by Lila Felix
“Who are the Gilmore Girls?” I asked.
She looked at me, incredulous. “Are you serious right now? If we weren’t already mated, that would be a deal breaker.”
“I’m totally serious.”
“It’s a show. This epic-cult-like show. Never mind. The binge starts tonight.”
I nodded. For the next hour, we stayed around town square. She made us take selfies in the gazebo, and I swore she touched every pumpkin, cornucopia, and turkey in the square.
Ridiculous.
And adorable.
“So where’s the Terrace?”
This again.
I was hoping she would forget that part. My father warned me to never go to the Terrace. It was where the lesser servants lived. It was not for royalty.
It was strange that one instant, my father shielded me from the things that only royalty should know, but in the same breath be offended that I wasn’t alpha material.
“I think it’s this way.”
We went down Main Street right off town square, and I looked up at a few apartments on the second floor over the retail shops at ground level. Most of the businesses around town square had offices or apartments above them. The Terrace was a group of apartments above the butcher shop.
“I think that’s it.”
Atlas took my hand. “Come on.”
We went up the stairs off the back alley and knocked on the dilapidated door. Someone had poured salt across the threshold, outside the door. They must’ve been expecting evil to try to cross.
“Who is it?” A familiar voice called from the other side.
“It’s Atlas and Harrison,” Atlas called through the door.
After a few turns of locks and what sounded like a chain, the door opened, but just a sliver.
“Come in. Most of the staff are at the castle, but the rest of us are off since the alpha is away.”
Oscar gave Atlas a look. He was scared. Why was my childhood friend scared of me?
“It’s okay,” Atlas said. “He knows how to keep his mouth shut. So this is it? For how many people?”
The place was like a refugee camp. Each area was the size of a dorm room, and that was being generous. Atlas covered her mouth and nose, but not before I saw her mouth gaping open at the horrific sights of squalor. Cots were stacked right next to each other, and most were on their last leg. Some were so broken that their owners had laid them to rest on the bare floor. There was no place for a couch, and the kitchen consisted of a two-burner stove and a sink smaller than those in our guest bathrooms. The windows were covered in newspapers duct-taped to the panes. The paint peeled from the walls, and the floors were stripped, concrete-cold, and naked. Smells of sweat and tears made my eyes burn with the stench. This was no place for any creature.
This place was paid for by my father. Why was he having them live like this? They may be servants, but they were bears just like us.
“You live here, Oscar?” My heartbeat thumped heavily in my chest as I waited for him to answer. I almost felt betrayed by my friend. If he was living like this, I could’ve done something. I would’ve spoken to my father.
“This is where the men sleep. The women servants and your father’s women are in the next apartment over.”
“But you’re married, Oscar. You have a mate.”
He hung his head, as though I’d reminded him of his worst nightmare.
“We are not allowed to sleep in the same room with our mates.”
My hands went to my hips. I looked left and right wondering what in the fuck was going on.
“Why not?”
Oscar’s head hung again. Atlas chimed in. “Oscar, give us a few minutes, okay? We’d like to see the female quarters next.”
He nodded and went to the sink, ran the water, and started to wash a motley crew of mismatched dishes.
“Harrison, listen to me.” With her hand fisting the front of my shirt, Atlas pulled me closer. She wasn’t angry. I could feel the desperation coming off her in waves of scent through our ever-strengthening bond. “Your father did this. Don’t you understand? This is only one of the many things he keeps from you. He doesn’t want his servants sleeping together, because what happens when married couples sleep together?”
My eyes had been focused on her mouth while she spoke, but with her question, they raised to her eyes. “They have cubs.”
“Yes, and if you loathe an entire population, what’s the last thing you want them to do?”
My shoulders slumped, and the room began to spin. “Procreate.”
“Exactly. Your father is essentially keeping his servants sterile. There is someone from the castle who comes every night and locks the apartments from the outside to make sure the mates can’t get to each other. Your father is a special kind of dictator, right under your nose. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want you going with him to meetings. He loves to keep you ignorant.”
She let go of my shirt, and I wavered on my feet. With my hand on the wall, I braced myself for whatever was to come next.
“Oscar, can you show us the rest? Please? We are so sorry to interrupt your day off.” I ground out the polite words.
“It’s okay. My mate is working anyway. We have opposite days off.”
We took a five-minute tour of the rest of the place. The female quarters were as sparse as the rest. Five hundred thousand thoughts pummeled through my mind, along with limitless questions.
“You said something about my father’s women? What does that mean?”
Atlas took my hand, trying to console me. “Come on, Harrison. We can talk about this later.”
“No.” I pushed Atlas’s hand away. “Tell me now. This shit is enough. I’m not some helpless spoiled prince. Tell me the fucking truth. I’ve obviously been lied to all my life. Oscar, please, if you ever considered me a friend, tell me the truth.”
A light blazed in Oscar’s eyes, and before Atlas could speak, he stepped forward. “You know what? I’ll tell you, Harrison. I don’t even care if you punish me or banish me or whatever. It’s time. Your father keeps a harem of sorts here. He calls on them night and day. Sometimes they get pregnant, and he makes sure they get taken care of when they do. We make minimum wage working for your father while we serve him steak on a golden platter. He hides everything from you. Everything.”
“Why hasn’t the Court stopped this? Why haven’t they stepped in? It’s their duty to protect the supes who live here.”
Oscar bowed up against me. “Because your father makes deals with demons. He has one named Justus Abbadon that he deals with to keep this place under some kind of glamour. We don’t know what the deal is exactly and to tell you the truth, we don’t want to know. We have reported it to the Court, but what they see is nothing but façade. They see a five-star hotel when they look in here, and then think we are nuts for reporting it. I think Ric suspects something is going on here. He stops in from time to time, but with the demon working for your father, despite his sense that something is off, Ric can’t make a case. Your father has so many ill-willed supes in his pocket, I’m surprised he can keep track. One of the mages must be involved, too, covering up the demon’s magic.”
This must be why my father hated the Kasuns and the rest of the Court so much. They suspected that he was up to something.
I thought back on my life for some clues. For some reason, my mind scrambled for an argument against Oscar’s accusations. That was easier than accepting what he was saying. This was my father. Why would he betray the son who would one day take over his job?
Maybe because I was never intended to be alpha.
“What about the news? There are servants who read the news to him. I get copies of it by email. Why haven’t I heard about this?”
Atlas reached for my hand, but I moved out of the way again. There was nothing anyone could do to soothe me now.
“Harrison, your father doesn’t let any news enter the castle that doesn’t involve absolutely bowing down to him. And Oscar says he�
��s heard of a plan to get rid of me as soon as you become alpha—if you become alpha.”
My pulse drummed between my temples, and the pain almost blinded me. “I can’t hear any more.”
I walked out, around cots and blankets full of holes, to the outside, where I was finally able to catch a breath of fresh air.
This wasn’t happening.
“I’m going home,” I announced and started down the stairs.
“Harrison?” Atlas came to the door. Her voice was tiny, and desperation hung from the tip of it. “You’re leaving me here?”
Of course I wasn’t.
I turned, only about ten steps down, and faced her. I was ashamed and could barely bring myself to look her in the eye. I was part of this. I was under this regime that branded and burned her people.
I was at the root of her pain—the pain of her kin.
And I was too ignorant to even know it.
“Of course not. I’m sorry. Come with me. Atlas, stay with me.”
The look on my mate’s face broke me. She was in me and with me and swirling through me and burrowed so deep, I wouldn’t ever be able to get her out.
I didn’t ever want to. And I’d be damned if my father ever touched her.
She didn’t move, so I pushed further. “Atlas, let’s go home, love.”
She turned to say goodbye to Oscar and gave him some empty promises about trying to make it better.
Oscar didn’t come out to say goodbye.
I didn’t blame him.
“Hey, I don’t want to go home yet. Is there a place we can get a cup of coffee or something?”
A cup of coffee would wake me up, and at this point, I wanted a drink that took the edge off the rage that was brewing in my chest.
“I’ve got a better idea.”
Taking her hand, I led us to The Dirty Knuckle. The bar was frequented by humans and supes alike. I’d only been once.
“Oh, nice. Coffee was just for conversation. I see you’re looking for a reprieve.”
I turned on her, swift and steady. “I’m looking for a fucking way out of this life that is blowing up all around me. The only thing in it that’s worth anything to me is you. You understand? The one person I thought would be fleeting is now the only one who is solid.”
Chapter 19
Atlas
Showing Harrison what I’d seen in the past three days—what he hadn’t known in his twenty-five years being here—wasn’t easy.
But it had to be done.
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” I spoke the words that were truth now. Harrison and I were too deeply bound to be separated now.
He had to know that this seemingly perfect life he had grown up seeing wasn’t real. It was all an elaborate scheme to keep a race of bears under the alpha’s thumb and powerless to stop him.
We were served our drinks by a lithe and lanky fae who introduced himself as Casten. I’d heard there were some Seelie in the world, but had never seen one in person. He smelled like cotton candy and the sweetest caramel apple to me.
Harrison said nothing to me during the hour we were in the bar. Despite his fervor to drink his cares away, my mate mostly kept his face buried in his hands, never touching the drink that was placed on the table in front of us.
“When did you know?” he asked when we got back in the car.
“Oscar approached me the day after our mating. There was no time to waste, Harrison. Do you even know where your father is?”
“He’s at a meeting. He took Dolrich.”
I slapped my hand over my face. He was so blind, it bordered on ridiculous. But under the regime of his father, there was no way for him to know better. That’s what I was there for. My purpose was clear. If nothing else, Harrison Xavier would wake up and know the truth of the masquerade his father conducted.
“Harrison, your father is in Nebraska, securing a containment camp of sorts.” I choked over the word containment. They gave a cage such a pretty name.
“A containment camp? And my mother knows? And Dolrich?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’m assuming.”
He turned to me, now doing eighty miles an hour on the road to the castle. “Oh? What do you mean? What, four days here and you don’t know every facet of the royal plans?”
I forgave him that one. He was in pain and angry. It was written all over his face, and we were smothering in the scent of it, trapped in this car.
“They are going to put all of the cinnamon bears in one place so your father can control the numbers. That’s the nice version. The not-so-nice version is that he’s going to cage bears like me.” I took his hand off the seat belt, to which he was hanging on for dear life, and put it against my chest. I wanted him to feel the truth inside me. My need was desperate and didn’t make any sense. “They are going to cage us and then starve us to death, Harrison. Do you want that for me? For my mother? For my best friend Sammy?”
Seconds later, we were at a full stop on the side of the road. “How can you say that? I want you with me. I know we started this as an arranged mating, but there’s more here. And I’ll be damned if I let your people suffer. I won’t.”
I shrugged. I needed this flame inside him to grow. He needed to be fueled to full in order to fight his father.
And I needed his strength to build my own.
I needed my mate to fight this tyranny with me.
“But what are you going to do? You don’t want to be alpha. You’ve pretty much set it up where Dolrich is going to be alpha. You think he’ll be any different? You think they’re gonna let us stay together while he plans for my people’s demise? Please. I’ll be in the cage with the rest of them. And by the way, you know your friend Sela?”
He nodded. I suspected he was afraid to interrupt. I would be afraid to interrupt me right in that moment.
“She’s in bed with Dolrich. She’s your new alpha queen, and you don’t even know it.”
His eyebrows bunched in the middle above his nose. “Is that why you growled at her?”
I blushed against my will. “I don’t know.”
“No.” Harrison took my face in his almost burning hands and gently made me face him. “You can’t start being shy now, Atlas. We are thick in this together. You understand? I think I’ve made it clear how I feel about you. Now you tell me why you growled at Sela.”
Ugh. Sela.
“Because she was on you like a wolf on a sheep. And it pissed me off, and possibly she just had more physical contact with you in that moment than I have in a week, and it was killing me.”
With a flick of his wrist, he unbuckled the seatbelt, and his mouth was on mine. Lips that started out as greedy and bordering on violent quickly turned gentle yet passionate. His hands were now on my hips, tugging at them, needing a closeness that the confines of this car just wouldn’t give us. Anger laced his movements, and I took each lashing from him, knowing that his heart was now changed.
“I’m taking us home,” he said, breathless, breaking the kiss for just those four words.
“Fast as you can.”
My head was still spinning with thoughts of what had just happened while he buckled back up and sped to the castle. Servants were in the living quarters, so we had to act normal as Harrison took my hand and led me to the bedroom. Once there, his lips were on mine, leaving them only for the few seconds it took to relieve ourselves of shirts and jeans and shoes.
“This is real, Atlas. Tell me this is real. Everything in my life is a fucking lie except you. Tell me this is real.”
I couldn’t form the words yet, but he needed to know. He needed to realize that this was the beginning of everything that was real for him and for us.
I kissed the mark I’d made on his shoulder as he kneaded my back and skimmed his hands down my sides, gently brushing the sides of my breasts.
“Harrison, you and I are real. I tried to deny you, but I can’t. I won’t anymore. Touch me and know that this mating is real. You are mine.” The
word mine was backed by my bear, turning the word into a growl.
“Mine. You are mine and no one else’s, and you will be my queen.” His bear mimicked mine, enforcing those words with his own voice. “You are absolutely stunning, Atlas.” With a finger under my chin, he commanded that I look at him, seeing the raw truth in his almost-black eyes. His other hand pulled down a strap of my copper-colored lace bralette. “We have to say the words, mate, or I can’t go any further. Tell me.”
I whimpered at the thought of him stopping.
“Look at me, Atlas, and say the words.”
Barely able to harness my want enough to speak, I looked into the soft caring eyes of my mate and recited the words I knew. “I take you, Harrison Xavier, as my mate and my other half until my body fails me and death takes me.”
He repeated the words to me, all while doing things with his hands that rendered me putty in his care.
He and I became one.
Chapter 20
Harrison
A knock on the door pulled me from a deep sleep I didn’t know I was capable of. I looked down to see Atlas, now my mate in every way, draped across my chest, her chestnut hair sparkling, reflecting the little bit of dawn that was streaming through the curtains.
“What?”
I didn’t even bother getting up or covering the bits that were hanging out. They could just shut their eyes. I did, however, cover up Atlas.
“Harrison, I mean, sir, something has happened.” It wasn’t my usual servant. In fact, this was one dressed in black, which meant that he worked on my father’s side of the castle.
“What happened that warranted waking my mate up?” Atlas now turned in the bed next to me.
“It’s your father, sir. There was an accident with the plane. He was coming home early. The alpha is dead, sir.”
I jumped from the bed, grabbing the robe that I never used but was always there.
“And my mother?”
He bowed his head, and for a microsecond, I thought she was gone as well. “Your mother is well, sir. The—I shouldn’t say.”
