Taming the Wolf King novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: Terms

I sat back on my heels on the frozen rock.

"Your what?"

"My mate." He said it like a diagnosis. "Fated. The real thing. My wolf knew the second your truck came up the hill."

"The first day of term."

He closed his eyes.

"You worked that out."

"Your friend with the cast worked it out. He just didn't know he had."

I pressed my blazer harder against his arm, and he hissed.

"You've known for a month," I said. "You knew in the great hall. You knew when you said anyone but you."

"Yes."

"You let me think I was doing something. Kneeling on mats. Turning my back. Like it was skill."

"It is skill. You're the only person on earth he'd lie down for, and you'd be that if you weren't my mate."

A small brown wolf came limping out of the trees with a red ribbon in her teeth.

She dropped it, shifted, and was Annis, shivering in nothing but goosebumps.

"I got two ribbons," she said, teeth chattering. "Then I heard the roar. Oh. Oh, Your Majesty, you're all bitten."

"Hold this," I said, and put her hand on the blazer.

Then I walked to the edge of the rock and yelled into the dark at the lake until my throat hurt.

I stitched his arm at the tower kitchen table at one in the morning with Grandpa's kit.

Annis held the lamp and pretended she wasn't listening.

"Explain it," I said, pulling a stitch through. "All of it. And if you lie I'll sew your sleeve to your arm."

He watched the needle.

"The charter says a King's mate must be a wolf. It's in the founding law. If I take a human mate, I'm not King."

"And your uncle rules."

"For life."

"So refuse it. People refuse it, don't they?"

"People do." He looked at the table. "My father didn't."

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