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Chaotic Third Option

The Shadow King’s Probability Matrix flashed into my mind.

OUTCOME PROBABILITY MATRIX

YAY: 59.

5%

NAY: 26.7%

CHAOTIC THIRD OPTION (e.g.

, delay, demand, twist): 4.

5%

Me going into estrus most definitely fell under that 4.

5% twist.

Declan didn’t have to command everyone to leave twice.

I’d seen Wolfennites move slower with a tornado on the horizon.

Three words from their High King, and the room scattered.

Even the Shadow and Mountain Kings disappeared.

Though Tadhg threw me a look brimming with regret before slipping through one of the black arch doors—doors that had all magically opened, flooding the room with bright light after the ceremony’s dim hush.

But the light didn’t last.

The doors sealed shut, and the shadows rushed back in.

Meanwhile, a core-clenching need—unlike anything I’d ever felt—nearly doubled me over.

My essence… I could feel it sluicing out of me, the patch on the front of my skirt spreading wider by the second.

My mind spun under the weight of it, dizzy with need.

Still, the High King didn’t move.

I could feel his cold gray eyes on me.

Watching me suffer.

I had to…

I had to…

Belatedly, I remembered: I still had free will.

I could go after Tadhg.

Or the Shadow King. Someone not related to the liar in front of me.

Someone worthy who could help me relieve this unbearable ache.

Mate! Mate! a small, distant voice cried inside me.

“Where are you going, Sadie?” the High King’s hard voice asked as I stumbled down the dais stairs.

“Not you,” I croaked over my shoulder.

“Anyone but you.”

The wet spot was bigger now, staining nearly the entire front of my skirt.

My thighs slipped slickly against each other as I made for the lake-facing door the Shadow King had disappeared through.

I had to find him. I had to?—

“It can only be me.” Suddenly, Declan was in front of me, his rhubarb scent sharp and acrid beneath the cloud of my estrus.

“I am the High King. The one you gave First Claim when you allowed yourself to be presented.”

“You tricked me!” I shot back, trying to shoulder past him.

“That presentation meant nothing !”

The black door the Shadow King had used was right there.

Less than a meter away.

Directly behind the not-very-nice-at-all High King.

To my surprise, he let me pass by him.

I made a mad dash for the door?—

Only to have his body slam into mine from behind just as I reached it.

His arms came down on either side of me, caging me in, pinning me between the door’s glass and his unyielding chest.

“Did no one tell you how unwise it is to run from bears, álainn ?”

Once or twice.

But I’d hold my breath and die before admitting that to him .

The Shadow King wasn’t the only one capable of stubbornness.

“I will not…” I growled, my cheek pressed to the glass.

“I will not make a baby with someone who thinks so little of me. Who let me sit in fear of rejection while he laughed at me from behind a wall.”

“You think I was laughing at you?” His cold voice heated like iron over flame.

“You think I let you stew? I was the one stewing, Sadie. The one burning alive in your heat.”

“What?” My eyes darted, but I couldn’t find him in my peripheral vision.

“You don’t know how hard I fought against this. How hard I tried to do the right thing—for all of us—and send you away.” His mouth hovered behind my neck now, breathing on but not touching the spot the Shadow King had already identified as an erogenous zone.

And I couldn’t help it.

A shiver ran up my spine, sending another rush of slick down my thighs.

“Tadhg and the Shadow King won’t ever tell you. Because they’re kind. But I, dearest Sadie, am not,” he informed me.

I stilled. Because I believed him.

I’d felt it—how often the other two held back, even when I asked direct questions.

I couldn’t stop myself from taking his bait.

“What didn’t they tell me?”

“That you are our ruin.” His voice cracked against my ear.

“The reason I can no longer do business in The Above. The reason I can’t think. Can’t function .”

A growl rumbled in his chest. “I’ve watched nothing but Sadie on the wall telly for weeks. How dare I? How dare you cast this spell? Making me obsessed with you, even though I knew it would mean abandoning every value I’ve built my life on.”

My hand pounded the glass beside where he had me pinned.

“You think that’s my fault?”

“Who do you think was watching you , Sadie?” he demanded, pushing the side of his face into mine.

“Who sent Tadhg after you when he heard you crying in the night? Who told him to pick up those whittling knives I couldn’t stop myself from ordering for you from the kingdom armorer? Who started texting that traitor again when you ran off with the insane Mountain Princess my brother married?”

That…

that was him? Declan?

My mind nearly buckled, trying to take it all in.

But—

“I didn’t… I didn’t ask you to…I didn’t ask for you or any of this!”

“Do you think you had to, álainn ?” he growled.

“All you had to do was appear to destroy my life. I didn’t know you were ruinous at first. I holed myself up in my room, thinking that at any moment I could put an end to this madness. But no…”

The High King pressed his nose to my neck, audibly breathing in my scent.

“You just had to smell like strawberries, didn’t you? My perfect scent match. And you had the nerve to be good in bed. After claiming you’d only had bad sex and your own hand for years. Why didn’t you tell us from the start what you really were? You ruinous witch .”

His accusation sent another shiver through my body, even as I protested, “I’m not a wi?—”

“If you’re not a witch, tell me what you are then!”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

I didn’t even know what I was anymore.

All I could feel was the weight of his body, the sting of his words, and the throbbing, drenched ache between my legs.

“What kind of true innocent casts a spell over a High King like this?” he asked in my ear.

“Makes him abandon all his principles just so he can watch you all day with his cock in his hand?”

My breath caught.

Not from shock. Not from shame.

But because some messed-up part of me…

liked hearing that. Liked knowing he watched.

Liked that so many of his waking thoughts had been filled with me the way mine had been filled with him.

“Do you have any idea how much I hate you, Sadie Ellis?” he growled.

“It’s a lot. Almost as much as I desire you. Because I couldn’t. I couldn’t say no to this marriage, no matter how sensible it would have been. No matter how badly it fucked my life in The Above, I couldn’t resist.”

“You could have left,” I countered.

“You live in a palace. You could have gone to any other room in the house.”

“Don’t think I didn’t try, my witch of a queen. But I couldn’t close my eyes unless yours were. Couldn’t look away from even a second of your training. You had me watching you like A Clockwork Orange .”

I had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.

Still… “That doesn’t explain you misleading me. Pretending to be your brother’s bear?—”

“The only thing I was pretending to be was not obsessed,” Declan insisted.

“Do you truly think there’s any other explanation for my behavior? The few moments of peace I was granted were when you left your room to go whittle in my hedge woods. What else could explain me not being able to keep myself from leaving my room to stalk after you? Pretending I just happened to be standing by that rock every single time you came by?”

My knees went weak, threatening to give out—not under his weight, but under his words.

“I could only interact with you as a bear because I knew… I knew if I dared to do it in human form, all would be lost for certain. Oh, Sadie…”

He let out a bitter laugh and rubbed his entire face into my neck as he spoke.

“You believe the joke to be on you, but it’s on no one but me. Because you charmed me from every angle. I both couldn’t get enough of your voice as you made your confessions to me, and wanted to murder my own brother, just because you thought you were making them to him. Yes, joke’s on me. And then, you gave me this and pushed me over the edge!”

The High King pushed something underneath the hand I had splayed against the glass.

Something small and hard.

The carving. The bear I’d made.

When I thought it was just his brother.

“That’s just a piece of evidence for the case I’m making. The case where you cast your spell with the offer of a muffin, making me love you from the start. You giving me this carving was the final straw.”

I closed my fingers around the bear I’d whittled.

This? This was what had broken him?

“I’ll be needing that right back,” he said, taking the carving from my hand.

“Because I am a male too far gone. This gift is mine , just like you. And I’m never letting it go. Just like I’m never letting you go now that I’ve accepted the burning down of my life for you, Sadie Ellis, my reluctant queen.”

He let out another bitter laugh that held not even a flicker of amusement.

“I’d lost to you from the beginning, hadn’t I? There was no version of our story that wasn’t going to end with me finally giving in to the spell you’ve cast. Now, let me in, little witch. Give me the first claim I more than deserve after trying and failing to stay out of your cauldron.”

I didn’t know what surprised me more.

His confession…

Being called little anything…

Or the sound I made right before I turned my head and found his mouth with mine.

His mouth caught my kiss with a sharp spark that sent us both spiraling into a frenzy.

Clothes.

There were too many clothes.

The sound of ripping fabric filled the air.

My beautiful fairy-tale dress.

His stately king robes.

Every barrier between the front of his body and the back of mine got torn away.

Until suddenly—there was something thick at the back of my vagina.

Pressing my hot, panting core into the cool glass.

And then…

With one great shove of his hips, he filled me up so thoroughly that my feet kicked air.

The force of his first claim lifted me off the floor .

Then I was back on solid ground again with his hands on my hips as he rocked into me from behind.

Tadhg and the Shadow King had been right to worry.

Declan was large. The width of Tadhg’s curled hand with the Shadow King’s length.

He was so deep inside me.

And still it wasn’t enough for him.

He lifted one of my legs, crooking my knee over his forearm, forcing me to take him even deeper.

“Give me this cunt, little witch. First Claim. First Baby. It is mine. It is mine!”

Oh goodness.

Oh goodness. I thought this would be like training.

But it was nothing like training.

He was so rough. So dominating.

So all-consuming. And I came so fast.

“Not yet,” he said in that steely king voice that brooked no argument.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped.

“I can’t stop it. I can’t?—”

The orgasm stole the rest of my words, choking me as I helplessly defied him, coming with a broken, ragged cry.

“Little witch,” he bit out.

Then he roared.

His length spasmed inside my tight channel, right before it flooded me with liquid heat.

His heavy body shuddered behind me—again and again—until his seed was dripping out of my hole and hitting the floor in wet plops.

“ Fuck me , little witch?” Declan hissed in my ear.

“ Fuck you. Over and over until my baby’s swelling that soft tummy. Then fuck you even more.”

He pulled out of me, releasing more of his cum—and my want—which dribbled down to the floor beneath the smeared black-glass door.

“But first,” he said, rough and low, “I’ll make you a nest.”