"Maddox?"

He did not respond.

Guinevere gently rolled him off of her, careful of his weight with her ribs. She pressed her good hand to his forehead.

He was burning up.

Her brain reached for context and came back with a shrug. Dragons ran hotter than wolves. He had told her that himself on the flight. Twenty degrees above any wolf she had ever stood beside. A warm forehead on Maddox Drakencrest was probably normal for a dragon.

Probably.

Mate marking was not common with female wolves. She had never heard of anyone going unconscious for it, and she had never heard of a dragon going unconscious for anything.

She sat up.

Looked down.

There was blood between her legs.

The exact panic that hit her next was specific. She knew blood happened when you lose your virginity. But Gods, she didn’t want anyone to see especially Maddox.

She slid off the bed and bolted to the bathing chamber to clean herself off.

She returned with a wet cloth.

"Maddox?"

Nothing.

She cleaned him carefully. The blood was on his thigh, his lower stomach, the inside of his hip. She wiped it all away.

Oh.

"Maddox."

Still nothing. His chest was rising and falling. His pulse was strong under her fingers. He was, as far as she could tell, alive. But he was not waking up, and the mark on his neck was red and angry and her stomach turned over.

She had bitten her husband less than an hour into being married to him and now he was unconscious, and the only framework she had for this was from wolf stories where the woman was the one unconscious and the man was the one who had done the marking.

She stood. Naked. In the king’s chamber. Panicking.

She needed Blair.

She also needed clothes.

She went to his closet feeling like an intruder in her own husband’s wardrobe, and the first thing she saw was a full rack of women’s clothes.

She stopped.

Oh.

The options were: these were for her, and he had acquired them since she arrived, or he had recently had another woman in this room and had not cleaned out her closet.

She did not have time to litigate this right now.

She pulled on a pair of undergarments from a drawer. A pink silk camisole. Matching silk shorts. A silk robe over the top. She grabbed a pair of his black cotton shorts for him, because she was not having Blair walk in and see her brother naked, and went back to the bed.

Getting shorts onto an unconscious dragon king was significantly harder than she had anticipated.

She got them to his knees. Then over his hips by wedging her shoulder under his lower back and lifting. Her ribs punished her for it. She did not care.

She stood back. Surveyed.

He was clothed. Passable. Barely.

She was about to leave when she noticed the sheets. Blood. In several places.

Oh gods.

She could not have Maddox see that. Or Blair. Or the healer. Ideally, she didn’t want the entire continent of Velkaris collectively inferring what had happened on her wedding night.

Highly irrational. Everyone has sex on their wedding night. Panic bubbled anyways and she did what any rational woman would do in this situation.

She pulled the top sheet off.

Under it, the fitted sheet had blood on it too.

Fuck.

That one came off too. Maddox didn’t stir.

She stood there holding two blood-marked sheets and realized she had just stripped the king’s bed to the mattress, which was going to look even worse than the blood had, because now there was a naked mattress and a husband in cotton shorts and a pile of sheets on the floor, and she was fully dressed in pink silk like she had wandered in from a different room entirely.

She put the sheets in a pile. She pulled the comforter up over the bare mattress under Maddox with great effort, so it covered the full mattress. Then put his pillows on top, followed by a blanket over Maddox who was on top of the comforter now.

She stepped back.

It looked insane. That was insane. He was unconscious and she made the bed.

There was no time to fix it. She pulled on her boots, belted her robe, and sprinted into the hall.

Which was when she remembered she had zero idea where Blair’s quarters were, zero context for how the Drakencrest mindlink network functioned, and zero authority to be running through the private wing of the Keep in a pink silk robe and boots.

She rounded the corner at full speed and ran into Ryker.

"Guinevere?"

He caught her elbow on reflex before she could fall. His face did the exact thing a man’s face did when a woman he had been trained to defend turned up in his hallway at night in silk.

She swallowed.

"Ryker. Could you mindlink Blair for me. Please."

His eyebrows knit.

"What is wrong?"

Her eyes burned. She had not realized they were going to until they were.

"I think there is something wrong with Maddox, and it is my fault."

Her voice cracked on the last word. Tears were already falling. She could not stop them. It was the first actual emotion he had seen out of her.

Ryker blinked.

"You think you hurt a grown-ass dragon."

She nodded.

He fought the urge to laugh. He lost at the corner of his mouth, caught it, and schooled his face with what she could tell was significant effort.

"Is he in his quarters."

"Yes."

"Come on."

He turned on his heel and started walking, and she fell in next to him.

They reached the chamber door.

Ryker pushed it open.

He took one look at the perfectly made bed with a sleeping king on top of a comforter, with a blanket over him, and a pile of stripped sheets on the floor beside it. His entire face did a thing that Guinevere didn’t understand.

Thirty seconds later footsteps sounded in the hall. Aldric. Sterling. Blair.

Sterling entered first. His eyes went to the bed. Then the sheets. Then the king. Then Guinevere in pink silk with tear tracks down her face.

Blair came in last.

Aldric set his leather case down on the side table with the practiced calm of a man who had walked into more undignified royal bedrooms than he cared to count.

"What happened, Princess."

Her voice cracked before she got the first word out.

"M-m-my wolf took over. I. I bit him."

The room went silent.

Aldric’s eyebrows lifted.

"Bit or marked," Sterling asked. His voice was the flattest thing in the room.

"Marked."

Her eyes welled.

Ryker’s face, with absolutely no warning, went stone serious.

"Guinevere. Mate marks are fatal for dragons."

Her good hand flew to her mouth.

"You killed the king of Velkaris. Death penalty. I’ll give you ten seconds to run as a courtesy."

Tears spilled down her face.

Blair’s arm swung before the last syllable had finished leaving his mouth. She whacked him across the shoulder hard enough that Ryker actually rocked sideways, and she was already pulling Guinevere into a hug with her other arm.

"He is being a dickhead. Dragons mark too. He is fine. You did not kill anyone."

"Male dragons mark," Aldric corrected. "I have never heard of a female dragon marking. I had also understood that among wolves, marking was a male behavior. Is that correct, Princess?"

Guinevere wiped her eyes with the back of her good hand. She opened her mouth.

A hiccup came out.

Then a sob.

Then she covered her face with both hands, and cried into her palms in front of the Second, the Third, the royal physician, and the king’s sister.

Blair shot Ryker a look that could have stripped paint.

Ryker held up both hands. Sterling watched Guinevere with an expression that was, for Sterling, something close to baffled concern. Neither of them had seen her produce emotion on this volume at any point since knowing her, and both of them were, visibly, recalibrating every analysis they had run on her up to this moment.

Sterling walked past her into the bathing chamber without a word.

He came back with a cup of water.

"The scientific way to wake him."

He threw the water directly into Maddox’s face.

Maddox jolted awake with a sound that was half grunt and half expletive.

"What the fuck"

His eyes opened. Unfocused. He blinked at the ceiling. Then at the room. Then at the lineup of people standing around his bed.

"Why is everyone..."

His gaze caught on his sister holding his wife and Guinevere’s tear-streaked face.

His heart cracked.

He was off the bed in a blur. Across the room. He pulled Guinevere out of Blair’s arms and into his own chest before Blair’s arms had finished registering that the hug had been hijacked. She was still mid-embrace position, arms held out in open air, blinking at where Guinevere had been a half-second ago.

Maddox’s hand cradled the back of Guinevere’s head. Her face was pressed into his bare chest. He was in the cotton shorts she had wrestled onto him, shirtless with a mating mark on his neck that half the room had not yet noticed because they had been busy watching his wife fall apart.

His eyes lifted over the top of Guinevere’s head. They had gone dark.

"Ryker’s fault," Sterling said, flatly.

Ryker opened his mouth. Closed it. Thought better of whatever he had been planning to say.

Aldric cleared his throat with the practiced neutrality of a physician who had just watched a king go from unconscious to actively homicidal in under three seconds.

"Do you feel alright, Your Highness."

Maddox’s hand kept stroking the back of Guinevere’s hair. His voice came out rough.

"I feel fine. Why is everyone in my quarters."

Aldric glanced at Guinevere. Then at the mark on Maddox’s neck. Then back up.

"Your wife, Your Highness, marked you. She believed she had harmed you. When you did not wake, she came looking for help. Ryker informed her, in his professional capacity as second to the crown, that mate marks are fatal in dragons."

Maddox’s gold eyes went molten.

"Don’t forget the death penalty he casually dropped," Blair said flatly.

He looked at Ryker over the top of his wife’s head with an expression that suggested the next war Velkaris fought was going to be a very short one with a very specific target.

"Get out."

Ryker got out. Sterling followed him.

Maddox’s chin came down to rest on the top of Guinevere’s head. His arm stayed locked around her back. His other hand stayed cradling her skull.

"Gwen."

His voice was low against her hair.

"You did not hurt me. I am fine. I am more than fine."

She said something into his chest. He could not make it out.

"What."

She lifted her face half an inch. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were wet and her voice was very small.

"I didn’t know my wolf would do that."

"I know you didn’t. It’s not your fault. If my dragon glows though, we might have a problem."

She let out a wet laugh at that. He wiped her tears with his thumbs.

"Your Highness," Aldric said. "If I may. We should take a sample of your blood, to know what we are working with."