Page 9 of Wolf Caged (Bound to the Shadow King #1)

My eyes widened a heartbeat later, when her order repeated in my mind, echoing there.

Return me to my world? Panic lanced me. Where was I if this wasn’t my world?

“No.” A male of few words, and not the retribution I had expected.

“Why is she here?”

“That is none of your concern.” He was definitely her master, or at the least, her superior. He spoke like an alpha.

“None of my concern?” She did snap now. “I beg to differ. As your second in command?—”

“A position you wish to keep?” he growled low, a cold threat and one that silenced the female for a full minute.

But then she muttered, “At least give her some clothes.”

I had the feeling she either wanted this male to strip her of her position, or she knew his threat had been an idle one, something he wouldn’t do no matter the circumstances. They were close then. Shared some kind of bond that made me pine for my parents, for Everlee and Chase and Morden.

The female huffed. “I do not know your plan, brother, but it would not kill you to make her more comfortable.”

Brother.

They were siblings.

Silence, and then light boots on hard stone and the weight of his gaze on me, searing through the blanket to leave me feeling exposed as she moved away from us.

“See to it.” His voice was darker than midnight as he issued that order.

The steps halted and then she responded.

A muttered, almost sarcastic, “Yes, my king.”

I drew down a steadying breath as the sound of her steps drifted into the distance, the weight of his gaze on me unbearable, making me squirm and struggle to keep still.

The scent hit me again. A wild storm.

This male.

It was his scent, one that filled my lungs and some hollow spot inside me, speaking to me on a primal level, where my animal soul met my human heart.

He huffed, the sound beast-like, and snarled, “You can open your eyes now, little lamb. You are not fooling anyone.”

I cracked my eyes open and rolled towards him.

Only I couldn’t see anyone. Just darkness on the other side of the bars, as if someone had snuffed out the torches.

I held the blanket to my chest, and brushed my fingers over the soft material, and dread accompanied each stroke of them as it dawned on me.

This was the blanket that had covered that terrible cage before Lucas had lifted it to reveal me to all those greedy, wretched eyes.

Eyes like the ones watching me now, drilling into me.

I wanted to throw it away from me, but doing so would expose me to this male.

So I clung to it instead, just as I clung to my courage.

I straightened my spine, refusing to let him see my fear as I clamped muscle down onto bone to stop myself from trembling. He hadn’t cowed the female who had confronted him, and he wouldn’t intimidate me.

“I’m not a lamb. I’m a wolf.” My voice came out surprisingly strong, and a bit loud in the musty dungeon, as I bared my fangs at the shadows before me.

“You are a lamb in wolf’s clothing. There is a difference, little lamb.”

Weak.

He was calling me weak.

Bastard.

I growled low, keeping my fangs bared, despising how that word made me feel and how right he was.

I was weak. Coddled. Nothing in my life had prepared me for not only being rejected by my fated mate but being thrust into this dark situation I now found myself in.

The primal instincts of my wolf side warned I was going to have to fight if I wanted to live, and I was woefully underprepared in that department.

Female wolves didn’t train.

We didn’t fight.

“Where am I?” That question echoed as it bounced off the cold stone walls. Maybe if I knew where he had taken me, I could start planning my way out of this mess.

“The answer to that is simple.” He paused and my breath halted as I waited, sure he had done it for dramatic effect. His deep voice rumbled through the darkness. “ Lucia .”

The way he said that, drawing out that name, and the way he stilled in the shadows, waiting for a reaction, told me I was somewhere I should fear.

But I was tired of being afraid. Too tired to care or participate in whatever game he was playing. I couldn’t keep up with everything that had happened and deep inside me, my soul was howling, raging, grieving… still unable to believe my fated mate had betrayed me.

This male couldn’t do anything worse to me than Lucas had in rejecting me.

I shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

He scoffed. “So uneducated. I expected as much.”

I scowled at the darkness before me. “So haughty. I expected as much—from a king.”

He chuckled, but it was a deadly, hollow sound. “We shall see how long that tongue remains sharp when you realise where you are and what I am.”

Not who. What .

He was of a species he believed I should fear then.

I tried not to let it shake me, but it was hard.

This male had bought me. Paid handsomely for me.

Playing a game with all the other bidders, letting them think they had won before he had casually thrown in excess of a hundred million dollars down on the table.

For my virginity. And now I was in a cell at his mercy.

Not that he seemed to have much of that particular quality.

“Do you know of the faerie?” A direct question, laced with a hint of amusement that said he thought I didn’t and was as uneducated as he expected.

I was too busy wrestling with how ominous that question was to snap at him, found myself stilling and holding the blanket closer to keep out the sudden chill as I peered into the shadows where he stood.

Shadows that seemed unnatural the more I looked at them.

I glanced left and right, and it was lighter in both directions, the torches still flickering brightly to warm the cold space.

It was only dark where he was.

“A little,” I murmured and looked back at the gathered shadows, my pulse picking up as the full gravity of my situation hit me.

“Tell me what you know.” A gentle prompt, but that amusement was still there, lending a cruel edge to his bass voice.

“That there’s good and bad fae—and this is their world, isn’t it?

I’m in the faerie realm.” Not my world. What that female had said came back to me and dread sank through me.

I was in the land of the fae, as far from my home as I could get, and even if I did escape this dungeon and whatever building it belonged to, I had no way of getting back to my pack.

Unlike the fae, I couldn’t teleport or use magic.

I was trapped here.

“Perhaps not so stupid after all.” There was almost a grin in those words. “And tell me…” He moved, voice a low rumble as he stepped closer and the shadows fell away, revealing him at last. “Which do you think I am?”

I couldn’t breathe.

He was darkness made flesh. A warrior from another time in black armour and with an onyx spiked crown curving across his forehead.

Shadows streaked across his eyes, below pitch-dark eyebrows, making his silver irises as bright and sharp as moonlight ringed with night.

The twin braids he wore tucked behind pointed ears tipped with silver metal and adorned with rings fell to one side as he canted his head, studying me.

Not me. My reaction.

Apparently, my shock was satisfactory, because his lips, a shade darker than his pale skin, curved at the corners.

But it wasn’t fear that had me reeling.

No male should be beautiful, not when they wore an air of cruelty and darkness like those words had been made for him, but he was breathtaking .

Otherworldly.

Beautiful .

Every feature was perfection, from his chiselled jaw to his striking molten silver eyes, to his glossy black hair that reached his nape and had been pulled back into a half ponytail.

I struggled to find my voice, to muster some witty and scathing retort as he towered over me, elegance incarnate in his fine armour that hugged a body I felt sure would also be perfection.

His smirk widened.

Because he thought fear had me stunned into silence, not some sort of misplaced awe that bordered on a dangerous attraction that had my pulse quickening at just the sight of him.

I shut it down, because this was probably a trick, a lie. Fae could use glamours and magic, altering their appearance as they pleased. That was what the story books had taught me.

I would be a fool to fall for his charms, for his looks, just as I had been a fool to fall for Lucas’s.

And I was sure if I did, if I lowered my guard for even a second around this fae king, my fate would be far worse than what my mate had done to me.

“A bad fae.” I pushed the words out, part of me wanting him gone so I could breathe again and find some balance, his presence seeming to tilt my world even further off its axis.

“A very bad fae,” he corrected and angled his head the other way, a predator sizing up his prey. “You would do well to remember that, little lamb. You are in my domain now.”

The shadows that clung to his shoulders like a cloak rose again, swirling around him, and as he melted backwards into them, he left me with parting words that rattled me to my core.

“Entertain me and you might live to tell the tale.”