by Riley Storm
His friend nodded. “You’re right, I suppose. Probably why you’re the big hotshot. You’re always thinking of these things.”
Logan frowned. “You’re my diplomat. Aren’t you supposed to be thinking of them too?”
“Yeah but I’m drunk!” Chief said with a grin.
“Yes, yes you are,” Logan said, clapping his friend on the arm. “Just remember my people need me to be King right now, not lover,” he said.
Chief nodded slowly. “At least apologize to her then.”
“I did,” Logan said. “I went, told her she was right about the raid, that I should have taken her advice more seriously. Don’t worry, already taken care of that one.”
Chief just looked up at him, eyes slightly glazed over with the beer. He reached up cautiously with one hand and patted Logan on the cheek twice. “Apologize to her about everything, you idiot.”
Then he fell backward onto the floor, spilling beer everywhere.
From nearby, Lucien roared. “I win!” he crowed, still on his feet somehow.
Logan just stared at his passed-out friend, the final words he’d said echoing loudly in his skull.
Apologize for everything. Logan frowned.
What else did he have to apologize for?
13
Heather lay awake, staring at the ceiling, satin sheets bunched up in her fists.
She’d taken two showers, but still didn’t feel clean after seeing Leonen again that evening. They’d had dinner together in public, where she could easily keep him from pawing at her. Mostly. He’d still insisted on holding hands, and on several occasions his hands had slid farther down her back than she was comfortable with, but not so far she could stop him without drawing attention to it.
Why does he have to be so damn creepy about it?
Even just thinking about him made her ready to hop back into the shower and turn the heat up to a scalding temperature.
“I don’t know if I can do this, Mother,” she moaned quietly, knowing if she defied Miriam’s wishes on something like this, her mother would withdraw her protection, and she’d find herself locked up in a cell with no freedoms for the next year.
The more she thought about that, the more she was starting to think it might be acceptable compared to a life with Leonen. A year of solitude, but then freedom to live her life. Yes, Miriam would set out to make her life a living hell, but Heather would survive. She was strong and wouldn’t rock the boat. It could be doable.
If she doesn’t have you killed first as a “precaution”.
Miriam was her mother, but she’d rarely felt like much of a mom to her, and Heather doubted there would be much hesitation before ordering the death of her daughter. In Miriam’s mind she had birthed Heather, gone through the labors of raising her, and now Heather was hers to do with as she pleased, a pawn.
No matter how she looked at it, Heather knew she was trapped in the situation, for the time being at least. Maybe in time she could find an out, but not now. Not without risking her life.
So, she was stuck with Leonen. Stuck with it. Heather shivered. There was so much to dislike about him.
Why couldn’t he just be more like Logan?
“Fuck it,” Heather muttered, getting out of bed, throwing on some sweats and heading toward a blank spot on the wall in her room.
There was only one person who could listen to her problems. Only one person who might be able to engineer her a solution out of this mess. Only one person she wanted to talk to about it.
And he was also the one person she wasn’t supposed to see. But there was no way Heather could fake it for the rest of her life. Logan owed her. It was time he paid up.
She reached the wall, pressing three bricks in succession. The wall then clicked and swung inward to reveal a hallway.
The Manor was riddled with secret passages and she strode into them now, taking a route she hadn’t gone in a number of years. She reached a T-intersection, then looked down and counted her steps very carefully. After fourteen, she stopped, turned to face the wall on her left, and then found four more stone bricks, pressing them in a repeating pattern three times.
The wall clicked again and opened, revealing a hidden passage within the hidden passages. Grinning, she entered and closed the door behind her. The passageway beyond was dusty and unused.
Most shifters knew of the secret passages, though not many made use of them. What few of them were aware of, however, was that there was a second set of passages hidden within those. These were only known to the King and the Knight of the House.
Well, the King, the Knight, and a certain female that a certain Knight wanted to visit him whenever she pleased without getting caught, Heather thought with a grin as she followed the pathway until it reached a blank wall.
On the far side were Liam’s chambers. She’d never used this exit, because he’d not been the Knight at the time, but she knew what lay beyond. He’d shown her it once before, though he’d made her swear never to go there. Surely that didn’t apply to right now though. This was different. She needed to see him.
Yes. Heather needed to see him, to talk to him. To ask for his advice. But she couldn’t be seen doing so. This was the only way. She’d probably be waking him up anyway, but whatever, he could live with it.
Reaching out, she quietly pushed open the door. It swung open soundlessly, revealing the spacious chambers of the King of House Canis. A giant four-poster bed was the first thing that caught her eye.
Her ear caught the royal snores, but she just laughed silently at that. Some things don’t change, it seems.
Then her eyes registered movement. A black shadow slipped down from the ceiling and was poised above the bed.
“What the—” she said out loud before catching herself.
Something in the way the shadow shifted told her that whatever it was, its attention was now fixed on her.
Something gleamed in the shadow, and Heather realized with a gasp it was a knife. There was a person in there!
“Logan!” she shouted and threw herself at the shadow.
The knife sliced through the air toward her, but Heather was faster, throwing herself up and over the attacker. Her body hit something tangible, and she clamped on for dear life as both she and the shadow-attacker went swinging wildly around them.
As she’d suspected, it wasn’t shadow that was supporting the unseen assassin, but a rope hanging from the ceiling. By grabbing it, she’d jerked the would-be-killer away from Logan and thrown him off balance.
Letting go, she rolled across the floor, getting to her feet immediately, eyes focused on the shadow as it spun around wildly. One tendril curled up, and the illusion dissolved immediately as the person behind it dropped to one knee.
Heather grinned as she realized both his hands were empty. At some point, the knife must have gone spinning off into the room. That meant she was on even terms with him. Closing rapidly, she ducked under his strike, getting within his reach.
Just as with humans, female shifters were predisposed to being smaller and possessing less muscle, given their half-human heritage. They were, however, faster, and while they possessed less muscle, they were still many times stronger than even a human male.
Heather hit hard, and she didn’t let up. Her smaller reach allowed her to operate closer to the attacker, and her speed kept her moving, dancing around his strikes as she pummeled his midsection, feeling a rib give way.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” a voice asked blearily from the bed.
The unexpected sound of Logan waking startled Heather. It was only for a split second, but it was enough. The assassin recovered first, and his gloved fist smashed into the side of her face. Heather spun around wildly as she crashed to the floor, pain exploding through her skull.
Dimly, she was aware of Logan getting up. But something was wrong with him. He wasn’t moving quickly.
“Hang on,” she tried to say, but her words came out slurred.
One punch shouldn’
t have done this to her. What the hell had he hit her with?
14
Someone was disturbing his sleep!
Although sleep would be a generous thing to call the drunken stupor in which he’d fall unconscious. Most of it had worn off by the time the sounds of people in his room woke him, but his senses were still dulled. Shifters didn’t party lightly.
“What’s going on here?” he asked as something hit the ground nearby with a cry. He focused his vision. “Heather? What are you doing here?”
He saw her hand come up and he nodded. “Yeah sure. I’ll help you up.” He threw the covers up and off the bed with abnormal gusto.
A moment later, there was a curse and a ripping sound. Logan was halfway out of bed at this point, and he turned with a stumble to see a knife slice its way through the comforter. He frowned, trying to keep his gaze steady, but it wasn’t working.
He dropped to the ground just as a masked figure finished tearing up his bedding.
“I really liked that comforter,” he mumbled. “Why would you do that? Who are you?”
“He’s trying to kill you,” Heather said from nearby, voice thick with pain. “You have to stop him.”
“Stop him?” Logan hiccupped. “Okay.” From his seated position, he braced himself with his hands behind him and kicked.
He just encountered air.
“What are you doing?” Heather growled as she got to her feet. “Fight him!”
Logan looked up at her. “Find ‘em? What are you talking about? Heather, you’re drunk. Go home.”
“I can’t go home,” she snapped, moving to stand in front of him. “There’s an assassin here trying to kill you, and you’re drunk.”
“Am not,” he pouted, looking directly up at her shapely rear, admiring the curves of it, wondering if he would get in trouble if he just reached out and—
There was a thud, a feminine grunt, and then Logan’s hand landed on an ass that was definitely not shapely or pleasant. It was firm, and very masculine.
He frowned at his hand, then at the ass he was grabbing. “That wasn’t very nice,” he said, sweeping the legs out from under the person it belonged to.
Heather yelped, and suddenly, she was next to him, lying on top of the third person, whoever it was. Logan looked around. “Am I in your quarters? Did I interrupt you and Leonen?” he asked in a stage whisper.
“No!” Heather shouted, pulling her head back and slamming it into the bridge of the other person’s nose—definitely a male, Logan knew now by the sound of pain.
Then Heather’s hand flashed out and cuffed him in the side of the head. “Get your shit together, Logan. He’s trying to kill you.”
Pain blossomed, smashing through the fog of alcohol, burning it off rapidly. “Kill me?” Logan growled, just as the unknown person threw Heather to the side.
Reaching down, he hauled the black-clad assassin to his feet and shook him like a rag doll. “You’re trying to kill me?!” he roared, then tossed the man across the room and into the stone wall.
The shifter—he had to be a shifter to survive that, Logan’s awakening mind recognized—collected himself and came at him.
This time though, Logan’s kick didn’t miss and he sent the entire bedframe screaming across the floor. It connected with the shifter’s shins, and the solid metal frame shattered bone.
Logan didn’t wait to follow up. He was already leaping across the room, landing on the bed, and driving up with his leg, using the added momentum of the springs to deliver a vicious knee to the head.
Something snapped and the attacker went still.
He turned to Heather. “Are you okay?” he snapped as fists started pounding at his chamber doors.
“Little sore, I’ll be alright.”
“Get in the closet,” he ordered, adrenaline firing through his system now, brain functioning closer to normal. “You can’t be seen.”
“Wouldn’t the passageways be better?” she countered, heading that way.
“No. That’s how he got in,” Logan said, pointing at the assassin. “They’ll search it. In the closet.”
Heather nodded and darted into the closet a moment before the guards burst inside, swords and pistols drawn.
“It’s over!” Logan barked. “He’s dead. I think.”
One of the guards went over to confirm, nodding slowly after checking for a pulse. “He’s gone.”
“Get him out of here,” Logan commanded, two guards leaping to obey while the others searched his room from top to bottom.
“How did he get in here?” one of them wanted to know.
“You,” Logan said, pointing at one of his guards about to enter the closet. “Searching the secret passageways. It must be how he got in. Nobody is in that tiny closet.”
The guard hesitated, then nodded, taking a partner and darting off into the hallway, leaving Logan with just a pair of his guards.
“I am not to be disturbed for one hour,” he said, shooing them to the front door. “Is that understood? I need to calm down. And possibly puke. A king should be able to do that privately,” he said when they tried to protest. “I’m fine, trust me. I just need to think, and I need to be alone for that.”
Once he had all the guards out, he closed the secret passageway door as well. Then he went and opened the closet.
“Are you alright?” he asked as Heather exited.
“I’m fine,” she said, reaching out, patting his shoulders. “What about you? He tried to kill you.”
“I know, but he was stopped.” Logan fixed her with a stare. “By you.”
Heather nodded but didn’t say anything else.
Not good enough. “What is going on here?” he growled.
Heather frowned. “What do you mean? You just said it. He tried to kill you, and I stopped him.”
“There’s some critical information missing from that,” Logan said.
“You don’t seriously think I had any part in this, do you?” Heather challenged, crossing her arms defiantly.
“Why were you in my room then?” he wanted to know, grabbing her by the arm as she tried to walk away.
Heather just stared back at him expectantly, as if he should know, but she didn’t pull away. Her chest rose and fell swiftly, her system still up after the fight. He could see the flush in her cheeks, clear evidence that adrenaline was still affecting her as well.
“So, you just saved my life,” he said, still breathing a little hard from the fight and the knowledge of how close to death he’d come.
“I did,” she agreed, squaring up to him, still not pulling away. She licked her lips, meeting his stare. “What are you gonna do about it?”
15
It was such an ambiguous statement. There were so many ways Logan could interpret it, and Heather was well aware of that. She’d known as soon as the unguarded words slipped out of her that it was a mistake.
Brown eyes met amber, and suddenly his grip on her arm wasn’t so tight, wasn’t so off-putting. Heather shifted slightly, and Logan swayed closer.
It just sort of happened. She couldn’t remember the exact sequence after that, of who did what, or how, but the next thing she knew, she was in his arms, feet lifting clear of the ground as warm, hot lips crashed against her own.
“Logan,” she gasped, his teeth sinking gently into her neck, turning the word into a gasped moan. “Logan, wait.”
But she didn’t try to stop him, to make him slow down. Her body was on fire. This was nothing like the mental memories she had of his touch. This was the real thing, so hot and fevered. Heather ached for him, ached for his hands to cover every inch of her body. Her skin burned where he touched it, sapping her of breath from the heat.
She wasn’t an idle participant though. Her own hands scratched at his back, tugged his face down to hers over and over, desperate for more. It was wrong, so very wrong, and that made her body want it more. She couldn’t say no, couldn’t stop herself. Anything he wanted, Logan could have from her then.
All he had to do was take it.
Logan pulled back abruptly, without warning, his face going from intense to horrified in a nanosecond.
“What am I doing?” he gasped, setting her down abruptly and stepping back. “What have I done?”
“Logan? Logan, it’s okay,” she said, stepping forward. “I…I want this.”
He looked at her. “And you think I don’t, Heather? You think that I don’t want anything more than to take you to my newly re-arranged bedroom furniture and have my way with you? I remember what it was like, what your body felt like against mine. I remember. But I can’t.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“You know why,” he said patiently. “We both do. This is beyond our own wants, our own needs. It’s bigger than that.”
Heather cursed at herself, taking in a deep breath, tugging at her clothes, readjusting them to sit properly on her body again from where they had been disturbed.
“I’m sorry,” Logan said quietly. “I really am. I shouldn’t have given in just now. That’s my fault. Not yours. Your honor is still intact.”
“Oh, shut up. I let it happen if nothing else. Okay, fine, we won’t do this. You’re right, it’s wrong. I know that. I should know better.” She paused. “Do we tell anyone?”
Logan cringed. “I hate lying to people,” he said slowly. “But I can’t help but think, that in this case, if word got out, it would do more harm than good.”
She nodded, thankful that they were still in agreement.
“The House needs unity, more than I need to indulge any of my personal desires,” Logan said stiffly, looking past her now, unwilling to gaze into her eyes anymore. “I have to make sacrifices. Whatever it takes, Heather. Whatever it takes.”
Biting back words about how that was dumb, and why did she have to make sacrifices when she wasn’t in any sort of position of power, Heather did little else but nod. Whether or not she agreed with any of it, she understood his position, his thoughts and emotions. After all, she knew Logan well.
She just couldn’t have him.
“You need to go,” Logan said softly. “You can’t be here, you know that. They’ll be back soon, and I won’t be able to keep them out. A Krait nearly killed me tonight. My guards won’t give me an ounce of privacy for a long time to come now.”
