Andromeda's Reign

by K. S. Haigwood

  Andra laughed. “You don’t have anything to worry about there. She’s not my type.”

  “That’s good to know, I guess,” I said, and she whacked me again.

  “I have seen some of your memories, Ace Keller. I’m still a little worried that I can even satisfy you. I believe there were four women in one memory.”

  It was my turn for my face to get hot. I’d hoped she would never see that one. The fact that she was still here and talking to me made me feel a little better. “Sorry,” I said, sheepishly. “I’ve seen your memories, too. I think you’ll satisfy me just fine.”

  A blast of desire hit me so hard that my hands dropped to my sides and I braced myself on the doorknob to keep from falling over. Andra’s arousal was so strong that I nearly grabbed her and pulled her into my room. I had to get rid of her before I messed everything up. My way. My pace.

  “Andra…” I swallowed.

  “I have a question,” she said, and I blew out a heavy breath. She had to know how much I was suffering by not giving in. She didn’t wait for me to tell her to ask it. “If we have to be up for training in…” she paused, like she was looking at her timepiece, “…five and a half hours, and we haven’t satisfied the bond tonight, how are we going to make it through training without collapsing? We haven’t touched much since you left for the concert.”

  Fuck! I moistened my lips as I tried to think of a way out of this, but I came up empty-minded. It was looking more and more like it was still going to be her way and her pace.

  “Will you teach me how to meditate and finish the story?” she said. “I will leave after that. I know you’re hell-bent on making me learn a lesson or something.”

  I moved my weight to my other leg and crossed my arms again. “I’m not trying to make you learn a lesson, Andra.” I sighed. “I just need you to know—”

  “About your past. I know, Ace. You’ve been going on about that all day. Tell me something… Why do I need to know about your past? What is so damn important that I need to know, that you think will have me running for the hills… or Alabama? We’re in the present. Your past means nothing to me. If you want me to get to know you, you’re going to have to let me see who you are now. Neither of us are the same people we used to be. I’m not that scared little housewife who knew absolutely nothing about her husband’s parallel life or the girl who had no friends because I had nothing in common with any of the rich bitches who were married to Marc’s friends. I’m different, and so are you. I’m sure you’re really sorry for whatever ugly thing you did. I want to know who you are now, and I want you to know who I am now. So, can we move forward, preferably without the past getting in our way?”

  I let my head fall back against the door as her words squeezed my heart.

  “Ace…” Her fingers closed around my left hand and she pulled it down, uncrossing my arms. “If you want me to get to know you, you’re going to have to let me in. I won’t take advantage of you.” She giggled. If she only knew what I’d done, she wouldn’t be giggling. Bond or no bond, she would try to get as far away from me as she could. The moon wouldn’t be far enough. My feelings for her were too strong to let her go now. I would find her and convince her that I would find a way to make it right. “Look,” she said, on a long sigh. “We can just get to know each other and you can show me how to meditate.”

  I didn’t have a choice. I had to let her in or we wouldn’t make it through training. Hesitantly, I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it, inviting her in.

  Chapter 31

  Friday, February 6th 2015 4:29 a.m. CST

  Montgomery, Alabama

  Roel

  Saying the chair was uncomfortable would be sugarcoating it. It was one of those metal numbers—the folding kind that every ass in the whole world has sat on at least once in their lifetime—and to top it off, this one was broken. One of the hinges had snapped or a bolt had come out or something, ‘cause the damn thing was leaning down on the front right side. Roel had no energy to fix it. Sitting here mentally bitching about it didn’t do anything except piss him off. It sure didn’t make his sore ass feel any better. Knowing Brad, and how well he took care of his stuff, he’d probably broken it when he’d taken the first two-hour shift over eight hours ago.

  Yeah, Jaxon had hit the moonrising wolf that hard and KO’d his ass for over eight hours now. Roel was no pussy, but he had absolutely no intentions of ever fighting with Phoenix’s second in command again. Sometimes he thought his brain was still rattling around in his skull. The guy packed some serious heat in his punches. And he was quick. Really quick.

  Roel groaned in discomfort as he switched his weight from one ass cheek to the other. He was thinking about carrying Phoenix’s big, comfy chair from his chamber in here, when the moonrising shifter’s leg moved. Standing, Roel took a step closer, but after half a minute, it still hadn’t moved again.

  He let out a quick whistle through his teeth and its ear twitched. The corners of Roel’s mouth turned up as he grabbed his phone and sent Peanut a text to get the others and come to the holding room.

  “Wakey-wakey,” Roel said in a sing-song voice. “It’s time to shift back to your human form so we can torture you.”

  The wolf huffed, and then raised its head a little, before laying it back down on the cement floor.

  Roel’s mouth pulled to one side as his brow furrowed. “Did Jaxon knock your brain loose or something?”

  The door opened, but Roel didn’t take his eyes from the wolf as Peanut, Heath and Phoenix came into the room.

  “Brad and the girls are on their way,” Heath said. “Tracy stayed over there so they’d only have to drive one vehicle.”

  “Is he gonna pull through?” Phoenix said.

  Roel frowned. “If he doesn’t have brain damage, he’s got one hell of a migraine. Remind me not to ever piss Jaxon off… again.”

  “Don’t ever piss Jaxon off again,” Heath said on a chuckle.

  Roel turned his head to give Heath an annoyed look. “You’ve been hanging around Brad too long. Stop now, before you get any dumber.”

  “Want me to call Mena?” Peanut said.

  Roel nodded as he picked up the cattle prod that they had used to poke the beast to try and get it to wake up. They hadn’t used the voltage. That would just be mean. There was, like, five million volts that went through that thing. It was just the first long, skinny thing Roel saw when he walked into Phoenix’s Chamber of Death storage room. But, up until now, the wolf hadn’t done anything except breathe. And it hadn’t done that well. Guess he busted a lung when he hit it with his Mustang.

  He slid the handle through the bars and poked the wolf in the shoulder. It pawed at the air, and then settled again.

  “Went straight to voicemail,” Peanut said.

  “Call the dick’s phone,” Roel said, and then shot Phoenix a nervous glance out of the corner of his eye. Phoenix’s face was impassive.

  “I need to speak with Mena,” Roel heard Peanut say, and then he must have put it on speaker phone, because said dick’s voice echoed around the room.

  “Her name is Andromeda,” Ace said, and Roel rolled his eyes as he turned his head to shout toward the phone.

  “Give the fucking phone to my Alpha, shit for brains!”

  “You’re speaking to your Alpha—” Ace started, but then Mena’s laughter interrupted, and the sound of playful scuffling came through the speaker.

  “Give me the phone, Ace,” she said on a laugh, and then squealed. “Stop—stop tickling me!”

  “No,” he said, with amusement thick in his voice. “Wait, okay, I will if you beg for it.”

  Roel risked a glance at Phoenix. The guy looked like he was about ready to bolt from the room and kill someone. Shit! “Ace,” he said, “will you please give her the phone or put it on speaker and shut the hell up so she can hear us?”

  “Sorry,” Mena said. “I’m here. We’ve had an eventful night.”

  “Sounds like it,” Heath said.
>
  “I have some awesome news, and some not so awesome news,” she said, ignoring Heath’s sarcasm.

  “Let’s hear the not so awesome news first, so that we can all be happy again after you tell us the awesome news,” Roel said.

  “Ace is blind for a little while, a few weeks, maybe,” she said, and Roel’s eyes popped wide.

  “Dafuq?” Heath said. “Shifters can’t go blind, Mena. What do you mean for a few weeks? What happened?”

  Roel’s head bobbed up and down, even though he knew she couldn’t see him. The wolf grunted behind him, but he didn’t bother looking. If Ace really was blind, it didn’t sound like not so awesome news to him. This was the best news he’d heard in a month of Sundays. Phoenix stepped closer to the phone, but didn’t say anything.

  “Um… that’s where the not so awesome news ends and the awesome news starts,” she said. “We got the potions to release all of you from the Nexus spell. Ace had to drink a random potion as payment for them, hence why he can’t see now. Phoenix will have them for everyone when he arrives back in Montgomery.”

  Roel blinked. “He did that for us?”

  “Yeah, I did, asshole,” Ace said. “So you can start being nicer to me. I care about you fuckers. You’re my pack, too.”

  Roel’s head lifted, and he locked gazes with Phoenix. He knew what he was thinking. He would have been thinking the same thing if he’d been in his shoes: Ace was planning to kill him.

  Roel swallowed as Phoenix turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. He was honestly surprised the guy had stayed as long as he had, after listening to how happy Mena sounded there with Ace. After hearing what Mena told them, Roel actually hated that he had stayed. Didn’t she realize what this meant?

  “Guys?” Mena said.

  Roel plastered on a fake smile, and said, “That’s really awesome news, Mena.” And to keep her from hearing the nervousness in his voice, he added on, “To be honest, I think both things you told us were awesome.”

  Mena laughed, but Ace said, “I figured you would, fucker.”

  Roel glanced at Heath and Peanut. By their worried expressions, they got Ace’s motives for getting the potions, too.

  “We called to tell you the moonrising wolf is waking up,” Peanut said, and Roel nodded at his swift thinking to change the subject. “Or…” Peanut said, with wide eyes, “… that he’s awake.”

  Roel quickly did an about face to see that the wolf’s snout was sticking through the silver bars, with its teeth bared. He took an uncomfortable step back, toward Heath, knowing how close he’d been standing to the cell. He was lucky to still have an ass left.

  “Yep,” Roel said, “he’s definitely awake.”

  “What do you usually do with moonrising shifters?” Mena said over the speaker.

  “We need to make sure no one in our pack bit him,” Heath said. “The Alpha gives the moonrising shifter an order to shift. If it does, it lets us know that someone in that Alpha’s pack, pride or whatever bit the human without telling him or her that they needed to name their beast. If it doesn’t shift, then it means that a shifter from another group of shifters bit the human.”

  “Do I need to come home to give it an order?” Mena said.

  “No,” Ace said shortly, before anyone there with the wolf could answer her.

  Roel’s jaw clenched. “No,” he repeated. “You can give him the command over the phone.”

  Muffled sounds came from the speaker, and Roel assumed she was asking Ace what she should say to the moonrising wolf. “Okay, put the phone closer to him,” Mena said, and Peanut took a step forward and extended his arm toward the large cage. The wolf snarled, but Alex’s arm didn’t shake as he held the phone out.

  “You’re good to go, Mena,” Roel said.

  “I command you to shift, moonrising wolf!” she commanded, and Roel smiled as pride rose up in him at hearing her take charge. She was going to be a great Alpha. He knew it in his gut.

  To his relief, nothing happened. That meant he didn’t have to interrogate all seventy-seven members—excluding Mena—of their pack to find which traitor bit the human. But that got them no closer to finding out who did.

  Roel blew out a weighted breath. “He’s still a wolf. We’ll wait until he shifts back, and if he doesn’t tell us anything, we will dispose of him.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Mena said, “Are you sure he’s a moonrising wolf?”

  Roel cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  She huffed. “What if he is like me? I mean, what if he is like I was? You know, not completely a moonrising wolf yet. It’s still a little over three weeks until the next full moon. What if he was bitten after the last full moon? There may still be a way to save him.”

  Roel’s other eyebrow popped up to give the other one already raised a high five. “You want us to try and find someone to bond with him?”

  “Um… yeah,” she replied.

  Roel puckered his lips, not fully understanding her, but not wanting to refuse an order from her, either. Refusing a direct order from your Alpha was extremely painful. “Mena,” Roel said cautiously, “it took us nearly three weeks to find an Alpha willing to bond with you. You are the only female Alpha in the whole world. I don’t think that’s going to be possib—”

  “Well, if an Alpha can only bond with another Alpha, can’t just a normal shifter bond with another normal shifter?”

  Roel looked up to Heath. The guy shrugged. Roel sighed. “We don’t know.”

  “Find out if he’s a true moonrising wolf,” she said. “If he isn’t, do your best to find him a mate. I don’t want you murdering someone, and, to me, that’s murder. You wouldn’t have let anyone touch me. Remember that, Roel. A human may still be in there somewhere. If he’s really a moonrising wolf, try to find out which pack he belongs to, so that his Alpha can come get him and figure out who the traitor is in his pack. It will happen again if we don’t help resolve it.”

  Peanut nodded as he glanced up at the others. “That’s a good plan.”

  Figured the cop would think so. Roel huffed. “What do you want us to do if he’s not fully a moonrising wolf yet, but we can’t find him a mate by the next full moon?”

  Besides a low growl coming from the wolf, there was silence in the room for a long moment, before Mena answered him. “You know what has to be done, Roel,” she said in a grim voice.

  “We’ll keep you updated, Mena,” Heath said.

  “Take care, guys,” she said. “I miss you.”

  “We miss you, too,” they all said in unison.

  “See you soon,” she said.

  Roel frowned. “See you soon, Mena,” he said, and then ended the call.

  Chapter 32

  Friday, February 6th 2015 2:43 a.m. PST

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Ace

  My eyebrows pulled together as I frowned. “I hate when they call you Mena.”

  She laughed. “That’s my name.”

  “Uh… that’s a negative, ghost—”

  “Don’t quote Top Gun at me,” she said, and then I heard her shuffle around on my bedroom floor in front of me, getting comfortable, I guessed. I’d refused when she’d suggested we talk on the bed, not that being on the floor would help me keep my hands to myself. “I could out quote you on that movie, even if I was suffering from a migraine, a hangnail and monthly cramps all at the same time.” She took my hands from my lap and squeezed my fingers. “Teach me how to meditate.”

  I smiled. Her naiveté was refreshing. “Shifters don’t have headaches or menstrual cycles, Andra.”

  She huffed in annoyance. “You know what I mean.”

  “I didn’t realize you were such a movie buff,” I said, grinning.

  “I’m pretty good. Better with the ones that have hot guys in them.”

  I snickered. “So, you were crushing on Maverick, eh?”

  “God no,” she said. “Ice Man had it going on, though. That man has a great mouth.”
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  My eyebrows popped up. “You have a mouth fetish?”

  “Wait… I thought you knew everything about me already.”

  Pulling my hands from hers, I placed my palms on the floor behind me and leaned back. Chaos cold-nosed my arm, so I lifted my head to scratch behind his ear. “I never said that.”

  “But you have all of my memories,” she said.

  I nodded. “And you have all of mine, yet you know close to nothing about me. I’ve only looked at some of yours, Andra. I know you have a brother who is deaf and parents who didn’t approve of your decision to turn Julliard down to marry a controlling asshole. I’ve glanced at several more, but I was mainly interested in the memories that made you happy. You loved dancing and you love your brother. There was something that didn’t quite add up, though. There are some fuzzy parts in your mind. Mind if I ask you a question?”

  She was silent as a discomforting tension settled between us. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why would you give up something you were so passionate about to marry a guy you didn’t love?” I said.

  I could sense that she had stiffened. She wasn’t even breathing, but her pulse was hammering. “I did love—”

  My jaw clenched. “Don’t lie to me. He wasn’t in any of your happy memories, not that you had many to sift through. Why would you stop doing something you loved to marry someone you didn’t?”

  She huffed. “I thought you were going to teach me how to meditate.”

  “I thought we were going to get to know each other,” I shot back.

  The exhale that came from her mouth sounded painful. The smell of salt thickened the air, and she sniffled. “Like you said, he was controlling.”

  “He made you marry him?” I said as I sat up and leaned in toward her.

  “Not exactly,” she said, and then sniffled again. “My brother was hanging around a bad crowd back then. Someone set a building on fire and a lot of people got hurt, some even died. Ian swore to me that he had nothing to do with it, that he wasn’t even there. I believed him. I still do. But someone was smart enough to make it look like it was his fault. I didn’t know what to do. Everyone had heard of the new hotshot attorney in town who couldn’t be beat. I took all the money I’d been saving for school and went to see Marc Hoke, hoping it would be enough to keep my brother from going to prison. He agreed to make it all disappear, but he didn’t want my money.” She paused, and then I heard her swallow. “He wanted me.”