All Chapters of A Deal With The Lycan King: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

She barely realized when Kaan stopped moving.
 One second she was swinging over his shoulder, dazed from the noise and the heat and the screaming. Next, her heels were on the marble again. Her legs trembled beneath her, the blood in her body not quite catching up to the fact that she was no longer suffocating inside the chaos.
 They were back at the sidelines, right where Kaan had stood before everything fractured. And ahead, where her eyes cut to the great door again … the male was gazing at something…someone. Saeris followed the angle of the stranger’s gaze, tracing it through the ruined court.
 It stopped on Maedor.
 The old king hadn’t moved an inch, not even when the head hit the floor, flanked by warriors whose hands had not once left their weapons. 
 “Who is he?” Saeris asked.
 Kaan didn’t answer immediately. 
 “Come. We are done here.”
 He began walking. She followed.
 The long hallway o

Something thrummed inside her. A heartbeat, not quite hers. Like an echo that didn’t belong to her, and yet it did. Old and new. Wild and tethered. Then it pulled. Like a thread inside her had been yanked taut. That thread again, gold turned blood. The same one that burned in her dream. It burned now, alive, wanting, calling her.
 Saeris blinked and that sensation passed, and so did the thread.
 She turned sharply.
 They’d been standing there, just beyond the forest line, long enough for the wind to slick her wet hair to her neck. Long enough to feel stupid and angry and afraid. No. She wouldn’t stay here. 
 Without a word to Kaan, she stepped forward.
 “Saeris,” Kaan said.
 She kept walking.
 He moved to block her. “I’m going back,” she said, her voice thin and hard.
 Kaan didn’t move. “No, you're not.”
 “He’s fighting alone.”
 His jaw worked. “Because he chose to.”
 “That doe

Since the kiss, she hadn’t been alone with Vaelen. And it wasn’t just that he hadn’t said much—no, he’d said nothing at all, save for a clipped order here or a flick of his gold eyes when she’d dared look at him too long. As if he were deliberately, cruelly, avoiding her.
 Two days. Two days had passed since they had returned. And what had she been given?
 Training.
 Or whatever Kaan thought passed for it.
 He’d left her in Vaelen’s private training yard, high-walled bone-white stone, its slate floor cold under bare feet, made her sit cross-legged like a child and meditate. To sense her surroundings without her wolf.
 To sense, when all she could feel was the ragged edge of her own temper.
 She lasted an hour before her back ached, before she opened her eyes and found the shadows empty. The cold bastard wasn’t even within the premises. Typical. 
 Samkiel, she hadn’t seen since they returned. And blessedly, Mogana

CHAPTER 037. Returned
 “I'm not... untouched," Saeris murmured, looking away.
 “That was not what I asked.”
 She didn't need to see his face to hear the disappointment. She could feel his gaze on her, steady as his fingers tracing her waist.
 “No.” She didn't have to yell it for him to hear.
 “No… what?”
 “No, I have not… done it yet. Sex, I mean.”
 The silence that followed her confession was thick and heavy. However, the more he said nothing, the more she felt the need to explain herself. “It's not like I didn't want to,” she said quickly, eyes dropping, running them across his collarbone. “But, he…he—”
 “He had second thoughts." Vaelen's scoff felt like a slap. “That is a quality admirable in a leader, in a warrior but definitely not in a mate.” 
 Saeris tried to sit up but he lowered his top half down on her to keep her where he wanted her. 
 “He was… a man of the law and he made sure he kept

The silence after her words was not empty, that, more than anything, told her this would end badly.
 Vaelen did not move at first. He stood before her with that terrible stillness he wore like a crown, the light from the chandelier catching the sharp planes of his face, shadows carving him into something more beast than king. 
 “What do you mean?” he said at last, voice low, precise, lethal in its calm.
 Saeris drew a slow breath. Felt Sirius coil tighter around her ribs, listening. 
 Don’t make me look stupid, she thought…but she did not say it yet. She had learned. Learned how to keep her spine straight even when everything inside her wanted to fracture.
 “You're ending it," she said evenly. "The deal. Cutting it short and sending me back like this was always the plan."
 "It was always the plan."
 "Don't." Her voice cracked, just once, before she reined it in. "Don't stand there and pretend you didn't decide th