“I’m glad. Do you feel up to coming down to dinner?” Gerri moved to the closet where Bella’s clothes hung. “I would like you to meet the king.”
Gerri pulled out a gauzy dress in deep gold and put it on the bed. “Take a shower and get dressed. Tell the room to call for me when you’re ready. I’ll come get you, and we can meet his highness.”
“The hardheaded Alion?” She grinned.
Gerri laughed. “Believe me, darling. He will be thanking me by the end of the night.”
“You work fast, Gerri. Haven’t we been here for only two days?” She frowned. “I keep losing track of time. There’s no clocks or anything in this place.”
Gerri nodded. “Something like that. We’ve actually been here four days. The hours are very long compared to earth, which is probably why you’re always tired. Those four days are equivalent to about an Earth month.”
Holy crap! She’d been gone a month? Damn, time was flying by.
“Don’t look so alarmed,” Gerri said. “The great thing about being here for extended time is that you don’t really age like those on Earth. A year here is about ten years there, so you look thirty when you’re forty.”
“Is that how you stay so young?”
Gerri winked. “Something like that. I can’t give away all my secrets.” Gerri marched to the door in a flowy blue dress that made her eyes pop. “Hurry. Dinner starts soon.”
She nodded and watched Gerri leave the room. She ran for the bathroom and took the world’s fastest shower. Then she lotioned down and dressed. Thankfully, the dress Gerri picked was one Bella had brought from her own clothes, so she didn’t need help trying to figure out how to wrap it like Teva had done with her previous one.
She was sliding into her sandals when a knock sounded at the door. Crap. She’d taken too long. She ran to the door and yanked it open. She didn’t get a chance to speak. Someone sprayed something in her face, and instant darkness took hold.
* * *
“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” Eros asked Brecc. He glanced down at Bella, Gerri’s assistant, and sighed. They were not the kind to abduct females. Usually, they had a bevy of them trying to make their beds a permanent home.
“Nadeeya said she was Gerri’s assistant. Gerri can’t go back without her. This will delay her leaving, and we can get her to help us.”
Eros nodded. Still, he didn’t like the idea. Nadeeya wasn’t to be trusted. “I don’t know, Brecc. She looks so helpless.”
Brecc stopped and glanced down at the sleeping female. “She does. But she is beautiful. I want one like her. Do you think Gerri can do it?”
Eros shrugged. All they could hope for was to get Gerri’s attention and delay her return to Earth. The hike up the mountain was one they were used to. The transport had taken them to the base. Now they walked. Thick snowflakes fell around them in sheets of white. They were used to the constant snow. The Ice Mountains were always cold and snowy.
“I still think we shouldn’t have taken her,” Eros said.
“You heard the king. Gerri found him a mate. That means she’ll leave. We need her.” Brecc glanced at Eros, frustration clear in his blue eyes. “We need her to stay.”
He was right. Still, it felt wrong. “How long do you think she’ll be out?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never used that before. I took it away from Tatiana when she was trying to spray it in her brother’s eyes.”
“You’re niece? She’s a baby,” Eros said.
“It’s supposed to help her sleep now that she’s teething. Alessandra mentioned it was harmless.”
Eros sighed. But Tatiana was a shifter baby. Bella was a human. As it was, she’d been out for hours.
When they got to the large cabin he and Brecc shared, they laid Bella on a guest bed and waited to hear from Gerri.
Eros’s instincts told him trouble was coming. What they did, taking Bella, had been a bad move. If they weren’t so far, he’d suggest taking her back. But he could tell they were coming for her. He sensed it.
It was another hour before Bella woke. She frowned, rubbing a hand on her temple, and sneezed.
“Are you okay?” Eros and Brecc asked at the same time.
She opened her eyes, nodded, and sat up. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the Ice Mountains,” Brecc replied. “We mean you no harm. We just need the matchmaker to stay and help us. We know you work for her. We hope she will agree to help us in exchange for giving you back.”
She blinked her chocolate-brown eyes wide. “You kidnapped me!”
“You’re not a kid,” Eros said.
She rolled her eyes and frowned harder. “Abducted. Captured. Snatched. Take your pick. I am not where I’m supposed to be.”
Brecc grinned. “You are feisty.”
“Are you crazy? You have to... You have to...” She sneezed again, her body shaking hard. “Take me back!”
“You’ll go back soon enough. We need her to help us.”
She sighed. “I’ll ask her to help you. Hell, we’ll stay and vacation for the summer if you want, but you have to take me back. I think... I think...” She sneezed twice in a row. “I think I’m allergic to something here.”
“You will help us?” Eros asked.
“Gerri loves matching up people. I’m here to help her do that. Maybe she won’t need my help with the king, but I bet we can find you guys a couple of girls and make you all happy like clams.” She sneezed hard.
Brecc frowned. “Why clams?”
“It’s a figure of...of...” She sneezed again, adding a cough this time. “It’s a figure of speech.”
“Why are you crying?” Brecc asked.
She sniffled and wiped her cheeks. “I’m not crying. I’m tearing from the allergies and the sneezing.”
“We don’t need a couple of girls.” Eros grinned. Bella was so funny and cute, with her dainty little sneezes and the way she wiped her cheeks from the tears falling from her eyes. “We just need one.”
She stopped, blinked, and glanced back and forth between him and Brecc. “There’s two of you, though.”
He nodded. “We will share a mate. We are a triad pack.”
She smiled wide and sniffled. “I know all about that. My cousin, Tally, is mated to two wolves. The Alpha and Omega.”
Eros sighed. “So you understand how difficult it is to find a mate.”
She nodded, inhaling hard once, and then twice, before letting her breath out slowly. “That one went away. Seriously, what do you all have in this cabin? I’m having the worst allergies ever,” she sniffled. “I do understand. I promise, Gerri and I will help you.”
NINETEEN
Alyx readied to head to dinner when his library door burst open. Gerri’s face twisted in anger. He’d never seen the matchmaker so close to shifting.
“Where is she?”
There was no need for names. He knew she was asking about Bella. “I left her in her bed this morning.”
Gerri curled her hands at her sides, pushing the wolf back and inhaling hard. “I told her to get up and dress for dinner. I wanted her to meet the king.”
“What?” He jumped to his feet. “I hadn’t told her about being king.”
She clenched her teeth. “Too fucking bad. You shouldn’t have lied to begin with. Now, where is she?”
“I take it she’s not in her bedroom?”
Gerri growled. “She’s not in the castle!”
His heart dropped to his stomach. She figured it out. She found out he was lying and left.
His throat closed up and he had to stop his lion from tearing through his skin. Did she run? Fuck! He’d find her. Wherever the hell she went, he’d follow her and bring her back to this castle that was no longer his home if she wasn’t in it with him.
The door flung open a second time. Karel rushed inside. “What’s going on? I heard yelling all the way to the dining room.”
Gerri turned to face him. “Bella. She’s missing.”
> Karel frowned. “That’s strange. She has been good about staying in the castle.”
“She wouldn’t know how to leave the castle walls. We came in through the back. There’s no way she’d be able to leave.” Gerri glanced at Alyx. “Someone took her.”
“Holy fuck!” Karel gasped.
“What? What do you mean someone took her? Who would dare?” Alyx asked, his heart aching and his lion roaring to be let loose.
“The wolves. They just left a few hours ago.”
Alyx’s lion pushed at the skin. He’d let the animal loose soon. If the wolves wanted war, he’d give it to them. Happily.
They raced up the mountain, anger guiding Alyx’s movements. His lion wanted out. When they reached the cabin Brecc and Eros shared, he didn’t bother knocking. He slammed the door open, knowing full well his mate was in there.
“Bella!”
Gerri’s scream made the cabin shake. Bella ran through a pair of doors and sneezed before she reached them. She stopped in front of Alyx, and he picked her up in his arms, hugging her hard and appeasing his beast.
The two wolves came out from the back of the cabin, heading straight for them.
Alyx put Bella down and launched himself at Brecc, the Alpha. Though bigger and stronger than the wolf, Alyx knew Brecc could fight hard. He tossed Brecc over his shoulder and broke a table in the process.
“Alyx, wait!” Eros yelled.
“Are you crazy?” Karel shouted. “How dare you take a guest from the castle?”
“We meant no harm to Gerri’s assistant,” Eros said. “Nadeeya mentioned how if we wanted Gerri to stay, maybe we should bring Bella here and ask Gerri for urgent help once she showed up to get Bella.”
Alyx tossed a growling Brecc, growling right back and breaking a sofa behind him.
“We didn’t expect the king to show up to get her,” Eros added.
“King?” Bella asked.
Alyx turned to look at her. She frowned at Karel and Gerri before glancing at him, confusion clear in her eyes.
“She’s his mate, you mutt,” Gerri snapped. “Of course he’d come get her.”
Brecc shoved him hard. Alyx lost the fight with his lion. Bones snapped, and the shift slid through him, heating him from the inside.
TWENTY
“He’s going to kill him,” Bella screamed. She watched in awe as Trey or Alyx or whatever his real name was shifted into a big-as-hell lion.
He stretched to about nine or ten feet and had paws the size of Bella’s head. Alyx was massive.
“He won’t kill him,” Karel said. “He’ll probably bite off an arm.”
She glared at him. Had everyone lost their minds all of a sudden? “Right. Because biting off anything is a good idea.”
“He shouldn’t have taken you from the castle.” Karel shrugged.
She watched the massive lion leap for the huge, white wolf. They were not evenly matched at all. While the wolf was huge, the lion was twice his size, easily.
“Trey, stop!”
“Alyx, dear,” Gerri said.
She turned to glare at her boss. “You knew?”
Gerri shrugged. “He’s your Alion. Yours. We can talk about that later. Right now, I think you might want to stop him from killing my next client.”
Great. What the fuck did she look like? The lion whisperer?
The two animals wrangled back and forth, breaking every piece of furniture in their path. Once she saw an opening, she jumped between them and screamed at the top of her lungs. “Stop!”
The lion and the wolf separated, each giving the other space and moving away to keep her between them without allowing her to get hurt.
She turned to face the wolf. “Stay right there, Brecc. I know you’re big and strong, but you and I both know you don’t want to fight. If you did, someone would be bleeding. This is your king. What you did was wrong, but I forgive you, and I’m the one you took from that castle.”
She heard a low growl from behind and turned on her heel to glare at the lion—a lion bigger than her. “That’s right. I forgive them for bringing me here. They didn’t mean any harm. They wanted help.” She glanced at Gerri. “Help we are going to give them, as soon as possible.” She pursed her lips and stared deep into the lion’s golden gaze. “You think you can come here and try to save me and things are going to be perfect? You lied to me.” She glanced down at her hands and then back at the animal. “I appreciate you coming here to help, but as far as we’re concerned, I don’t know who you are.”
* * *
Bella fought with the material one more time before giving up and throwing it across the room. Screw it. She put on a pair of leggings and a tank top. She’d been sitting in her room, unwilling to talk to Alyx, for too long. Someone knocked at the door, and she growled for them to enter.
Gerri walked in with her brows raised high. “I won’t ask if you’re okay. I can tell you’re not.”
“The growl gave it away?” She sat and let her shoulders slump.
“Not just the growl. The anger and disappointment is like a blanket at your door. It hurts me to know you’re not happy right now, Bella.”
She shook her head. “It’s not your fault Alyx turned out to be a liar.”
Gerri nodded and pulled up a chair to sit across from Bella. “You asked me if I knew. Yes, I knew.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I’ll explain something nobody knows about my matchmaking. When Karel called on Alyx’s behalf, the image of you two popped into my head. I knew then that this was the place for you. That somehow, some way, you’d end up with him.”
“So you’re saying I should forgive him?” She didn’t like the idea of just letting go of the fact he lied.
“Oh, no. I’m not saying that at all.” Gerri patted her hands and smiled. “You and Alyx are going to be together. You’ll have to go through whatever you go through, but at the end of the day, you are his and he is yours. Nothing will change that.”
That deflated her anger by leaps. No way was she just going to let him slide on the lying. This had to be addressed.
“You’re right. I love him.” She widened her eyes and stared at Gerri in shock. “I love the lying lion.” She giggled at how stupid that sounded.
“It’s going to be fine, Bella.” Gerri’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “Trust your instincts.”
* * *
Bella stormed into the library. Alyx and Karel were in deep discussion with two other men. She folded her arms over her chest and raised a brow.
“We’ll be back later,” Karel said, ushering the others out of the library. “Nice seeing you, Bella.”
She smiled sweetly at him and waited until the door closed before turning her wrath on the lion.
Alyx leaned back on his desk, as if waiting for her to explode.
She took a few steps closer to him and scowled. “Why did you lie?”
She saw him debate with himself before he opened his mouth. “It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t want you to have any preconceived ideas about me being king.”
“But you’d be okay with me having ideas about you being a liar?”
“No!” He stood, closing the distance between them and gliding his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t think it would come this far.”
She blinked and turned to leave. “Okay, then.”
“Bella, wait!” He grabbed her by the arm and turned her back to face him. “That came out wrong.”
She had been so close to walking away, but she loved him. She didn’t want to believe he purposely lied to her, not caring how she’d feel. “Okay. Explain what you mean then.”
“When I told you my name was Trey, I didn’t exactly lie. I was called Trey when I was a kid. My full name is Alyx Treyvaal.”
She nodded. “Alyx. You’re the king. The Alion king.”
“I am. The moment I saw you,” he motioned to the chair she’d been sitting in, “here, I knew you were the woman for me.”
&nbs
p; “How? How did you figure it out?” She needed to know so badly that she wasn’t the only one helplessly in love, that her heart wasn’t the only one on the line. That this love at first sight thing was real for him too.
He grabbed her hands and placed them flat on his chest. “Not only did my lion roar for you—something he’s never wanted to do for another woman—but my heart felt full of all these emotions I wasn’t even aware existed. From the very first look, I knew.” He picked up one of her hands and brought her palm to his lips and kissed the center. Her chest felt to near bursting with love. “I love you, ym Neevk.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, her heart beating at her throat.
“I love you, my queen.”
She shouldn’t let him get her this fast. This easy. With those three simple, little words, he destroyed her ability to stay angry. She saw it in his eyes. The emotions he’d spoken of, they were the same she had filling her heart with joy just hours after meeting him. She leaned into him, gripped his shirt by the collar, and tugged him. When he was millimeters from her lips, she smiled. “I love you too, my lion king.”
He met her lips with a deep, soulful kiss—one that destroyed her brain cells and made her pussy wet at the drop of a dime, a kiss that turned her into a complete slut for him.
She no longer cared she’d only known him a handful of days. Her heart had spoken.
He slid his hands down to her waist and under the tank top she wore, yanking the material over her head. The bra was gone next. Her nipples fluttered into tight, little buds. Slowly, he kissed his way to her chest, sucking one of her tits into his mouth. Her pussy slickened with need. A low groan sounded from him.
“Alyx,” she moaned. “I love when you do that.”
Another rumble sounded on her tit. This time, it sent sparks to her clit. Her skin felt tight and hot. He tugged on her pants, pulling them past her hips until they fluttered to the floor, along with her panties.
The world shifted, and he had her on his desk, pushing her legs apart. He stared at her—from her hard nipples, down her belly, to her wide spread pussy lips aching for his touch.
“You,” he inhaled deeply, “are fucking sexy.” He ran his fingers down her jaw to cup her breast and flick his thumb over her nipple. He moved his other hand between her legs, fondling her clit and making her whimper. “Feel that, Bella? Feel how slick and wet you are? Know what makes you this way? Wanting me to fuck you.”
The Alion King: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (Paranormal Dating Agency Book 6) Page 8
