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I lived as an island, focused on protecting my people, so that they did not become like the other villages surrounding my lands, continually crushed and razed by those who reveled in lawlessness,in destruction, who terrorized the weak and the vulnerable like hungry wolves.

Still. In those fleeting moments of calm, resting in my bed at night, the breath easing from me as soft and warm as wool, I stared into the darkness and considered my future and whether there would be a woman next to me in the bed at the end of day. A wife.

I’d always assumed I would marry someday. It was my responsibility to do so. My father had been clear on that.

I had wondered if maybe I would form a bond with her. Then, she had been a faceless, nameless, formless figure. Someone soft to pull to my hardness. A gentle hand to find in the dark.

Would there be that closeness between us that some husbands had with their wives? I’d seen those alliances. The shared, knowing glances. The lips that would lift at private jokes. The little intimate touches. The couples who seemed to exist for each other as much as they existed for themselves. Not a frequent sight, but frequent enough to know they were real. It was perhaps attainable.

Now I had a face to consider. A form. A name.Tamsyn.A wife. My wife.

Perhaps, if I kept her, there would be children. Those of my own blood. I’d never had that before. I’d existed without seeing myself in anyone else. I had no blood. No kin. No one to look at and say:family.

When I studied my reflection—that frosted gaze, the hair dark as a raven’s wing—I could not point to someone else and think:There, too. There was no shadow of me in anyone else.

A dragon had stolen that from me—the ability to see myself anywhere else, in someone else. Tamsyn could change that. If I accepted this. If I acceptedher. Yes, I would make Hamlin pay for his trickery. I would bring down the throne. Especially that sour-faced lord regent. But that did not mean I couldn’t keep her.

I tried to envision it, to feel it, to see it in her unearthly gaze, in eyes like sunlit amber. I tried to see the future if I kept her. Our future. Perhaps a family. That did something to me. Made my chest warm and snap like a fire crackling in a pit. I definitely didn’t mindthe idea of creating those children with her. At least the begetting part would not be a chore. The push and pull of our bodies together had been a sweet, blissful thing. The blood rushed to my cock, remembering it now.

It was something. A start. Even if she was a liar.

She was a peculiar thing. A puzzle I could not quite piece together. A non-princess. I didn’t care what they called her. No royal took a beating with a smile and called it duty.

I glanced at Tamsyn, and my palm instantly reacted, the marked skin jumping, the X humming as though longing to press against her, craving contact—a return to her.

She rode along silently, her lips like ash, her face pale, the healthy golden glow to her skin that I’d first admired when I met her now gone. Clearly she was not accustomed to the rigors of the crossing, but there was little I could do about that. We still had the river to ford. And winter was coming. We needed to make haste lest we find ourselves caught out in the open in a snow squall. People became disoriented in squalls, riding right off a cliff or freezing in a snowdrift.

This was not the time to indulge her.And why should I look after her comfort?That stubborn voice inserted itself, an aching bruise, raw and sore and slow to heal.

She was my wife, true, but only through foul means. Only because I had been robbed of choice. She was no innocent. She was a cog in the wheel turning to make a fool of me. And now I was stuck with her. For all our days together, however long or brief they were, we would have this ignominious start, something never shaken. Like spilled wine, it would forever stain the fabric of us.

As we rode along the winding and rutted road, the forest a tangle encroaching on either side, she stood out like a flag flapping in the wind, calling attention to herself in her elegant riding habit, marking herself as different. Not one of us. As though she was out for a country ride and not a cross-country passage.

I dragged my gaze away, at war with myself. Part of me wanted to keep on ignoring her, but the other part of me, the pitiless, merciless part—the Beast—wanted to stop and camp early for the night, to erect a tent and climb inside with her, to strip that ridiculous riding habit off her and punish her with pleasure until she wept.

For my hands, lips, and tongue to explore and map every inch of her until she was no longer such an unknowable thing, no longer a mysterious, uncharted realm waiting to be discovered, waiting to be made mine in a way that a duplicitous bedding had not achieved.

Until there were no more veils between us, and I marked her as well and truly mine.

I nudged my destrier ahead to the front of the party, increasing our pace and vowing that we would not stop until nightfall.

And I would set up no tent.

15

Tamsyn

THE WOODS WERE ALIVE. I KNEW IT. FELT IT.

In the ensuing days, this knowledge took hold of me, deep as teeth sinking into my skin, through the meat of me, clinging tightly.

We moved along at a swift pace that was far from comfortable, especially in the increasingly opaque air. The limited visibility worried my nerves, but the others carried on as though the fog were an ordinary thing. I could see directly in front of my horse to the rider before me, but beyond that, the world turned hazy, draped in a fine wool. Shapes, vague shadows. Trees towering, amorphous giants. There could be anything out there, ahead of us, beside us... waiting.

I would have preferred to travel slower, to see better, to take more breaks, to stretch my screaming muscles and unkink my back, to rest—even if that meant adding more time to what already felt like an endless journey. We had been at this for over a week, and we were not yet halfway there.

But my preferences didn’t matter. I told myself I would become accustomed to the relentless pace, to my grinding weight, to the exhaustion and the soreness and the aches, to the ill-humored company I kept.

All of it.