Page 92 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

One command, and his gardai will be on us.

We’ll be dead before we can take another breath—or handed off to the Lady of Shadows for torture if our luck has really run out.

“Stay the fuck out!” Cashel barks at the door.

But those gardai will obey for only so long if they think their prince is in danger. One scream, one clash of steel too loud, and they’ll storm in.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” I ask as quietly as I can.

My eyes are on Wolf, but I’m not entirely sure which one of them my words are for as I put myself between them, and Wolf’s eyes flare with a sudden, ferocious light that steals my breath. With one steady hand, he reaches out to grasp my shoulder, pulling me back to his side.

Cashel’s chest heaves from the attacks.

Wolf’s is steady, controlled. And it hits me—Wolf never struck first.

For all the malice and hatred seething off him, Wolf never took a killing blow. And Old Ones, he could have. Just from watching them fight, it’s clear. The prince is no match for him. If Wolf wanted his cousin dead, he’d be dead.

Green eyes flicker to mine. Is that… hurt flaring behind the mask he pulls into place? There’s torment, too. A tortured kind of grief, there and gone in an instant.

“You have no idea what he’s done, Maeve.”

“I know what he’s offering to do,” I say softly, as if the words can stay just between us.

His gaze sharpens on mine. “What do you mean,what he’s offering? What did you tell him?”

“Oh no.” Cashel’s navy eyes shift to me, and the feeling is like knives on my bare skin. “She hasn’t said a word. I figured this out on my own.”

“Figured outwhat, exactly?” Wolf’s eyes narrow on Cashel, the same predatory darkness I saw that first night we met in the safe house. “Go ahead. Tell me what you think you know.”

“Wolf.”Taunting the man who could get us killed with one call to the gardai outside is a risk we can’t afford right now.

“Wolf?” Cashel smirks. “What is that, some secret rebel code name? You don’t seriously think anyone here forgot your real name—or that my father ever stopped hunting you after you escaped.” He tilts his head, and my stomach clenches. “How did you manage that, by the way?”

A self-satisfied smile turns Wolf’s expression mocking. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Escaped?” I look to Cashel.

His brows knot. “Don’t tell me he pulled you into all this and hasn’t even told you how he got that… distinctive scar?”

Wolf’s shoulders go rigid. “Don’t.”

Cashel glances from him to me, eyes cold. “I’m the reason his family is dead. I’m the reason for that scar down his face, and about a dozen others I would bet this entire kingdom he hasn’t even let you see… yet.”

The insinuation heats my cheeks. “Why?”

Part of me doesn’t want to know the answer.

Cashel’s cold stare flickers to Wolf, debating his next words.

“His mother’s army wanted me as… leverage. But we were like brothers, so he told me just enough to keep me out of their grasp.” Pain wrenches my heart. “And I told my father.”

Raw, brutal hate burns in Wolf’s eyes. It twists his whole face into ravaged lines—the kind that come not just from loss, from betrayal, but from guilt.

Too many questions do battle in the hollow ache of my heart.

There isn’t time for any of them. The gardai could force their way through that door the second Wolf’s barely held restraint snaps, and I don’t trust our current luck will hold.

“You said you wanted to help, right?” I turn to Cashel, and Wolf’s shoulders tense.