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The king took my cloak delicately off my shoulders and laid it over a chair. “You look beautiful.” He smoothed one hand up my arm, from the wrist to my shoulder, his touch firm through the silk. “Even more beautiful that you did in your gown.”
My wolf urged me to move closer, to kiss him, to bury my face in the crook of his neck and erase all my reason and logic in the delicious familiar scent of his sweat. I wrestled her into submission.
“We should talk,” I said.
The king pulled back with an interested smile on his face. “Sure.” He moved toward the crackling fire, then gestured toward the armchair across from his own. He hadn’t changed his clothes, but did roll up the sleeves of his fine shirt, revealing the tanned muscular curve of his forearms. He poured us each a bit of brandy, then offered me the glass. “Let’s talk.”
“I know it’s our wedding night,” I said.
“You have a keen eye.”
I ignored that. “And I know what is—customary.”
“Right,” he said, that wolfish smirk reappearing on his face as his warm eyes tracked over my body.
“But I—I can’t forgive as quickly as some might be able to,” I said. “I need more time.”
The pleased expression dropped off his face. He raised his eyebrows. “This is about that traitor of yours?”
“He wasn’t just a traitor,” I said.
“I thought we discussed this,” the king said. “How can you still be angry after all he said? All he did to you? All the lies and the treason?”
“It’s not anger,” I shot back. “It’s grief. It doesn’t just go away because he lied to me. It doesn’t erase what we had before this.”
“It should,” the king said. “It wasn’t real. It was based on lies.”
“It was real to me.” I swallowed hard and looked into the crackling fire as my emotions sparked inside me just as restlessly. “He was the only friend I had for years. I can’t just get over something like that immediately. I can’t pretend it never happened.”
“What you have ahead of you is so much better,” the king said. “You’ll waste your life being trapped in the past.”
“How can you be sure of that?” I asked. “How can I be sure of anything you say? You’ve lied to me too. You hid the prophecy from me. There was always more to this competition than just the council’s opinion on my manners and your personal attraction. A marriage is about trust—how am I supposed to trust you?”
His eyes burned gold. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, gaze fixed on me and lips parted to show the tips of his canines. Instinctively, I pulled back in my chair, away from the show of dominance. But it wasn’t just authority in his gaze—it was more than that. There was hunger in his eyes too, hunger and desire.
“If you were more amenable to me,” he said so low it was almost a growl, “perhaps I would’ve been more forthcoming. But since the moment you stepped into this manor, my Choice has been nothing but a game to you. Even when I informed you I was not doing this for politics, but for a mate, you ignored me. Why would I be inclined to tell you more, if you didn’t listen to me when it mattered?”
“Of course I didn’t believe you!” My wolf flashed behind my eyes, and the king reared back the smallest amount. “You’re the Bloody King. Even if the Bloody King wants a mate, that’s an arrangement about power. It’s all about power—the power you hold over me, keeping me here, the power your pack wields over my mind, the power you wield over the country. You don’t treat me like an equal.”
He stood up from his seat so fast the legs scraped across the floor. I swallowed, cowering slightly in my chair. I’d let my frustration get the best of me again. Running my mouth in front of the king might be more dangerous than letting my wolf out.
Then, slowly, the king leaned down. He gripped the armrests of my chair, caging me in. I felt small underneath him. His golden gaze was unwavering. He leaned so close I thought he was going to kiss me; my lips parted in anticipation.
But instead he leaned so close his breath tickled my ear as he spoke. “Think carefully next time you call me the Bloody King, Ice Princess.”
I scoffed, turning my head to avoid him. “Don’t call me that.” I flattened my palm on his chest to push him away but he was unmovable as a stone.
“Then don’t act like it.”
“You are such a hypocrite, Elias,” I said, spitting his name like it tasted foul in my mouth.
Finally, he stood up and moved from the chair. I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The king grabbed his brandy glass and drained it. He seemed to be just as frustrated as I was.
I stood up and smoothed out my robe. I didn’t have anywhere to go; I just didn’t want to be trapped in this room with him. Surely I could make it back to my quarters. I hadn’t expected this to go great, but I’d thought I could at least have an adult conversation with him. About our future together. And yet as soon as I’d tried to make myself heard, he’d turned on me in anger, closer to a wolf than a man. He was so unreasonable—how could we be expected to lead together when we couldn’t even have a conversation?
Regardless of the vows we’d made, I had a feeling there wouldn’t be much of us ‘together.’ I was supposed to simply follow him. Just as my father had wanted me to follow him, and Griffin, too.
I needed air. I needed my wolf to calm down and I needed to get my emotions under control. I moved toward the glass doors leading to the balcony of the king’s quarters.
