For a time, the painted mare’s world extends no further than the hitching rhythm of her sobs. Yet though the breaths that she steals between each are a blessed relief, she cannot call them a gift. Not when these gasps of air only seem to fuel the furnace of her grief, increasing the burning ache in her chest until Chelle wonders how she will bear it. Perhaps she will not— perhaps the flames will continue to spread, until nothing but ash and bone remains of her. Perhaps there is truth to her mother’s claims that a broken heart can kill her. That thought in itself is enough to make her sorrow a wild thing; a storm that shakes her otherwise lifeless body so violently that she fears it might come apart.

And then, a voice.

You must get up. You must come with me. If not for the gentle note of these commands, the tawny girl would believe them to be spoken by her captor. As it is, she lifts her freckled face reluctantly, suspicion warring with the hope the dark Teke’s kindness stirs within her. Chelle doesn’t know the silver-haired King— not truly— but in her mind, he and Judas are the same. And where his strength is insufficient to overcome a challenge, her grandsire has been known to resort to treachery. Rougaru must have chosen his piece carefully in this game; must believe that she will be quick to place her trust in another woman. That she is too desperately lonely to see through the thin veil of his deception. But the hells will freeze over before she submits to him, even under the guise of this black-as-night creature.

“No.” Her defiance is spoken roughly, raggedly; her voice all but robbed from her by the tempest of her grief. But it is still there, especially in the way her body sinks further into the sand. By the way her ears tip back into the tangled red sea of her mane, and her nostrils flare. “I won’t. I’m not his, and nothing he does can ever—”

A predator emerges from the shadows, and the tattered remnants of Chelle’s courage abandon her.

Rougaru boasts neither fang nor claw, but his presence is no less fierce or fear-inspiring for that lack. And it is this presence— the feel of his gaze raking over her, the visceral quickening of her pulse in that moment— that has undoubtedly won him the title of Wolf-King. Flinching away from the towering figure that thrusts itself lightning-quick at the nameless mare, Chelle knows the briefest moment of regret that she hadn’t fled the second it was asked of her. But this regret passes as quickly as that moment had, slipping through the sieve of her mind and leaving her hollow once again.

If she runs, she does not doubt that Rougaru will find her. And when he does— how can this slender woman hope to stand against him, where Cain himself had already failed?