A wolf running a temperature high enough for a dragon to notice was a wolf whose body was doing something it wasn't designed to do.
Wolf healing burned illness out before it could take root. He knew enough about wolves to know that.
He carried her through the main corridor of the Keep. Drakencrest was carved into the mountain itself, stone and obsidian and vaulted ceilings that caught torchlight and threw it back in fractured gold. The halls were wide enough for a dragon in half-shift to pass through, which said everything about the scale of the men who had built it.
Guards straightened as he passed. Fists to their chests.
"Your Highness."
He didn't acknowledge them. His focus was on the woman in his arms and the fever radiating off her like a second pulse.
He kept walking until he reached his private wing. He shouldered open the door to the chamber across from his own. The room was pristine. Enormous bed, stone hearth, arched windows overlooking the mountain range. A room fit for visiting royalty. He walked to the center of it, looked at the bed, looked at the door, and looked at the distance between this room and his.
"Yeah. No."
He turned around, walked back across the hall, and kicked open his own door.
Then he laid her on his bed. She looked small in it. The frame was built for a dragon king.
"Guinevere."
She didn't move.
"Guinevere." Louder. Direct. The voice he used on generals who were slow to respond.
Still, she didn't stir. Her breathing was shallow, steady, but her skin was flushed and the heat coming off her had increased since they'd landed.
His dragon grumbled low in his chest. A sound that meant wrong. A sound that meant fix it.
Maddox: Get me Aldric. Now.
Aldric, the royal physician, arrived in under four minutes. The man was seventy, grey-haired, and moved with the unhurried efficiency of a healer who had treated dragon kings for two generations. He asked no questions when he saw the girl in the king's bed.
He pressed two fingers to her wrist. Then her temple. Then the hollow of her throat. His brow furrowed.
"Why isn't she waking?" Maddox asked from the foot of the bed.
Aldric didn't look up. "Her body is under significant thermal stress. Fever well above what I'd expect for..." He trailed off, and glanced up at Maddox. "What is she? Her energy is mixed."
A fair question that Maddix was also still working on. The running list included: wolf, white wolf, knife-catcher, cave-dweller, and recently, the most expensive woman in recorded history.
"She's a wolf. That information stays in this room."
"Understood, Your Majesty." Aldric paused, his fingers still resting against her pulse point. "Wolves don't get fevers. Their healing factor eliminates infection before symptoms manifest. Which is precisely why I'm asking."
Maddox said nothing. Aldric continued his examination, moving his hand above her body without touching, tracing the air an inch from her skin. The old man's eyes narrowed.
"The signature of flame." Aldric's voice dropped, careful and precise. "It matches yours, Your Majesty."
Maddox didn't react.
Aldric looked up. "Her fever resembles the one dragon riders have when they take their mate's flame. But even marked, that can take years. Was she marked by you?"
"No."
"Then I don't understand how she's carrying your flame signature without a marking."
"She's my fated mate."
Aldric's eyebrows rose. Very little surprised him.
"That's extraordinarily rare, Your Majesty. There's no example in history of a fated mate without dragon blood."
"I am aware."
"The fever," Aldric continued, recovering his composure, "is her body calibrating with yours. Synchronization of flame signatures between mates. It typically occurs after a full marking and the sharing of flame." He looked back at Guinevere. "For it to be happening already, without a marking, she would need to have channeled your flame directly."
"She has."
"That's..." Aldric stopped himself. "Forgive me. When?"
"Last night. In front of two hundred witnesses."
Aldric closed his eyes briefly. "Then her body is attempting to integrate a flame signature it has no physiological framework to process. Either she is running fire she was never built to carry or she has dragon blood."
"If she doesn't have dragon blood, what will happen to her?"
"There's never been a case of a wolf and a dragon to my knowledge," he answered. "In humans, death. That's why dragons don't take human mates, Your Highness."
He prepared a syringe, then seemed to notice Maddox's gaze.
"To reduce her fever. Increases the chances she'll survive."
He said it casually again. Maddox's dragon didn't like that and neither did he.
"I can take her to the healing ward and notify you when she's through the worst of it, Your Highness."
"No." The word filled the room. "She stays in my chambers."
Aldric looked at him. A long, measured look that held decades of service and exactly zero judgment. "Then I will treat her here. But I'll need to check on her every few hours."
"Done."
"Might be worth mentioning, skin contact will help her body calibrate with yours. That's what we tell riders after they've taken their mate's flame."
Maddox already knew that.
"Thank you, Aldric."
The old healer nodded, and left, closing the door behind him.
Maddox pulled a chair to the bedside and sat. The fire in the hearth crackled low. She breathed. He watched.
He sat in the chair for less than five minutes before the fever radiating off her became unbearable.
Her cheeks were flushed crimson against the white sheets. Sweat beaded along her hairline despite the cool mountain air drifting through the cracked window.
He stood. Hesitated.
This was crossing a line he had no right to cross tonight.
His dragon snarled low in his chest, impatient. She is ours. She burns because of us. Fix it.
Maddox dragged a hand down his face, then moved.
He leaned over the bed and carefully slid one arm beneath her shoulders, lifting her just enough to reach the laces at the back of the gold-accented dress. The fabric was delicate, expensive, and completely inadequate. His fingers worked the ties with surprising gentleness for hands that had snapped necks and commanded fleets.
The dress loosened. He peeled it down her arms slowly, revealing the delicate line of her collarbones, the curve of her breasts. He kept his eyes on her face the entire time, watching for any flicker of awareness. None came.
He pulled the silk the rest of the way off, leaving her in nothing but a bra and thin scrap of undergarment. A faint gold emanated under her skin. His dragon color and flame manifestation.
Maddox exhaled sharply.
He stepped back, unfastened his own tunic and shrugged it off. Then he stripped down until he stood in only black briefs.
He climbed onto his massive bed, and gathered her carefully against him — skin to skin — pulling the heavy furs and silk sheets over them both. One arm slid beneath her neck, the other wrapped around her waist, pressing her body to his chest. Her legs tangled naturally with his.
Heat poured off of her into him like a living furnace. It felt like he was literally taking it from her, which he realized after a moment, that he was. Through the matebond, the building discomfort that'd been bleeding from her lessened dramatically.
She made a small, unconscious sound in between a sigh and whimper, and nuzzled into the crook of his neck.
Maddox went very still.
Then his lips curved on their own into a smile he had no business having.
The current between them ran stronger now that nothing separated their skin. Sparks danced where they touched. His dragon purred in the back of his mind like a damn house cat.
Safe. Warm. Mine.
He tucked her head more securely beneath his chin, one large hand splaying across her bare back to hold her closer. The gold veins beneath her skin seemed to brighten slightly, syncing with the pulse of flame beneath his own ribs.
"You're going to be all right," he whispered against her hair, voice rough. "I've got you now."
Maddox closed his eyes. Skin to skin. Flame to flame.
He would stay like this until the fever broke. Or longer.
Somewhere across the sea, a wolf king was not sleeping.