The Girl He Sold Returned as the King's Mate novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: White

I came up out of the river on four legs.

The current had carried me a quarter mile downstream, past the castle's lit windows and into the reeds below the old bridge.

My paws found stone and gravel, and I hauled myself onto the bank and stood there shaking water from a coat of fur I had not worn in thirteen years.

It was white.

I saw it in the dark pool at my feet, a pale wolf with gray eyes, steaming in the night air.

I did not know her.

I did not know how to stand in her, either.

She wanted to run.

She wanted to run until her lungs split, and she wanted to howl, and she wanted somebody to tell her that she was allowed.

A branch cracked on the path above me.

I swung my head toward it and bared my teeth.

A black wolf, larger than any I had seen in the Royal Guard, came down the bank in three strides.

He stopped a body length away.

His amber eyes were wide and bright, and his sides were heaving, and the bond in my chest pulled so hard it hurt.

Alaric.

He did not growl.

He lowered his head until it was level with mine, slowly, and went completely still.

I understood.

He was waiting for me to decide what I was.

My hackles sank.

I stepped forward, and he let me press my cold nose into the thick fur of his neck, and the wolf in me went quiet, and the girl in me remembered how to breathe.

"Astrid," a low voice said above me.

I felt the change come back, bone by bone.

It hurt more than the river.

When I could think again, I was on my knees in the gravel, human and bare and shaking, and a heavy coat settled around my shoulders.

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