by Roxie Ray
An entire host of guards and warriors had pledged their lives to her only moments before the attack—and yet, only Orion and I had made good on those promises. The rest had followed our coward of a king as soon as he called them away. They had left not only their queen at the mercy of the rebels—they had abandoned an entire room full of females and cubs at the king’s orders as well.
Once again, my certainty that King Brixta needed to be deposed was renewed.
But that would be difficult with Jaix and Apex, arguably the two greatest assets that any rebellion could possibly have, now captured. I would consider it a greater loss if Apex had not also managed to save Alora’s life today as well. At the expense of his own, no less.
It chilled my very soul to think of what might have happened if Apex had not seen what I felt for Alora in my eyes. I had been so distracted by Leonix’s scream that I could have lost Alora forever today.
That only raised yet another concern for me, though. I had been only moments away from killing Jaix for attacking Alora. Why had Leonix stopped me? Why had she screamed at all?
My mind was in knots by the time I entered King Brixta’s secret room behind the high table. A few guards in front of the king stood still as a healer knelt with his kit before Brixta’s feet.
“My king.” The words felt wrong in my mouth. Sour, like bad wine. “Were you injured?”
“Badly, yes!” King Brixta slurred furiously. “How kind of you to notice, Ronan.”
“My apologies, Your Majesty. I did not see the rebels attack you.” My own fury toward him abated—but only slightly. Perhaps King Brixta had good reason for calling his guards to him after all.
“The rebels did not attack him,” the healer grumbled. “He twisted his ankle running away.”
“I twisted my ankle fleeing from an armed attack on my life!” Brixta backhanded the healer, who fell to the floor. “Away with you! Speak against me like that again, and I will adorn my throne room with your severed head!”
“Of course, my king.” The healer glowered, muttering to himself as he picked himself up and hurried away. “As you wish.”
“And how is my bride? Murdered?” Only when the healer was gone did Brixta finally notice Alora unconscious in my arms. “A pity. I rather liked her. I suppose I will contact Earth to send a replacement.”
“There is no need, Your Majesty.” I grunted the words through my teeth. “She merely fainted. I fear today’s events have been far too exhausting for her.”
Too exhausting for you to bed her tonight, I wanted to add—but I knew that would be overplaying my hand.
The king did not deserve to bed Alora. He was a coward, and a fool. Fond of her or not, he saw her as disposable. Easily abandoned. Easily replaced.
He could not have been more wrong.
“Well, if she is not dead…I suppose I owe you my thanks for protecting her, Ronan. I really do mean it—I was not certain that any one female could sate my lusts, but in these days leading up to our marriage, I have wanted only her.”
She is not yours to want, I was desperate to growl at him. Not yours to have.
But no matter what fate had decreed, and my dreams had told me, the wedding bracelet around Alora’s wrist was King Brixta’s. Not mine.
“Perhaps you will allow me to remain on as her guard more permanently,” I suggested instead. For as long as I could remain close to Alora, I could continue protecting her. From the rebels. From the court. From King Brixta himself. “It is clear you need more warriors in your employ, my king, to protect you both.”
“A marvelous idea, Ronan. I was going to grant you lands in the south and a wife from my harem for your service, but…” King Brixta arched a thin eyebrow. “Unless…you would prefer that?”
“I could never accept such a great boon from you, Your Majesty.” The only things I wanted from Brixta were either already in my arms or glittering metallic on his fat head. “Allow me to continue to serve you in this manner. Now that we know your own specters are not to be trusted…who else can you trust?”
“Too true, Ronan. Too damn true.” Brixta crossed his arms over his belly and nodded. “Go lay her down, then. You are right—she has had a long day. It is for the best that this comes to an end now.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” I said, relieved. “I will guard over her chambers all night.”
“Not her chambers, you buffoon! Mine.” King Brixta looked at me as if I had just grown a third set of arms. “It is still our wedding day, and I cannot risk waiting to bed her any longer. It would be a shame for her to die a virgin, would it not?”
As Brixta chuckled to himself, I was overcome with the desire to move across the room and crush his head between my hands. I only needed two arms to carry Alora. With my other two, I could smash Brixta’s skull in an instant, and we would be done with this entire mess.
Alora would be safe from him if he was dead, at least. Safe from the rebellion, too.
But as I glanced at Brixta’s remaining guards in the room, I knew it was not a good idea. If I was not carrying Alora, I could have taken them all on easily. But with her still unconscious in my arms…I could not put her at risk like that.
Her life had already been risked too many times today already.
“She is unconscious, my king,” I reminded Brixta. “Do you not think it best to wait until she has recovered?”
“Get her conscious then, if you can. But if not…bah.” King Brixta shrugged. “She does not need to be awake to be bedded.” He chuckled again, even more disgustingly than before. “Not to be bred, either.”
Again, I considered how best to kill him without endangering Alora. If I placed her aside for a moment, then perhaps I could manage—
But before my plans for a royal assassination could solidify, I felt Alora stir in my arms. Her eyes opened just a crack. When she spoke, her voice was a weak rasp.
“Do as he says, Ronan,” she told me. “It is all right.”
It broke my heart to hear those words. I could not argue with her. Not before Brixta and his guards.
But as I carried her to the royal bedchamber, I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that I was carrying my mate to the place where she would be bedded by a bad husband. A false king.
She was mine. Mine, not his.
And still, I had no choice but to carry her to his rooms.
13
Alora
The world faded in and out around me. Distantly, I was aware that I’d passed out when I saw the warrior’s entrails hit the floor. But knowing that I’d fainted only made everything feel that much more like a dream.
In Ronan’s arms, it almost felt like a good dream for once. A brief respite from the chaos that had ruined my wedding feast. At least, it had until I heard my new husband announce his intentions for the rest of the evening.
King Brixta planned on sleeping with me tonight. Whether I wanted to or not. Whether I was even conscious or not.
Knowing that, this whole situation was becoming more of a nightmare with every passing second.
I’d been mentally preparing myself for the bedding ceremony ever since my father had announced my engagement. Even after meeting King Brixta in person, watching him beat his own child and seeing first-hand how he treated the women of his harem…I’d known that there would be no avoiding this. My marriage to the king was still the only thing that would allow Knox and me to ensure our plans for reform on Earth would go soundly.
And to make that happen, I’d known all this time that no matter how much I hated King Brixta, I would have to do more than just sleep with him tonight.
I’d have to blow his mind.
But I hadn’t factored in any of this. I’d been feeling ill for a week now, half-sick with nerves. I’d been attacked. Nearly killed. I’d been abandoned by my own husband in the process. He’d left me almost defenseless, except for Orion and Ronan.
If it hadn’t been for Ronan—the way he’d jumped on Jaix and whatever he’d said to the second sp
ecter in the attack—I wasn’t sure that I would be alive for tonight at all.
I still had Orion’s blood on my hands and skirts as Ronan carried me to the king’s bedchamber. I’d seen a warrior’s guts spill from his body onto the floor. My head was a mess and my heart felt like it was being slowly torn in two.
Any decent man would have at least let me recover from the attack for a few days before expecting to sleep with me. Even a king should have known better.
Especially a king.
But King Brixta didn’t care.
As Ronan laid me on the bed where I was expected to give myself over to my new husband tonight… Suddenly, I knew damn well that I wasn’t going to be able to go through with this. Not now. Not ever.
“How are you, my queen?” Ronan hovered over me and stroked my hair away from my face. When he reached the piece that had been burned away by blaster fire, he rubbed it between his fingers and sighed. “I was so worried for you…I thought I might have lost you, and—”
“You’ll never lose me,” I mumbled as I tried to make my vision focus on his face.
“What?” Ronan took my face in his hands and leaned in closer. “I can’t hear you, Alora, what did you just—”
“You’ll never lose me,” I said again. “You protected me. I’m yours.”
“You’re…” Ronan blinked twice. Between blinks, I watched the purple of his irises shift to a deep, dark blue. “You’re mine.”
It was impossible to say who kissed who first. I arched up. Ronan dipped down. Our lips came together willingly, eagerly. Simultaneously.
It was a kind of kiss unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Electricity shot through my body. It made my heart pound hard and toes curl. My hips bucked upward like I’d just made out with a live wire. Heat spread through me in the wake of that jolt, starting in my belly and radiating outward.
When King Brixta had kissed me just hours ago during our wedding ceremony, I’d only felt disgust. But with Ronan…
I felt galaxies. I felt butterflies.
As his tongue slipped against mine, my breaths came deeper, just to breathe in his scent. My body was on fire, electric. Alive.
It was a kiss that confirmed something simultaneously glorious…and terrible.
Ronan was the one for me. He’d protected me. He’d been kind. He made my body feel things I hadn’t even known were possible.
It shouldn’t have been King Brixta that I married today.
It should have been Ronan.
It should have been him.
I could have lived out lifetimes in that kiss. But like all good things, it ended.
Far, far too soon.
“Ahem.”
My heart froze mid-beat as I heard a throat clear in the doorway of the room. Ronan tore his lips away from mine in an instant.
We’d been caught.
“Well, well, well.” Kali smirked as she stepped through the doorway, arm in arm with Orion. “What do we have here?”
“Kali…” I said slowly, my voice full of warning. Yes, she’d caught Ronan and me…but if I had to remind her that she had plenty of kissing secrets of her own that I was keeping, I wasn’t above that.
All things considered, it could have been worse.
“It is fine, Alora. They can be trusted.” Ronan bowed his head in relief as he straightened and turned to the pair. “How much of that did you two see?”
“Enough to know I owe Kali six gold lunars when my pay comes in,” Orion grumbled. He wore a bandage around his shoulder over his stab wound and still looked a little pale, but I was happy to see that he was already on his feet again.
The knowledge that Orion had been wounded and was already walking around like nothing had happened, while I was lying there uninjured but completely useless, was almost as embarrassing as being caught kissing Ronan in the king’s bed.
I needed to toughen up, and fast.
Especially if I wanted to find some way out of my duties to the king tonight.
“We’ve known for a while now, actually,” Kali assured me with a smirk. “It’s okay, Alora. We keep each other’s secrets, remember?”
“Just didn’t think the two of you would be so bold as to go making out right before the bedding ceremony,” Orion said with a short laugh. “Speaking of…”
“You can’t sleep with the king, Alora.” Kali came over to me and shoved Ronan aside so she could put the back of her hand across my forehead. “You’re cold as ice, poor thing. You have no business doing anything other than resting right now.”
“He abandoned you,” Orion added. “Surely you’re not still planning on going through with this? Especially seeing as your affections obviously lie elsewhere…”
I frowned as I tried to find the words to explain to them my predicament. It stunned me that Kali and Orion really thought it was that cut and dry. Of course I didn’t want to sleep with Brixta. He disgusted me on every level. But…
“She has her reasons for this. Leave her be.” Thankfully, Ronan came to my rescue. If only for a moment. “But…they do make several good points, Alora. If you are insistent on going through with this, I cannot stop you, but…”
“But what, Ronan?” I asked, suddenly feeling even more tired than ever.
“You know that I would rather you did not. For your sake…” Ronan turned his face away from me. “And for my own.”
“What would you have me do, then? Tell him no?” I shifted up onto my elbows and gave Ronan a look of resignation. “I don’t want to sleep with him either. But unless you’re planning on killing him—”
“That is an idea, yes.” Ronan’s fingertips brushed against his blaster. “He would deserve it.”
“And send Lunaria tumbling into chaos as a result?” I liked the idea of Ronan solving this problem for me with the business end of his blaster as much as he seemed to, but this wasn’t some children’s game. “As with all parts of my life, we needed to take politics into account. I already have the rebellion after me,” I pointed out. “You need the support of the rebellion if you intend to commit regicide, Ronan—and you just got a number of their agents locked in the dungeons.”
“We leave, then. All four of us.” Ronan nodded and offered me two of his hands. “Come. If we go quickly—”
“King Brixta will realize that I am gone before we’re even out of the palace walls.” I shook my head and swung my feet over the side of the bed. “He’s expecting to find me in here at any moment now. We don’t have time to run.”
“And we can’t leave without freeing my parents,” Kali said. “And Orion’s family, too.”
“My twin brother is in the dungeons as we speak,” said Orion. “And Phoenix is half-Rutharian.”
“How…” I started, more than a little confused. Orion was clearly part human, part Lunarian, and if Phoenix was his twin…
“You will have to ask my mother about that one,” Orion said with a shrug. “All I know is that if I leave, King Brixta will kill Phoenix in retaliation. He is more than just my twin, Ronan. He may be one of the last Rutharians in all the galaxies as well.”
“Damn this!” Ronan strode across the room, all four of his fists clenched. “Damn this all. How am I supposed to stand by and let this happen, Alora? I cannot allow it. You do not want it either. We must find some way.”
“Maybe…” I paused as I felt a vibration sound from my pocket. Incredibly, despite all the diving around and being carried I’d been through today, my communicator was still inside. I gave Ronan, Kali and Orion a glance, then flicked it open. “Hello?”
“Alora! You finally answered.” Knox’s face appeared on the communicator’s screen. He looked disheveled, like he’d been nervously running his fingers through his hair for hours. “I’ve been trying to get through to you all day.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You know today was the wedding—”
“Exactly. You can’t go through with it, Alora. You need to find whatever people you trust and get to the Earthan Embassy
at once.”
I blinked at him for a moment as my chest tightened horribly.
After everything…only now did Knox tell me that I didn’t need to go through with the marriage after all.
Unfortunately, his call had finally come in far too late.
“The wedding is done, Knox.” My lips trembled. Through everything today, I’d managed not to cry. But now, a stinging heat was spreading through my sinuses. “I can’t go to the embassy. I’ve already married the king.”
“No! Fuck.” Knox turned his head to the side as he spat out the swear. “Then you need to make sure your new husband is willing to protect you with his life, Alora.”
“That is also not looking likely.” I bit my lips and tried to hold back my tears. “I was attacked at the feast after. The rebellion here on Lunaria is after me. The king didn’t even try to save me.”
“Fuck. Fuck.” Knox raked his hair back and forced an exhale through his teeth. “This is bad, Alora. The timing couldn’t be worse.”
“What’s happening on Earth?” I asked. “What’s changed?”
“We have a rebellion of our own on our hands,” Knox admitted. “It’s being led by an escapee of Sector Five who calls herself Nyssa. She’s amassed an entire army of gray-class citizens. They’re said to be marching toward the capital now.”
“Has Father dispatched our forces?” I wasn’t surprised that the gray-classes were finally rebelling against my father’s administration. I couldn’t imagine Father was either. “Surely he’s planned for this. It’s been a long time coming.”
“He has—but for every group that the army takes out, two more seem to pop up to take their place. If they succeed before Father dies…I’m not sure how much longer our family will be in power here on Earth, Alora. If the capital falls…”
“The sacrifice I just made won’t matter.” Finally, a single tear managed to well up and fall down my cheek. “My marriage won’t mean anything at all.”
