Dade appeared beneath the stairs in the Keep, but I continued down the hall as he said to the poor mutt who’d loitered too long near the bowl of fruit on the hall table, “Tres, find out who’s responsible for my missing meals.”

Aghast to have been given a lowly duty for a warrior, Tres sputtered, “Me? But I need to—”

“I do not recall making a request,” Dade said, his tone now that of the alpha he was.

Tres cursed but muttered, “Of course, my king.”

Dade caught up with me in the dank hall leading to the war room, his gaze a burn upon my back. “You’ve been busy.”

“No.” I pushed open the door to the musty room. “You merely spend too much time in your rooms with your bird to notice much of anything.”

He ignored that, leaning against the doorframe while I plucked a fresh piece of parchment from the mountain of mess at the center of the table. “You smell strange.”

I dipped the quill into an inkpot and smirked. All the while, I tried to keep my hackles from rising. “I might have skipped bathing,” I lied far too smoothly. “You’re welcome.”

The crimson king’s eyes dug into my profile like a serrated blade. “Not of filth.”

“You’re truly becoming so sweet, but I’m afraid you’re spoken for.”

He snarled, then paused, and I knew I’d stepped in shit before he realized it himself. He laughed, the sound one of disbelief. “A female, isn’t it?”

I ignored him and continued with the list for my legion so that we could finish the repairs on the village outside of the city and move on to the next. “We need more supplies and fast.”

“They’re coming.” Silence settled upon that thorn-covered wall between us—the one we’d never breach. Sighing, the king mercifully veered away from the subject.

At least, that was what he led me to believe.

“For two days now, my lunch seems to have gotten lost on its way to my rooms,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this mystery, would you?”

I cleared my throat to keep from laughing. “Not a damned thing.”

He surveyed me in a silence more irritating than his grating interrogation tactics while I marked the list as priority and placed it over one Fang had recently left upon the board.

“Who is she?” Dade said when I marched for the door. “I won’t ask again.”

Fuck.

I stopped, knowing I couldn’t avoid it—knowing that if I didn’t give him something, he could very well look into what I was up to.