Page 1 of The Night Prince

Prologue

Blake

His footsteps echo as he walks down the endless prison corridor.

Shadows coil around his arms and legs, almost as if they are alive. They slink around his ankles like cats.

His nostrils flare as a sweet, familiar scent hits them.

She’s peering through the barred window of one of the cells ahead, her back to him.

He tilts his head to one side. Is this his dream, or hers? Has he merely imagined her? Or is this a consequence of the bond between them?

Her red hair cascades down her back, almost the color of blood in the gloom. It’s as if she’s been plucked from her bed and dropped here. She’s wearing his shirt, the one he gave Callum for her to put on after James bit her. It’s too big for her. It caresses the soft curve of her behind, and strokes her thighs. Her calves and feet are bare. He swallows.

She stiffens like prey, and he wonders if she senses him watching. Then he follows her gaze. A writhing mass of shadow surges toward her. The jailer of this prison is coming.

Blake prowls toward her as she edges back. She bumps into his chest, and he hooks an arm around her waist—clamping a hand over her mouth before she can scream.

He brings his lips to her ear. “You shouldn’t be here, little rabbit.”

She stiffens in his arms.

And how he loathes her. He loathes the way her scent washes over him—even here. She smells like the slither of moonlight that would drift through the grate of the cell beneath the palace. Freedom, taunting him. The broken promise of something he cannot have.

He loathes how soft and warm she feels, how his cock stirs at her proximity. He loathes how the wolf he keeps on such a tight leash longs to sink his teeth into her.

Footsteps approach.

He drags her though an open cell door. It clicks shut behind them. Her attention shifts to the emblem carved in the obsidian beneath the barred window; a key with two crescent moons in the bow. He wonders if she knows what it means. Most Wolves would—it’s a remnant of when theacolytes rose a century ago, but this symbol is not common in the Southlands. They don’t worship the darker gods there.

Her elevated pulse drums in his ears. His arm tenses against her torso. “Shh.”

The temperature drops, and Blake’s breath mists in front of his face. Aurora inches back, as if desperate for warmth, even from him. He holds her tighter.

The footsteps fade, and Blake exhales. He removes his hand from her mouth. She twists in his grasp to look up at him, and the soft swell of her breasts presses against his chest. A crease forms between her eyes. “What—”

Her attention jerks back to the door.

The figure stalks back. Thick, unnatural darkness bleeds through the barred windows.

“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” She’s muttering under her breath. “It’s just a dream. Wake up.”

It’s not just a dream.

He shuts his eyes. He wrenches her back. He doesn’t hit the wall—instead, it dissolves. The cell door bursts open in front of them, but they’re already falling through endless darkness.

He lands on his feet in the cell beneath the palace, and he knows they’re inhabiting his dream now. A memory. He doesn’t like it here, but it’s not as dangerous as the place before.

There’s a cot against one wall, the mattress stained brown with old blood. A bucket of waste sits in the corner. There are books piled against one wall, a candle flickering beside them. The scent of lemons mixes with iron and the cloying odor of bodily fluids.

Aurora stands in the center of the space. She’s perfectly poised, her back straight, her chin slightly raised so she can look down her nose at her surroundings. Only her slightly elevated pulse and the fact that he canfeelthat whisper of her inside him through their bond—like a small thread of light—tells him she is not as unfazed as she seems.

He loathes that about her, too. She’s always so well put together, but he’s been able to sense the violence that simmersbeneath her skin since he first set eyes on her. It makes him want to provoke her.

When he was a child, some of the older boys from the village used to throw stones at the ducks in the river. He didn’t understand why they did it—even at six years old it had seemed juvenile to him—until he met her.

He’d do anything to ruffle her feathers. He wants to see what happens when she unleashes herself.

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