“Brilliant idea.” Sarcasm was a wonderful method of keeping walls between one’s self and others.
“Thank you.”
“Now uncuff me so I may assist you in this endeavor.”
Yes, uncuff and free me, Alphar, so I can kick you in the balls again for being so presumptuous. Or maybe kiss you. I’ll decide later.
“Why?” he asked, tilting his head in a familiar wolfish gesture.
“Just uncuff me.”
“I don’t know…I like you cuffed to the bed.”
“I bet that’s how you like all your women,” she mumbled but he ignored her.
“It wasn’t my idea to cuff you. You attacked my people, and even though you’ve been suspiciously forthcoming with all the information about yourself, I can’t guarantee you aren’t here as an enemy.”
“I work for you, damn it. I am not an enemy.”
“Until yesterday I didn’t know Incendiaries existed. All I knew was there was a crazy woman attacking my guards. Something I don’t take lightly.”
“I did not kill them.”
“No, if you had, you wouldn’t be in such comfortable accommodations. I am responsible for every soul inside this mansion, and while it goes against everything I am because of who you are to me, I need to keep you under a leash. Understand?” She nodded grudgingly, not holding the need to protect his people against him. It was what any Alphar worth his or her salt would have done.
“While I have you here—”
“As if I had a choice.” She couldn’t help but mutter.
“—we should discuss the mating.”
Cymbeline pinned him with a penetrating stare. “We are not mated.”
“Correct.” His admission caught her unawares and she relaxed back into the pillow. “We, the human halves of our souls are not mated. But our Beasts, the animals within, have chosen each other. Didn’t your trainers teach you all this along with how to kill members of our populace?”
“They taught me to hunt and kill rogues, a job someone had to do by the way, so don’t make it sound so despicable. I wasn’t taught the finer points of mating as Incendiaries don’t mate. We’re not exactly the social type.”
“I would be glad to teach you.” And there was that lascivious grin again. She would very much like to smack it off his face.
“You touch me and you will experience a far worse pain than just a kick to your tiny balls.”
“If they were tiny, you would have missed.”
She smiled, unwilling to admit to herself she enjoyed this back and forth. “I have superb aim.”
He looked annoyed for the briefest of moments until a smile lit up his face. “I see you need some time to think.” He stood and moved towards the door. “I’ll let you mull it over for a while.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, sitting up and dislodging the food tray until it crashed to the floor. He ignored that as well.
“I’m the Alphar. I’m a very busy man.”
“Too busy to keep who you think is your mate company as you have her chained to your bed?”
“Oh, so you admit we’re mated now?” he asked, crossing his arms with a knowing look.
She slammed her hands on the bed in frustration, unable to hold the anger back any longer. “No, but you think we are mates! So for you to leave me here, thinking I am your mate, would be very—very ungentlemanly. Not a good way to treat who you will be chained to for the rest of eternity.”
“Then why kick me in the balls? That wasn’t exactly ladylike behavior.”
She shrugged. “From your perspective? Foreplay.”
His grin was more than feral. “Foreplay?” He crawled onto the bed, a hunting cat stalking his prey. Her heart began to pump at his close proximity. He straddled her, holding her legs down with his own powerful thighs and pinning her hands to the bed. “Foreplay?” he asked again, a dangerous whisper across her lips.
She refused to look away and back down. He had her hands pinned but she could still lean back on them to keep herself propped up. She stared him right in the eye.
“Foreplay. The harder the kick the harder your cock gets.”
“I’m hard, but it’s not from your kick, I can assure you.” He bit her bottom lip and it was all she could do to keep the wolfish whimper from escaping her chest.
“Tell me, Cymbeline,” he whispered, trailing his lips across her cheek and towards her ear. “Do you not like the feel of my lips on your skin? The bite of my teeth on your ear?” He bit the shell of her ear and she pressed her mouth closed to keep the moan in. “Don’t you want to feel my lips on other places? Feel my body as it slides against yours? My chest rubbing against your naked breasts, your nipples stiff as pebbles. My cock as it teases and rubs the lips of your pussy.”
Don’t moan. Don’t moan. Don’t moan.
“Tell me you don’t want it.” His lips skimmed over her jaw and down to the junction of shoulder and neck. That spot. Her trainers may have given her the bare basics of mating but she’d noticed one of them had had a giant teeth mark tattoo on his neck. In her youth she’d asked what it meant and he told her it was his mating mark. The tattoo made from love and magic that replaced the bite scars his mate had left as she’d claimed him for herself, warning off all other Weres.
She tensed, feeling his lips at that spot and turned her head towards his ear, biting down. Hard.
“What the—”
“I do not mate,” she snarled, not letting go of his ear. “I may want to fuck you, but I do not mate.”
The Alphar dug his thumb into her mouth, dislodging her teeth’s bloody grip on his ear. He held her chin with a resolute grasp and rested his lips against hers. “Why not? Do you want to be alone the rest of your life?” He nuzzled her cheek, and a second later he was gone.
Chapter Five
“It must be so nice to finally have a feminine presence in that room of yours.”
“Finally? I’ve only been sleeping in this room a little over three years.” How Grace even knew there was a woman in his room confounded him, but Kerrick had stopped trying to figure out her eerie clairvoyance a long time ago.
Kerrick smiled at the image of his mentor on the video chat screen. He hadn’t seen Grace since ascending to his Alphar seat of power. At the time she had faithfully stood at his side and witnessed the challenge he’d lain at Riddan’s feet. It was her clear voice he’d heard, through the haze of blood and violence, proclaiming him the new North American Alphar. It was her hand that guided him through accepting the overwhelming and consuming power, showing him how to absorb it completely into his skin, in his soul. Without Grace, the power would have taken him under, turning him mad within those first few moments as Alphar.
Grace was the Alphar of Western Europe and the woman he was sent to in order to learn to control his potential Alphar powers. Hers was the oldest and most powerful territory, even though it was nowhere near the largest, and having her protégé leading the North American Weres only cemented her place in power. Kerrick was fully aware of the advantageous spot she’d placed him in. Some of the other Alphars had gone so far as to call him her puppet. But as the youngest Alphar in existence, youngest potential to ever take the helm of power and make it his own, he was above any juvenile insult to bring him down and test his resolve.
For now, Kerrick was content to let the rumors fly as long as Grace did not interfere with how he saw fit to run his territory. His territory. The reality of his position was still hard to get his head around. At times the weight of the Alphar position was almost too much to bear. He felt his people’s souls like the force of a thousand chains wrapped around his heart. But at other times, their souls were warm and comforting, fortifying his strength. Yet he often found himself thinking he needed someone to share that burden with. Contemplating the woman currently chained to his bed, he didn’t think Cymbeline would
be too willing at this point in their courtship.
Her face when she realized he was leaving her chained to the bed had been amusing no matter how much it irked him to leave her there. But he could tell her legs were not fully healed from the Vryk blood, and if she were released and uncuffed, she could potentially harm herself and others in the process of escaping. Kerrick had no doubt she would try to escape once she had the chance, she was too intelligent to sit complacently and wait. He could tolerate her annoyance with him, but he wouldn’t tolerate her harming herself or his people.
“Why the sudden call, Ker?” Grace asked, using the familiar nickname she’d had for him since childhood. Her coal-black eyes gleamed at Kerrick with that familiar glint of pride he’d grown to depend upon. Born in America but sent to hone his potential Alphar power in England, she looked the same as she had when he first arrived there as a boy, sent away by his mother in order to become the leader he was today. Grace’s head was topped with close-cropped black hair, she was as fit as a woman in her mid-thirties, and looked no older than forty, her centuries of existence only showing in her eyes. Tall and muscular, standing close to Kerrick’s height at six feet, she held the bearing of the warriors she took pride in training, physical prowess being an important part of her regime as Western Europe’s Alphar.
“Can you tell me about the Incendiary?”
Grace nodded, a simple smile stretching her lips. “Which one, dear? Yours or mine?”
“So it really is true,” he said, running his hands through his hair in disbelief.
“What, dear?” she asked, taking a sip of some wine and smiling at him in that indulgent way she had with Kerrick alone. He was the closest thing she would ever have to a son, as the Alphar power rendered the shifter infertile upon inheriting it. He also, would never have a biological child.
“Incendiaries are real.” He laughed, almost in a state of shock. Yes, his mate had been adamant about her position, and Carter had confirmed her story, crossing paths with Cymbeline once or twice in their working relationship, whatever that meant. It better not mean what Kerrick thought it meant or Carter would no longer be able to meet the requirements of ambassador once Kerrick ripped his tongue out.
Kerrick’s astonished reaction gained Grace’s attention. She placed her wineglass on the table and leaned towards the screen, brow furrowed. “Riddan never introduced you to his Incendiary? Not even when you were Captain?”
“No. Up until this morning I still thought Incendiaries were scary bedtime stories.”
“And they are, to the general population. To us they are valuable assets who should be respected and given every honor. How have you been dealing with rogues since your ascension?”
He shrugged, annoyed that Riddan’s secrecy and general unorganized way of running their people had, yet again, turned into a road block for him. “The only rogues we’ve been aware of were the ones turned by the chaos of the Alphar transition.”
“Oh Gods, I’ve said it a thousand times but I’ll say it again, I bloody hate Riddan and thank the Gods that menace is ash on the wind.” Grace and Kerrick had both known Riddan on a personal level. Upon completion of his training with Grace, after coming of age, Kerrick had been sent to serve as a guard in Riddan’s army. He’d risen through the ranks and learned there was most definitely a wrong way and a right way of ruling as Alphar. When the time came, when Kerrick saw that Riddan’s insanity was unalterable, he challenged Riddan for the Alphar seat.
“Darling, an Incendiary is worth ten teams of guards and warriors. They are hand picked and trained from a young age in many different forms of combat. Not to mention the array of skills they are given outside of combat during their training. But the most important reason you need them is that they are raised on the outside of our society. They will never personally know the rogues they are forced to hunt, and they will never falter due to sympathy for their target. You need the Incendiary on your side, Ker. They are a vital tool.”
Kerrick didn’t like hearing how his mate was supposed to be used as a tool. The story of her life sounded lonely, a never-ending task with one goal in mind. It wasn’t exactly dissimilar from his own story. They had both been sent away from their mothers as children to train for some greater purpose. At least he had had his cousins and Grace to keep him company. All she had was an endless line of trainers and nothing more. What happened to Incendiaries if they wished to retire? Or what if one was killed in the line of duty? Did nobody mourn for them? Were they given a choice to become Incendiaries?
“How did you discover the existence of your Incendiary?” Grace asked when he didn’t respond.
“She came to see me, actually. Seemed a little pissed that I and all my constituents thought she was a fairytale. Also she doesn’t look very threatening, which probably added to the hilarity of the situation for my guards.”
“Did you laugh at her? You did, didn’t you? You laughed at the Incendiary!” She threw her hands up in disbelief. “Are you mad? The woman, and that’s brilliant that your Incendiary is a woman by the way, is a trained killer. You don’t laugh at those kinds of people, Ker. One hundred and fifty years old and you still have no sense.”
“I didn’t laugh at her, Grace. My guards did!”
“And?”
“Oh she beat the ever-loving shit out of them. I’m shocked they’re still breathing.” She could have killed them if she wanted to. Instead she knocked them out, because according to her way of life, she didn’t kill indiscriminately. “We have her here, Grace…she’s the woman in my bedroom.”
Grace blinked after a moment, without betraying her thoughts on the matter before asking. “How is she taking that?”
“Oh, brilliantly. She’s staying in the Master Suite as you know.”
“Which is curious in itself. Tell me what’s going on, Kerrick?”
“I mated with her. My Beast chose her. The second I saw her she was mine.”
“Bullocks,” Grace said, echoing Kerrick’s thoughts on the matter. “An Alphar mated to an Incendiary. Is that even possible?”
“You know, Grace, I’ve never mated before but I’m pretty sure this gut-wrenching feeling of need and lust that completely overcomes me whenever I see her is fucking mating. Either that or I have severe indigestion while simultaneously suffering from a heart attack.”
“Kerrick my dear,” she said, grinning and shaking her head while once again picking up her wineglass. “You just perfectly described love.” Grace saluted him with the glass and took a long swig of what was probably a very expensive wine.
“The girl knows nothing of how to function around other people. She’s abrasive, indomitable, belligerent—”
“Belligerent? That doesn’t sound right,” Grace said, twirling what was left of her wine inside the glass, watching the liquid spin and spin.
“How so?” Kerrick asked, recognizing the deep thought process overcoming his mentor when she was contemplating something otherworldly.
“Incendiaries should be emotionless. They are taught strict and unyielding methods to suppress their emotions.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, something to do with why they are picked to be the Incendiary in the first place.” Grace shook her head quickly, dislodging the faraway gaze she developed when her clairvoyance interrupted her everyday functioning. “In any case, either her emotions are breaking through her barriers because of your mating, which will make her an inefficient Incendiary, or, she is using the appearance of emotion as a ruse for some greater purpose.” Kerrick didn’t like the sound of that at all. To have a mate capable of shielding her emotions would be the worst kind of hell. She would be able to deny their mating, while he would be forever connected to a woman who didn’t want him, who could ignore him. He would go mad.
“Have you had any more trouble with the Vryk bitch?” Grace asked, referring to Mara. She was an Ancient, probably cl
ose to Grace’s age, whatever that was. Mara had immense power and seemed to think now that Riddan was gone, Kerrick would capitulate to her every want and need, becoming her slave. She even expected him to move the Were headquarters, his home, to a different location so she could take over the land. The woman was drinking some crack-laced blood if she thought he would prostrate himself before her and sacrifice his people’s safe haven.
“Nothing outside of the usual negotiations, and her minions loitering just beyond our borders. More importantly, Rhiannon thinks Carter seems anxious. She thinks he’s under more pressure than he’s letting on.” He let his gaze fall on the latest stack of conditions Carter had brought on behalf of his mistress. “If things continue to proceed in this vein, we’ll be facing war with that clan before the year is out.”
“No one knows Mara’s mind, Ker. She is twisted and all her moves are self-serving. Mara is one of the smartest creatures I have ever known, she has a reason for dragging these negotiations out the way she has instead of just attacking. Then again, she may just like the sadistic entertainment of seeing you squirm.” She leveled Kerrick with a penetrating gaze, mouth tight and brow furrowed in worry.
“I do not squirm, thank you very much.” Kerrick couldn’t hold back his next question. “Grace, what happens to Incendiaries when they no longer want to be the Incendiary?”
“From what I understand, Kerrick, the only way an Incendiary is relieved of their position, is if they die.”
Chapter Six
“This is a pack structure.”
Cymbeline sat in a large leather chair along the far wall of the Alphar’s quarters, still handcuffed much to her irritation. Her captors were considerate enough to magically enlarge the length of chain so she could move about the room and use the facilities. However, Cymbeline refused to give them any credit for the gesture as she had been on the brink of wetting the bed when Lottie, the head physician who should know better, remembered she was a living being with a digestive system that created waste. Just to spite the Alphar, Cymbeline found herself half tempted to scent mark everything in his rooms, especially his little string instrument collection he seemed so fond of. A myriad of guitars, violins, cellos, anything in the string instrument family rested or hung along a large brick wall like a shrine to some string instrument god. He even had an upright piano sitting in front a window, overlooking the expansive back lawn.
To Mate an Assassin: The Lost Alphars Series, Book 1 Page 7
