Page 64 of Wolf Caged (Bound to the Shadow King #1)

His thumb swept over the band on my finger again, his gaze distant now. “If I had not been born royalty, I believe I would have been a blacksmith or a jeweller.”

And he was back to looking vulnerable.

Because whatever gates guarded his heart, he had just opened them a little to me, letting me see some secret inner part of him he preferred to keep hidden.

“I didn’t really think you had the fine motor control to make something so delicate,” I teased, my smile bright, trying to ease the tension building in him.

And he was too delicious as he purred, “You know how skilled my fingers are.”

I shivered, barely suppressing the urge to bite my lower lip as I recalled just how skilled they were, as my body hummed with echoes of that pleasure he had given me and my nipples beaded.

“I can’t really dispute that.” I eased a little closer to him, growing aware that he was still holding my hand, his thumb grazing my fingers as his gaze remained locked on me.

The corners of his lips quirked into another dangerously seductive smile.

I glanced down at the ring again, avoiding falling under its wicked spell.

“It really is beautiful. I can’t imagine making something so intricate.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin and whatever I made would probably look like a gnarled piece of metal at the end of it.

How did you even inscribe such tiny lettering?

Or make those little vines that are holding the moons? ”

“Centuries of practice, little wolf.” He turned my hand, making the pale stone catch the light. Colours like the aurora above us chased across the heart of the stone.

“Centuries?” My gaze darted up to lock with his and I feigned shock. “How old are you?”

“Five hundred and sixty years old.” He sounded proud about that.

“My gods, you’re old.” I gaped at him and he scowled at me, and I couldn’t stop the smile from blooming on my lips. “I read about you in the library.”

“Do not believe everything you read in the books there. Some are a rather… abridged… history of this land and its people.”

“Well, it didn’t mention your blacksmithing hobby, so I believe that.

” I looked at the ring again. It truly was beautiful.

Probably the most beautiful gift I had been given and one that spoke to me on some deep level.

A moon ring. A present fit for a wolf shifter.

“What’s your favourite thing you’ve made? ”

He pursed his lips, expression growing thoughtful and pensive.

And then he said, “I have made many things in my life, but the most important to me is my sword. I spent months crafting it and imbued it with power through ancient spells.”

“The same language that’s on here?” I lifted my hand and he nodded. “Ancient fae. I can’t read it.”

“It is a language few know, and one we do not share with others. It is almost… sacred to my kind. Wait here a moment.” He pivoted and walked away before I could stop him, heading back inside the forge, where he retrieved something from the blacksmith.

I frowned at the bundle of worn brown leather he held in his hands as he returned to me.

He held it out to me. “My apology, for branding you without your consent.”

“Another gift?” I took the supple bundle of leather from him and unwound the thin strap that had been wrapped around it, and then unrolled it.

Revealing a beautiful dagger that was as long as my forearm.

The silver metal gleamed in the low light as I closed my hand around the black leather wrapped hilt and lifted it before me.

“I admit, it took me longer than I had expected. I began working on it when Vyr started your training.” The lightness in his deep voice stole my focus from the dagger, the warmth in his eyes as he looked at it stirring an echo of that warmth and lightness within me.

“I had considered a sword, but my sister mentioned your speed and agility, and I thought perhaps a dagger might be more suitable, especially given your slight frame. It is a weapon you could easily wield and would not slow you down. So I set about crafting you one that would complement your skills and work with you, rather than against you.”

So much passion.

This male before me was so different to the fierce, hard king I knew him to be.

He was passionate, warm, and animated as he talked openly about the weapon he had made with me in mind, his love of blacksmithing on show for me to see.

I wanted to keep him like this, even when I knew it was impossible.

A court needed a king, and the mask would fall back into place before I knew it and I would lose this warm, bright male.

I had read enough about the courts now to know how they ran, and about the kings of the other courts, each more brutal and ruthless than the last.

But a few of them were warm and kind.

Like the king of the frigid Winter Court, who had loved and lost his seelie fated mate.

I stared at the dagger, at the delicately carved wolf head that acted as the pommel and the cross guard beautifully inscribed with ancient fae. At the reflection of Kael in the blade, his handsome face warm and beautiful, alight with his passion as he spoke so openly with me.

“I read about your court,” I murmured, unsure whether I wanted to go there, wanted to bring up what I had read and what I had seen with my own eyes.

I was overstepping, I knew it, and if Vyr were here, she would warn me not to do this, but I wanted this male before me to remain.

I wanted his people to see this side of him.

“You said you closed the borders, but what you didn’t say is that you did it when your parents died.

I didn’t realise just what that meant until I read about it and then some of the things I’ve been feeling during my visits to the city began to make sense. ”

His expression gradually darkened, a slow death of the warm male reflected in a dagger crafted of his passion and a need to protect.

He remained deathly still and quiet, the power he radiated growing darker as our shadows on the cobbles grew restless, pooling in the cracks between the stones.

Nerves threatened to silence me, but I squared my shoulders and lifted my eyes to meet his, because someone needed to say it. I needed to say it.

“Are your people happy?” I echoed the question I had asked him before.

And just like before, he was quick to say, “Yes.”

“Are they though?” I looked around us, that feeling that they weren’t growing stronger within me as I looked at the blacksmith where he stood at the doors of his forge, watching us with a cautious air, with a touch of fear in his eyes.

I shifted my gaze back to meet Kaeleron’s.

“Because I can’t see it, Kaeleron. Everywhere I look in this town, I see my own reflection.

I see people who are smiling on the surface, to hide their pain. Their fear. Their resentment.”

He growled and I stiffened, but I wouldn’t back down. Not this time. I knew what I was seeing, because I had lived it. I had been the one who felt trapped in their home, unable to come and go as they please, who had been cut off from the world.

“You closed the borders, Kaeleron. What does that mean for the people of your court? What does it mean for those who had come to work here from other places? Some of the people here aren’t from Lucia.

” My breath hitched as the ground beneath my feet trembled and the blacksmith behind Kaeleron stepped back into the shelter of his home, slowly shaking his head.

I couldn’t do as he wanted. I couldn’t stop now. “Are they trapped here?”

“They are protected. They have everything they need.” The same bullshit he had told me before.

“And what price are they paying for that protection? How many of them have families outside the walls of the Shadow Court? How many of them don’t know what has happened to those people?

How many people come to your borders, wanting to find their family, and are turned away?

” I felt like a bitch as I asked those questions, as I ruined the moment we had been sharing, driving that warm male further from me.

In the hopes I could draw him back again, that I could open his eyes to what he had done so he would loosen his hold on his court and free his people.

He growled as he stepped up to me, darkness branching from his eyes, staining his skin as his irises gained a crimson corona.

I wouldn’t be silenced.

“Can you see how afraid your people are of you or are you truly blind to it?” I looked beyond him to the blacksmith.

Kaeleron looked over his shoulder at him too, some of the tension in his body fading in an instant when he saw the older male cowering in the shadows of his home, watching us as if he feared for his life.

“You might believe you are keeping your people safe, you might even truly believe they are happy, but there is a difference between keeping your subjects safe and keeping them caged. This kingdom is beautiful, Kaeleron, but to many it’s a gilded cage.”

He snarled in my face, his canines and the incisors beside them as sharp as the dagger I gripped in my trembling hand.

Gods, I was being an ungrateful bitch by doing this to him when he had just been so kind to me and had let me see the warmer side of him, but someone needed to say it.

And deep in my heart I knew it had to be me.

He knew my history, he knew how caged I had been, and he might listen to me because of it. He might show his people the side of him I had met today—the warmer, kinder male.

“You closed the borders to your kingdom, for the same reason you closed off your heart—to protect it and avoid pain—but in doing so you condemned your people and yourself to living half a life. You built a cage—no, a magically reinforced steel wall—around everyone and cut them off from the world… from their kin… from their families.” My heart pounded against my chest, an unsteady and rapid rhythm that had me shaking as I faced him, as I braced myself for his wrath.

Shadows swept around me, buffeting me and chilling my skin.

And then they were gone.

And so was Kaeleron.