Nine Hot Therians and Their Only One Queen novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Wolf Answers
Kaelen, captain of her guard, answers the Stone with her in a locked chamber and pushes the frost back a ninth, then a panther drops from the rafters.
Linnea did not say his name in the Hall.
She stood in front of three hundred people with frost eating the floor and a man kneeling at her feet, and she said, "Everybody out."
Nobody moved.
"Out," she said, louder. "Captain, clear my Hall."
Kaelen Ashgrove rose and drew his sword half out of its scabbard.
The galleries emptied faster than she would have believed possible.
Bracken went last, and he looked at her the whole way to the door.
When the doors boomed shut, the frost stopped at her toes.
She stared at it.
"It stops where the Stone's light stops," Kaelen said. "Your mark is the only thing holding the border."
"How long do I have?"
"Until midwinter night. A hundred days."
"To do what?"
He looked at her steadily.
"To answer all nine of us. Every answer pushes the Blight back a ninth. The ninth answer lights the Stone for good."
Linnea laughed, once, a thin cracked sound.
"A hundred days to take nine men to bed, or the kingdom freezes."
"The Stone gives nothing to a forced bed," Kaelen said.
"You can say no to every one of us."
"Then the Blight takes the country, and Bracken takes the crown from your corpse."
"And you?"
"I'm your captain. I carry you out the back door tonight and you never see the crown again."
She looked at his hands.
They were big and scarred across the knuckles, and the gold sun on his palm was glowing faintly.
On his left wrist sat a worn grey cord, knotted twice, the only plain thing about him.
"What's that?" she asked.
"A clan token." He tugged his sleeve over it. "From my sister's boy."
She let it go.
She was thinking about something else.
He was thirty years old and six and a half feet of scarred shoulders.
When he had knelt in front of her, her stomach had dropped through the floor.
She had been poling a ferry for nine years.
She was twenty-four, and she had not been touched by anyone in three.
"Take me somewhere with a door that locks," Linnea said.
Her chamber was a vast cold room with a bed the size of her old ferry.
Kaelen locked the door and stood with his back to it.
"I'm not going to ask you," he said. "You have to say it."
"Say what?"
"What you want."
Her face flamed.
"I want you," she said. "I want your hands on me, Kaelen. I've wanted them since you crossed that floor."
His breath went out of him.
"You don't know what you're asking."
"I know exactly what I'm asking."
He crossed the room slowly.
Then he put one hand on her waist, and she felt the heat of it through her wool dress.
"My turn," he said, and his voice dropped to gravel.
"I want you flat on that bed, Majesty."
"I want you screaming my name loud enough for the whole palace to hear."
"Then do it."
He kissed her.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was all mouth and teeth and a low growl she felt in her own chest.
She dragged at his leathers, and he dragged at her laces, and they got her dress open and his shirt off at the same time.
His chest was a map of old scars.
She put her palms flat on it, and he shuddered.
He picked her up, simply lifted her, and set her on the edge of the bed.
"Lie back."
She lay back.
He pushed her skirts up around her hips and knelt between her thighs.
"Kaelen," she said, and he looked up at her with grey eyes gone gold at the rims.
"Tell me what you feel."
"Your breath," she gasped.
He put his mouth on her pussy.
He licked her slow and deep, from her entrance up to her clit, and she bucked and grabbed the sheets.
He growled against her, and the vibration went straight through her.
He held her hips down with both hands, and he did not stop.
He found her clit and worked it with the flat of his tongue until she was begging.
She ground up into his face and said his name again and again.
She came with a cry that cracked, her back arching off the bed.
He kept licking her through it, gentle now, until she shoved at his head.
He rose, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Again," he said. "Before I fuck you."
"Kaelen, I can't."
"You can."
He unbuckled his belt.
His cock sprang out, thick and flushed, and she stared at it.
"I'm going to take you slow the first time," he said. "After that I won't be able to."
"Don't take it slow."
She hooked her ankles behind his back and pulled.
He thrust into her in one long stroke.
She cried out, stretched and full, and he went still, his forehead pressed to hers, shaking.
"You feel like a fucking blessing," he said.
Then he moved.
He fucked her hard and deep, the whole heavy bed knocking against the wall, his hands locked in hers above her head.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and met every thrust.
"Mine," he said into her neck, low and wild. "My queen. Mine."
"Yours," she gasped. "Harder."
He gave it to her harder.
She felt the second one build under her ribs, hot and tight, and she dug her nails into his back.
"Kaelen, I'm going to-"
"Do it. Come on my cock."
She came again, clenching around him, and the sight of her undid him.
He drove in once more and came with a groan that shook the bed, pouring hot inside her, his teeth at her shoulder.
They lay tangled and panting.
Light blazed across the room.
The gold sun on her palm and on his went white, and a hum filled the walls.
She rolled to the window with a sheet around her.
Far out across the roofs of Emberhall, the creeping white on the horizon had pulled back a ninth of the distance it had come.
Kaelen came up behind her, warm and huge, and wrapped his arms around her waist.
"One," he said into her hair.
She leaned back against his chest.
For a moment she felt safe, which was ridiculous.
Something dropped from the rafters directly above the bed.
It landed on all fours, silent and black.
It rose into a tall lean man with green eyes, smiling at the two of them.
"One down," said Ruvan Sable softly. "Eight to go. And you should not trust a single one of us, Majesty."
← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend