Hunted Princess: A Paranormal Dark Romance (Feline Royals Book 3)

by Alexa B. James

  Princess Itzel had made me question that lifestyle, though. She had pointed out the emptiness inside the shimmering bubble of my existence. Underneath the glitz and glamour, no one actually cared about me. They loved my fame, my money, my image. Not the guy I was under it all.

  The princess’s death seemed to confirm that I had been right all along. It was better not to care. It was better to name a woman for the month when you’d fuck her along with twenty others. It was better to have pleasure without torment. Attachment to someone meant being hurt when they were gone.

  Except…

  Except she wasn’t wrong. How could I deny that now, when I knew what it felt like to know a True Mate, if only for a moment? I hadn’t believed it when the amulet had shown me only the human princess. But when she’d opened the amulet and given me a mark, I could no longer deny it—at least to myself. I hadn’t told anyone, but I knew. Magic didn’t make mistakes.

  “We’ll stay here and wait for answers,” Shadow said after a short silence. “Balam will be back.”

  I needed to do something, to act. I was tired of prowling back and forth in the small clearing, charged with energy and helplessness to change what had happened. I cursed myself for not joining Kwame on his search for the killer. Doing nothing while our mate grew cold on the ground was a torture worse than death itself.

  I stopped pacing and turned to Itzel, staring down at her glorious body, now drained of life. If my fate was worse than hers, wouldn’t I trade places with her? If knowing a True Mate for only a moment, not even long enough to consummate the mate bond, was worse than death, wouldn’t I choose death instead? It was the only way for us to be together. To go to the spirit world and join her.

  I stared at the bag sitting next to the princess, discarded as if it didn’t contain four of the most precious items in the world. I would have traded them all without a moment’s thought to get her back, to know how it felt to fuck her as a mate, not just a man. To do more than glory over her helplessness as I held her captive and made her beg for my cock, and then filled every tight inch of her with it until she begged for mercy. I would take time to appreciate that her cunt tasted like honey, and I’d know why she was the best fuck I’d ever had.

  As if in a trance, I took a step toward the bag, blood drumming in my ears. She wasn’t a shifter, but she had marked us. I was her True Mate. My amulet… Could it heal a human?

  Before I could do anything too crazy, my phone went off in my pocket. Shadow’s head shot up, and his nostril’s flared as if it were an insult to carry technology while holding vigil for the dead. I slid my phone out, turning my back and pacing to the edge of the forest before answering. A pale, flavorless blonde face stared up at me from the screen, as far as you could get from the succulent, wild woman who had claimed me and then promptly and spectacularly died in front of me.

  “Hello,” I said carefully, brushing the fog from my brain.

  “Hello, Sir Kenosi,” Princess Camila said. “I’m so glad to see that you’re unharmed. Though I admit to being slightly surprised.”

  Blood rushed in my ears, and I rubbed at my chest, trying to relieve the tightness that squeezed it. I could barely speak, and I was not the kind of man who stumbled over his words. “Did you—Did you order that attack?”

  “What attack?”

  “Shit.” Though I was no fan of Princess Camila, I didn’t relish the thought of telling her that her sister was dead.

  “I’m sure you were taken hostage by my sister and her poor, misled band of rogue shifters,” Camila said. “That’s the only explanation. Otherwise, you’d be in violation of our agreement. You do remember promising me the use of your helicopter for transportation, don’t you?”

  “Your Grace,” I said. “Camila, if I may…”

  “I don’t believe our relationship warrants that kind of informality. Perhaps after you’ve returned with the promised vehicle, and we’ve spent the remaining stops on my Amulet Tour as a team and gotten better acquainted, it would be acceptable for you to call me by my given name.”

  “Your Grace, your sister was attacked by a tiger when we reached the Tiger Nation.”

  “What?” Camila’s voice was blank, unbelieving. For a long minute, neither of us spoke.

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Then you absolutely must come and get me. I’ll need to speak to King Tiger about this right away. And it will take my father too long to arrange for a plane to fly here from the nearest city and then take me to the Tiger Nation.”

  I glanced across the clearing to where Shadow sat with Itzel. He’d lifted his head, his eyes fixed on me with their eerie, otherworldly green glow. Despite Camila’s businesslike response, I knew that everyone dealt with their own shit in their own way. Still, I didn’t much like her way.

  I wrapped my hand around the phone and lowered it from my mouth to speak to him. “Do you think we should return for Princess Camila?” When Shadow glared at me, I shrugged. “She’s her sister. Wouldn’t Itzel have wanted her here?”

  “Mistakenly,” Shadow growled. “Camila has no heart. She’s not above hiring a tiger to ambush someone. We have the amulets. She would think nothing of killing her own sister for them.”

  I shrugged like his words meant nothing, but my fingers returned to rub at my sternum, attempting to loosen the crushing tightness that had risen again. He’d confirmed the momentary suspicion that Camila’s first words had raised in me. I lifted the phone back to my mouth. “I won’t be coming back for you, Princess Camila. I promised the helicopter because I wanted to be closer to Princess Itzel, so I might get to know her better. Not you.”

  I relished the indignant huff on her end of the phone. There was little that could satisfy me more than knocking a spoiled princess down a notch. And while seeing Itzel on her knees choking on my cock had been irresistible, Camila held none of that appeal. She probably had shark teeth that would slice my dick like salami. But there were other ways to bring a princess to her knees.

  “You’ve created an enemy in the ocelots,” she hissed at me through the phone.

  “If I recall correctly, your kingdom has already created an enemy of… Everyone. You’re giving me far too much credit for the tension between nations.”

  “You’ll regret this day, you worthless upstart.” Her voice grated like chewing a mouthful of ice.

  “I assure you, I’m far from worthless,” I said. “In fact, my net worth is more than your entire kingdom.”

  “I command you to bring back the helicopter,” she gritted out. “A man of your station is required to obey my orders. I am a princess, Sir Kenosi.”

  I laughed at that. “You’re not my princess. I use your title out of deference to the predecessors in your position, not because you’ve earned it, and certainly not because I believe you somehow superior. You have no power over me, Princess Camila.”

  “You stole the amulets,” she fumed. “Those are mine, and you know it. I earned them. You won’t get away with this. I’ve already spoken with my father. If he hasn’t already contacted the shah, he will. And trust me, you don’t want to make an enemy of me or my father, Sir Kenosi. All the money in the world can’t get you back into our good graces.”

  “Your good graces?” I asked with an incredulous laugh. “That’s the best threat you can come up with? Princess, I couldn’t give two shits about your good graces. And if I recall, your sister was the one who earned the Cheetah Amulet.”

  “I was treated like a servant. I worked for that!”

  “It wasn’t given to you,” I said. “It was given to your sister, and trust me when I say that she earned every ounce of it. She knew how to work for a mating amulet.”

  “Ugh, you’re disgusting,” Camila said. “You deserve each other.”

  “And it was Itzel who marked a mate when she opened the cursed amulet,” I reminded her. “Something that, if I recall correctly, only the future queen can do.”

  I could hear sputterin
g on the other end of the line. Shadow studied me as if waiting, watching intently as the realization dawned in my mind. We stared at each other across the clearing. I’d just put it together, but it was clear that he was one step ahead of me.

  Camila’s voice trembled when she finally spoke. “She can’t be queen. She’s not a shifter.”

  “If a tiger killed her, she would be.”

  “She’d be a tiger,” Camila said. “A tiger can’t rule the Ocelot Kingdom.”

  When I didn’t answer, she went on. “I’m coming for those amulets. Gabor will get them from you. You have no idea how ruthless an ocelot guard is, Kenosi. You don’t know what he’s capable of. My father will send more guards, too. You won’t get away with this. Those are my amulets, and I’m going to get them back.”

  I didn’t know if she was trying to convince me or herself, but I didn’t have time to talk her through it. I needed to see what else Shadow knew about the curse, about my mate. Our mate. She’d marked him, too. He hadn’t been afraid to tell her, even when I was still in denial. I didn’t know how it was possible that someone could have more than one True Mate, especially a human. But magic didn’t lie.

  I ended the call without another word to Camila. Shadow watched as I strode across the clearing to him. “What does this mean?” I demanded.

  Before he could answer, Lord Balam appeared, the body of a tiger who must have weighed four times as much as him draped in his arms. I sprang to his side as he dropped the enormous beast, its legs trussed with vines and its fur streaked with blood. “You killed him?”

  “He’s not dead,” Lord Balam said, his deep, rich voice thick with disgust. “He’s a shifter. He escaped into the spirit world.”

  “Fuck.” I cursed our rotten luck. If only he had been a real tiger, one who could have given Itzel a second life. I stared at her body, swallowing at the thought of what I’d considered earlier.

  “Where’s Kwame?” Shadow asked, never moving from his vigil by her side.

  “In the spirit world,” Lord Balam said glaring down at the murderous tiger at our feet. “But here’s our answer.”

  “The curse,” I said, turning to Shadow. “It says Itzel will be the next queen.”

  He nodded.

  “Well,” I said. “Things just got interesting.”

  Lord Balam scowled. “How is that possible? If she was killed by a shifter, she won’t come back as a tiger.”

  I swallowed, my pulse painful in the side of my throat. “There is one thing we haven’t tried.”

  Both men turned to me. “When I used the Panther Amulet, I saw Princess Itzel,” I said. “I didn’t believe it, but… Maybe it’s true.”

  Lord Balam nodded, no surprise on his face. “I thought that might be the case.”

  “How does that bring back our mate?” Shadow asked, his face going still as he swept aside a strand of hair that had blown over Itzel’s cheek.

  “It doesn’t,” I said. “It’s my amulet that might bring her back.”

  Five

  Itzel

  Princess, Ocelot Nation

  I approached the man standing before the wide, open windows of his house. His hands were clasped behind his back, and in front of him stretched an endless orchard.

  “This is your father, Gao Tsewang,” Mom said gently, guiding me forward. “Tsewang, this is our daughter, Itzel.”

  The man turned from the window slowly. He was short and black-haired, with a round face and Asian features. “Itzel,” he said, a smile breaking onto his face. “I have waited eighteen long years to meet you.”

  “You knew about me?” I asked, swallowing hard.

  “Of course,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him and giving me a small bow. “I know all about you.”

  I glanced at my mother. “I thought you said you didn’t get to watch over us from this world.”

  “I’m not a god,” she said, a slight twinkle in her eye that hadn’t been there before. I could see it now, how her whole being was both relaxed and lit up in his presence. I felt a strange, irrational pang of sympathy for my father—no, not my father. King Ocelot. And just as quickly as it had come, it was replaced with fury at all he’d done. Yes, it would be heartbreaking for the person you loved to find their True Mate. But there were people like Lord Balam who loved their wife enough to let her go, so she could marry the person she was meant to be with. And there were people who didn’t.

  “I’m the daughter of a god,” I muttered, my head spinning with this knowledge. I’d always felt so…ordinary.

  “And of the High Priestess,” Tsewang said, a note of pride in his voice as he smiled at my mother. “That’s even more rare. There is only one of those in the world at once.”

  “Who is it now?” I asked.

  Tsewang frowned up at the ceiling as if in thought. “There’s a little baby girl with the power inside her right now,” he said. “When she grows into that power, she will have to be careful not to meet the same fate as your mother.”

  “Did you know what my mother was when you met her?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “And so did your father. I felt it only fair to inform prospective lovers of the potential consequences.”

  “Like pissing off King Ocelot,” I said, glancing at Tsewang.

  To my surprise, he laughed. “Yes. I’m overjoyed that I was able to make your acquaintance at last. I’m sorry that I was not able to do so in the human world. I would have liked to be your father, Itzel. I have a feeling you would have challenged me even more than my son.”

  “Your son?” I asked, my throat tightening. Awe and loss filled me at once. I had a brother as well as a sister. There was so much I had missed by not knowing who I was, so much I had missed because of Tsewang’s death. So much that King Ocelot had taken from me. My real father, my mother, the chance to know my brother.

  “Ah,” Tsewang said, his head jerking up. “We’ve got company.”

  “Lilith?” my mother asked, her eyes widening.

  Tsewang’s eyes sparkled and he lifted a finger. “What do a ghost, a lion, and a prince have in common?”

  “Kwame,” I said, an ache twisting in my chest that took my breath. I hadn’t expected to be so affected by the thought of one of my mates. But he was someone I knew, someone familiar, even if I hadn’t known him long.

  “What a wonderful match you have made, Princess. I couldn’t have chosen a better mate for you if I’d tried.”

  “You know Kwame?”

  “Well, of course,” Tsewang said. “He’s royalty and a shifter—as much as we call ourselves that here, when only the spirit is present.”

  Mom had said something like that, that she had been the High Priestess and a shifter in our world, but now she was neither.

  Kwame appeared in the room before I could ask more. “My queen,” he said, rushing to pull me into his arms. “I have never been happier to be a ghost.”

  “But I gave you your life back,” I pointed out. “Why are you here?”

  “I can still travel between worlds. I imagined I would have more time in the human world before I came back here, but if you are here, I have no reason to stay there.”

  “Your family,” I said, my throat thick with the words. “I didn’t save you so you could come back here.”

  “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” he said, taking my face between his hands and kissing me softly. His lips were warm and full, and I had to fight the urge to sink into him instead of standing on my own two feet. I had to be strong, though.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, pulling away.

  “Why must there be more?” he asked. “You are my mate. I would do anything to be with you. Remember, I even tricked you into coming here with me the first time so we could be together. I would risk you hating me because I know that I can only be happy when I’m with you. If that means never returning to the human world, so be it. I’m satisfied with you by my side.”

  “Kwame,” I whispered, getting all c
hoked up again. “That’s crazy.”

  “I’m crazy,” he said. “Crazy for you, my queen.” He kissed me, and again I felt that spiraling, hypnotic attraction.

  “I’m not used to men being so…” I shook my head and laughed. “I don’t even know the word for it.”

  “You’re not used to being treated like a queen?” Kwame asked. “Then shame on your other mates. You should never be treated as anything else. I will spoil you into eternity, Princess Itzel.”

  “Wow,” I said. Because what else could I say? It wasn’t like a man had never sweet talked me before, but this was a bit overwhelming. He wasn’t just trying to get laid. He really meant these things. I was used to men like Tadeu and Lord Balam, with their dirty mouths and rough exteriors. Men who might have emotions buried somewhere under there, about as deep as the earth’s core. Even Sir Kenosi was more familiar, with his sick games and tests. I could negotiate with a man like that. Only Shadow was still a mystery to me, but I understood mystery better than… Adoration.

  “You came here prepared to give up your human life and stay forever?” I asked, halfway in awe and a bit appalled that he’d die so quickly for me.

  “Of course,” he said. “There’s nowhere else for me now that we’ve met. You’re my True Mate, Itzel.”

  “But… You wanted out of here so badly. You wanted your human life back.”

  “I know what I am doing,” he said. “No matter how painful it is to give up a chance at a human life, it’s infinitely more painful to give up a mate.”

  I couldn’t believe it. He’d tricked me, fought so hard for his human life, and now he was ready to give it up in an instant to be with me.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said. “When I marked you, it meant I was going to be queen. Somehow, I have to get back to our world.”

  Kwame gave me a sorrowful look. “I’m sorry, Princess. But the tiger that killed you was a shifter. You won’t come back as a tiger.”