The Scarred Prince (The Wolf's Pet Book One) (11 page)

They pulled me forward. The guards turned, escorting us through the tent flaps.

The room was dim. The heat coming from the fire on the other side of the tent was such a welcome relief that I breathed in a small gasp. My muscles relaxed, the warmth soaking into my damp hair, my naked skin.

“Sir?”

“What is it?”

In front of me sat three figures silhouetted by the fire behind them, two women and a man. I could see the faces of the women on either side of the chair the man was in. He was huge; he blotted out the light of the fire. They were talking animatedly as we came in, but stopped as soon as we came in.

“Sir, a messenger.”

The older man knelt in front of me, and I strained my eyes to see the man standing in front of the fire. The Scarred Prince.

He stood up still facing away from us. I blinked at him, a black shadow against the red fire. Then I blinked again and he had turned around, stepping forward into the guards’ torchlight.

My heart caught in my throat when I saw him. Those unblinking blue sapphires. The sharp dark line of his jaw, shaded by the barest growth of hair around his head. And now, with his scarf gone, I could see the hint of a scar curling up around his neck.

Alekk.

Chapter Nineteen

“We brought you a captive. A messenger, she says.”

The old soldier stepped away and I was exposed for all to see. My bare ass. My naked breasts. I forced my hands to stay at my sides, not trying to cover anything up. If they were not going to offer me clothing, I would not ask for it.

“A human?”

The woman on Alekk’s right stepped forward into the light. Like Alekk, her hair was dark and her eyes were deep pools of blue. Then the other woman stepped closer as well. She was younger, but looked eerily similar to the first one. Her sister, I assumed. They all looked like siblings.

I stayed in human form, looking at Alekk.
He
was the Scarred Prince?

His eyes searched mine, asking a question that I could not understand. He seemed confused, almost.

No, not confused.

Scared.

The wolf sense of emotion is highly attuned to scent. Making sense of those scents isn’t always easy. Adrenaline can be fear, or anger, or a rush of power. Most shifters think that their powers of sense are more developed in their wolf form. They can easily pick out the base emotions, and it is hard to conceal scent.

Granny Dee taught me, though, that human instinct is sometimes more subtle, more powerful. In human form, I was more attuned to facial movements. And Dee had taught me how to tell if someone is lying.
As a wolf you can smell the fear
, she said,
but as a human, you can see why the other person is frightened
.

Now I waited and watched as Alekk’s mouth turned down slightly and his eye muscles froze. I knew that expression.

He was going to lie.

“What message do you bring?” he asked. He didn’t give any indication of knowing me. That… that was the lie.

He swept his eyes down my body, but somehow I knew that it was perfunctory. A performance he was making for the other people in the room. He did not linger on any part of my body. His tongue licked his bottom lip, red and full.

“A proposal from Damien of North Firs,” I said. The corners of his eyebrows perked up slightly, cautioning me. I said no more.

I didn’t have to. The woman on the right burst into a ripple of laughter, and the other woman joined her. To my surprise, Alekk joined as well, his low chuckle underscoring their peals of laughter.

He acted like he didn’t know me.

He was lying to them.

Why?

“A proposal?” the younger woman asked once she’d regained her breath. Her voice was smooth, honeyed. “What is this distraction?”

“Damien is the Blind Wolf,” the other sister said. “The one we’re moving on.”

“Alekk, you said that they rejected surrender.”

“So they did,” Alekk said.

“Do you propose surrender?” she asked me.

I shook my head, confused. She pinched her lips together.

“Then. As I said. A distraction.”

The sisters looked at each other and nodded as if in agreement.

“Kill this messenger,” the older sister said. She snapped her fingers.

“No, Sara. Wait.”

Alekk reached out and plucked a lock of my hair, twirling it in his fingers. He grinned, a wolvish grin, moist and toothy.

I watched him carefully. This was him, wasn’t it? Yes. His injuries were healing, the same ones Blaise had inflicted. It was his same shaven head, his same penetrating blue eyes. Yet he acted like he was seeing me for the first time.

“I’d like to keep her a while,” he said.

“You don’t mean to listen to her proposal?”

“Not at all. I’d like to keep her for… questioning. In my personal tent, please. Have a guard watch her until I get there tonight.”

“Hmph,” the older woman said, turning back to the fire. Sara. I filed away her name in my mind.

“Wonderful,” the younger woman said sarcastically. “Another useless prisoner whore to feed.”

The soldiers grabbed my arms again and again I said nothing. I could have shouted out. I could have shifted into wolf form, gotten their attention. But the way that Alekk looked at me made me think that my mouth was best kept shut. I didn’t know what was going on here. Obviously. I had no clue who these women were—his wives? His sisters? They acted as decisively as if they ruled alongside him. In any case, I didn’t know enough to open my mouth.

Yet.

“Sir?”

“What is it, Rikash?” Alekk raised his eyebrows casually at the older soldier. He bowed.

“Will you kill her tonight, or shall you…”

Alekk shook his head. A flash of something—anger?—passed over his eyes and was lost as quickly as I had seen it come.

“Despite what my sisters say, I have a use for her,” he said. “Let’s plan on keeping her for the night.”

So they were his sisters. For some reason, knowing this made the tension inside me ease a bit.

“We have the brand ready,” Rikash said. His silver hair glinted in the torchlight.

Alekk paused, then nodded. I noticed a tic at his temple, an extra heartbeat that matched my own as it pattered in my chest.

The brand?

The soldiers pulled me into the middle of the tent. One swung his foot into the backs of my knees, knocking me to the ground in front of Alekk. I looked up to see one of the young soldiers from outside bearing an iron brand. The end of the brand was a curved design that shone white-hot. The air around it rippled with heat.

All of the moisture was gone from my mouth. My lips parted.

“No,” I whispered. Fear made the world around me slow down. The soldier walked toward me with the burning hot brand, his face radiant with hateful glee. He handed the brand to—

To Alekk.

“No,” I said again. “No, no,
no
.” But I could not make my voice louder. My breath rasped in my throat and all I could hear was the thud of my heart in my ears. The air was hot. Alekk took the brand and held it up, then looked down at me. His eyes seared blue next to the orange-white iron tip of the brand.

“No! No! No!”

“Let me,” he said, shoving the soldier aside. His knee landed on the small of my back, knocking my breath out. I gasped for air as he shoved me face first down against the ground. His hand wrapped over my shoulder, his fingers digging into my skin. I could sense the wolf inside me beginning to panic. Instinct was taking over. I fought to keep control. Or should I shift? Should I even try to fight? If I shifted into wolf form, at least it would not hurt as much. Injuries never hurt as much in wolf form.

The brand hissed with blinding heat behind me. Alekk knelt down and pressed his mouth to my ear. I could feel his breath, hot against my skin, and the heat of the brand, searing hot even as he held it inches away from the back of my neck.

“This will hurt,” he said. His voice was soft, almost inaudible, and his words came out in a quick staccato. “Don’t let them know what you are.
Don’t shift.
”

Confusion mixed with my fear. Who was Alekk? Why was he telling me this? Why was he—

“
Ahhhhh!
”

I shrieked as he brought the brand down against the back of my neck. The pain was quick—a searing heat that burned itself out in an instant, and I bit my lip so hard it bled. But I held back my wolf.

Then the heat was icy, icy cold, and I knew that the nerves in my skin had burned so badly that I could not feel the heat anymore. The back of my neck sizzled and hissed and still I screamed because of the smell,
oh god, the smell!

Even as a human, I knew the scent of burning flesh.

Alekk pulled back the brand, but still I moaned. This was pain unlike anything else I’d felt before. The back of my neck burned like a thousand needles now that the iron was gone. I gasped for breath, my eyes wet with tears I didn’t remember shedding.

“Good,” he said roughly. His voice thundered through my body alongside the waves of pain. I held onto my human form, although shifting would have eased the pain. For some reason, I knew that I couldn’t shift now. There was a reason, something I didn’t know. A wave of pain shuddered my body, and I saw the room spinning, turning black.

“Good girl,” he said, and that was the last thing I heard before the world disappeared into blissful nothingness.

***

Find out what happens to Kinaya next in

Bride to the Alpha (The Wolf’s Pet Book Two)

What would you do to save your pack from war?

Held captive with the mark of the Scarred Prince’s pack freshly burned onto her neck, Kinaya is as scared as she’s ever been. And things are about to get a
whole lot worse.

It can’t be the Calling. There’s no way that Kinaya would be fated to the greatest enemy of her pack. So why is it that whenever Alekk touches her, it’s like being struck by lightning?

As the pack marches toward war, Kinaya is struggling to keep her inner Wolf locked inside. Every time Alekk looks at her, she can’t help but think about the dark shadow in her dreams, the one she knows she is fated to. And she can’t help but imagine what would happen if they both lost control…

Available on Amazon Now!

***

Learn about Kinaya’s parents’ romance in

Blind Wolf: The Complete 4 Book Collection

#1 Shifter Romance Bestseller!
The complete collection of werewolf shifter romance stories in the bestselling Blind Wolf series now includes all four books:
Blind Wolf
Perfect Mate
Human Shifter
Alpha's Child

Julia has never been on a date in her life. She's a curvy girl with no money, no education, and no way out of the town she works in as a library assistant... until Damien shows up. He's just like the prince charming Julia always imagined would s
weep her off of her feet. There are just a few things standing in the way of true happiness: he's blind, he's dating someone, and he's WAY out of her league.

Oh, and he's a werewolf.

Damien lost his eyes two years ago in a wolf battle. Ever since then, the straggler pack of disabled wolves he leads has been searching for a place to call home. One house seems like the perfect choice, but Damien realizes too late that the person who lives there is the girl he met at the library. The human girl. Damien is torn between loyalty to his pack and raw lusting desire for the girl who haunts his dreams day and night.

She's a human. How could she be his true mate?

Available on Amazon now!

***

The complete Aubrey Rose collection:

Me, Cinderella?

Broken Prince