit," I said. "It loo