Edge of Power

by Megan Crane

  “I crippled my father.” Wulf felt his own mouth curve, sharp and hard. And watched his princess’s gaze go swiftly, deliberately blank. Whether in shock or something else, he couldn’t tell. “It’s more accurate to say that I ordered him crippled, but the end result is the same. He no longer walks upon this earth like a man. He crawls like the little bitch snake he is.”

  Kathlyn straightened her shoulders and tipped her chin up as if accepting a blow. He liked it. It told him how she felt about the justice he’d visited upon Amos, that violent piece of shit. And it wasn’t exactly the horror or revulsion he would have expected from a soft, sheltered little western highlands girl.

  It wasn’t only his cock that sat up and took notice of that.

  “My father is not a snake,” Kathlyn said quietly. Her gaze met his, dark gold and stark. “He’s a monster.” Wulf didn’t move or reply, and she kept going. “But you must know that already. You know what color dress I wore last summer. You must know what I said about my father.”

  He inclined his head. “I do.”

  “Then you know what kind of man he is. Never doubt it. If his men had made it to your island they would have murdered you in your bed.”

  Wulf smiled through the insult of that, because he was certain she had no idea what she was saying. She had no idea what it meant to be a raider. Or one of the brotherhood, the elite warriors who dedicated their lives to battle and the protection of the clan.

  Much less what it meant to be their king.

  He forced himself to tamp down his temper. “Let me be clear. Your daddy’s pissant mercenaries wouldn’t have gotten anywhere close to me or my bed. They wouldn’t have made it ashore in one piece.”

  She looked as if she pitied him then. And it took every bit of self-control Wulf possessed to remain where he was, kicked back on that sofa with his feet propped up as if he was wholly unaware of his own potential peril here. As if he deserved the pity of a creature like Princess Kathlyn, all soft skin, tender scent, and that vulnerable mouth.

  “Is that why you came here?” she asked. “To brag about your prowess in person?”

  “I never brag,” Wulf told her, with a careless shrug. “It’s unnecessary. And I’m here to negotiate.”

  He didn’t like the taste of that word in his mouth. It was too close to surrender, as far as he was concerned. And Wulf was many things, but he was no cringing little bitch. Under normal circumstances, he would surrender—or fucking negotiate with some douchebag king who’d ordered the deaths of Wulf’s brothers and friends—right about the time he slit his own fucking throat and passed his corpse over to be desecrated by his enemies.

  “Negotiate?” The princess looked as if she didn’t know the word, which set his teeth on edge, because it wasn’t exactly in his usual vocabulary either. “Do raiders do that?”

  “You might be surprised what raiders do.”

  Her dark gold gaze seemed armored then, and she didn’t react to his suggestive statement the way he wanted. And yet he was still hard. She was still more or less naked. And it still made no sense to squander a potential tactical advantage before he knew what the hell he was getting into. He was starting to feel something like battle lust build up in him, that screaming need to fuck until he felt human again—but it wasn’t happening.

  Get a grip, asshole, he told himself.

  She was so pretty it was almost silly, but Wulf was used to pretty. Pretty rode his cock from the mainland to the eastern islands and back again, one woman blurring into the next no matter how sweet her taste at the time. The camp girls who served the needs of the brotherhood were all pretty in their own ways, and he was their king. He’d sampled them all more times than he could count. He spent his life thinking, strategizing, plotting his next move, or deep in the thick of battle. When he was fucking he let that shit go. He just fucked. It was the only time he turned his damned head off, ever. That Kathlyn was pretty worked for him, sure, even when he hadn’t known she was the princess he’d expected to find somewhere in this palace, if not in his room his first night here.

  But since when was he led around by his dick?

  “This is what my father does with enemies,” Kathlyn was saying, in that quiet way of hers that poked at him. “He isolates them. He humiliates them. Sometimes that means traditional torture, and sometimes he gets more creative. The only thing he likes more than outward aggression and war is a good, old-fashioned mind game, the better to break an enemy before he has to resort to cruder methods.”

  “He sounds like every passive-aggressive punk-ass bitch who’s ever come at me on the battlefield and ended up a pile of shame and entrails.” Wulf let out a laugh. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “You would be alone in that.” Her voice was crisp then, and there was a note in it he didn’t like. A kind of knowledge that told him even more shit about her evil fucker of a father. “King Athenian is feared and loathed in equal measure. And it’s not only because he’s rich, it’s because he’s vicious. Cruel. He delights in visiting misfortune on others, and more than that, watching it. As far as I can tell that’s his one true joy in life. Everything else is about what he owns.”

  “Princess.” He had the urge to reach out and touch her. He restrained it. “You might be afraid of your father, but I’m not.”

  She aimed a smile at him, but it wasn’t a real smile. It only made her look vulnerable. Small, for the first time since she’d catapulted herself through the door. Wulf rubbed a hand over the sigil on his chest that covered his heart, and refused to ask himself why.

  “Then you are the bravest man I’ve ever met,” she said quietly. “Or the most foolish.”

  Wulf would no more outline his actual business here—or any of his carefully laid plans—than he would bow down to one of the pissant little douches strutting around old, falling down structures on the eastern mainland, calling themselves kings. There was no reason at all that he should think about throwing her a bone and cluing her in that he wasn’t a fucking idiot. He was appalled that he considered it for even a second—all because she looked too defenseless, suddenly, and he didn’t like it.

  “I’m here because I don’t want war,” he told her flatly, which was close enough to true. He didn’t want war in raider territory. He didn’t really give a shit if this kingdom became a battlefield. He’d salt the earth himself and sleep like a baby. “Because I’m tired of my settlements being razed to the ground. I don’t like mercenary dirtbags chasing my men around the eastern mainland or washing up on my island. It’s a waste of my fucking time. I assume your father feels the same or he wouldn’t have been plotting out an invasion in the first place.”

  Kathlyn shook her head, and Wulf had the funniest sensation. It took him a minute to understand that when she wasn’t actively afraid of him, she treated him as if they were equals. As if she didn’t owe him any deference at all.

  It was safe to say that was new for him. People had been kissing his ass or making sure to be careful with him—no matter how friendly and casual things seemed—since he’d taken the throne at eighteen. And maybe a little before that, too, when it had been so obvious that he had the potential to do exactly that. Kathlyn looked at him directly, stood tall against that wall, and didn’t seem to realize she ought to conceal her obvious impression that he was in over his head.

  Yeah. Brand fucking new all around.

  So new Wulf couldn’t decide if he should establish a few boundaries in a way certain to live on in her memory a while—or if he liked it.

  “You don’t know him,” his clueless princess was saying, very seriously, frowning slightly as she spoke. “He delights in these games. Death and destruction are literally the only things that make him happy.” She swallowed again, then. As if maybe she was having second thoughts about telling him something—but then her chin rose and she continued. “And I don’t think you understand. He hates you. All of you. All raiders, ever, but especially you.”

  “It’s a common complaint. And so
hurtful. We’re nothing if not friendly.” He smirked. “Me most of all.”

  She ignored his sardonic tone. Another first. “He won’t negotiate with you. He doesn’t negotiate. As far as he’s concerned, raiders stole the eastern settlements from him. And he wants them back.” She shifted from one foot to the other, betraying her distress—but not because of him, Wulf thought. Because she thought he’d wandered in here like a dumbass with a target on his back. It should have enraged him. He had no idea why it made him feel a little shot of a weird, new warmth instead. “And my father is very, very creative when it comes to getting what he thinks is his.”

  “It’s adorable that you’re so concerned about me,” Wulf drawled, aware of that edge in his voice that suggested he didn’t think it was anything like adorable. It was in his smile, too. All predator. No hint of prey. And a fucking lie. “But there’s no need. I’m very persuasive.”

  He didn’t need this bright and shiny pretty girl, all wet eyes and that lush, trembling mouth, telling him that this place was dangerous—and no matter that he was enjoying the novelty of someone imagining that he, the most feared and beloved king in the eastern islands and therefore the whole of the shithole world, needed protection. From anything. He didn’t need Kathlyn telling him that the scumbag western king who was responsible for so many deaths over the course of all these years was as much of an asshole as Wulf had anticipated. He’d known that shit going in.

  And still, it took almost everything he had to keep his temper locked down and hidden inside him. He didn’t want to sit here making cutting remarks to a half-naked girl who was, at best, a pawn in her father’s bullshit. Hell no. He wanted to throw the door open and take out his aggression on the guards at the end of the hall. He wanted to search out this pissant bitch of a king right now and show him exactly how he felt about his minions crawling all over the eastern settlements the clan had won. He wanted to revenge his lost brothers and enact a swift and terrible justice in honor of all the people he’d lost to this ravenous, greedy dirtbag over the years.

  He didn’t want to wait. The equinox was twenty days too far away.

  The sheer mayhem that was so much a part of him it was fused deep into his bones, as much who he was as his ligaments and muscles and his greedy fucking cock, flared inside of him then. It threatened to burst free. All he’d have to do was pick up a blade and start carving his name into this piece of shit kingdom.

  He wanted that. Now.

  But there was this princess standing before him. And while he found he didn’t mind making her uneasy, unsteady—that he liked that, in fact, because he was a sick fuck, apparently, and that didn’t bother him as much as it should—terrifying the living shit out of her did not exactly appeal. He told himself it was because he might have to use her as leverage at some point and he needed her not freaking out while he did it, but that wasn’t it.

  Wulf knew he was a savage. He was proud of it. But for some reason, he wanted this soft, unscarred female who looked at him as if he might not be able to handle her douchebag of a father to think of him as a man.

  Which obviously fucking horrified him.

  And either way, he couldn’t handle it the way he would have at any other time.

  Not the situation. And not this princess.

  It took everything Wulf had to stay where he was, lounging there on the sofa as if nothing was going on inside of him. No mayhem, no weird-ass longings. He was irritated that it was difficult, when he’d spent his entire life keeping himself under control. It was the first thing he’d learned as a child trapped there beneath his father’s vicious, sadistic thumb. It was a lesson that had been beaten into him, literally. One damaging fist after another every time Amos was drunk—which was pretty much nonstop in the dark months. At this point Wulf had assumed that his iron control over himself in all situations was second nature. Until this very moment he’d been sure of it.

  But it turned out that up here in the ridiculous western highlands where the world was less ruined and he couldn’t seem to control himself the way he should, nothing was as it should have been.

  He hated that shit even more.

  “You’re staring at me as if you want to start your little bloodfest with me,” Kathlyn said after the silence dragged on awhile. Wulf could tell that she was trying to sound brave. He could see it written all over her. It was the way she held herself a little too rigid against that wall. More taut and breathless than before. “Do I need to remind you that I’m not my father?”

  “You don’t need to remind me about shit.”

  Wulf had to move then. It was that or completely lose his cool. He shifted his feet off the table, then rose in a quick, sure burst of controlled ferocity. And he was a dick, because he could see the way she reacted to his speed. And to the savage he had no doubt she could see in him. More starkly than before.

  In case she’d forgotten for even a second that he was nothing but a dangerous predator. And she was trapped in here with him.

  He roamed across the floor, taking his time. He told himself he wasn’t trying to scare her, exactly, but what the hell. If that was what happened, he wouldn’t complain. If it taught her a lesson about messing with raiders and treating strange, murderous men as her equals, that had to be a good thing.

  He told himself he was doing her a favor.

  “What—what are you doing?”

  There was less bravery in her tone then, and more fear. Or maybe not fear, he thought as he roamed closer. Because he could still see that heat there, shining in the soft darkness of her eyes. Reminding him of what happened before. Of her addictive wetness, lush and juicy. It only made him harder and, in turn, that only made him more pissed.

  Not that he was pissed, exactly, he told himself sharply. Because there was no reason on this crappy earth that he should care. About any of this.

  Her father might play games. But Wulf won them.

  On his way toward her, taking far too much pleasure in the way her eyes widened at his approach, he bent down and snatched up that cloak she’d dropped to the floor. It wasn’t that he needed to cover her. He wasn’t that much of a little whiny bitch with zero self-control. He could keep his hands to himself. It was just that the longer he stared at her half naked—more than half, because there was no pretending what she was wearing counted as clothes—the more he didn’t really want to keep his hands to himself.

  For the first time in his life, he wanted to ignore strategy, get impulsive, and deal with the fallout later.

  He handed her the cloak and somehow kept himself from smiling like too much of an asshole when she paused a minute before taking it. As if she suspected a trap.

  “Good girl,” he murmured. “You’re learning.”

  She stiffened at that and then she blinked, as if there was some heat or emotion in her gaze she didn’t want him to see. He found he liked the idea of that, because most people’s layers were pretty obvious to him at a glance. A serious portion of his role as leader of his clan involved reading people. Figuring out when they were lying and why they might want to do that. What they wanted versus what they said. Running through various scenarios based on all those things so he could deliver his judgment. Who knew a little mystery was so intriguing?

  Kathlyn took the cloak from his hands, making sure not to let her fingers brush his as she did it. He wondered if she thought he didn’t notice that—but then, he was certain she’d been untouched before she’d walked into this room. It was possible she had no idea how obvious she was. He stood there, an arm’s length away from her, and watched as she slipped the swirling coat back on and fastened it at her neck. And something in him turned over when she was covered again from head to foot, the way she had been when she walked inside, with only those legs of hers showing. Because now he knew exactly what was underneath.

  “You need to go, baby,” he said gruffly. “I have a feeling a princess can’t just up and disappear. Someone’s got to be looking for you.”

  She frowned at
that, and Wulf could feel the anxiety coming off of her. She pulled the cloak tighter around her and held it shut, so hard her hands clenched into fists.

  “Oh—I—but I didn’t get what I came for,” she said, haltingly. And when she met his gaze, hers was as troubled as it was determined. “Didn’t you say you were going to teach me things? Show me . . . something?”

  He couldn’t tell if it was humor that licked its way through him then or something far more like satisfaction. He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her for a long moment as she stood there before him, clearly as nervous as she was determined, as if she was completely unaware how foolish it was to tempt a man that way.

  Especially when that man was him, bound to none of the rules of her world. Wulf didn’t even know what the rules were here. All he knew for sure was that he didn’t do compliance. In any sense of the term.

  “You have no idea what you’re asking for.”

  She drew herself up a little bit taller and he watched her press her lips together as if that gave her some kind of strength. “I know I don’t. That’s sort of the point. I want to understand that, at the very least.”

  “I’m sure you do. And I don’t blame you. But not from me.” He didn’t let himself do what he wanted to do, which involved skin on skin and more temptation than he was prepared to face at that moment. It felt a little too much like weakness. Wulf shoved that aside. He rested his hand on the place where the cloak came together, just below her collarbone. It wasn’t her flesh, but still, he could feel the fire of her. The sweetness. As if she was made of flame and sugar. “Not tonight.”

  He could see the struggle in her then. He could see that thing that looked like fear, mixed up as it was with all of that heat, and he could see her determination besides. Beneath his hand, he could feel her jerk slightly, as if she’d started to move toward him but had stopped herself. He needed to think of strategy instead of his dick, he knew. For a thousand excellent reasons, none of which he could seem to bring to mind just then.