Page 166 of The Wolf King

“The way I see it,” he says, “you could be bathing right now in front of a warm fire. You could have eaten a hearty meal. You could be putting on a pretty dress, and preparing to ride north. Yet here you are.”

He looks around the dank cell with distaste.

“Bound and chained. Vulnerable.Defenseless.” He makes atsking sound. “That was your choice, was it not?” His expression darkens. “I’ve been ordered to make you change your mind.”

Cold dread spreads through my body.

I recall the hand-drawn diagrams I found in Blake’s medicine books, and the depictions of torture that seemed like they came from experience. His eyes were cold when he told me what he’d done to his father. The Wolves in this kingdom all seem to fear him.

“What are you going to do to me?” I ask—my voice sounds small. I wish it didn’t.

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Darling, I’m not going to torture you. You have nothing I need. I’m merely going to implore you to see reason.”

I relax slightly, but the tension in the room is thick. “I won’t marry him.”

“Why not?”

“I will not be a pawn in another game between men.”

“You wouldn’t be a pawn. You’d be a queen. Is she not the most powerful piece on the board?” His voice is a gentle, seductive caress—as dark as the night sky.

“How does this help you get what you want?”

“Who says that it helps me?” He cocks his head to the side. “Listen, I know what you’re thinking. You think that during the fight that breaks out, you’ll be able to slip away. You won’t. Have you ever seen the front line of a battle? It is not a place many trained warriors walk away from. Let alone little rabbits who have strayed far from their burrows. Even if youdomanage to break free, James or Sebastian will kill you. You smell of wolf.” Blake’s nose curls. “Sebastian will not let you live for that. And James would gladly kill you to take something from Sebastian.”

He has an ulterior motive, I remind myself. I cannot trust anything he says. “You’re telling me this to help me, are you? You don’t need me to marry James? The marriage was your idea, was it not?”

He shrugs. “Yes. That was my idea. But whether or not you accept him matters little to me. My game is already in motion.”

“What is your game?”

“Play with me, and find out.”

I calm my breathing, wondering if I can implorehimto listen to reason. “If it doesn’t matter to you, why not let me go?”

Blake laughs. “I’m not your knight in shining armor, Aurora. I am not here to rescue you. Ihavegiven you a way out. It’s your choice whether or not you take it.”

“A way out? You will have me... submit myself, my body and soul, to a man I do not want?”

A muscle feathers in his jaw, though his posture remains relaxed against the barred wall of the cell. “He will not harm you.”

“Like he didn’t harm me upstairs, just hours ago?”

Blake’s eyes move to my cheek. “I didn’t relish that, believe it or not.”

“I don’t believe a word you say. Has anything you’ve told me actually been true?”

“I deceive, often. But I rarely lie. I can recall being untruthful to you only once.”

“When?”

He shifts, crossing his ankles as he leans further back. The torchlight on the wall outside the cell flickers across his features. He seems pensive.

“When we first met, I said I recognized you from the palace. I didn’t. I hadn’t seen you before in my life. I was only in the King’s Guard for a couple of years, and I didn’t spend much time in the palace. Though I knew from stories that your mother had red hair.” He shrugs. “Your identity was an educated guess.”

My eyebrows lift. Of all the things he’d said to me that could have been lies, this was the least expected. Partially because I thought he looked familiar when I first set eyes upon him.

“Accept James’s offer,” he says. “You may not believe me, but I would rather you survive this.”

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