Free Web NovelChapter 78: Cuddling Without Consent: A Ryker Report
The bed exploded. One second she was asleep against his chest. The next, his body rocketed upright and she was airborne.
Ice packs went everywhere. One hit the headboard. One hit the floor. One hit her in the face.
The lamp went next, knocked off the table. Glass shattered.
Her hand flew to her chest, heart slamming against her ribs. Every future nap she ever took was going to carry the trauma of this moment.
Maddox zeroed in on her.
"Who the fuck are you?"
Of all the ways she had imagined him waking up, and she had imagined several, none of them had included this sentence.
Her mouth opened. No sound came out. freёweɓnovel.com
"Answer me. Now." His voice was cold. The temperature of a king who had woken up with a strange woman in his bed and was three seconds from solving that problem permanently.
Guinevere blinked a few times, stunned. She had received many looks in her life. None of them had broken her heart like this.
The door slammed open. Ryker was through it with his blade drawn, scanning for the threat.
He immediately sheathed it, assuming Maddox had just woken up startled and the lamp was a casualty.
"You just scared the daylights out of me. How are you feeling?"
Maddox’s eyes cut to Ryker, then back to Guinevere.
"Maddox?" Ryker’s brows knit. "Why are you looking at her like you look at the elders?"
"Arrest her."
Two words Ryker had hoped to never hear. The refund policy on Guinevere Lunaris was going to be complicated.
"You want me to arrest her," Ryker echoed. "I’ll answer that for you. No, you don’t."
"Yes I do. Now."
"What did she do? Laugh at your jokes and call you handsome?"
"She broke into my chambers, Ryker. A stranger got into my bed, wearing almost nothing, and was touching me without my consent."
On a scale of one to revealing, these pajamas sat at a six compared to the others Maddox had given her. She was wearing a camisole, matching shorts, and a bralette underneath just in case Aldric came back in.
"She was cuddling you without your consent." Ryker’s tone was flat and his face dead serious.
"Yes. She had her hands on me. And she’s wearing nothing."
"Bandaged hands," Ryker corrected. "Holding ice on your wounds."
"Someone get her some clothing and remove her, now."
"You picked those shorts, Maddox. You held them up and said, ’she’ll look incredible in these.’ Direct quote. I said, ’Please stop showing me women’s clothing.’ And you said, ’You’re just jealous no one wears shorts for you, Ryker.’ And I have not recovered."
"Ryker. This isn’t funny."
"Maddox, she is your wife. And I agree, I’m your High General, not your shopping companion."
"My wife." Maddox repeated it the way a man repeats a bad joke. "I don’t have a wife."
Ryker glanced at her, then back at Maddox. "Yes you do. You dreamed about her. One trip across an ocean. Seven hundred and fifty million pounds of gold. That girl. Ring any bells?"
Maddox looked at Guinevere again. His eyes moved down her body, across the baby blue pajama set, her bandaged hands, and the tears cutting tracks down her face. He looked at her like a thing he found contemptible.
Ryker: Jaxon. Sterling. Aldric. Maddox’s chambers. Move.
The mindlink was the tactical equivalent of pulling a fire alarm. Every name on that list would arrive at full speed, in varying states of dress, with varying levels of context.
He paused for one second, then added a name that cost him something.
Ryker: Kael. I need you in Maddox’s chambers.
"Maddox." Ryker’s voice shifted into the register he used when he needed the man inside the king to hear him. "I swear on my dragon. She is your wife and the woman you love."
Maddox’s jaw worked. His eyes hadn’t left Guinevere.
Her hand found her mouth before she knew it had moved. The look on his face wasn’t something she had a framework for.
"Easy there, buddy," Ryker said. "We have a war summit starting in a few hours. I need you to be king then, otherwise I have to be responsible and we both know how that goes."
Maddox didn’t laugh. He always laughed at that. Another joke with a lifetime success rate hitting the floor. Ryker was starting to take it personally.
Maddox took a step toward Guinevere. Then another.
Sterling entered at that moment. He took in the scene in one pass: Maddox advancing, Guinevere backed against the wall, Ryker positioned between them with his hand up.
Kael came through the door behind him.
"M-M-Maddox?" Guinevere whispered.
The stutter destroyed every man in the room at different speeds. Ryker first. Sterling second. Kael third, and his landed the hardest because he had caused it once.
In a blur, Maddox closed the distance and wrapped his hands around her throat.
Three men moved simultaneously. None of them made it in time.
Jaxon and Aldric entered the room just as her slippers left the ground. Her hands flew to his arms on reflex, but she didn’t fight him.
This was Maddox. Her Maddox. Nothing about what was happening made sense.
"Maddox," Kael said calmly. "If you hurt her, you will never forgive yourself. Drop her. Now."
The irony of that statement was not lost on anyone.
Maddox ignored him.
Ryker clapped his hands once. Maddox turned his head towards the noise.
"I have never seen you lay a hand on a woman. Ever. Think about what you are doing right now. Even if she snuck in your chambers, you wouldn’t choke her."
That cut through.
Maddox looked down at the ice on the floor. Then back up at the woman he was choking.
He let go, teeth gritted.
Guinevere hit the ground on her knees and bandaged palms, coughing and gasping for air.
Maddox looked down at her. Then at his own hands, confused, like he just noticed something.
"How do you have my flame?"
"I merged with your f-f-flame." She wheezed through tears that weren’t just from the coughing.
"Arrest her. Now."
Aldric stepped forward with the measured calm of a healer who had treated this king since birth. "Your Majesty. You want your wife of two weeks to be arrested."
Kael’s head snapped to Aldric, his face giving him away for a split second.
Wife.
Every assumption he had about her demolished in real time, and Kael Ashenvale was not accustomed to being the last person in a room to know something.
Sterling’s jaw tightened.
Kael rolled his eyes and lifted both hands in surrender. "Fine. I didn’t hear it."
The words carried more weight than any blade he had held to her throat. Every man in the room understood what they meant: Kael Ashenvale had just been handed the one piece of intelligence that would destroy the strategic advantage of her anonymity, and was choosing to set it down.
Maddox blinked. His expression reset. "Who?"
On the floor, Guinevere pressed her forehead to the cold stone. Her shoulders shook once. The coughing had stopped and what replaced it was quiet, helpless crying that she was trying and failing to contain.
She hated the stutter. She hated the tears. She hated that her heart was shattered more from the look on his face than from the fact he just choked her.
The contempt on Maddox’s face evaporated into something wrecked that every man in that room recognized. Then it sealed shut again, and the coldness came back harder.
"That woman is bad."
"Your wife is bad." Aldric repeated it slower, watching his face. "Why is she bad?"
"GUARDS," Maddox yelled.
Two Drakencrest guards entered the chamber with blades drawn, responding to their king’s command.
Kael stepped in between. "She falls under Article Three of the Incapacitation Clause until your king’s brain reassembles itself."
The guards exchanged a look that said, very clearly, ’do you know what that means?’ and ’absolutely not’ in the same glance.
Kael exhaled through his nose. "When the crown cannot protect its own household, the authority transfers to the highest-ranking officer present." He looked at Ryker. "That’s you, High General. Act like it."
"Stand down," Ryker ordered.
Both guards stepped back and lowered their blades.
Behind Kael, Guinevere pushed herself off the ground. Her bandages were soaked through again, pink spreading across the white linen, and a bruise was already forming on her neck.
Without looking at them, she walked to the door and slipped out with whatever last shred of dignity she had left.
"Guinevere," Ryker called in a tone he only used with her.
She didn’t slow or turn around, closing the door softly behind her.
The room across from Maddox’s was unlocked and she walked straight through it, not stopping until she reached the bathing chamber and the lock was latched.
She turned the bath on. Water thundered into the marble tub, filling the chamber with white noise. Loud enough.
✦✦✦
Across the Keep, Nicholas Shadowfell woke to his wolf howling and grief flooding into his chest. He pulled his boots on in a blur.
In the adjacent room, Damon heard his Alpha moving and was dressed in seconds.
They moved through the corridors they both knew well. The guards at the entrance to Maddox’s private wing had seen Nicholas pass through multiple times in the last twenty-four hours.
They let him through without a word.
Nicholas stopped in the hallway in front of Maddox’s quarters.
Voices carried through the closed door, muffled, the low tones of men arguing.
His nostrils flared. Her scent was coming from a different room entirely. The one across the hall.
He exchanged a glance with Damon. Understanding passed between them.
