Chapter 24

I told myself to stay put. To let the cold night air numb me until the garden was no longer haunted by Cassian’s words. But my restless wolf would not let me linger. My legs carried me back into the palace before I realized what I was doing, each step echoing against marble floors that felt colder than stone.

The halls were quiet, eerily so. At this hour, most of the palace slumbered, save for the night guards. Yet a faint light flickered from the training wing. Torchlight, too soft to be official. My wolf’s ears pricked, urging me closer.

I should have turned away. But curiosity was a fire, and it pulled me into the shadows until I reached the open archway.

That was when I saw him.

Madden.

The cruel Lycan King. The one who haunted me, tormented me, claimed me. But here, he wasn’t draped in his cold mask. He wasn’t smirking at my pain. He was crouched low, sleeves rolled up, his hands steady as he wrapped a strip of cloth around the leg of a wounded soldier.

The man was young, barely older than me, his face pale with blood loss. His breathing was ragged, his hands trembling as though he’d barely survived something brutal.

Madden’s voice was low, soothing, not the thunder I had grown used to. “Breathe. You’re not dying tonight. Do you hear me?”

The soldier’s lips quivered. “My… King…”

“Not your King right now,” Madden said, tightening the bandage with practiced care. “Just a man keeping you alive. Hold still.”

My breath caught.

I shouldn’t have been surprised he knew how to handle wounds, he was a warrior before he was a king. But the tenderness, the patience in his tone… it stole the ground from beneath me. He brushed damp hair from the soldier’s forehead with almost fatherly care, his jaw set with determination but his eyes… his eyes softened.

My chest ached.

I pressed my back to the wall, hidden in the shadows, afraid that if I moved, the moment would shatter.

This was not the Madden I knew, the one who taunted me, who chained me with his dominance, who burned me with his touch and smirked at my resistance. This was someone else. Someone quieter, burdened, but undeniably human.

My wolf whimpered. Mate.

I shook my head, pressing my hand over my mouth to stifle the sound. No. I couldn’t afford this. I couldn’t afford to let my heart weaken. Yet traitorously, it softened anyway.

The soldier murmured something about Seraphine, his voice slurred with exhaustion. Madden froze for only a second, his hands tightening before he steadied himself again. “Rest. That’s an order.”

His voice didn’t crack, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. The wound beneath his armor wasn’t blood, it was grief.

And for the first time, I saw it. Not the fury. Not the cruelty. The grief. The loneliness.

I gripped the stone wall, nails scraping as my heart twisted. This was the man Cassian swore would never forgive me. The man I was supposed to hate. But hate was brittle when faced with the sight of him kneeling in the dirt for a soldier’s life.

And gods help me, my body didn’t just ache for him. My heart did too.

The soldier slumped into unconsciousness, alive for now. Madden sat back on his heels, dragging a bloodied hand through his hair. His head tipped back, eyes closed for a long, weary breath.

For that moment, he looked nothing like a king.

And everything like the boy I once loved.

I pressed harder against the wall, my chest rising and falling too quickly. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes before I could stop them.

Because now, I wasn’t sure which was more dangerous, Madden’s cruelty…

Or his vulnerability.

My wolf howled inside me, demanding I go to him. To comfort him. To claim him. I clenched my fists until my nails broke skin, whispering to myself, “No. No.”

But the whisper trembled.

And I knew then, this bond was eating me alive.

My breath hitched the moment his golden eyes lifted.

I thought I had been careful, hidden in the shadows, silent as stone. But Madden was not a man you could hide from. His gaze snapped toward me with lethal precision, the kind of awareness that made wolves bend to their knees.

And then he saw me.

For a heartbeat, the world froze. His eyes gleamed, dark with exhaustion but still sharp enough to pierce through every wall I’d built around myself.

Slowly, he rose from where the soldier lay unconscious, his tall frame uncoiling like a predator. His coat hung open, sleeves shoved up to the elbows, streaks of blood smeared across his forearms. Not his own. The soldier’s.

“You shouldn’t lurk in shadows you don’t belong to,” he said, his voice low, too calm.

My throat tightened. I should’ve looked away, should’ve fled back to the Luna’s chambers before he could make me regret it. But my feet were rooted to the floor.

Madden gestured with two fingers, curling them toward himself like he was summoning a disobedient wolf. “Come.”

The word rumbled through me, a command wrapped in silk.

I swallowed hard, but my wolf shivered, obeying before I could even decide. My legs carried me forward, step after step, until I stood within arm’s reach of him. Close enough to see the beads of sweat at his temple, close enough to feel the heat radiating off him.

“You should not be wandering aimlessly through my halls,” he murmured, studying me like I was some puzzle he meant to dismantle. “Or do you enjoy following me in the dark?”

His lips curved slightly, though it wasn’t a smile, it was a weapon, honed to cut me open.

I clenched my fists at my sides. “I wasn’t following you.”

“No?” His head tilted. “Then what do you call hiding behind a wall and staring at me as though you’ve seen a ghost?”

Heat rushed to my cheeks before I could control it. Damn him. Damn that sharp tongue of his that always made me falter.

“I was curious,” I snapped. “Forgive me for not expecting the mighty Lycan King to play nursemaid.”

His eyes narrowed, a flicker of something dangerous passing through them, but instead of anger, his expression smoothed. Too smooth. “Careful, little wolf. Your tongue cuts sharper than you think.”

I smirked then, sharp and bitter, because if I didn’t, the pull of the bond would eat me alive. “So what? Going to throw me back into the dungeons for looking at you wrong?”

For a long moment, he just stared at me. His chest rose and fell, each breath measured.

And then, to my shock, he huffed a low laugh. It wasn’t warm, it was jagged, a sound torn from someone who had forgotten how to laugh at all. “Not tonight.”

He stepped closer. The scent of him, cedar, smoke, and the faintest trace of iron, wrapped around me like chains. My wolf leaned into it, hungry. My human side recoiled.

He leaned down, close enough that his breath grazed my ear. “Don’t mistake my mercy for weakness. If you’re going to haunt my halls, at least do it with purpose.”

I forced my voice steady. “And what purpose would you suggest?”

His lips hovered near mine, not touching, just close enough to burn. “Learning. Watching. Remembering.” His gaze dipped to my mouth before locking on my eyes again. “Because your body remembers me, Nadine, even if you pretend to forget.”

My heart thundered. My wolf howled, clawing at my insides, desperate to close the gap.

But I forced a smirk, thin and sharp, though my chest ached. “Then perhaps my body is more foolish than I am.”

For a moment, silence stretched between us. A battle neither of us would admit we were fighting.

And then he stepped back, wiping his bloodstained hands on a cloth. His mask slid back into place, the cold king once more. “Go back to the Luna’s chambers.”

I should have obeyed. Should have turned and left like the prisoner I was.

Instead, I lingered for one second too long, tilting my chin up, smirking through the storm in my chest. “As you command… my King.”

His eyes flared, molten and furious, but he said nothing as I walked away. My pulse raced the entire time, my wolf snarling in satisfaction while my human side trembled.

Because I had seen him. The part of him he didn’t show anyone else.

And for the first time, I wasn’t sure if the real danger lay in his cruelty,

Or in the way he almost let me see the man beneath it.