Chapter Thirty-four: The Offer

SIGRUN

The morning light streaming through the high, arched windows of the dinner hall was entirely too bright, entirely too cheerful for the absolute disaster that was my current state of mind.

I stared down at the ceramic bowl in front of me, poking a piece of smoked trout with the tines of my heavy silver fork. The fish looked perfectly flaky, but my throat was so tight I knew a single bite would choke me.

My resolve had been set the exact moment I woke up, tangled in the heavy linen sheets of my bed.

Keep him at arm's length.

That was the mantra. That was the only rule that mattered now.

I needed to keep my walls up, before he systematically tore down every single defense I had. I had to keep reminding myself of who I actually was. I wasn't some bartered medieval princess destined to breed heirs for a wolf king. I was Sigrún Parker. I belonged to a world of subways, neon lights, over-priced iced lattes, and tight deadlines.

But maintaining that ironclad resolve was a hell of a lot harder when the man in question was sitting directly across the oak table from me, looking as appealing as ever.

The sexual tension in the room was so thick it felt heavy. It was a suffocating pressure, filling the vast space between the stone walls until I could barely draw air into my lungs. Yet, looking at Varul, you would never guess that last night had even happened.

There was absolutely no sign that he had spent the previous night destroying every coherent thought in my head. He was completely unbothered. But me? I was a hyperventilating, jittery mess.

Color me resentful.

I resented how easily he could compartmentalize the fire that had nearly consumed us both in the map room. I needed to snap myself out of it, and FOCUS.

The silence between us stretched on, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the occasional, agonizingly loud scrape of cutlery on cutlery.

Back home, finding answers was a mindless reflex. If I needed to know the historical layout of a region or the mythical lore of a culture, it would have taken me ten seconds. I’d just pull out my phone, type a few precise keywords into G****e, and let the algorithm spit out thousands of pages of cross-referenced data.

But I didn’t have the luxury of G****e here.

Hmm.

What did people do to get information when the internet hadn’t even been conceived?

They went to the library.

I ran through a frantic mental checklist of every corridor I had walked since arriving at Pillak Towers. I had seen the great hall, the armory, the endless drafty corridors, and the map room—which was clearly reserved for military strategy, not historical research. I hadn't seen anything resembling a proper repository of books. The only place closest to a library that I could think of was the Thompsons' store.

Maybe Elara wouldn’t find it weird if I asked for books with anomalous travelers slipping through realms.

Fingers crossed.

Yep. I was going to Thompsons right after breakfast.

There was just one massive, looming roadblock: Varul’s explicit, terrifying command that I was never to leave the perimeter of Pillak Towers without informing him first.

I cleared my throat, deliberately forcing my posture to straighten as I broke the agonizing silence. "I will be going into town today.”

Varul didn't stop cutting his steak. He didn't even look up. "No."

My jaw dropped. The sheer, casual finality of that single syllable practically begged me to start a fight. The blood in my veins instantly turned hot with indignance. "Excuse me? No? I wasn't exactly asking for your permission. I was informing you. Isn't that exactly what you ordered me to do? To let you know before I stepped foot outside these walls?"

Finally, his movements paused. He set his knife down on the table with a dull, heavy clatter that seemed to echo off the high rafters. He leaned back in his carved wooden chair, his dark, bottomless eyes locking onto mine behind a wall of absolute, immovable authority.

"You are not leaving the castle grounds, Princess," he responded, his voice low and scraping like gravel.

"Am I a prisoner here?” I snapped, leaning forward across the table, my hands clenching into tight fists against the dark oak tabletop. I felt a dangerous prickle of frustration behind my eyes.

“No, Princess,” he replied indulgently. “You are not a prisoner.”

“Well it feels like I am. I want to go into town. I can go with an army, if you wish.”

“You went into town yesterday,” he pointed out.

“Well, is there a problem if I want to go again?” I snapped.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to go into town? I can arrange for a servant to get whatever you need.”

“I love reading, so I want to find some books at Thompson’s. I need something to occupy my head. And time.”

Varul raised one heavy shoulder in a shrug as he picked up his fork and resumed eating. “Well. If it is books you want, there is an impressive collection of texts right here in the castle. More than Leward Thompson could ever hope to house in his shop."

I blinked. Huh. Yesterday, Elara had estimated that their collection held over five thousand books. If Pillak Towers housed more…how many were we talking about?

I let out a scoff that overtook my caution. "Oh, really? There's a library here? I wouldn't know, considering absolutely no one has bothered to give me a proper tour of this place since,” I said faux-sweetly. "Seeing as my husband left for an entire week the exact moment I arrived, leaving me to guess which corridors lead to the gardens and which ones lead to the dungeons."

There was a spark of interest in his eyes. “Oh, I thought we discussed this yesterday. Are you still holding a grudge, Princess?”

I crossed my arms stubbornly. “No.”

For a few moments, we simply stared at each other. I had to admit that my breathing was actually much heavier than the situation demanded.

His dark eyes flicked down to my lips for a fraction of a second, a silent acknowledgment of the fire still burning between us, before rising back to lock onto mine.

"Would you like me to give you a tour, Princess?" he asked softly.

I froze, completely caught off guard. The wind was instantly knocked right out of my sails, leaving me blinking at him across the table like an idiot. "Don't... don't you have Alpha duties to do?" I stammered, trying to find my footing. "Council meetings to dominate? Border skirmishes to plan? Strategic war maps to obsess over in the dark?"

He picked up his silver chalice, taking a slow, measured sip of his dark wine before his heavy gaze trapped mine once again, pinning me to my seat without him ever having to touch me.

"Showing my wife around her own castle is one of my duties," he murmured, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register that made my skin flush with a sudden, entirely inappropriate heat.

Remember, KEEP HIM AT ARM’S LENGTH.

“Finish your breakfast, Sigrún. Let us see if our collection satisfies your curiosity."