And more than that, four lions prowled nearby in the moonlight. Four real lions. No wonder they’d told me I had to get back.
Rage rippled through me, and I jumped to my feet. “Stop fighting,” I yelled, kicking at them. This time, I didn’t have a gun. I had no way to stop them as they rolled over in the grass, fists and claws flying. I only knew that both of these men had lied to me, tricked me. Shadow hadn’t just told me he was my mate. He’d used that lie to gain my sympathy, to come between me and my sister. I knew he hadn’t killed my mother now, but I didn’t know why he’d lied to me. I wanted a chance to find out, though, and I’d never get it if he got himself killed.
And though I resented Kwame for making me choose him over my mother and Tadeu, my mother had confirmed that I was actually his mate, and that meant something to me even if I didn’t know exactly what. It was romantic, somehow, to have a mate, even if it wasn’t infused with magic for me. I’d given up my mother for him, and I hadn’t done it so he could be killed.
I had to save him, to get the amulet if nothing else. His mother wouldn’t very well give me the thing if I had just gotten her son killed again. Besides, my mother had told me he was important, and I believed her.
When I couldn’t find anything around to use as a weapon, I threw myself on the two men. I had put myself in mortal danger plenty of times lately. I was the expendable human, and if throwing Kwame’s mate into danger would make him stop fighting, I’d do it, even if that mate was me. If my mother could give up a chance to live again for Prince Kwame, if he was that important, then I could risk it, too.
Claws raked down my back, and I arched in pain, crying out. A second later, someone slammed into me from above as another person threw himself into the fray.
“Break it up,” Lord Balam snarled, ripping Shadow from Kwame. Shadow twisted around, catlike, and sank his teeth into Lord Balam. Kwame leapt back onto Shadow, snarling about his mate. Lord Balam hurled Prince Kwame across the grass, his body landing with a thud. Shadow barked that I was his mate, slashing at Sir Kenosi as he ran in to grab me.
I rolled away in the grass, fighting back sobs of pain. Strong arms scooped me up, and his smell, like dried grass in the sun, enveloped me. I pressed my face to Kwame’s chest as he whisked me away from the fight, leaving my three lovers snarling at each other in the savannah.
I didn’t care. Prince Kwame had been there in the spirit world. He knew I was his mate, and he knew what I’d given up for him. I was going to make damn sure he never forgot it. But for now, I could only wrap my arms around his neck as he carried me inside the royal house.
“What happened?” came a low, familiar voice out of the darkness. I hated that I couldn’t see anything in the interior of the house. As cats, they could probably see everything, but I could make out nothing but Kwame’s flat, hard chest against my tear-streaked cheeks. But I knew that voice, a voice that had traveled the halls of my father’s treacherous kingdom all my life. The kingdom I had believed was mine, that I would return to, until that moment.
“Lay her here,” Gabor ordered, and though he was only a guard, and Kwame was a prince, the lion obeyed. I was lain on the floor, and I felt Gabor’s strong hands turning me, pressing me face down on the packed dirt. Gabor, who served my father with unwavering, unquestioning loyalty.
I remembered the days after my mother’s death, when a dozen guards were executed for failing to protect her. My father had ordered those executions, murdering twelve innocent men who had given up everything, given up the chance at living for themselves so they could live for their country and serve the king with blind devotion. And he’d killed them, twelve men who might have been as good as Gabor, for the simple reason that he had to make it look like an outside attack.
That was when Gabor had been promoted, brought into the palace and trained and brainwashed to believe my father’s lies. And now… Now I felt something for him that I didn’t feel for anyone else. Not Kwame, my mate, or Lord Balam, my first lover. Not even Tadeu, my first love, or Shadow, whom I also could not trust. What I felt for Gabor was so much more complicated, and yet, so simple. He would always be my father’s. He would never be mine.
It didn’t matter that his hands were agony on my skin, holding me steady with relentless pressure, as gentle as a lover’s and as hot as the devil’s. He held me down as Kwame’s tongue swiped over my wounds, drawing a ragged sob from my throat. I wanted to scream at Gabor to do it himself, that I wanted him to heal me, to taste my blood, not this kind stranger who had done nothing to earn my fury but who had gotten it nonetheless. Kwame’s healing tongue finished its job, and Gabor lifted me into his arms without a word, conveying me to a hammock and shifting me gently into the swaying sling.
“Gabor,” I said, sliding an arm around his neck. One day, if I kept asking, maybe he would stay. Maybe I could rewrite history, rewrite reality, and one day, one night, he would tell me he felt the same.
“Itzel,” he whispered, not using my royal title this one time, as if the rules had changed in the darkness. His fingers stroked my hair back, and after a second, his forehead touched mine. He moved his head slowly back and forth, his skin brushing mine, the gesture so innocent and yet so painfully intimate it stopped my breath.
“Where is my guard?” Camila’s voice hissed through the night. “Gabor?”
Gabor stilled for a beat, and then he was gone, a cool rush of air taking his place as he hurried to my sister’s side. Prince Kwame had stood back respectfully, not fighting for his mate as he had when Shadow had tried to claim me. I didn’t protest when Kwame slid into the hammock beside me, his long body stretched the length of the hammock. He wrapped an arm around me, murmuring words of comfort to me, apologizing for hurting me and assuring me I’d heal quickly.
I hardly heard him. I’d spent my tears for the evening, but my heart was a shell. It wasn’t just the wound, the gashes torn along my back. The last few days had destroyed me. Everything I’d always known had been ripped from under my feet, sending me tumbling into a freefall. Camila didn’t trust me. My mother was gone, and I’d had one chance to bring her back, and instead, I’d brought back this supposed mate of mine.
I wanted to sob so hard I turned myself inside out. But all I could do was lie there, as silent and empty as the night world once the men had come in from fighting. There was no fight in me anymore, either. I knew I should want to overthrow my father this very day, not waiting the six more months for Camila’s coronation. For tonight, though, all I wanted was everything I couldn’t have. The mother I hadn’t saved. The sister I’d lost. The man who had married himself to my father’s service. And most of all, I wanted to be anyone but the daughter of a monster.
Forty-Three
I woke to the sounds of shrieking and laughter. Since I was not exactly a morning person, the last thing I wanted to do was get up and face a bunch of bright and chipper people—especially when the weight of the night before came crashing into me. I pulled the hammock tight around me, aware that I was alone in it now, unlike when I’d fallen asleep. If only I could block out the noise, the people, the past. But the delicious aroma of fried onions and spices and something sweet called to me, and my stomach twisted, keeping me awake from within even if I could have drowned out the noise.
Finally, I gave up and clambered from my hammock. My back hurt, but not nearly as much as it should. Someone had peeled off my shirt replaced it with a soft, pink thermal top and black cotton shorts with pink clouds printed on them. Judging by the tightness of the fabric across my chest and hips, I had to assume they were Camila’s, though I didn’t know why she’d bothered to have someone dress me. And how they’d managed to do it without waking me, I’d never know, but I didn’t have the energy to question it. Probably the panther hallucinogen or Kwame’s saliva. I had stopped trying to understand shifter magic.
Without stopping to find more clothes, I stumbled out from behind the fluttering curtain that sectioned off the sleeping area. The moment I emerged, the chattering of two d
ozen voices ceased. Everyone turned to look at me, pausing around the feast laid out on platters in the center of the circle where they sat. After a second, Prince Kwame rose from a seat around the huge circle and loped over to me. He took both my hands in.
“Good morning, Princess Itzel,” he said, a smile twitching at the corners of his lips.
“Good morning, Prince Kwame,” I said, curling my toes against the cool dirt floor.
A bright, gap-toothed smile broke over his face, making the raised scars on his forehead bunch and his eyes squinch almost closed. “Let me introduce you.”
“Actually, I met your family yesterday,” I said, wincing at the memory of my blunder.
“You’re my family now,” he said, tucking my hand into his and pulling me across the room. I knew I should protest, tell him I couldn’t have an audience with the queen while still in pajamas, but I decided it didn’t really matter. Camila would be scandalized, and Gabor would probably think I represented our nation with a marked lack of decorum, but none of it bothered me.
I scanned the faces, finding many new and unfamiliar ones as well as the lion royals. Then there was Sir Kenosi, wearing the same sort of tunic as the other lion clan members, and Lord Balam, stoically watching his lover approach on the arm of another man. And Shadow, his long cascade of black hair hanging down his back, his green eyes bright as he watched me. There was so much I needed to say to them all, but him in particular. Gabor sat next to my sister, her face placid and calm even though I knew she was fuming with humiliation that I’d come to breakfast in such a state.
For a minute, I wanted to let her be furious at me. I wanted to let her biggest concern be my attire. To let her keep believing our father loved us, that he’d mourned our mother with us. For a minute, I wanted to let her keep living the lie we’d lived for half our lives.
Before I could find a way to pull her aside, the queen was on her feet.
“My daughter,” she said, holding out a hand in a welcoming gesture. Instead of her cold expression from the night before, she wore a smile that covered her whole face. Her eyes squinted almost all the way closed as she stood and held out her arms to me.
I was too stunned by her transformation to move, but Prince Kwame conveyed me forward into her arms. Queen Lion enveloped me in a full body hug like the ones my mother used to give me. Only then did I realize she was talking to me. That she’d called me her daughter.
“I hear that you are in need of this,” she said, stroking a glass bead on her necklace.
“Oh, yes,” Camila said before I could answer.
“Th-thank you,” I managed.
“Thank you for bringing my son back to me,” Queen Lion said, pulling back to take my face between her strong, worn hands. Even the lines around her eyes seemed to have faded since the day before. Tears glistened on her lashes as she smiled at me. “I can never repay you.”
“We are forever in your debt,” King Lion agreed, appearing behind his wife. “No matter what happens, if you ever need our assistance in any matter, you don’t even need to ask. Not only are you our daughter now, but you have returned our son to the land of the living.”
He enveloped both his queen and me in his arms. Prince Kwame joined the embrace, stepping behind me and wrapping us all in his long, ropy arms. Laughter sounded all through the big house, and the queen’s tears fell freely. When the king pulled back, tears ran down his face as well.
“You have a second family,” said one of the princesses, standing to join our small group. “It can never replace your first, but you’re our brother’s mate, which means you’re our sister now.”
I wanted to tell them that I wasn’t sticking around to make a home there, but this didn’t seem the time. The queen undid her necklace and carefully removed the beads, at last pulling out a sleek yellow-and-orange bead. She handed it to Kwame, wrapping her arms around him and holding him so tightly I wasn’t sure she’d ever let go.
Camila rose gracefully from her mat on the floor and cleared her throat. “Your Majesty,” she interrupted in her soft, sweet voice. “I am the heir to the Ocelot Throne, as you know. I am collecting the amulets.”
“Of course,” Queen Lion said, the joy beginning to drain from her face as a bit of her queenly resolve returned. “You’re a part of our family now, too.”
“A royal marriage in return for the amulet is a tradition we are happy to continue,” Camila said.
Wait, what? My gaze flew between my sister and the queen and then to my other lovers. My father had assumed I would marry Lord Balam—or he had certainly hoped I would before Lord Balam got tired of me and left me a ruined woman. Though Lord Balam and I had never made that commitment, quite the opposite in fact, I didn’t want to be the one leaving him any more than I wanted to be left by him. He’d already seen his wife find someone else. Now he had to see me do it. Kwame pushed the bead into my hand as if solidifying the fact.
“Cooperation is not a question this time,” King Lion said. “This is more than a marriage of alliance. My son has found the rarest jewel—a True Mate.” He said the words with reverence, as if I were a goddess or something. The way Kwame was looking at me let me know he shared the king’s estimation.
“Thank you,” I said, bowing slightly. “I am truly honored to be a part of your family as well as my own. As Camila’s escort, I must finish her Amulet Tour with her. I would be happy to visit the Lion Kingdom as soon as it is over.”
“Oh,” Queen Lion said, more of her smile slipping away. “I see. Of course. Preparing to join our nation is a big step. A few delays are unavoidable. We only hope you will return quickly. Preparations for a royal wedding are in store.” Her smile returned, and she took both my hands in hers and squeezed.
Okay, then. This True Mate thing was a bigger deal than Shadow had let on. Suddenly, people were planning my wedding, and I’d only met Prince Kwame twice in my life. I didn’t even know if I liked him. But then, that’s how arranged marriages worked. You didn’t have to like each other. You just had to spend the rest of your life together.
“Delays won’t be necessary,” Camila said. “I’m happy to leave my sister here to enjoy her True Mate if you are able to provide me with one female escort for the remainder of my tour.”
“Yes, yes, take anyone,” Queen Lion said in a rush, as if afraid Camila might change her mind.
My heart twisted in my chest like my sister had skewered it on the end of her knife when she slipped it in my back. I shouldn’t have been surprised, and I really wasn’t. I shouldn’t have hurt, but I did. Every time, it was like the first time, the sting so fresh and raw it nearly brought me to my knees. My sister didn’t want me there.
“Good,” Camila said. “Then it’s settled. Thank you for your hospitality, and I hope this marriage will create a bond of trust between two great nations.”
She bowed to the queen, who returned the gesture, though not as deeply.
Camila bowed to the king and then to Kwame before turning to me. If I married Prince Kwame, I would be the next Lion Queen. I saw that knowledge click into place as she met my eyes. She’d never considered that I could be anyone of importance, certainly not someone of an equal title. But not every feline nation considered humans inferior. Prince Kwame and his family seemed nothing less than overjoyed to have me as their family. Of course they did. The king and queen themselves were mere humans, unable to take a lion’s form until they died.
It occurred to me then that this wouldn’t be my last amulet tour. Prince Kwame would one day have to take this journey, and I might very well accompany him. As my gaze moved around the circle, I had to swallow past a knot in my throat. If I married Kwame, would I have to give up these men, only to see them again when Prince Kwame was ready to take the throne? He’d have to bargain for the amulet from Lord Balam, the curandero of the Jaguar Nation. From young Shadow, whose trickery I might never understand. From Sir Kenosi and his twisted games. And from Queen Camila, who had taken each amulet from my hand as if I o
wed it to her.
What if I wouldn’t give it up this time?
Forty-Four
One day, I would need Camila’s alliance. One day, I would need to ask her for the Ocelot Amulet, would need to give her something in return. Maybe I would remind her of this moment, when the queen had given the Lion Amulet to me, and I handed it to her instead of keeping it.
But I knew that in her mind, she had already earned it. She hadn’t gone into the spirit world and given up her mother for it. She’d traded it for a marriage alliance.
One bead for one human sister.
For all I knew, she’d planned it all along. Maybe that was why she’d brought me with her at all. When she held out a hand to me, palm up, I hesitated before delivering the bead with shaking fingers.
“I hope it’s worth it,” I said.
Camila looked as if she didn’t know what I was talking about. “You may help me prepare my things for our journey to the Tiger Kingdom,” she said. “We must take our leave so that we can collect the remaining amulets and return in time for your wedding.”
Maybe it was knowing all those eyes were on me, or maybe it was the princess training that was ingrained in me despite my best efforts, but I couldn’t argue with my sister there in front of the whole Lion Court. So, after promising Queen Lion that I would come celebrate with them afterward, I followed Camila back to the sleeping quarters.
The others in our party trailed behind.
“Itzel,” Lord Balam said, a troubled frown creasing his forehead. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
When our eyes met, I had to look away. What would happen if I refused this arranged marriage? Would the Lion Court turn on me, consider me a traitor, as the Ocelot Court would if someone dared defy a royal order? Would I be executed? Or would they chase down my sister and take the amulet by force, as the Panther Kingdom had tried to do?
“Yes,” I said. “But I have to talk to Camila first.” Time for a goodbye was the least I owed Lord Balam. In truth, I owed him a thousand times that. But I couldn’t give him what he deserved right now.
Captive Princess: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Feline Royals Book 2) Page 21
