Chapter Two — Room Service, Do Not Disturb (2)

Her phone buzzed. Gold, of course. A text.

K.T.: Are you sleeping?

Layla stared at the screen. The Wolf King had her number. Of course he did. He'd put himself second in his own contacts.

Layla: No.

K.T.: Why not?

Layla: Hostage insomnia. Big night for the nerves.

There was a pause. Then:

K.T.: I cannot fix the hostage part. I can fix the nerves.

Layla: How, exactly?

K.T.: Open your door.

Her heart did a stupid little somersault. She opened the door.

Karen Thorne stood in the hallway, backlit by candlelight, wearing a black silk shirt that was doing things Layla refused to acknowledge. He was holding a mug. Steam curled off it.

"I made you tea," he said. "Herbal. The guard said humans like herbal tea before bed. It's supposed to be calming."

"Did you make it or did the guard make it?"

"I made it." He paused. "The guard supervised. There was an incident with the kettle. He said it was 'nobody's fault' and that I should 'maybe step away from the kitchen for the good of everyone involved'. I do not understand what I did wrong. I followed the instructions exactly."

Layla took the mug. It smelled like chamomile and honey. It was, objectively, a perfect cup of tea.

"Did you boil the kettle upside down again?" she asked.

"How did you know about the kettle?"

"Locke told me. He said you've been banned from the kitchen twice."

The King's jaw tightened. "The kitchen ban is a temporary setback. I will return."

"Please don't. You almost burned down the palace making scrambled eggs."

"They were fluffy," said the King of the wolves, wounded.

Layla laughed. She couldn't help it — it bubbled out of her, bright and helpless, and the King looked at her like she'd handed him the moon. The gold in his eyes caught the candlelight and turned to molten honey.

"You have a nice laugh," he said quietly.

Layla's face went hot. "I—that's—you can't just say things like that."

"Why not?"

"Because it's—" She gestured vaguely. "Because you're the terrifying Wolf King and I'm your hostage and this is a very confusing dynamic and I'm pretty sure I should be running."

"Running where?" he asked, and there was something dangerous and soft in the question at once. "I'd find you."

"I know. That's the problem."

"No," the King said. "That's the solution."

He stepped into the doorway, close enough that she could feel his heat through her thin shirt, smell cedar and smoke and that enormous, ancient scent that was him. Her heart was hammering so hard she could hear it. And under it — she could hear his, too. Huge and slow and steady, like a war drum at rest. It was the strangest thing. She'd never heard anyone's heartbeat but her own, but she could hear his, clear as a bell, as if it were singing directly into her blood.

"You're afraid of me," he murmured. "Everyone is. It's fine. It's correct. But you don't have to be, Layla."

"My name—" She swallowed. "How do you know my name?"

"I asked the diner. They said you were their best delivery girl and that you once fought a customer with a baguette and won." A pause. "I have a file on you now."

"You have a file?"

"It's very flattering. Locke wrote it."

Layla's brain short-circuited. "Why would you make a file about me?"

The King looked at her for a long, long moment. Then he said, very softly, in a voice that was barely more than a breath:

"Because you made the noise stop. And I need to know everything about the only quiet I've ever had."

Layla forgot how to breathe.

And then, from somewhere deep in the palace, she heard it — a low, rumbling snarl, an alarm, the sound of a wolf pack hitting full alert. The King's head snapped up, the gold in his eyes guttering like a candle in a storm.

"Stay here," he ordered. "Do not leave this room. Do not open the door for anyone but me or Locke."

"What's happening?"

"The Blood Court," he said, and the tenderness was gone, replaced by iron. "They've sent a delegation. Unannounced. That's never good."

He was gone before she could ask another question, and the palace shuddered with the sound of a King going to war.

Layla stood in the doorway, alone, heart pounding, holding a perfect cup of tea.

And that was when she noticed the envelope on the floor by her feet — a white envelope, wax-sealed, that hadn't been there before. No stamp, no address, just her name in elegant, old-fashioned handwriting:

Layla.

She broke the seal. Inside was a single sheet of paper, and a single sentence:

THE KING HAS KILLED FOR LESS THAN YOU. ASK YOURSELF WHAT HE'LL DO WHEN THE WOLVES DEMAND YOUR HEAD. — A FRIEND

Layla read it twice. Then she turned the envelope over, meaning to study the handwriting, and her blood went cold.

On the back of the wax seal, pressed deep into the crimson wax, was a mark. A symbol — a crescent moon caught in a thorned ring.

She knew that symbol.

She'd seen it once before, in her only memory of the night her parents died — the night of the fire, the night the orphanage burned, the night she'd crawled out of the flames alone. The man in the shadows had worn a ring. And on that ring, the same symbol, glowing like a coal.

Layla Gray, the most normal, boring, un-special human in the entire city, stood in a palace of wolves, holding a threat sealed with the mark of her own nightmare.

And for the first time since she'd walked into the Wolf Court, she didn't feel like a hostage.

She felt like prey.

* * *

To be continued.

Next chapter: The Sigil and the Vampire — in which the Blood Court comes calling, the King learns the price of a human heart, and Layla discovers that the only thing more dangerous than being the Wolf King's weakness is being his* everything*.