Chapter 21: Ask Me

Caspian's POV

The sand was cool through my trousers, and I did not feel it.

I had knelt for no one since I was ten years old, when my father made me do it in his hall.

I had promised myself on the way up off the floor that I would never do it again.

Now I knelt at the edge of a white ring in front of three thousand wolves, and I did not look at one of them.

I looked at her.

She was standing in a torn Crown coat with sand in her hair and blood on her ribs, and she looked down at me with one eyebrow raised.

I was.

"Get up," she said quietly. "You'll ruin the suit."

"I don't think I will."

"Caspian."

"Let me say it first."

She folded her arms.

She was bleeding, and she held her ground anyway.

It was the thing I loved most about her, and I had never said so.

"I've said I won't ask you for anything," I said. "I wrote it in a car so that I would never be the man who did."

"I remember."

"I was wrong. It isn't protection. It's a way to make sure I never find out."

"Find out what?"

"If you'd stay."

The hall had gone so silent I could hear the sand settle.

"My father took women," I said.

"I spent twenty years believing the only decent thing I could do was not take anything."

"Not your time, your word or your name. I thought I was being careful."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Pack Erased Me. The Lycan King Didn't. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.