Chapter 13

Nadine’s POV

The hall glowed with firelight, shadows crawling across the vaulted ceiling as the feast raged on. Roasted venison, dripping fat, filled the air, mixed with spiced wine and the musk of too many wolves gathered too close. I sat at Madden’s left, a place that didn’t belong to me, on a chair that felt like it might swallow me whole.

He hadn’t asked if I wanted to be here. He never asked.

The goblet before me caught the light like blood. I stared at my reflection in the dark liquid until my hand shook, then pushed it away. I could feel him at my side, a furnace of heat and power, every movement commanding the room without effort.

The council whispered, too loud to be mistaken for courtesy.

“The king keeps her at his side as though nothing happened.”

“Shameful.”

“She’s no Luna. She’s a curse.”

Their words slid under my skin like blades. I clenched my jaw until it ached, trying not to let them see the tremor in my fingers.

Madden didn’t flinch. He ate with calm precision, golden eyes catching every flicker, every insult, every sidelong glance. He heard it all and let it stand, as though the spectacle amused him.

I couldn’t bear it.

“Does it please you?” I asked, my voice sharp enough to still the hall.

Forks clinked against plates. Heads turned. Silence crashed heavy and complete.

Madden lifted his gaze to me slowly, one brow raised, lips curving into the faintest smirk. “Does what please me?”

“This circus,” I spat, my voice rising. “Dragging me here, parading me like some…some conquered trophy, while your nobles look at me as though I should be buried beside your dead Luna.”

Gasps echoed across the chamber. One councilman dropped his spoon, the clatter loud as thunder.

Madden didn’t blink. He leaned back, his arm draping over the back of my chair, casual, predatory. His smirk deepened until I wanted to claw it from his face.

“You mistake me,” he said softly, almost lazily. “It isn’t their whispers that please me, Nadine.”

His golden eyes burned into mine, and heat coiled in my gut, unwanted, cruel. “It’s your fire.”

I froze.

The hall was still. Wolves waited, tense, expecting my punishment to fall like an axe. Instead, Madden reached for his goblet, raised it high, and drank deep, as though my fury were nothing more than fine wine.

Laughter rippled uncertainly through the council. Relief, fear, confusion it all blurred together.

I sat rigid, my heart hammering, my breath shallow. I had wanted to hurt him, to shame him, to tear open the mask he wore so smugly. But he’d turned it, twisted it, and made it his victory.

The feast went on, but I couldn’t taste the food. My mouth was ash.

\---

Later, when the hall had emptied and I slipped into the colder corridors of the palace, a voice stopped me.

“Brave,” Cassian said smoothly from the shadows.

I spun, pulse leaping. He leaned against the stone archway, silver hair gleaming faintly in the torchlight, cane resting loosely in his hand. His smile was sharp, but his eyes those icy, watchful eyes measured me like prey.

“Brave,” he repeated, pushing off the wall, strolling closer. “But dangerous.”

“I don’t need your opinion,” I muttered, crossing my arms, though the weight of his gaze pressed against me like frost.

“You think I offer it freely?” he asked, tilting his head. “Consider it…charity. Don’t provoke him too far, Nadine.”

My name on his lips made my stomach twist.

“He is not the boy you once knew,” Cassian continued. “The one who could be swayed by tenderness, undone by mercy. That boy burned with Seraphine’s corpse.”

My throat tightened. “And whose fault is that?”

He only smiled, cold and knowing. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? What matters is this: if you keep spitting fire, one day it won’t amuse him. It will destroy you.”

I glared at him, but unease coiled in my chest, his words sinking like hooks.

Cassian leaned close enough that his breath brushed my cheek, his tone dropping to a whisper. “And I’d hate to see you wasted.”

I shoved past him, heart hammering, fury masking the tremor in my bones.

But even as I stormed away, his warning clung to me.

Because for the first time, I realized Cassian wasn’t wrong.

Madden wasn’t the boy I’d rejected. He was something far more dangerous.

Madden’s pov

She doesn’t even realize what she does to me.

Every word she spat across that table each accusation, each flash of defiance should have enraged me. And it did, gods, it did. My wolf clawed at me, demanding I put her on her knees, silence her, remind her who she belonged to.

But beneath the fury was something else. Something I’d long forgotten I could feel.

Pride.

The way her voice cut through the hall, sharp as a blade, refusing to break even when the council’s eyes stabbed her like daggers she burned brighter than any jewel, fiercer than any wolf I’ve ever known. She hates me, and yet she shines in my shadow.

And I couldn’t punish her for that.

I wanted to devour it.

When she looked at me with that fire, my blood surged, my chest ached like it was splitting open. That bond she despises pulled taut, her wolf calling to mine even as her human cursed me. The council thought I let her live because I enjoy the spectacle. Fools. They don’t understand.

I let her live because I can’t do otherwise.

She is my curse, and my salvation.

\---

After the feast, I dismissed them all, but Cassian lingered. Of course he did. He slithers in shadows, testing me, testing her, circling like a vulture waiting for scraps.

I felt his eyes on Nadine all night. Too long. Too curious. And she noticed him, too her scent soured with unease when he spoke her name.

It made my teeth ache.

Cassian is no fool. He sees the tension in my jaw, the way my hand twitches toward her whenever another wolf dares look too long. He smiles because he thinks it gives him power.

But I’ve learned not to kill too quickly. Wolves like him must be handled with patience strung along until they reveal the rot festering inside them.

Still… when she walked past him in the corridor later, his presence was too close. Too comfortable. I could smell his words clinging to her skin when she returned to the Luna’s chambers. A warning. A whisper.

My wolf raged inside me, snarling to mark her, to erase the ghost of his breath on her cheek.

But I stayed my hand. Barely.

\---

She doesn’t see it how fragile the line is between the mask I wear and the feral thing clawing beneath. Every time she looks at me with those eyes, every time she spits venom like it costs her nothing, she presses me closer to the edge.

And gods help us both, I like it.

When Seraphine lived, she caged me with silk and poison. Her presence was a chain, her love a performance. Nadine is nothing like her. She doesn’t beg, doesn’t flatter. She strikes, over and over, even knowing I could crush her in a breath.

It enrages me.

It tempts me.

It makes me remember I am alive.

And that is why she is more dangerous to me than any enemy at my gates.

\---

Tonight, as I sit alone in my chambers, I can still hear her voice echoing against the stone. Does it please you?

Yes, little wolf. It pleases me more than you’ll ever know.

But if you keep testing me, one day I won’t smirk. I won’t laugh.

One day, I’ll give in to t

he bond that claws at me and claim you in the only way my wolf understands.

And when that happens, I don’t know if either of us will survive it.