Page 49 of Wolfkissed
“I can take it.” He’s looking at me. “For you, I will.”
“No. We’re not barbarians. This is ridiculous!” I turn to Stepfather. “This isn’t his fault.”
“How interesting.” Stepfather’s eyes narrow. “Is it yours, then? Let’s have you both lashed.”
“You can’t do that!” I start struggling anew. “I’m the lady of this house.”
“Are you, now? You think you have any power here? A little too late to assert yourself, huh, daughter? You spent your life coddled and hidden away?—”
“Coddled?” I all but spit at him. “I was never coddled by you.”
He sniffs and turns his back on us. “Lock them both up.”
“But my lord,” one of his manservants objects, “he’ll kill her if we lock them up together, eat her?—”
“Not my problem. She wants to be near him? Let him have her for dinner.”
We have no dungeons, as this is a stately manor and not a fort, or I’m sure we would have ended up there. Instead, we are shut inside a small storeroom downstairs. Crates are piled at the back, leaving us precious little space behind the door to stand or sit.
Someone has thrown Valen his pants and a shirt, so the werewolf is dressed once again. So terribly thoughtful of them to consider dignity and propriety after grabbing us and throwing us into this hole like criminals.
Standing there, in the dimness broken only by the light slipping under the door, I remember Della’s words and bow my head. She was right. I should have been more careful. I hadn’t thought Stepfather had people watching me.
But honestly, how could I have foreseen this? I’ve lived here all my life, and despite all the terrible things that happened long ago, being locked up and threatened with a lashing, after having goons set on me trying to kill me, just wasn’t in the cards, or so I had thought.
“What is Stepfather playing at?” I press my back to the wall by the door and pat the sheathed knife, hidden in the folds of my skirt. “He doesn’t want me to reach my future husband. He’s trying to have me killed. He’s humiliating me. Why? Why is he doing this?”
“You should sit and preserve your energy,” Valen says, doing as he says, sliding down to sit on the floor.
“What is he doing? What…?” I shake my head, frustrated. “Has something changed? He married me off for his own interests, and now…”
“You are the heir of this House. While you live, his own daughter can’t inherit anything.”
I shoot him a sharp look. “I’m leaving to get married. I’ll be abandoning my rights, as per the laws of the plains, when I take my bonding vows. And nothing has changed.”
“As far as you know.” I can make out his outline, limned in faint light, the pale hair, the glint of his eyes. “It does feel like a desperate move.”
“It makes no sense,” I insist and sigh. “We have to get out of here.”
“Shall I break the lock?”
“Can you?” I pull out my knife and insert it into the lock, wiggling it around. “I’m pretty sure they bolted it from the outside, too.” After a while, I sheathe my knife again. “Dammit.”
“Princess, with your permission,” he growls, “the moment they open the door, I’ll break us out of the manor. I can take the lashing, I can take just about anything, but you cannot be harmed.”
I scoff. “Just because he said I’m coddled… You shouldn’t believe him. I can take pain?—”
“I know you can. But not on my watch.”
I stare at him sitting there, unbound, untethered. Dressed in plain dark pants and a soaked, white shirt that clings to hispowerful torso, with his wet hair falling in his eyes, he looks so… human. A muscular, handsome hireling inside my home, gazing up at me through pale lashes, not a deadly creature brought here for my demise.
“Why are you acting like this?” I demand, a different sort of fear gripping me. “Like… like you’d give your life for me. You don’t know me, and since you entered my home, we have all treated you worse than we treat our dogs.”
“Lucky dogs.”
“Seriously, Valen. I?—”
“Say it again,” he rasps.
