Page 28 of The Lycan King's Captive

“Oh no, no.” She shook her head, and the pink deepened. “No, it’s not like that. Cyrus and I aren’t married. I was pledged to him as a child, but then my parents died and I came to live here. We grew up together, and by the time we were supposed to marry we couldn’t do it. I love him like a brother.” She shook her head again, and she seemed to wince a little this time. “I can’t be his queen, but he’s an honorable male so he won’t set me aside until I find another.”

My head spun as a flurry of emotions coursed through me. She’d just hit me with a lot of information, but the chief takeaway was that Cyrus had a childhood friend who was also his sort-of fiancée—whom he did not sleep with.

I wasn’t going to think too hard about how relieved that made me feel.

She lifted her arm a little and for the first time I noticed there was clothing draped over it. “I hope you don’t mind I brought you some clothes.”

“No. I mean, no, I don’t mind.” I stepped back. “Um, please come in.”

She entered, trailing a light, feminine scent as lovely as she was. “I’ll put these on the bed…” She lifted a microbladed brow. “Unless you prefer them somewhere else?”

“The bed is wonderful,” I said, as if I welcomed supermodels delivering clothes into my suite all the time. I followed her as she moved into the bedroom. Her platinum hair fell in soft waves down her back. How had Cyrus resisted this woman? I didn’t know many men who would have.

She patted the clothes in place and then faced me. “Foster…the blond man you met downstairs? He’s the head of the Council of Nobles. He said you were turned against your will.”

My chest tightened. “Yes.” Just like that, I was reminded of the staggering difference between us. I was a werewolf—a dirty, undesirable thing. I braced myself for her to say something offensive.

“I’m so sorry.” Sympathy gleamed in her eyes. Her hand fluttered up like she might touch my arm, but then she lowered it. “This must be overwhelming for you, coming here.”

“It is.” The pressure in my chest increased. She was so lovely, and so seemingly sincere, a lump formed in my throat. I swallowed it. “Hold your cards close to your chest, squirt,” my dad’s voice said in my mind. I didn’t know this woman—or her intentions. And she was a lycan, which meant she was predisposed to view me as an enemy.

Foster certainly did. He’d looked at me like I was dog poop on the bottom of his shoe. Then he’d demanded some kind of meeting. For a second, I considered asking Celeste about it, but I pushed the idea away. She might not be my enemy, but I didn’t know if she was my friend.

“Abby?” She touched me now, her fingers long and elegant on the sleeve of my robe. “Everything is going to be okay, all right? Cyrus is a good male. He’ll help you figure out where to go from here.”

A dam inside me burst. “The only place I want to go is home.” Words flowed before I could stop them. “I’m a veterinarian with a practice that’s going to close unless I can get back to work. I s-stand to lose everything all because I got tangled up with a psychopath, and now I’m stuck here in this r-robe and Cyrus just left me here by myself with no explanation!” My shoulders heaved. A tear had tracked down my cheek.

Celeste stared at me with wide blue eyes.

I dashed the tear from my face. “I’m sorry. That was quite the outburst.”

She recovered, and then she offered me a smile—a real one that cracked the porcelain doll facade and gave me a glimpse of someone far less than perfect. “You’re right to be upset with Cyrus. He shouldn’t have dumped you in here. I know he’s busy with Foster’s antics, but that’s no excuse for leaving you in the dark.”

“It’s fine,” I said, waving it off. Embarrassment heated my cheeks. “Thank you for the clothes.”

“Of course.” She eyed my body. “We’re nearly the same height, but you’re smaller through the hips than I am, so the jeans might be a little loose.”

I seriously doubted that, but I nodded. “I’m sure they’ll be great. Anything is better than a robe, right?”

She grinned, and I found myself grinning back. The first tentative wings of friendship fluttered between us.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asked. “Something to eat?”

“I would love something to eat.”

Her eyes twinkled. “You got it. Give me like thirty minutes.”

True to her word, she returned within a half hour with a plate groaning with food. There was baked chicken, creamy mashed potatoes, and a thick slice of chocolate cake. She left me with a promise to “talk later” and then she was gone, leaving me to wonder if she was secretly some kind of lycan fairy godmother.

But there wasn’t a pumpkin carriage waiting for me outside the (thankfully unbarred) windows, and none of the clothes on my bed were a ball gown. However, there were comfortable jeans and several high-quality button-downs, so I dressed and settled in front of the television with my feast.

I ate slowly, only half-watching a sitcom with an irritating laugh track. After a while, I flipped through the channels, shuffling from cable news to a show where a young couple tried to choose between three different houses they probably couldn’t afford. It was so surreal to see regular humans doing mundane things like shopping for real estate, I turned the TV off.

Now that I knew life was far from mundane—and that humans were most definitely not alone in this world—I couldn’t lose myself in mindless entertainment. For now, I was a prisoner in Cyrus’s home. I was fed and clothed and comfortable, but I wasn’t free to walk out the door. And if I was pregnant…

I placed a hand on my lower abdomen. What would happen to me? To my child? Fatigue swept me, which just ratcheted my fear even higher. Was my extreme hunger an early pregnancy sign? Was this tiredness a side effect of all the changes I’d gone through, or was I carrying Cyrus’s baby?

I’d never given much thought to kids. I’d been too busy with school and then scraping together a practice I could be proud of. That Dad could be proud of.

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