Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

BLAIR-O-METER: Psycho Bitch

Why was Blair Drakencrest at level four?

ITEM ONE: her dress-up doll had outrun the three most powerful kings in the known world.

Three goddamn kings with combat experience, supernatural speed, shifts, and glowing nonsense. And a tiny, white-haired firecracker outran all of them. Blair would have been proud if she wasn’t so pissed off.

ITEM TWO: her annoying Griffin was hurt.

Griffin was an idiot, but he was her idiot, and nobody got to break her shit except her.

ITEM THREE: nobody had thought to get Blair during the crisis.

Guinevere had woken up confused, frightened, and surrounded by crazies. Of course she fucking ran. She woke up in the ugliest room in the Keep in the bed with three strange men.

They chased her through the forest in the dark like goddamn serial killers and wondered why she was running for her life.

Instead of sending Guinevere’s instant-best-friend, they sent three territorial kings with glowing bodies and zero emotional intelligence.

Territorial pheromones cranked to maximum. Chasing a traumatized woman through a dark forest like a pack of hormonal searchlights. What the actual hell was the plan? Glow at her until she calmed down? Blind her into submission?

And those FUCKWITS were SURPRISED she ran. Goddamn she was surrounded by idiots.

Blair could have had her back in the Keep in ten minutes. But instead, the three geniuses chased her off a goddamn CLIFF and into a river.

Men. The species as a whole was a design flaw.

ITEM FOUR: Why did she give Kael her blood again? The bastard, pun intended and fully loaded, decided to jump into a freezing river while recovering from being dead.

He grabbed onto Guinevere and got sucked through a portal to gods-know-where.

Was he alive? Obviously. Kael was always alive. Kael would survive the apocalypse and have a sarcastic comment. There was zero doubt in Blair’s mind that he was alive, conscious, and currently cuddling her dress-up doll while sleep talking.

Blair adjusted her crown like a woman preparing for war.

She had shit to do. A twelve item list, actually. Three were emergencies. Four were cosmetic. Five were acts of psychological warfare. All of them were happening at once.

EXHIBIT A:

The brown room was exactly how they’d left it. Broken glass on the floor from "Guinevere’s scream" which Blair did not believe for a second. The boys were fighting like psychopaths and were trying to blame this mess on her.

The chalk line was still on the bed. Brown curtains, the brown bedding, the brown chairs.

Gerald’s time had come.

Blair crossed the room, glass crunching under her boots, and went to Kael’s desk. Her necklace was in the box. She opened the box and put it on.

"I’m borrowing this until you can give it to me properly," she said out loud, chin lifted, as if Kael could hear her.

She turned to the room just as servants entered, lining up in a row. Right on schedule.

Blair passed with her hands clasped behind her back and her chin elevated like she was daring gravity to try her. She was a commander inspecting the troops and this commander did not fuck around.

"We are redecorating."

She said it the way generals said ’we are invading.’ Same energy. Same finality. Same absolute certainty that everyone in earshot was about to have a very long day and zero say in how it went.

"You are the elite. The chosen."

Only three of the fifteen did not look terrified. New recruits. Rookies. Fear was the foundation that Blair was building an empire on. They would learn.

"Failure is not an option. Neither is beige. Beige is brown’s timid fucked-me-then-chucked-me side-ho. Brown is the failure older sister who started calling mediocrity acceptable."

She got right up in the nearest servant’s face, close enough to smell the fear-sweat. "Do we accept either, Suzy?"

"No, Your Highness."

"SUZY is officially the only one I trust not to fuck this up. The rest of you are on thin ice and thinner talent."

Suzy didn’t react. That was why Suzy was the goddamn favorite. Conner, previously Blair’s golden child, stared at Suzy with quiet devastation. Good.

Blair turned on her heel sharply. "I expect precision. I expect speed. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Your Highness," they said in unison.

Blair pointed at the rug. "Excellent. We start with Gerald. In the bonfire he goes."

Gerald was rolled up and carried out with zero care. Blair watched him go and felt zero remorse. She let out a quiet, satisfied little laugh under her breath. The kind that made nearby servants suddenly remember they had urgent business elsewhere.

Then she snapped, "The bed frame goes. All of it. His colors are navy, white, and light blue. The bed is white."

She clapped her hands twice. "No, no, no. If it’s brown, flush it down. Or burn it. I don’t give a flying fuck. New bookshelves. Yes, MICHAELA. I said ALL NEW FURNITURE."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Get your shit together, Ryan. What did I say? Original wood is NOT a good thing. This is not a fucking log cabin."

Michaela started moving furniture. Ryan started making excuses. One of them would be promoted. One of them would be scrubbing the floor if he kept this up.

A servant held up two fabric swatches for Blair to look at.

"Yes. You are getting it. CONNER understands the assignment," Blair announced loudly. "We are going full nautical."

Suzy nodded, drinking every word. A servant near the window inhaled through his nose so hard Blair thought he might pass out. Emotional regulation under duress. Admirable, but ultimately pointless. Blair saw everything.

"MARY, I said navy. NAVY. That is teal. Teal is the color of women who settle. Do I look like a woman who has ever once in her goddamn life said ’close enough’? Get that shit out of my sight."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Full fucking nautical," Blair called to the room. "Not nautical-inspired. Not little boat energy. FULL. FUCKING. NAUTICAL. Big boat energy. Anchors, ropes, navy, white, salt, discipline, the whole MOTHERFUCKING package. Because Kael Ashenvale is a sailor in his soul whether he knows it or not and his room was going to goddamn look like it."

"Ryan. Ryan. RYAN. STOP. Stop folding. STOP FOLDING. That is brown linen."

She didn’t even finish watching Ryan drop the linen before her head snapped left like a predator catching movement.

"Why is that chair still here? Did I stutter? MOVE THE DAMN CHAIR, THOMAS."

Thomas ran with the chair into the hallway. It scuffed a wall on the way out. Blair let it slide because Thomas was crying and she wasn’t a monster. Overcorrection was better than insubordination.

"SUZY has removed three curtain rods and hasn’t asked me a single stupid question. Let’s all give Suzy a round of applause."

Suzy’s face went pink. Next to her, Ryan clapped for Suzy with hollow eyes. Rock bottom had a basement and he was furnishing it.

Someone in the back whispered "kiss-ass" and Blair’s head turned forty-five degrees. Every servant in that corner aged a decade in three seconds.

The room went silent. She let them cook. Then, like a storm deciding to change direction, her expression shifted.

"CONNER just color-matched the throw pillows to the curtain trim without being asked. THAT is initiative. THAT is goddamn excellence. Well done, Conner!"

Conner stood two inches taller. Blair flashed him a warm, genuine smile. It was the most horrifying thing in the room because everyone knew the emotional whiplash coming would be fucking devastating.

"Suzy, tell Alex what you just told me about the thread count. Louder. So the whole room hears. Because ALEX brought me two-hundred thread count sheets like we are outfitting a goddamn prison cot."

The sheets were removed from the bed by Ryan, who was already on thin ice. Alex watched them go. Blair had already moved on. The dead bury the dead.

"WHY IS THERE A BROWN VASE ON THAT SHELF, MARY?"

This was a limited-time dictatorship. The Keep was hers, and she planned to rule it with an iron fist.

Her brother’s chambers were going to match, fun fact. Blair had started the remodel of Maddox’s forty minutes ago. New bed already en route. Soft mattress. Elegant seating. Matching bathing linens. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, unstoppable.

"Who hung that? WHO HUNG THAT. The walls are being repainted first! Fix it before I lose my shit. If I walk back in here and see a single piece of brown furniture, I am setting this room on fire and starting over."

✦✦✦

ONE HOUR LATER.

THE HIGH COUNCIL CHAMBER.

Crown. Necklace. Bitch face.

The holy goddamn trinity.

These forty dragon lords were about to get politically face-fucked.