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“Okay.” She rose. “I’ll get a pillow and blankets then, so you can at least be comfortable.”

She skittered away up the stairs before I could reply. She was too sweet for what was coming for her.

I pushed my reluctance aside and focused my attention on Jax. He had to pull through this. He wasn’t just my Alpha, he was my oldest and dearest friend. We’d grown up together, gone through every first, every hardship, every battle together.

When we were pups, I was the runt of the pack, and therefore the subject of ridicule and hazing by our peers. And though he was the Alpha’s son, he stood up for me. He defended me when a pack of pups ganged up on me and declared me untouchable.

Without his intervention, I wouldn’t have grown to be one of the most formidable of the black wolves. I was his second-in-command, his beta, and I would do anything for him. I loved him like the brother I never had. Seeing him like this, battered and barely hanging onto life, shredded me up inside.

Aliya came back into the den with a bundle of pillows and blankets piled in her arms, and rather than handing them to me, she went about setting up a sleeping space on the floor beside the couch Jax was on.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I said. “I’ll be fine in the chair.”

“Nonsense,” she said as she aired out the comforter and draped it over the sheet and pillow. “You need some sleep after your journey, and this way, you can be right next to your friend if he needs you.”

My heart squeezed again at her compassion. We were strangers to her, intruders in her kingdom, and yet she went out of her way to care for us. Little did she know our true intentions, and guilt over that fact gnawed at my gut like maggots on a festering sore.

I didn’t deserve her kindness. None of us did, least of all, Jax.

“Well, I’m going to have a rest too. So I’ll see you later?” she said awkwardly when she was finished, then nodded at me once before sweeping from the room.

Leaving me alone to wrestle with my troubled thoughts over what I must do.

Chapter 4

Aliya

IDIDN’T FALL ASLEEPduring my afternoon rest. The excitement and gratitude at havingactual peoplein the castle with me after so long was overwhelming and had anxious energy coursing through my body.

I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t alone!

I was so happy over that fact that joyous tears trailed from my eyes and soaked into the pillow beneath my head.

And then there was the obvious perk that they were so handsome. I couldn’t stop the images that circled inside my mind. Their impressive naked bodies kept popping into my restless brain, though honestly, I didn’t really want to stop.

I’d never seen a man without clothes before, at least not one that wasn’t an artistic statue or in a painting. After months of solitude and despair, I’d become convinced I never would. And though they’d come bloody and injured, I couldn’t help but fantasize about them naked in good health.