Chapter One — The Girl Who Should Have Died (2)

And he walked back into the palace, leaving Layla Gray standing in a courtyard of bodies, surrounded by guards who were all staring at her like she'd personally hand-delivered the apocalypse.

Locke, the King's Beta and best friend since before the war, sidled up to her. He was a mountain of a man with a face like a friendly cliff.

"Okay," he said. "Quick question. What the hell are you?"

"I'm a delivery girl," Layla said weakly.

"No." Locke shook his head, watching the palace doors where the King had vanished. "Delivery girls don't survive the King's killing field. Delivery girls don't walk through the King's pressure like it's a mild breeze. That was the famous part, by the way. You broke it. You broke the scariest thing about him. Congratulations, I think."

"I'm going to die," Layla said.

"Probably," Locke agreed cheerfully. "But on the bright side, you're gonna die famous."

* * *

She didn't die that night.

She woke up in a room the size of her entire apartment, in a bed so soft it felt illegal, wrapped in blankets that smelled like cedar and smoke and something enormous. Her thermal bag — cleaned, miraculously, and with a crisp fifty-dollar bill tucked inside — sat on the bedside table like a shrine.

Also on the table: a handwritten note in handwriting that looked like it had been carved with a sword.

Hostage. Room 7. Breakfast at 6. Don't run — I'll find you. — K.T.

Layla stared at the note.

"Hostage." She read it out loud, tasting the word. "Hostage gets a suite and a tip. Hostage gets blankets. What kind of hostage treatment is this?"

Her phone buzzed. A text from the diner.

BO$$: u alive? heard u delivered to the wolf court. say something.

Layla typed back: I'm their new hostage.

There was a pause. Then:

BO$$: cool. can u get me their catering contract

Layla laughed. It came out wet and slightly unhinged. That was the exact moment the door opened, and the King walked in carrying a tray.

Karen Thorne, the Butcher of Verath, dressed in black silk and looking like a nightmare that had decided to do brunch, was carrying her breakfast. On the tray: a glass of orange juice, a pile of pancakes that were, at best, structurally enthusiastic, and a single rose that looked like it had been personally traumatized.

"Breakfast," he said, setting the tray down with the care of a man defusing a bomb.

Layla looked at the rose. "Is that for me?"

"Yes."

"Why is it... crushed?"

The King's jaw tightened. "The guard said humans like flowers. I picked it. There was a thorn. I did not enjoy that."

"You fought the rose?"

"I won," said the King of the wolves, with immense dignity. "The rose lost."

Layla stared at him. The Butcher of Verath, who'd stood ankle-deep in blood last night and looked bored, was standing in her doorway, post-battle with a flower, radiating the smug pride of a golden retriever who'd retrieved a very dead bird.

She was going to die. She was going to die laughing, which was at least an upgrade from dying screaming.

"Okay," she said. "Look, Your Majesty. King. Sir. I don't know what kind of hostage deal this is, but I need you to know that I'm not going to be useful to you. I don't know anything. I saw you kill, like, a lot of guys, and I'm pretty sure that makes me a liability, not an asset. So maybe just... let me go? I'll forget everything. I'm excellent at forgetting. I forgot my own birthday for three years straight."

The King's eyes did something strange. In the morning light, they weren't cold gray at all. They were pale gold — the color of honey, of sunlight through whisky, of everything soft in a world that had never been soft to him.

"No," he said.

"Why not?"

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, very quietly, like a man confessing something shameful:

"Because you made the noise stop."

"What noise?"

"The noise in my head." He touched his temple with a hand that had killed a hundred men. "It's been there since I was nine years old. Screaming. Every day. Every single day. And then you walked into my courtyard, dropped my dinner on my boots, and called me out of my delivery zone, and it just... stopped."

Layla's heart did something complicated in her chest.

"That's not—" she started. "That doesn't make sense. I'm just a human. I'm the most normal, boring, un-special human in the entire city. I microwave forks. I once locked myself out of my apartment in my pajamas."

"The wolf doesn't care," the King said. "The wolf has been howling for twenty-eight years. Last night, for the first time, it went quiet."

He stepped closer. Close enough that she could feel the heat of him, close enough that she could see the gold bleeding into his irises like sunrise.

"You're not going anywhere, little hostage," he murmured. "I would slaughter every last soul in this world before I let a single tear fall from your eyes. So stop looking at me like I'm going to hurt you. I'm not."

Layla swallowed.

"You said 'hostage' twice," she pointed out, because she was terrified and terrified people say stupid things. "Hostages get hurt. That's the whole hostage thing."

The King's mouth curved. It was the first time she'd seen him almost-smile, and it rearranged his whole face, turning the nightmare into something dangerously beautiful.

"Then I'll be the best hostage-taker in history," he said. "Eat your pancakes. I made them myself."

"You made them."

"I consulted a book."

"Did the book survive?"

The almost-smile became a real smile, small and stunned, like a man seeing his own reflection for the first time. And in that moment, standing in a palace that had never held anything soft, surrounded by blood and gold and a woman who had no idea who she was, the Wolf King's gentle side cracked open — just a hair, just enough.