Page 38 of Wolf Caged (Bound to the Shadow King #1)

I went to stand to set it on the table, but Kaeleron’s hand clamped around my wrist, forcing me to remain sitting beside him.

“Drink. It is good for you.” He gestured to the glass.

“Apparently, it’s good for fae and bad for wolf shifters. This is going to my head too quickly.” I tried to stand again.

Kaeleron yanked me back down, his voice a black snarl. “Sit.”

“I’m not a dog. You can’t order me to sit and expect me to beg for a treat.” I ripped my arm free of his grip. “If I had known you’d be like this tonight, I might not have found Beltane so intriguing.”

He looked at his own goblet, at the dark liquid that sloshed towards him as he tilted it, and muttered, “Perhaps the brew is stronger this year.”

His silver gaze slid to me.

“Or perhaps it is something else intoxicating me.”

A shiver tumbled down my spine and through my limbs, heat chasing it, and I blamed the mead rather than that husked admission.

“Plenty of females here.” I swept my arm across the entire glade. “You’d probably have your pick if you announced you were in need of a little entertainment.”

“I have my entertainment right here, little lamb, and there is no female in this crowd that is a match for you.”

“It’s the dress or the booze. I can’t decide which has transformed you into this… this… whatever this is. Is calling you an asshole grounds for punishment?” I wanted to take back those words as soon as they flew from my lips.

His handsome face darkened but then his lips curved into another toe-curling smile that flashed straight white teeth. “Perhaps. Call me it and see how imaginative I get with my punishment. It may or may not involve that altar.”

“Is there someone else I could sit with?” I shot to my feet, blood heating to a dangerous degree, unable to deny now that it was Kaeleron who flustered me and not the mead. “Your sister perhaps?”

His gaze lowered to the seat, a silent order to resume my position beside him. “My sister is absent.”

I frowned at that. This was apparently an important celebration. What was more important that Jenavyr was missing it to attend to that business instead? Or maybe his sister had witnessed her brother tipsy on mead too many times in the past and didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment anymore.

Kaeleron reached up and pushed his black hair back.

Revealing his pointed ears.

They were bare.

No silver tipped their points, shielding them from view.

I tried not to stare, but my eyes refused to move from their delicately pointed tips as a desire rose within me, one that felt more compelling than any that had come before it.

I itched to reach out and feather my fingers along them.

I sipped my drink instead and took my seat again, this time picking a spot right at the end of the black chaise, as far from this tempting fae king as I could get.

“I’ve never heard of Beltane before. Is it like a solstice?” A change of subject seemed like a good idea and it might divert his attention away from teasing me.

I took another sip of my mead and this time it tasted better, and that sweet spicy tang in the air swirled with the scent of it, invading my lungs and my mind, easing the tension from my body.

“Of a sort. Millennia ago, when the seelie and the unseelie roamed the human world, the mortals felt a need to ward off my kind and appease us to prevent our wickedness from spoiling their lands and taking their people. On the first day of their May, they lit great bonfires and drank mead spiced with woodruff, and danced long into the night, frolicking to celebrate the rebirth of the world through fire. My kind would grace them with our presence, drawing magic from the rite.” He swirled his mead, seemingly lost in it.

“They no longer celebrate Beltane as they once did, so my kind celebrate it instead, carrying on the tradition with the fire of rebirth.”

Several men jeered and I glanced in their direction, and lingered.

By the gods, I had never seen a pig as large as the one they were turning on a spit, its skin glossy and dark.

My mouth watered as they basted it with what looked like mead from one of the open barrels, sloshing wooden ladles of it over the animal before they swept a thick brush along the length of it, spreading the mead and making sure every part of it was basted.

“The little wolf hungers. She has an insatiable appetite for meat,” Kaeleron purred.

“If you mention your nether regions, I will throw this mead in your face.” I slid him a dark look, hoping to silence him with the threat, but he only laughed instead.

“Throw it in my face and I will order you to lick me clean, my lamb.”

“Ugh. I’m not a lamb.” I had to lock my arm up to stop myself from hurling my drink at him, all too aware he would carry out that threat and make me lick it off him if I did.

Since my threat had failed to make any impact on him, I gave him the cold shoulder instead, enjoying my drink as I took in the celebration.

I frowned as a male stepped up behind a female who was bucking the trend and wearing leather trousers and a loose blouse rather than a dress, sliding his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder.

The larger male she had been speaking to a moment ago, one who had feathered his fingers across her cheek and leaned in for a kiss from her, didn’t seem to mind the attention the other male was giving her.

In fact, the two of them shared a smile and struck up a conversation.

Kaeleron shifted in his seat beside me, sitting up and leaning far too close to me for comfort, his scent of wild storm swirling around me, as drugging as the mead. I scowled at him, but he didn’t notice, was too busy staring in the direction I was.

“Ah. My little lamb is curious. The brunette female is Kali, a warrior who serves in my legions.” He placed his hand on the seat beside me, his little finger brushing the side of my thigh, his look unrepentant when I shot him a glare.

She was pretty, with her braided dark hair and pointed ears, and the way her face lit up with her warm laughter, but she looked as much a warrior as Kaeleron had called her, her body honed for battle, but somehow still feminine.

“Which of the males is with her. I thought it was the larger one, but the tall, slender blond fae seems more intimate with her.” I studied them closely, struggling to figure out which was her lover.

“They are both her mates.”

My head whipped towards Kaeleron so swiftly I almost headbutted him. “I’m sorry. You mean she’s in love with both of them, not that they’re both fated to her.”

He shook his head. “They are fated. It is unusual, rare even, but it does happen. Ivaron, the blond male, hails from the Dusk Court and she met him during talks between the courts, quickly realising he was her second mate.”

I looked at that male, with his burnished bronze leather trousers and gold-studded tunic. He looked as elegant as any fae of this court, but perhaps a little less dark.

“The larger male is Taegen. He is a member of the Shadow Court, though he does not hail from this land but rather the Dark Realm.” Kaeleron inched closer, his shoulder brushing mine, sending a jolt through me that had me hyper aware of him again. “You would call that realm Hell.”

Hell. Many species of immortals came from that shadowy realm, including demons, and I had heard stories that it was where dragon shifters like Neve lived.

Even vampires lived there, acting as mercenaries for the other species, willing to fight in their wars for money.

Had Neve and Riordan come from that realm?

“He’s fae though,” I said, not quite a question and not a statement, because I wasn’t sure what he was. He had black hair and pointed ears, and had Kaeleron not mentioned where he had come from, I would have assumed he was from the Shadow Court.

“An elf, rather than an unseelie. Her family disapproved of the match, and then she discovered she has two fated mates and they disowned her. Jenavyr gave her a place in her legion.” Kaeleron idly swirled his finger around my shoulder, tracing patterns on my bare skin, and I jerked it.

This time he stopped without me glaring at him.

“Ivaron was away on business and has only just returned. It is little wonder she is so happy to see him. I am sure she would have missed his presence tonight.”

Two fated mates.

“Is it a fae thing?” I said.

Kaeleron arched a brow at me. “Missing your mate?”

“No. Having two of them. I’ve never heard of it before.” And some small part of me willed him to say any immortal who was blessed with a fated mate could have two of them.

Because I desperately wanted it to be true.

I wanted a second fated mate—one who would want me and would love me.

“It is a fae thing. I have not heard of another species having more than one potential fated mate. Perhaps demons, and those with fae blood in their lineage.” He moved away to refill his goblet.

Disappointment rolled through me, bitter and dark, dampening my mood. For a glorious moment, I had felt hope, had seen an end to my misery. If I had been able to find a new fated mate, the pain that was my wolf side’s constant companion would be soothed and healed. I could be happy again.

Kaeleron pulled out two seats at the table and gestured to one of them.

I hurried to take it, wanting to lose myself in the glorious food that had been laid out on the table and maybe more of the mead.

If I drank enough of it, perhaps I would forget my sorrows.

I swayed with the music as I loaded up my plate, narrowing my world down to it, hiding in it in a way as Kaeleron spoke to his people, his voice distant to my ears.

My wolf side bayed, making me want to throw my head back and loose a mournful howl as rather than making me forget, the mead stripped me of my barriers, allowing everything to flood into my soul.

Why couldn’t I have been given a fated mate who loved me?

Who wanted me? Why did Kali get two males who looked as if they adored her, while mine had rejected me?

What had I done wrong in life to receive such cruelty from fate?

Kaeleron’s gaze drilled into the side of my face, but I didn’t have the energy to look at him as I played with my food, my appetite gone. Even the meat from the roast pig that was delivered to my table wasn’t tempting, but Kaeleron pushed it my way anyway, his eyes still on me.

He took my goblet from me when I refilled it. “You are not a happy drunk.”

He was right about that.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been drunk enough to find out whether I would be a happy one or a morose one.” I reached for my goblet, my fingers brushing his, sending an electric jolt coursing up my arm that only increased my awareness of him. “Let’s find out which I am.”

“I think you already know.” He held firm, refusing to release the goblet, even as he signalled to one of the servants. “Bring wine for my little lamb.”

The same female hurried to him, curtseyed and then left to carry out his order.

Odd. Normally he was served by males. I looked around, noticing that all the servants were female tonight, and that several of the attendees were smiling and chatting to them, some even brushing a hand up their hip, and none of the attention was unwanted.

The females smiled and blushed for them, even leaned into their touches.

The female returning with a bottle of dark red wine for me pulled my focus away from the servants and guests, and I watched as Kaeleron found a fresh goblet and filled it for me.

“There.” He pushed it towards me and I released the one I had a death grip on, letting him take it away.

I sipped the wine, and it tasted incredibly weak compared with the mead, but it was probably better than getting flat out drunk and making a fool of myself, and possibly Kaeleron.

“Eat. It will help.” He pushed the roasted meat my way and growled, “That is an order.”

I rolled my eyes at him but tucked into the meat anyway, savouring the juiciness of it and the hint of mead that laced it, together with herbs. Delicious. My wolf side growled in approval, ravenous for more. I’m sure I had never been so hungry. I couldn’t seem to get enough of it.

Laughter and conversation rang around me, Kaeleron presiding over it all in silence, and part of me felt I should probably strike up a conversation between us but I couldn’t stop placing forkful after forkful of meat into my mouth. No matter how much I ate, I wasn’t satisfied.

The night air seemed to be getting warmer as the festivities rolled on, the bonfire blazing at the other end of the glade showering golden sparks up into the sky that twinkled and danced like the stars.

I tilted my head back, soaking up the beauty of the sky as aurora chased across the full moon.

That tang that laced the air grew stronger, invading my lungs, my pores, clouding my head.

By the gods, it was beautiful here.

I lowered my head to tell Kaeleron that and locked up tight.

By the gods!