by Holly Gunn
I see that mark, and I suddenly feel ill.
There is a tattoo on my chest, but it is not a couple’s tattoo.
She hasn’t touched me willingly yet, and although I know she’d jump at the chance, I am unsure if I am worthy of the beguiling beauty I have in my bed.
I have spent my life cowering, biding my time, waiting to take the crown, and now I want only her, our children, and I will not be the man I want to be if I turn my back on my duties. My people might drive me mad with their requests, their divided loyalties, and their inability to grow a backbone and protect their individuality, but they are still my people.
I am not worthy—of her or our people. Not yet.
But I will be.
I have never been a violent man, but I know that this is the only way to settle the dispute between my father and myself.
I must fight.
And I must win.
I dress quickly, choosing my suit with delicate precision, wanting it to state clearly that I’m powerful, I can handle my duties, I can be the king Elizabeth and my people need.
Then, I quietly exit our bedroom.
Our bedroom.
Nothing is ours yet.
But it will be.
One more objective and I will be the man I need to be.
She finds me in the kitchen as I’m scribbling a note and leaving a key for her.
“You’re worried,” is how she starts, and the accusation in her voice breaks my heart. I’m not worried. I can’t be worried. I have a focus. It’s on the challenge. After that, I can move forward. After the challenge, when I am king, my life will no longer be lived at the whim of my father’s desire to remain ruler.
I haven’t realized I’ve been quiet.
So when her next words hit me, they are as sharp and as painful as a lash carving its way through my back.
“You want family ... You want a future for your people … You want me to know you can take care of me …”
Her voice trails off and she moves closer to me, but I move away putting distance between us. Her flinch tears through me.
“You say I’m the first woman you’ve desired, but for all that, you want everything for everyone else, including your damn top-notch clients as Grizz called them, you won’t take what you really want—for you.”
“It seems, Elizabeth, I took what I wanted last night just fine.”
She retreats with an involuntary step back.
I’m a monumental asshole.
“I did not mean—”
Her hand comes up. “You did, Eagle. You never say anything you don’t mean. You never do anything you don’t mean. You’re controlled. And while I won’t say it wasn’t the most intoxicating experience of my life being in your control last night, I won’t be there again if you keep pushing me away.”
“Even if it means you won’t be queen?”
She shakes her head and looks pityingly at me. “Either I’m your queen or I’m not, Eagle. Either your mine and I’m yours, or it’s not true and maybe Vera is yours.” I can see from her expression that even saying that pains her.
I fist my hands at my sides to keep from reaching out to her.
“Vera will never be my queen,” I vow.
Even if we’re meant to be, and she tries to touch me, I won’t have her. I’ll strip the tattoo from my flesh in some way, if it forms. I’ll not mate with her, and it will fade, leaving someone else to rule. I do not care for a life without Elizabeth.
I don’t tell her these things. I am that prideful it seems.
“You are afraid,” she accuses.
I am afraid.
I don’t say this aloud. I don’t nod. I just flex my hands and see her eyes focus on them.
For some reason, her eyes brighten with tears.
She reaches toward me, but I’m far enough away, I don’t need to back up further.
She returns her hands to her sides, then her arms cross her chest, covering the perky breasts I tasted over and over again last night. My mark is there. My tongue has been there. I could spend eternity worshipping her body—but first, I must win this fight.
“I’ll be in the front row tonight.”
I attempt to argue, but she glowers at me.
I cover my mouth to keep from showing my smile.
Her face suddenly clears, and she stares at my hand covering my mouth.
“I love you,” she whispers across the distance between us.
My hand falls to my side and curls into a fist.
But for once, I know I haven’t kept my face clear of emotion because she nods.
She sees the need in my eyes.
She sees the desire in my soul.
She sees the hope as my jaw goes lax.
My queen misses nothing.
“I must go,” I announce.
I don’t look at her again. I gather my belongings and prowl toward the door, more intent than ever before. I will defeat my father and end this once-and-for-all.
While I may not glance Elizabeth’s way, this does not mean I don’t know her eyes watch me.
She would follow me to hell and back—and I would do the same. Today, I intend to prove that to her. To prove I am worthy of the love she gives.
It is not, I fear, my people I am fighting for tonight. It is for my right to stand at Elizabeth’s side. It is for my right to be her king.
11
Eagle
My father is waiting in the center of the small arena, his body language relaxed. While Father has taught me control, he has not mastered control of himself as I have. He is one to share his opinion loudly, to use his fists often, and generally to reply pompously to everything. In some ways, he has made me his opposite—and for that, I am grateful.
When he’s relaxed, I fret. This is because my father’s calm means he is sure of himself. Based on what I know of our strengths now, he should not be sure. He should be nervous.
“The old man has something up his fucking silk sleeve,” Grizz growls.
This is probably true.
“You’ve got this, man,” Heavy butts in, his presence is, as it always is, a balm, a positive and upbeat vibe of continued joviality. He has an innocence to him Grizz, Snake, and I will never have. And yet, in other ways, he lost his innocence along with his first love.
“Knock ‘em dead, Scipio.”
I don’t rise to Snake’s bait and glare at him.
I take the sobriquet, and as they’ve filled me in on their first meeting with Elizabeth, I know now of her lecture on reappropriating energy.
I want to kick myself for how I acted this morning, but I have to hope that she will forgive me. I have to hope that all that I’m fighting for is not for naught.
As though spoken into the veil, she takes her seat in the front row, a ways back from the outdoor arena of my father’s mansion. This is where our convocation’s, very few, outdoor events take place. Many eagle convocations throughout the United States enjoy outdoor activities. We are shifters. We do not belong in hallowed halls for all our gatherings. And in my father’s black and white tiled halls where my blood has been spilled more times than there has been true joy and laughter, I am more than pleased with our choice of fighting location.
It will be the start of my reign that we return to nature.
But whoever is to be king of the eagles next will not have to fight for his right to his seat.
This will be the first fight in over three hundred years, and our last for many years to come. It will be the blood that needs to be spilled to rebuild the Eagle tribe from an old-world regime into what I desire for it to become.
It is only right that Elizabeth has a front-row seat to what she will help me rebuild.
Vera’s voice interrupts my thoughts.
“I would wish you luck, but I suppose those wishes are not wanted now that you’ve taken up with the whore queen’s niece.”
I round on her, but it is not I who rips into the woman with cutting words.
It is my que
en’s magic.
She drums her fingers along her hip and struts toward us, her eyes on Vera.
“Don’t speak. It fucks with the vibe,” she tells her.
I hear Snake guffaw. It takes a lot to get Snake to do anything beyond smirking and causing trouble.
Vera, it seems, cannot speak. She tries, but her eyes widen and she mumbles something before rushing off, her muffled cries drawing the attention of everyone currently in attendance.
I watch her leave, the sensation of satisfaction filling me.
Then, I face my queen. “It seems our children will know exactly who is boss.”
It’s a damned ridiculous comment after this morning. She doesn’t appear to think so because she smiles.
Then she leans forward, and without touching me, she whispers, “Snake’s shirtless.”
I lean back, wanting to do anything but. “Why, pray tell, Elizabeth, are you assessing Snake’s level of nudity?”
She smirks and walks to Snake, turning his body toward me and revealing his arm.
A white snake, ironic coloring since the band itself is arguably one of the best bands in all of rock and roll, is placed near-perfectly against the contours of his muscled bicep and triceps.
“That’s why,” she says, walking toward me again. She doesn’t accuse. She’s not angry. She sees past my charades and facades. She sees me. “That’s why you backed away this morning.”
I don’t have a chance to back away again. I wouldn’t want to anymore.
She was correct this morning. But I was more than afraid. I was terrified. I have not had a life built on the idea that hope is a worthwhile endeavor. She gives me hope, this exotic and beguiling beauty.
I reach out to touch her face, and Elizabeth grabs my arm.
“Nuh-uh,” she tells me, shaking her head. “It’s my turn to have control.”
My chest burns even as her fingers dig into my shoulders and she touches her mouth to mine, stealing my breath.
I feel the skin and bone of my chest being made anew. The sensation fires through sinew, tissues, and nerves I’ve never felt, not even in my daily workouts. Her gasp tells me she feels it as well.
That gasp fires other things in me, making my cock hard, demanding of me that I lay my queen down and show her with my body how much her earlier words of love mean to me.
I have more control than this. It has been ingrained in me by a man who has no such thing.
I lean back slowly, allowing myself one final swipe of my tongue along the seam of her lips.
“I love you,” I tell her, my hand on her cheek, my other on her hip. Her eyes brighten with unshed tears. “I love you, and I should have said that this morning when you shared that you felt what I have felt, I believe, since the first time I was in your thrall as I watched you play your instrument on a street corner. For that, Elizabeth, I apologize. I will do much to earn your forgiveness.”
She shakes her head and raises herself so she’s as close as she can be. “You don’t get it yet, Eagle. I get you. I was mad this morning. I’ll be mad again.”
“Yes,” Snake interrupts with, “Scipio is quite vexing, is he not?”
She smiles at his mimicking of my formal verbiage but her gaze returns to me.
“We’re Haves, Eagle.”
That rushes through me, a soothing balm. I cling to that feeling. And suddenly, I do ‘get it’.
I kiss her swiftly, surprising her I think by the slightly glazed look she has when I take a step back in order to undress.
That glazed look becomes more so as she watches my meticulous movements.
I smile without hiding it. I do not care whether my father sees my happiness. He will not take it from me, no matter his plans.
I remove my suit jacket, meticulously. The cuffs of my shirt are next. I undo the links, then the wrist cuffs, then the shirt buttons. Everything I do is deliberate and precise, just as I have always been.
When I’m down to just my bare back and bare feet, and trousers are the only barrier between us, I look toward the area where my father stands with his own advisors. But his advisors are not family as those around me are.
When my eyes fasten on the group around me, it’s to see the look my queen has on her face.
I find myself laughing lightly.
“My trousers will remain, Elizabeth.”
She scrunches her nose. “Spoilsport.”
“Oh, that’s a good one,” Snake says. “Spoilsport Scipio, the general who ruins the fun but brings the blood.”
“Let us hope,” I reply.
“He’s less fun to rile today. You two totally had sex last night, didn’t you?” Snake asks of Elizabeth in an accusing tone.
I’m about to come to her aid when she smiles at me, and then grins at Snake. “More than once in fact.”
Grizz grunts.
Heavy chuckles.
Snake smirks.
I walk toward the arena, my queen’s hand letting go of mine slowly until just our fingers touch, and then I am alone, walking forward.
And yet I am not alone.
That is Elizabeth’s point.
When you have family and friends, you have it all.
I already have it all.
I am a Have in every way.
My father is a Have-not—and my queen may not have been correct in her initial assumptions of me, but she would be in terms of my father. For that reason, for the first time in my life, I pity Imperial Manius Ambustus. A pompous name he may have, but it is a name that holds history, and he has spat on that history—and after today, there will be nothing of his legacy left to salvage.
“Hello, Father.”
My father's eyes bore into my chest, and I see a slip in his calm facade. It is then I know he is holding onto the only thing he has left—his pride.
There is no ace up his sleeve.
There is only arrogance.
I offer him an out.
“As you see, Los Angeles is up next in the search for our queens.” I turn toward the edge of the arena. Elizabeth has not returned to her seat where her aunt, her cousins, and three young women, presumably her roommates, as well as a woman who is dark-skinned but resembles Elizabeth, a man at her side, now reside. Instead, she remains with the rest of the kings. “I have my queen. This is already my kingdom—”
“Not for another twenty-nine days, and if you lose this fight, it will never be yours. I will have the right to rule for another thirty years.”
I shake my head in exasperation as once more, I pity him.
“So, we will not reach a detente, then, even with the proof of my mate on my chest, and my right to rule established by the fates?”
“She’s a Dabbler, for Christ’s sake, son.”
My eyes become shifter-bright. I do not lose control, but I have never been so ready to in all my life.
He is baiting me, I realize. There are no other avenues for him to take. His ruling ends today if he loses this fight, but if I draw blood before the challenge officially begins, with this as a formal match, I forfeit the fight.
I will still rule, but my father will cause as much damage as he can in the twenty-nine days to come if I do not lay down the law now.
I instead advise him, or as Elizabeth would say, I school him. “I think you understand that I won’t be tolerating any ignorance you spout about my mate and the queen of the Eagle tribe. The convocations will know by the end of the day. My suggestion, Father, get your affairs in order because I’m not starting my ruling off with you fucking with the other kings, our plans for the band, and my relationship with my queen.”
He sputters. “You can’t just send me away.”
I smile. “Look around you, Father. Who is on your side of the arena today? How many calls have you answered from your people this week?”
Yes, I pity him, because even his advisors look away from him when he turns to take in the crowds, none of whom are on his side of the arena.
This is, fortuitously, when the queen
s of the thirteen families enter.
I’m surprised to note Ryn is first, as she is still in training with her mother, and the current queen of the Dabbler witches. Her sisters Vy and Fee follow close. Behind them, a red-haired witch with jade-green eyes, the new queen of the Sea witches. And in line behind her, the others continue in the procession. I do not know their names, but I will. This is my world, and I have been remiss in not learning all that I can. Snake jokes and calls me Scipio or general, but for my people, I am that. I am king, and that should show in not only my control and my desire to rule a kind and compassionate, but also strong and driven people. It should show in those I am willing to share ideas with.
Ryn and I have not discussed her plans for coming out, but there is a divide between the supernaturals. Who knows how that tide will go, but I will be prepared. I will keep my queen and my people safe, no matter what occurs.
“Now that’s a couple’s tattoo,” the one I know is Vy says. Her hair is not red in the traditional sense. It’s red, and orange, and pink with shimmering silver, and pitch-black stands strewn throughout. The hair of fire, like her mother’s.
I look down at my chest, unable to see it clearly at that angle, but my father interrupts.
“Either we fight or you forfeit.”
“We fight,” I tell the witches.
They nod and take their place on the thirteen seats reserved for them.
We are resurrecting an ancient tradition—and so, we do it correctly.
“Corners, challengers,” Ryn intones.
“How very modern, having a Dabbler witch lead a ceremony that is used to decide who will be king.” My father does not know when to quit.
“Well, Imperial, we thought the changing of the guard needed a dose of contrasts. You see, I hold a little bit of all the gifts, and I will be queen but I will never take my position for granted. You had a life full of everything you could want, and you chose to squander it. And now, today, you will lose your kingdom. Irony meet iron will and pride.”
My father turns to the other queens. “She’s biased. Her own cousin is my heir’s queen.”
