Claimed by the Mate, Volume 1

by Kate Douglas

  But the full moon would be over.

  Kira wasn’t going to wait. She knew where Blaez was. That same light that had filled her and told her that she’d been Selected for him gave her knowledge of where she could find her mate. He would be there; she only had to go to him.

  “He wouldn’t want me to let you go out there alone,” Phelan said, still standing watch by the front door like that was his designated spot for the night.

  Kira nodded, respecting the second in command of Blaez’s pack in a way she never had before. “Then let’s go,” she said. “You’ll have to keep up.”

  Kira broke into a run the moment she’d cleared the door, calming her mind as Blaez had taught her and focusing on that light still blossoming inside her. It seemed as if the moon shone its brightest here in the thicket of trees, as she was able to see perfectly while moving along an untraveled path. His scent was different now, yet she’d still held it, from the moment that wolf had stood beside her. She continued to run wondering how she’d missed what was so clear to her now. How had she not realized her mother had told her there was something more out there for her and then he’d appeared as if at the same time that she’d been searching he’d been looking too. Blaez would probably never admit to that, but Kira knew it to be true. In her heart and soul she knew that she and Blaze were meant to run into each other that night in the woods; they were meant to spend these weeks locked in that lodge together. That time was preparing them for this moment, for this slice of time that the goddess had carved out for them. The moment they would become one.

  That realization still hummed along her conscience, pushing her to go even faster, to find him before it was too late.

  Kira moved faster until her arms and legs burned with the exertion, her chest beginning a dull ache. Then, as suddenly as she began, her feet were skidding to a halt, dirt and rocks being kicked up as she came to a stop, only inches before going over a cliff with a steep drop down. Phelan was right there, grabbing her arm to keep her from toppling over.

  She looked up at him in thanks and he nodded as if neither of them needed to actually speak a word. He thrust a backpack toward her and for a second she looked at it and wondered if he was sending her on her way. But the backpack wasn’t hers; it was black instead of blue like the one she’d carried here.

  “He’s going to need these,” Phelan told her.

  She nodded, realizing the backpack must contain Blaez’s clothes, and the memory of that beautiful wolf that had saved her life appeared in her mind.

  “Thanks. I’ll be all right now,” she told Phelan, looking back down to the lake and knowing now why she’d really stopped. Blaez was down there somewhere; his scent was stronger here. And when she’d looked down into the dark ravine again, she would swear she’d seen the quick flash of his blue eyes.

  “Be careful,” Phelan told her as if he too knew that Blaez was down there, which would be the only reason he would leave her alone.

  “I will,” she told him as she turned and headed down.

  It was steep and rocks crumbled rolling downward as she moved. With each step her heart beat just a little faster, Blaez’s scent grew stronger, and that full moon above shone brighter. When Kira made it to level ground she walked in the direction where she’d seen the flash of blue. She hadn’t glimpsed it again, but it didn’t matter. There was a copse of trees just ahead, beside what looked like a cave driving into the side of the mountain. That’s where she was headed.

  Her thighs burned as she continued, wisps of hair plastered to the back of her neck while the length of it swished behind her. Kira had no idea what to expect. Would it be Blaez the man? Or the wolf? What would she do in either instance? What would she say? How would she react? There were so many questions and so many feelings going through her at the moment. Her father was dead. Dallas had killed her mother on her father’s orders. Why? Because she was a Selected, a powerful lycan ordained to join with another powerful being.

  Blaez.

  She continued to move, stepping over two rocks being smacked by the quick-moving water that sluiced its way through this passage. She’d just jumped in the hopes of landing on steady rocky ground on the other side of the water when she felt herself being lifted into the air.

  In the next instant she was staring down at the ground she’d just been traipsing along, being carried deep into the cave that had looked so gloomy just a few moments ago. Unlike the last time she was in this position, when her heart had beat wildly as she wondered what was going to happen next, this time her heart beat wildly because she knew who it was that carried her. She recognized him with every fiber of her being and wanted to scream with joy that he was all right. Instead, she bit her lip against the swell of desire building in the pit of her stomach and when he set her down slowly in what she figured when she looked around was the end of this cave she let out a breath and stared up at him.

  He was gloriously naked, his body streaked with what looked like mud but might have also been blood. His chest heaved, pectorals rising and falling in a heavenly display of manhood as he breathed in and out. Every inch of him was beautiful, sculpted, alluring, just point-blank sexy as hell, and she had to take another gulp of air to settle herself.

  When he took a step toward her, Kira moved in, adrenaline coursing through her veins right alongside the light that had led her here. Sure, she was certainly happy to see him alive and standing and she was elated to finally know that he was the reason she was here, that they—as the Selected couple—were going to be the reason that things changed for the lycans in the future. But she was still pissed with him.

  “You liar!” she yelled. “How dare you hold me captive all this time, telling me to trust you, to find my control, to do this and do that, when all the while you were lying to me about everything you were! Everything you are!”

  He caught her wrist the second she finished, holding it tightly in his hand. She tried to yank it away, but he held tighter. She swung her other fist, almost catching him in the jaw before he grabbed that wrist, holding it just as tightly as the first.

  “You done?” he asked, looking down at her.

  “No, I’m not done,” she continued, unable to yell or to quiet the fear that had bubbled deep inside her when the pack refused to tell her what he was.

  “I should hate you,” she admitted, the anger that had appeared so quickly, dissipating just as fast.

  “But you don’t,” was his quick reply.

  “No,” Kira sighed. “I don’t. And see, that’s the thing, Blaez. I never hated you. I wanted to leave that lodge because you told me I had to stay there and I thought there was something somewhere else I should be looking for. But I wanted you. Every step of the way and as much as it irritated the hell out of me, I wanted you. Always.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” he said, zeroing in on her, his eyes now brown with swirls of something in the center. It looked like an orb or kind of like the moon. She gasped once more and this time he let her pull away from him.

  “I know I should have told you the truth, all of it, that day in the library. But I didn’t want to see … I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand you looking at me like I was an abomination. I’m an alpha and I can do just about anything, but that, Kira, that I wasn’t going to take well,” he told her.

  “Tell me now,” she replied. “Just tell me everything right now.”

  There was silence in the cave, the remnant echo of her last words having dissipated into the air. In the distance she could still hear the rustle of water, but there was nothing else. No words.

  “You already know that my mother was Kharis. I didn’t tell you that she was the daughter of Artemis and a farmer she met in Arcadia, when Zeus had gone there to seek out Lykaon.”

  He spoke quietly, his tone resigned as he eventually looked to Kira again.

  “My father was a pure-blood descendent of Nyktimos and my mother was a demigod. The blood that runs through my veins is more than that of the wolf, it is mingled wit
h the gods, so I’m not just a lycan.”

  “No.” Kira shook her head. “You’re not.”

  “I’m part lycan and part demigod. The only one left of my kind,” he replied grimly. There was that look that she’d seen him get often. It usually went as quickly as it had come. But not this time. His thick brows furrowed, his lips set in a thin line.

  “Zeus knew who my parents were and that they’d reproduced more like me. He knew and that’s why he really wanted them dead. He can never risk anyone being as powerful as him, or that could somehow be a threat to him. The children of a lycan and a demigod would be powerfully different from anything he or the mortal world had ever seen. So he killed them, and just like with Lykaon and Nyktimos, he forgot about me.”

  Kira shook her head. “But Selene did not forget about you,” she told him. “On the night I was born she Selected me for you. She sent me to help you go against Zeus whenever he comes for you.”

  “I told you before that I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be an alpha of a pack, didn’t want to have to fight anyone, to defend anything. I just wanted to be … whatever,” he said, finally turning away from her.

  “But that wasn’t your destiny,” Kira told him. “It wasn’t yours and it wasn’t mine. Here, right now, this is what is meant to be, Blaez. We are meant to be.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t. And not for the reasons you think. It’s not that I’m afraid of Zeus finding me or of what he will try to do to me when he does. I’m much too powerful for that to happen with just a blink of his eye and he knows that, which is why he had to use trickery to get to my family. No, when he comes for me I’ll have no choice but to fight back and that fight will involve the world I’ve chosen to live in. People will die. Mortals will suffer. Lycans will falter. And anyone I’m close to, connected to, might be—”

  Kira moved forward, touching a hand lightly to the back of his shoulder. “All this time I’ve been thinking that you were just being an arrogant ass. I thought this thing I felt inside whenever you were near and even when you weren’t was just nothing. A result of the needing that would be slaked the moment we finally had sex. But it didn’t,” she said, circling her finger on his skin, loving the tautness and the warmth she felt there.

  “Then you told me about what happened to your family and I thought I could relate to you not wanting an intimate or emotional connection after that. Who would willingly put themselves in a position to be hurt that way all over again? But you know what, Blaez? You have put yourself in a close relationship with others. You care very much about your pack, just as you had about your family. And then I came along,” she told him.

  “And you shouldn’t have. She has no right dictating who and what she be. None of them have any right. They don’t rule; the gods only know how to control,” he told her, his body bunching with the intensity of his words.

  “But don’t you see, Blaez. They won’t control us. We were Selected to be together, but nobody could predict what bringing two powerful lycans together would do, let alone a lycan and a demigod. It’s never been done before, so there’s no way they can know what to expect. We can fight Zeus together. I’ve seen it, Blaez; we can be good together,” she said softly, a smile ghosting his lips. “My selected power is of vision, so that I can see clearly who we are dealing with at all times and pieces of what was and what might be. With that together with your wolf and godlike instincts we will change the course of the lycans’ lives. And when the time comes, we will combat Zeus. Together.”

  He turned at her words then, staring at her quizzically. “I can’t be that, Kira. I can’t be the alpha that has an alpha female, another vulnerability. The pack, the betas, they stand their own ground, choosing the ground beside me. I cannot build a family like the one my parents had only to have it snatched away from me again. I could not survive it another time.”

  She cupped his face just as he had begun shaking his head, his eyes blinking between the brown and blue as the beast within him grew desperate to shift and possibly run.

  “You once told me to find my control. That when I found it I could have whatever I wanted.” When he stopped shaking his head she continued, “Tell me what you want, Blaez.”

  He was quiet, but she felt his body reacting, felt the thickness of his growing arousal pressing against her lower belly, saw the complete shift in his eyes to that ominous black that she’d become used to. Stepping even closer, she pressed her breasts against him, lowering her head to kiss his bared chest. “Tell me, what the alpha demigod wants,” she whispered.

  “Kira,” he warned through gritted teeth.

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head. “Lýkaina. Call me lýkaina, like you always do. Say it and tell me what you want, Blaez.”

  That muscle twitched in his jaw once more and this time when he spoke it was with that gruffness she recognized, that authority that never failed to send sparks of desire shooting straight to her pussy.

  “I want you, lýkaina. I want to be so deep inside of you I can’t think of anything or anyone else. I want your pussy holding my dick so tight neither of us can breathe.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, tilting her head and leaning in to take his lips. “Take control, baby. Take control of what you want. What I need. Take it, now.”

  Chapter 15

  She was giving him everything, arching in his arms as he licked along the line of her throat. Her words had said it all, and later he’d replay them in his mind. As for now, Blaez could only do one thing. It would be the first time, but he didn’t give a damn; he would take her command and give her what she needed, what he had so desperately wanted all this time.

  His kisses continued along her collarbone, down farther to the soft skin between her breasts. Inhaling deeply, he let every nuance of her scent be permanently embedded in his mind, his body, and his soul. She was everything, even when he’d tried to convince himself that she was nothing.

  One arm held her in place, gripping her around the base of her back, while he reached the other one up to rip the front of her shirt completely. He pushed it off one arm, grabbing her bra and giving it the same treatment, her mouth already open and ready to gorge on the dark-tipped nipple, already puckered and ready for his assault. She locked a hand behind his head, pushing him closer, feeding him like she’d become accustomed to doing. He wondered if she knew just how much she’d done for him in the short time they’d been together.

  Two weeks ago he was determined to live his solitary life, to lead his pack, and to keep his promise to his parents and his birthright. That had been enough. Until the moment he’d seen her, scented her. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked her breast as hard and as deep as he possibly could, loving the feel of her in his mouth.

  When she lifted a leg, wrapping it around him, he growled low and deep inside. Then he finally managed to tear his mouth away from hers, grabbing her by that lifted leg and thrusting his thick length against the pants she’d worn. He kissed her mouth then, hungrily, possessively, placing nipping bites along her bottom lip before sucking that into his mouth similar to the way he had her breast. She was gasping and whispering his name and his mind was caught in a frenzy of desire and want and destiny.

  “I knew it,” he rasped, his tongue tracing a heated path along her jawline, down to her neck once again. “The moment I felt your presence in the woods and then when I saw that mark. I knew and I should have just let it be.”

  “It is now,” she replied. “We are right now.”

  They were and yet they weren’t and Blaez opened his eyes with a start. The cave was still alight with moonlight even though it should have been dark. It had been rumored that Artemis and Selene were great cohorts, the moon often being mentioned when speaking of Artemis and her great hunting triumphs. While Kira had received her powerful gift solely from Selene, Blaez’s came from both, his grandmother Artemis making him a powerful hunter and leader while a significant source of his strength came from the moon. So the inside of the cave woul
d stay alight, until the very last second that the full moon hung in the sky. After that it would be too late, until next time.

  Blaez was not going to let that happen.

  He tore his mouth away from Kira once more, his hands moving in frantic motions to get her naked as fast as he could.

  “I won’t do this,” he said abruptly, cupping her face in his. “Not without your permission.”

  She licked her lips, blinking those beautiful eyes as she stared up at him. “We have been Selected,” she told him. “But even if we hadn’t, I want this, Blaez. I want you and all that you are.”

  If he were inclined to such things it would have been like music to his ears; as it stood, his body tightened with more than just arousal this time. He felt that sensation again, as if he were being filled, not just completely this time, until overfilling. The threads had weaved together, the bond was born, and all he needed was that last connection, that one last act that would seal their fate forevermore.

  He lowered his forehead to hers at that moment. “I didn’t think I could,” he whispered. “Didn’t think there was anyone that I could love, or that could love me. Someone that I would be willing to risk it all for.”

  “But I do, Blaez,” she said immediately. “I do love you. As much as I wanted to fight it, to run and keep going forever and ever. It’s here, right here is where I belong, standing beside you ready for whatever comes. I know that now. I know that this is our destiny.”

  He let his hands slide down, brushing past her breasts, spanning her torso, her waist, the curve of her hips, then between her legs. He kept one at the base of her back, letting his fingers slip through the folds of her vagina, each of them moaning as his fingers touched her warmth, the wetness. He loved how she felt in his hands, his mouth watering at the knowledge of what she would taste like. The flat of his palm rubbed along her clit, while two of his fingers delved deep inside of her.