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Seriously, did this male have the longest bootlaces on the continent? Clara’s skin was nearly being rubbed raw at that point.
“Yes, there is much more we need to discuss,” she conceded. “But that’s not likely to happen while your nose is to the ground and I’m expending all my energy warming up this thing. Surely this is sufficiently heated by now. I trust it’ll work properly. When can I let go of it?”
Bronze shot to his feet in a burst of energy common among pups and patrol guards, grabbed the compass from her, and tossed it into the bottom of his pack with no care whatsoever. “It doesn’t need to be warmed up to work. I just couldn’t have you shitting all over your confidence when you’ve got a handsome angel like me to marry. Figured it was best to keep your hands busy before that little fact dawned on you and you got it in your head to wrap those pretty fingers around my throat. And,” he added, adjusting the pack higher on his shoulders, “before we make it back to dear old dad’s, I think we better talk about the endgame here.”
Clara blinked, her palm still frozen in midair, and blinked again. In the span of a swift breeze through the trees, she’d been simultaneously tricked, understood, comforted, and, most peculiar of all, dismissed for not having the foresight to commit bodily harm to the male who . . . had rescued her? If she wasn’t barreling toward the biggest fight of her life once she returned home, she wasn’t entirely certain she could make it another step without drawing blood.
Of all the strangest, most frustrating, obnoxious?—
“No one has ever spoken to me that way,” she said icily.
“Yeah, I got that, and let me tell you I’m quite honored to be the first.”
Clara shook her head. “You’re unbelievable. Where I come from males don’t joke in such a manner, and females certainly?—”
“Don’t laugh quite as much as they should. I can tell. Now, we’ve got another hour or so, and I need to know one very important thing before we get there.”
“And what is that?” she said, snapping her fists to her hips.
Oh, her wolf was fuming. As weak as the poor thing was, it wouldn’t take much for her to shift and have her other half bound down on him with the force of a forest-leveling hurricane. Hell, Clara might even let her wolf get a few good bites in before she lessened—not halted—the assault.
Might lessen.
She was about to tell him as much when he stepped closer, chasing away whatever brave chilly spring breezes had dared to linger in his wake.
“What I need to know, princess, and what you’ve conveniently left out of your tale so far, is what comes after the wedding vows. I know my own reasons for why I’m agreeing to marry a beautiful woman and escort her back to her piece-of-shit father who made her run away in the first place. Now it’s time to tell me yours.”
Chapter 10
Clara could have sworn she’d passed the same tree three times now were it not for the slight difference in placement of the knots along the trunk. That and the hyper-focused intent with which she observed—and efficiently stepped over sans Bronze’s help—the tree roots punching up through the ground at varying angles. She would not study the male at her side, who didn’t even have the common decency to give a female her bit of space when asking after her private reasoning.
Was he entitled to the truth of it? She supposed he was. A little. But then so much of what she’d endured would have been for naught!
Clara chewed the inside of her lip, fully aware that the angel was being beyond patient in waiting for her answer. Males, in her experience, had not been blessed with such a constitution. If they had, she might not have needed to go to the lengths she had.
Discreetly, she risked a peek at him. That olive-green rucksack still sat high on his shoulders in the exact same manner as when he’d first slung it on. She had no idea what was in it, but it looked heavy enough to sever the exposed tree roots beneath him if he dropped it in the right place. The angle of her cloak’s hood obscured much of him beneath the pack, but it did nothing, thankfully, to hide Bronze’s shock of auburn hair that curled around his ears and neck. It was her favorite bit of chaos about him, and there certainly had been much to choose from. A part of her wondered what his hair would feel like between her fingers, whether it would be silky or coarse, whether it would spiral around the cylinder of her pinky or go its separate way.
Such thoughts were certainly unbecoming of an unmated female. A mated female, however, could fantasize about such things, could she not? And as he’d so confidently and bluntly pointed out, mated they would soon be.
Clara cleared her throat, finally dissolving the silence between them. “My father is not a kind man.”
He snorted. “Yeah. I got that.”
“It bears repeating.” She kicked a stone in front of her, measuring its skips until it settled into a puddle with a satisfying plunk. “My people deserve far more than to suffer at the hands of a tyrant, whether that be my father or one chosen by him to engage in practices similar to his own. There are many lycans who, as we speak, are fighting to break free and establish their own autonomy, but ruling pressure has been making it increasingly impossible to do so. The king has been crippling hybrid businesses that, for centuries, have served both the human and lycan lands, forcing them instead to cut their earnings by having the monarchy and its subjects as their sole customers. Our lands are well hidden, as I’ve mentioned, but many lycans believe a society cannot thrive without expansion. There are ways to safely navigate human interactions, and those lycans who had figured out how to do so over the years have enjoyed great prosperity for not only their families but their communities. My father, as I’ve mentioned, also believes in expansion but is much more narrow-minded in who he prefers to deal with. Where I see potential for growth and development, he sees only scarcity and what the humans have that we do not.”
“You mentioned hybrid businesses that had served both lands for centuries. How old are you, exactly?”
“Ninety-four. My father has been ruling in his seat for close to three hundred years but was only able to sire one offspring with my mother before she died.” A familiar tightness that always plagued her whenever she thought of her mother threatened to slow the momentum of her words, forcing her to clear her throat and fight through the pain, as she always did. Clara braced for his muttered condolences and had already curled her lips into the slight smile she often gave to soothe others’ acknowledgment of her grief, but Bronze never looked up at her. He just kept his head down, his steps measured, like the path before them would last exactly as long as it needed for her to continue her story.
His silence, for sure, meant she should continue. Right?
Goodness, he was so difficult to read. And that coming from her! A cloistered royal who’d spent a lifetime doing little more than people watching!
Then another thought struck her. One so obvious in its intentions it was no wonder he remained quiet.
He’s not interested in coddling you. He asked for the purpose of the marriage and has been waiting patiently for you to get to the point.
With how heavily her foolishness sat on her chest, it was a wonder she hadn’t sunk to the bottom of that blasted river to begin with. And even more perplexing, why the hell did she feel the need to drag out her answer to his question into some magnum opus? She had a friend or two, staff, others in her life who knew her history as well as that of her mother. It was clear from the set of his shoulders and the insistent pace he maintained that sob stories would go about as far with him as they’d gotten her. Nowhere.
