Page 73 of Angel's Conquest
“Where are you going? You’re retreating now?” she asked, letting all the derision she’d silently worked up over the past few weeks pelt her new chief of arms in the back. “All because he showed up and the law dictates you must abide by his word over mine?”
“I have heard his words, lady,” Broderick said with a sad smile over his shoulder. “I know you are hurting, but I do believe it’s best if you hear his words, too.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
The answer, when it came, only served to agitate her confusion even more.
“It means Broderick doesn’t have to listen to me or any other male monarch anymore, not unless you expressly allow it. I’ve taken care of that problem.”
Clara shook her head, still refusing to meet Bronze’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”
A cylindrical leather-bound scroll of papers plunked down into the soft earth at her feet. “Read ‘em.”
Clara slammed her eyes shut and breathed through her nose, doing her best to calm the agitation of her wolf prowling around in her mind. “If you think, for one minute, you can just come back here, to my home, and act like what you said, what you did could be swept away with some sort of . . . what? An apology? A show of male affection to my guards? Then you’re about to find out just how deadly my arctic wolf can truly be.”
She let her fangs drop and angled her head in his direction, fully intending to display whatever force necessary to get rid of him so she could break down all over again in peace.
The sight of Bronze on his knees, however, stopped her short. His massive weight no longer stood strong and commanding as it had done in Broderick’s presence. Instead, the great fallen angel had crumpled somehow, shoulders rounded, head lowered, mouth pulled down at the corners into an exhausted frown.
The subtle breeze around them fell silent, mirroring Clara’s shock.
Where was the confidence and discipline that had always tightened Bronze’s muscles? Gone, apparently, along with the fire she expected to see blazing in his eyes. Instead, a cold lifelessness stared back at her, causing her snarling lip to lower into a frown that had grown so familiar these past weeks.
“What is this?” she asked again, gesturing toward what he’d thrown at her, forcing the words out through a tight throat.
He dropped his eyes lower so they no longer captured hers and ducked his head. “Please read them.”
Perhaps it was her curiosity or the fact that a stupidly foolish part of her still hoped this whole thing was just some nightmare and she’d wake up any minute with a truth that saw them happy and together. Whatever it was urged her to untie the leather cord around the papers and read them.
For the second time in as many weeks, words her eyes took in failed to make sense in the context of how they were written. It didn’t matter how hard she furrowed her brow or how often she blinked and reread paragraphs. None of it made sense, nor did the eerie sensation of having his eyes on her as she pored over what had to be the biggest practical joke of all time.
“This isn’t real,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “This can’t be real. How could you have done this?”
Bronze sat back on his heels and, despite the kneeling, exhibited every ounce of warrior’s strength she’d known from him. Where her face was surely painted with all sorts of confusion and incredulity, his revealed only absolute certainty. Her heart pounded out a rhythm of chaos, while his stony jaw and stoic gaze never wavered.
His chest rose and fell with the steady power of a calm sea, all while the silence roared between them.
“Pascal drafted it, and among all the advisors as witnesses, I signed it into law this morning while you were out visiting some of the farmers on the northern edge of the property.”
Clara’s head spun, and she was once again grateful for the log supporting her. “I can’t let you . . . Why would . . . To do this, to enact it into the official canon of lycan law . . . Bronze, why would you do something like this?”
“Because you are the queen your people have always deserved, and now you’re the sole monarch of the northeastern lycans. It took some fancy legislative tap dances on Pascal’s part in terms of the wording, and I probably owe the male an entire brewery’s worth of craft beer as thanks, but as of today, your monarchy will be exclusively matriarchal. Any male you choose to take as a mate will be considered a consort. A member of the monarchy, yes, but in name only. He will not have any say regarding your official rule, laws, sentences, proceedings, nothing, unless you wish it.”
Clara could only shake her head as the silent minutes she took to reread the documents stretched on into eternities.
It was all there. Everything he said, everything he’d promised to help her achieve at the start of their journey was now baked into the official constitution of her people.
“I will never,” he ground out, the muscles of his jaw flexing, “outrun the nightmares of seeing the anguish on your face knowing that I was the bastard who put it there. They’ve haunted me at the beginning of every single sunset these last agonizing weeks, and I’ll gladly bed down with those fuckers each night for the rest of my life if it means you’ll never have to wonder again whether your wishes will be granted by the whims of a male. No middlemen. Not anymore. You’re the smartest and most courageous being I’ve ever known, and I’ve been around the block a long damn time, Clara. It’s time for your people to see the female I fell in love with and to start loving her as much as I do, too.”
Clara frowned, hating that the words she’d once longed to hear now came shrouded with humiliation. Hot tears stung her eyes. “You can’t say that, Bronze. Words on a page don’t negate one’s actions. You lied to me about your true emotions, about us, about me.”
The dirt littering the short distance between them kicked up into the air, clouding her already misted vision. Bronze appeared before her, faster than she thought possible. He was still on his knees, with eyes speaking pleas no warrior had ever known. Then his arms were around her waist, and he cradled his head in her lap like a child begging for atonement. By the Moon Mother, he clung to her, grasping at the back of her blouse and stretching it until she felt it pulling at the tops of her shoulders. The strength she’d always known him to possess was now around her, bunching into the cruxes of his joints with the force of a desperation that shook his sturdy frame.
“I’ll tell you what my true emotions have been, Clara.” Bronze shifted against her and placed a small dagger with a black blade—not metallic—in her fist, curled her fingers around it before wrapping his around hers, and pointed the lethal tip at his heart. “And if any lying words fall free, I happily give you permission to take the rest of them. The prime mages granted me a big fat mouth for a reason, and it’s long past time I put it to good use.”
There wasn’t a thing Clara could do but hold the male in her lap as he gave everything to her. It was like being strapped into those past-vertical dive coasters he’d told her the humans loved so much, with any objectionable screams being swallowed up by the force of the fall.
“You want to talk about emotions? Fine, let’s do it. I can’t control my first thought. My lizard brain spews up whatever it needs to in the moment, and I execute it based on habit and skill. There’s no logic in it, only emotional reaction. But that second thought? And the third? And the millionth? I sure as shit can control those thoughts. Those are the ones that have carried me through these eternally long years, keeping my brothers safe and keeping my miserable ass alive until I found you. Since then, though, you have been my every thought. The first, second, millionth. All of them. Emotions have nothing to do with the way my brain and soul are wired when it comes to you, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that. You’re not my emotional security blanket, Clara. You’re my survival and the truest reason for my existence.”