Chapter 109

Outside the tent, the world had turned into a cacophony. There were shrieks that seemed sharp enough to split bone, the ringing clash of metal on metal, the thunder of hooves striking the ground, and, cutting through it all in intermittent bursts, the thin, slicing hiss of arrows in flight. Odelliana stared at the man who had come to her as if her mind refused to accept what her eyes were insisting was true.

A large, beautiful hand cupped her cheek with a touch that was still cool, still oddly gentle. The sensation was unfamiliar and electrifying, so vivid it shocked her out of disbelief. In that instant she understood the truth. This was not a hallucination carved out of desperation. He was real.

His long fingers worked carefully at the gag strapped across her mouth, loosening it with a steadiness that did not waver even as blood pooled on the floor beside them.

“Are you all right, Master?” he asked, voice even and uninflected.

The calmness of it was almost cruel, because his gaze was not calm. As he looked down at the corpse of Lycan Droif, the fury in his eyes was feral, the kind of rage that did not need shouting to be terrifying. He studied the severed neck with a sunken expression, then set his boot on Lycan’s body and crushed down with deliberate pressure, as if he intended to kill him twice over. His face remained blank, the stillness of a winter lake, but the movement of grinding a dead man into the earth was chilling.

Odelliana’s throat tightened.

“…Is it really you, Matthias?”

It was an idiotic question, and she heard it the moment it left her. He answered it anyway, letting out a low laugh.

“Have you forgotten your disciple in only three years?”

She didn’t respond. Her mind couldn’t move fast enough.

“I’m hurt, Master,” he added, his tone turning almost light. “Your disciple hasn’t forgotten you for even a single moment.”

The words struck with a strange intimacy, and Odelliana, finally dragging herself back into coherence, tried to explain herself before that confession could settle somewhere too deep.

“I didn’t forget you,” she insisted quickly, breath coming uneven. “It’s just… it doesn’t feel real. I can’t tell if this is a dream, or reality, or if I’ve finally started seeing things. It’s too sudden. I—”

She had never imagined meeting him like this, in a stranger’s tent, with blood on her skin and fear still vibrating through her bones. The sheer improbability of it made the reunion feel even more unreal.

Three years. Only three, and yet the distance between seventeen and adulthood could be a chasm. He had marched off a boy and returned a man, and the changes were so stark that it made her feel as if she were looking at a stranger wearing a familiar face.

His frame looked as though it had doubled. He was so tall now she had to tilt her head until her neck ached to meet his eyes. His shoulders had broadened, his arms and chest built into something dense and hard, as if war had carved him from stone. Whatever softness youth had left in his features was gone. The lines of his face were sharper, the shadows of his bone structure deeper, giving his expression a severity she did not remember.

The freshness, the boyish brightness, the almost unfair prettiness that used to cling to him had vanished. In its place was a coldness that seemed capable of stinging bare skin, and a heavy, mature scent that was unmistakably male, unmistakably grown.

“You’ve…” Odelliana swallowed, voice thinning. “You’ve grown so much.”

It was absurd, she knew, to be unsettled by his adulthood when she had already lived through it once in another life. She had seen him older before. And yet this version of him felt different. Sharper. More present. More dangerous.

She found herself swallowing again, mouth suddenly dry, because his face was beautiful in a way that scraped at her senses. Every feature was too precise, too vividly etched into her vision, as if her mind were carving him into memory with the inevitability of an imprint.

“Three years have passed,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Your disciple is no longer a boy, Master.”

He climbed onto the bed.

A thick arm folded around her small body, and the cold press of steel against her skin made her flinch. She couldn’t tell if she was trembling from the chill of his armor, or from something more instinctive, something animal, the way prey trembles when it realizes the thing above it is not merely larger but built for killing.

“In contrast,” he murmured, gaze lowering as if weighing her, “you haven’t changed much at all. You look exactly as you did in my memories.”

He was heavier than she expected. He always had been strong, but this weight was different, anchoring and crushing at once. With her pinned beneath him, he looked down at her slowly, as if savoring the angle, as if he had rehearsed seeing her like this.

A small laugh escaped him.

“You don’t know,” he said softly, “how long I have hungered for this moment.”

Odelliana couldn’t speak. The air in her lungs had turned into something thick, difficult.

“I can finally have you completely,” he continued, and his voice dipped into something that made her pulse trip. “And yet I nearly lost you to another bastard.”

His eyes drifted over her bare skin.

Only then did she realize, with a shock of belated awareness, that she was naked. Heat flooded her face as she snatched the blanket and yanked it up, covering herself with frantic haste. His pale eyes flickered, and a faint smile touched them.

“You weren’t embarrassed when your young disciple helped you change clothes,” he said, as if amused by her panic.

Odelliana’s fingers tightened around the blanket, knuckles white.

“It seems,” he went on, voice almost conversational, “that now you’re ashamed because your disciple has grown.”

There was satisfaction in him, subtle but unmistakable. The murderous coldness in his gaze eased, as if her flustered reaction soothed some inner fury he had been holding by the throat.

He reached up and began to untangle her hair with his fingers, methodically smoothing each strand as though restoring order to something that had been violated. Then he wrapped her in the thin blanket like a cocoon, rolling it around her until she was covered head to toe, and lifted her with a single arm as if she weighed nothing.

He stood and turned toward the tent flap. Then he paused, eyes shifting to the severed head of Lycan Droif lying on the ground.

“I’ll have his head cleaned properly,” he said, calm again, almost polite. “Wrapped beautifully. I can’t present it like this. It’s too filthy.”

“…Fine,” Odelliana managed.

She pressed her face against his chest, making herself small, breathing in the scent of leather and iron and cold air that clung to him.

Outside, chaos reigned.

Allied knights had torn into the barbarian camp like a blade through flesh, cutting down enemies with ruthless efficiency. Men screamed. Steel rang. The ground shook beneath galloping horses. Without their leader, the barbarian forces were unraveling, their terror collapsing into frantic, disordered violence.

Odelliana still couldn’t truly believe it. The famed commander who had haunted the allied forces, a man whose name alone had made veterans go pale, was dead. Dead from a single stroke, killed in the most humiliating position imaginable, on top of a woman he had thought powerless.

Matthias barked an order to his aides to secure Lycan’s head, then mounted his horse with Odelliana still in his arms and kicked it into motion.

The sudden speed stole her breath. She buried her face in his embrace, clinging to the blanket as the night wind whipped past.

Her heart hammered so hard she thought it might burst, and in that violent rhythm, an old memory surfaced. A boy’s reckless vow. He had once sworn he would take at least her “shell,” if he couldn’t have anything else. She had dismissed it then as audacity, a child’s stubbornness masquerading as devotion.

Was that vow still alive inside him?

Did he still want her?

Her mouth felt dry, gritty, as if she had swallowed sand. Even with Matthias here, even with his arms around her and the camp behind them collapsing, she couldn’t surrender to relief. It wasn’t because she didn’t want him. Seeing him alive was gratitude sharp enough to hurt. But there was something unresolved between them, a debt that had never been settled. A bargain whose price had not yet been named.

And the thought of what he might demand tightened her chest.

What if he no longer wanted her at all?

What if he wanted to leave?

What if, as payment, he asked for freedom?

He had been away for three years. He had seen the world. He had become a man in places she could not follow. The foolish, raw feelings of youth might have burned out long ago. The thought made panic bloom in her stomach.

She almost laughed at herself, a bitter sound that never quite reached her lips.

I’m shameless.

She still wanted him to be happy. That had never changed. She wanted him to meet someone kind, to marry, to have children, to live quietly like other men were allowed to live.

And yet there was an equally fierce, selfish desire rising in her, hot and humiliating. She wanted him close. She wanted him kept. She didn’t want to hand him over to anyone, not now, not after learning what it was like to endure his absence.

His devotion had always been a collar he wore willingly. Odelliana had known it, had sensed it, and had still pushed him toward the battlefield while pretending not to see. She had told herself that if he ever wanted the leash removed, she would let go.

But now she didn’t want to.

His empty place had been larger than she could have imagined. The time without him had been lonelier than she had been willing to admit, a hollow stretch of days that tasted like dust.

And she understood, only now, standing in the aftermath of terror with his arms around her, that her heart had shifted in the three years too. She needed him. She needed him desperately, and she didn’t want to yield him to anyone else.

Yet she couldn’t even name what she felt without recoiling from herself, because she knew what she wasn’t. She didn’t love him in the way he loved her. She couldn’t give him what he deserved, and still she wanted him to stay.

Trash, she thought viciously, turning her disgust inward.

As she wrestled with that poisonous truth, the man who knew nothing of her turmoil glanced down at her pallor and spoke with quiet concern, as if she were something fragile he was determined not to break.

“You must be exhausted,” Matthias said gently. “Close your eyes. Rest. When we reach the castle, your disciple will wake you.”

His voice was warm despite the cold that clung to him, and she fought to smooth the storm inside her. She leaned against his shoulder, forcing herself to breathe, and let her eyes fall shut as the wind rushed past.

***

“Odelliana!”

The first person to meet her at the castle was Blair.

He looked gaunt, as if he had been scraped hollow by fear, and the moment he saw her standing there alive, he broke. He seized her and held her so tightly she could barely breathe, sobbing into her hair. Over and over, like a prayer he couldn’t stop repeating, he muttered that he was glad, glad she was safe, glad she wasn’t hurt.

Only when his trembling eased did he finally look up at the man who had carried her back from hell.

“…It seems,” Blair said, voice hoarse, “I’ve fallen into your debt again.”

When Blair had learned Odelliana had been taken hostage by the enemy commander, he had prepared to offer his own throat in exchange. He had waited for negotiations with blood in his mouth, each day dragging like a sentence. In the worst moments he had even thought of ending his life rather than imagining what she might be enduring as a prisoner.

He had lived in that state, not living at all, counting the hours until the enemy sent demands.

And then the castle gates had opened, and Matthias had returned with the First Knight Order, Odelliana in his arms.

“Thank you,” Blair said, and this time the gratitude was raw, unguarded. “Thank you for saving her again.”

Matthias’s gaze was colder than Blair remembered, his presence sharper, edged like steel drawn too often. Yet his answer was simple.

“I did only what I should.”

The words were controlled, but irritation flickered beneath them. It was written plainly in his eyes. You couldn’t even protect one woman, and you call yourself her family.

Blair’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. He couldn’t refute it. It was a failure, and it had nearly cost Odelliana everything.

He released Odelliana at last, then bowed with genuine respect toward Matthias, offering thanks with the full weight of his status.

Matthias acknowledged it with a slight nod, nothing more.

In that moment, the doors to the audience chamber burst open.

A man stumbled in, hair disheveled as if he’d been running without pause. It was Jocelyn. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days, as though his thoughts had chewed him raw.

He saw Odelliana, and relief flashed across his face.

Then he saw the man beside her.

Jocelyn froze, breath catching.

So that’s him, Jocelyn thought, staring. That boy?

He recognized Matthias at once, not because the face was familiar, but because something about him was unmistakable. A pressure. A presence. The kind that made people instinctively straighten, or step back, or bare their teeth.

Their eyes met across the room.

One man’s gaze was steady, almost indifferent. The other’s was taut, hungry with calculation.

Blair, oblivious to the tension, hurried to explain, voice bright with the need to make sense of the chaos. He told Jocelyn how the First Knight Order had raided the barbarian camp, slain the commander, and rescued Odelliana from captivity.

Jocelyn’s expression turned oddly conflicted, as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. His lips twitched. His eyes narrowed. He should be grateful. He was grateful that she was alive, unharmed.

But the knowledge that every ounce of glory belonged to another man made something ugly twist inside him.

“…I’m glad you’re safe, Lady Odelliana,” he said after a beat.

Odelliana didn’t answer. She only stared at him, hostility bleeding from her gaze like smoke from a fire.

Jocelyn felt a stab of emptiness at her hatred, but he forced a smile into place.

Then Odelliana spoke, her tone crisp, coldly proper.

“Matthias,” she said, “this is His Highness, the Second Prince. Pay your respects.”

Matthias, who had been treating Jocelyn with a casual, almost insulting disregard, straightened instantly and offered a formal bow.

He moved with disciplined precision, too refined to be mocked, his posture perfect, his gestures faultless. Yet the expression on his face remained openly irreverent. It wasn’t reverence.

It was provocation, barely veiled, his laziness edged with contempt.

Jocelyn clicked his tongue inwardly.

Arrogant little bastard.

Out loud, he wore charm like armor.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Jocelyn said smoothly. “I’ve heard much about you. Your accomplishments are remarkable. Wherever one goes on the front, there is hardly a day your name isn’t spoken. I’ve wanted to meet you for some time.”

Matthias looked at him without blinking. Then, slowly, he curved his mouth into a faint smile.

“I’ve heard many things about Your Highness as well,” Matthias replied. “It seems you’ve been very… busy.”

The double meaning landed like a blade.

Jocelyn’s smile faltered for the briefest instant. He narrowed his eyes, then let the expression soften again.

“As a royal on the battlefield,” Jocelyn said, voice sweet, “I merely did what I could. Setting an example, moving diligently.”

“Is that so,” Matthias said.

The indifference in his tone was almost insulting, as if Jocelyn were a minor inconvenience, not worth the effort of polite attention.

Heat flared in Jocelyn’s chest. He was a prince. No one spoke to him like this.

Difficult to tame, he thought, studying Matthias. Like a wolf.

Not a dog. Not something that could be trained and kept. A wolf that might allow a collar for a time, might even pretend to obey, but would never truly submit. And the moment it sensed weakness, it would sink its teeth into a throat without hesitation.

Jocelyn looked at Odelliana with sudden, uneasy clarity.

Does she really think she can control that?

He forced his thoughts back into a calmer channel and tried another angle, his voice turning earnest.

“I owe you my thanks,” Jocelyn said. “Odelliana is… special to me as well. When I heard she’d been taken, I was shaken. Truly. Because she survived, you’ve done me a great kindness.”

Matthias stared at him.

His face was still, like a quiet lake.

But anger bled through his eyes, subtle and unmistakable, as if something inside him snarled at the prince’s claim. It was not the anger of a subordinate hearing his master spoken of improperly.

It was the anger of a male guarding what he considered his.

Jocelyn went very still as understanding settled over him.

So that’s what this is.

The wolf didn’t see Odelliana as someone to serve.

He saw her as something to possess.

A female to claim.

A problem, Jocelyn thought grimly, and not a small one.

Matthias was not a man Jocelyn could easily fold into his influence. And Jocelyn wanted Odelliana for himself. Her value was too great to be left as the prize of a beast that might one day turn on her.

He masked the tangle of irritation and calculation behind a courteous smile and stepped back.

“Then I will take my leave,” Jocelyn said, voice smooth as silk. “Lady Odelliana, recover well. Until we meet again.”

He turned and walked from the hall, his thoughts already moving ahead, already planning.

That bastard needs to be handled before he grows any larger.