Copyright © 2020 by Eliot Grayson
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by Fiona Jayde
Edited by Alessandra Hazard
Proofreading by Lori Parks
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eliotgrayson.com
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1: Divide and Conquer
Chapter 2: Let Me Out
Chapter 3: Crazy for Loving You
Chapter 4: Near But Not So Dear
Chapter 5: You Don’t Know Me at All
Chapter 6: Two Mates too Many
Chapter 7: Enemies New and Old
Chapter 8: Cheats Never Prosper
Chapter 9: Down the Drain
Chapter 10: You Always Have a Choice
Chapter 11: Cats Always Land on Their Feet
Chapter 12: On the Hunt
Chapter 13: Keep Your Enemies Closer
Chapter 14: Break on Through to the Other Side
Chapter 15: Taken
Chapter 16: Disenchanted
Chapter 17: Fuck Me, or I’ll Find Someone Who Will
Chapter 18: Well, This Is Awkward
Chapter 19: Take Me Home
Chapter 20: Cute Little Tufty Ears
Epilogue: I Know
Acknowledgements
Get in Touch
Also by Eliot Grayson
If you missed The Alpha’s Warlock…
The One Decent Thing
The Replacement Husband
Author’s Note
This book picks up right where The Alpha’s Warlock left off, and while the main characters are different and each couple gets their HEA, the larger plot arc continues from book to book in the Mismatched Mates series. Readers of Captive Mate may note that some questions remain about Arik’s childhood. Some of his past experiences will come to light in a future book featuring his adoptive brother — who’s kind of a badass. I can’t wait to write his book.
Including that book, I expect to write at least three more Mismatched Mates books over the next year or so. Look for the next one tentatively in the spring of 2021! I’ll be releasing several books in early 2021, in fact, including a couple of shared-world projects I’m very excited about.
At the back of this book you can find several ways to keep up with what I’m publishing next, including links to my newsletter sign-up and my Facebook readers’ group. And if you missed The Alpha’s Warlock and want to catch up, you can find it here.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy!
Chapter 1
Divide and Conquer
Being chained up in a basement wasn’t as bad as being chained up in a cave, an outhouse, or a condemned poultry-processing plant. What did it say about my life that I could draw that comparison? Some might’ve pointed out that I ought to stop doing the shit that led me to be chained up, period.
I disagreed. That was victim-blaming, if you asked me. What was a little necromancy, anyway? Like, the guy I’d turned into a giant wolf-zombie-thing the other day was a complete asshole to begin with. I might’ve even improved his personality.
Not that anyone had asked me. As usual, I’d been ignored other than being locked into spelled manacles and dumped onto the floor of a secured room like so much dangerous trash — the radioactive waste of the supernatural world. Too hot to touch. Too toxic to discard in the open. Nearly worthless if I didn’t cooperate, but still with some potential to be used, if my captors figured out how.
First they’d try to get some magic out of me. Then, when I refused, they’d rape and beat me — they’d get some entertainment that way, if nothing else.
At least, that’s how it had gone before, more than once. Who knew what addled, bullheaded Matthew would do to me, or let his pack do to me, while under the influence of my spell? I’d never been raped by someone who thought he loved me before. Maybe this time I’d get a new experience. Broaden my horizons. Let another fraction of the miniscule bit of faith in humanity I’d held onto all these years shrivel and die. Not that I’d had much to begin with. I had faith in myself. Everyone else was a threat or a mark, and often both.
For now, though, I reclined on the beat-up orange shag carpeting, inhaling the acrid dust of decades that puffed out of it every time I shifted my weight. I closed my eyes, finding my center as well as I could with chains wrapped around me and cutting off my magic, the one thing I’d ever been able to control — other than the occasional undead monster.
I was Arik. I held on to that — the one, unshakable foundation of my identity, the name I’d been given by the only person I’d ever loved.
I was a shaman. A little quiver of ironic laughter there, because I hated that title as much as every alpha I’d ever encountered craved the use of someone who held it.
Sam Kimball was dead.
That allowed me a flicker of a smile.
And lastly, I had the Armitages’ alpha pack leader by the balls. And if he thought he could use me without reciprocation, he was about to have a rude fucking awakening. Chains, torture, and even fucking shag carpets couldn’t break me. Nothing could break me.
I was Arik, shaman and necromancer and survivor. I did the breaking.
Deep breath. I’d repeat that until I believed it.
I had the chance to repeat it several dozen times before anything happened to disturb me. Footsteps — several sets of them, it sounded like. Fucking yay. Maybe it would be all three of the stooges this time, instead of just Ian Armitage, Matthew’s brother, who’d come downstairs once the day before to growl and shout at me.
I’d ignored him. Then he’d shouted more. Then his mate, that little fucking asshole warlock Nate Hawthorne, had stomped to the top of the stairs and shouted at Ian about how they’d agreed he was going to deal with me himself. Really, I’d had better conversations.
By the time the door to the staircase opened, I’d managed to prop myself up into a half-seated sprawl against the end of an ancient ratty plaid couch. Couldn’t they have put me on the couch? No, of course not, but given how gross it was I was probably better off on the floor anyway.
I stopped short of laying the back of my hand against my forehead like a Victorian lady with the vapors, mainly because my arms wouldn’t stretch like that with the length of my chains. But I thought I probably got the point across. Limp arms, labored breaths, fluttering eyelashes, check check and check. That love-struck fool Matthew didn’t stand a chance. He might take his anger out on me at some point, or let his pack do it for him, but that would serve a purpose too. The more pathetic I looked now, the more guilt he’d store up for me to tap into later.
The first one through the door was Ian. He’d ripped the head off of Sam Kimball, leader of the Kimball pack, in the pack battle two nights before. The goons who’d lugged me down to the basement had made a point of bragging about it. Not that Sam had really been a Kimball anymore, not after the magic I’d laid on him. Either way, no loss there. If the goons thought I’d be crying over Kimball’s death, they didn’t know much.
Of course, it was obvious they didn’t know much. I doubted they knew how to tie their own shoes.
Ian was fucking huge, had an even bigger chip on his shoulder, and hated my guts. I wasn’t going to waste my focus on him, because I already knew how he’d react to any given stimulus: ripping off heads, etcetera. Boring and predictable.
Next came Nate, his mate, the bitch who’d knocked me out with a water bottle of all fucking things. Even in the dingy light of the one bare
bulb on the ceiling, he looked better than he had the last time I’d seen him. The other night his dark hair had been matted with filth, his baggy clothes torn up, his face a pale rictus of terror and misery. Now he just looked mildly exhausted and was wearing jeans that fit, if you liked jeans that cut off the circulation to your dick. His brown eyes gleamed with wary suspicion, and he stayed close to Ian.
Matthew was last.
Matthew, with his broad shoulders, intense blue eyes fixed on me like he couldn’t look anywhere else, and a fucked-up mix of longing and loathing written all over his square-jawed face. My only hope for getting out of this alive.
When I’d cast that love spell on him, it’d been at Kimball’s suggestion. Or rather, Kimball had ordered me to get Matthew in line somehow, intending for me to tie Matthew directly to him. The love spell had been my…elaboration. Having Matthew attached to me, rather than to Kimball, had been my ace in the hole. It’d ended up screwing Kimball over, since Matthew had thought he’d been helping to ‘rescue’ me when he brought Kimball’s plans, and barn, down around his head.
Remembering how he’d thrown everything away to make sure I was safe made it a little harder to plan to use the spell against him…but his feelings were fake anyway. He didn’t get credit for them.
And besides, it’d helped me then and it’d help me now. I loved it when I planned ahead.
“Hello,” I whispered. My voice was so hoarse and scratchy I sounded like a three-pack-a-day hooker trying to attract a john. Hopefully they didn’t make that comparison. “Did you forget to bring breakfast again?” I put as much pitiful confusion into my tone as I could, and let my head loll back as if my neck simply couldn’t hold it up. That also had the effect of baring my long, pale throat to Matthew’s no-doubt interested alpha gaze. “What day is it?”
“It’s afternoon,” Nate snapped, just as Ian said, “Go fuck yourself.”
Matthew’s head whipped around so he could glare at his brother. “What the hell?” he demanded. “You told me he’d been looked after. That you were taking care of everything. He’s chained up on the floor and you haven’t even been fucking feeding him?”
I ducked my head — making it look like I was drooping the other direction with hunger and despair, but really to hide a triumphant smile. Score. Discord sown. First volley to me. “I don’t remember when they fed me last,” I said quietly. Sadly. Meekly, even.
Heavy footsteps shook the floor and I braced myself for a hit. “Hey.” Instead, a huge, warm hand wrapped around the back of my neck, the fingers tangling in my long hair and caressing gently under my ear. I glanced up through my lashes. Matthew’s brows were drawn together, and his eyes were soft with worry. “It’ll be all right, Jonah. We’ll get you out of these chains, get you a real meal and a bed, and you’ll be fine. You were confused. That bastard Kimball was threatening you. You’re safe here, I promise.”
Oh, thank fuck, that made for good hearing, even though the sound of the stupid fake name I’d chosen when Kimball’s shaman Adam asked for one three months before made me wince. This was going to be even easier than I’d thought. Matthew was wrapped around my tattooed little finger.
A second later, Matthew’s eyes rolled back in his head, the hand on the nape of my neck went limp, and he toppled to the floor, his head knocking a puff of filthy dust into the air as it thumped into the shag carpet.
I looked up. That bitch Nate had one hand out and pointed at Matthew, and a smug smile on his face I wanted to smack off of him with a water bottle. Or my fist.
“Nice going,” Ian said, sounding impressed. Asshole.
“Dor taught me how yesterday,” Nate replied, and brushed his hands together. “Whammy. I thought we might need to be able to do that if Matthew acted like a fucking moron again.”
Well, fuck. Not so easy after all.
With the speed of long practice, I forced my rage down and out of sight. “He’s your pack leader, and he’s doing his job,” I said, careful to still sound breathy and weak. It wasn’t that much of a stretch. They really hadn’t fed me, except for a granola bar the night before. “He’s trying to make sure you aren’t abusing helpless pris—”
“Oh, save it,” Nate snapped. “Helpless my ass. You might have him right where you want him with your crappy spell, but we’re immune to the bullshit.” I blinked up at him, slowly, giving him the full force of what I’d been told were very pretty green eyes. I’d also been told they made me look like an alley cat, but hey, pretty was pretty — and also, that wasn’t entirely wrong, if they only knew. “We’re immune to that too,” Nate added, although he took a defensive step closer to his hulking Neanderthal of a mate as he did, like he was afraid my wiles might have more of an effect on Ian than they did on him.
Which, maybe — okay, no. Under the circumstances, no, although seducing two brothers at the same time was well within my wheelhouse on a better day. But if it worked? Ugh. I wasn’t putting out for Ian, and he didn’t seem like he was the type to let a guy get away with empty promises.
“Look, let’s make this simple. Break the spell or I’m going to rip your throat out,” Ian put in, losing whatever appeal he might have had in the process. He crossed his massive arms across his equally massive chest and glared down at me. “Matthew won’t care once you’re dead.”
Nate shot him a worried look. “We can’t just kill him. I mean, he may not be harmless, or helpless, but he is a prisoner. That’s — we won’t do that, right?”
“The hell we won’t,” Ian growled. “You might not. But I definitely will.”
I glanced down at Matthew, sprawled next to me on the floor. They hadn’t even bothered to move him to the couch; apparently they were still really, really pissed about his part in betraying his pack. His hand, the one that had cradled the back of my head so tenderly a few minutes before, lay limp next to my knee. He was out like a light, and likely to stay that way for a little bit, by the even rise and fall of his broad chest. He wouldn’t hear any of this, and he probably wouldn’t believe it when Ian told him.
Fine. No more Little Orphan Annie. “Go ahead, kill me,” I drawled, looking back up to meet Ian’s furious gaze. “If you want to watch your brother die too.”
Ian and Nate stared at me for a second. “I call bullshit,” Nate said, although he didn’t sound as confident as he clearly wanted to. “Spells die with the caster.”
“Sometimes they do.” I shrugged. “When the caster’s not very skilled. I mean, I’m sure your spells wouldn’t last if someone did the world a favor and lit you on fire.”
Nate’s cheeks went flaming red. “Fuck you, you sorry excuse for a shaman! I knocked your ass out with a water bottle!”
Fury spiked up in me. “That was a fluke!” Fuck, fuck, I had to keep myself together. No anger. No emotions. I didn’t need them. “Anyway, this spell won’t die with me. You kill me, and Matthew’ll be dead within a few weeks. A couple of months, at most. Slowly. Painfully. No cure, and no counterspell.”
I broke off, breathing hard, and glared back at them. My heart was beating way too fast. I needed water. I needed off this fucking floor. And I really, really wasn’t sure they’d believe me.
“You’re so sure we won’t call your bluff?” Ian asked. His arms were still crossed, like he was all casual, but his fists were clenched so hard his knuckles were white.
“It’s not a bluff.” And it wasn’t, not that it was any comfort. If they killed me, I’d be too dead to have the bleak satisfaction of watching Matthew suffer and die too, and I was the only necromancer I knew with the chops and the cojones to bring me back. Irony at its finest. “He’ll die if you kill me. If you want to risk it, then do it. This basement sucks anyway. I mean, who decorated this place? The Bee Gees’ grandma?”
Nate suddenly turned away, making a strange choking sound. “Nate, seriously, what the fuck,” Ian hissed at him. “Really? He’s the enemy.” Nate’s shoulders shook, and then he turned around again, his eyes oddly bright.
W
ell, fuck me. He’d been laughing. I still hated him, but at least he had one good quality other than that fucking cute ass and his aim with a bottle.
“Okay, look,” Nate said, putting his hands on his hips. He cleared his throat. “No killing. Just in case it’s not a bluff,” he said, directing that at Ian, who huffed at him. “But torturing. That we can do lots of, right? Starving, beating, you know, um, other stuff. Torture’s not really my thing. I mean, obviously we can’t cut off fingers or anything, that would be fucked-up, but. Something?” He elbowed Ian in the side with force. “Feel free to jump in anytime, asshole.”
“I’m terrified,” I said. Other stuff? That would be fucked-up? As if that wasn’t the whole point of torture. What was wrong with this pack? Was there anything they were good at? Their victory the other night was obviously an accident. And I’d let myself be captured by these incompetents. Sometimes I seriously hated myself, too. “Really. Shaking in my shoes. Cringing. Would you like me to come up with some ideas for you? I hate massages, hot baths, and caviar, just for example.” Nate rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. I smirked up at them. “Anyway, I can do torture for days. On either side of the equation. I couldn’t care less. But he will,” I said, nodding at Matthew, who was still drooling on the floor. “He won’t let you.”
“Wouldn’t give him a choice,” Ian said grimly. “He’s this close to being removed as pack leader by the council. I’m acting in his place right now, pretty much.”
My eyes darted back to Matthew involuntarily. Shit. I’d caused that, and a tiny little unfamiliar worm of guilt wriggled in my guts.
Matthew wasn’t quite as big as his brother, but he was more powerful, somehow, even lying there whammied by his brother-in-law. All those years of leading a pack left their mark. And he was a hell of a lot smarter. When I’d first met him, I’d been struck by how shrewd and observant he was — before he went under the influence of a fucking powerful enchantment, anyway. That tended to scramble a few neurons. I’d basically stuck a magical egg beater in his head and taken it to his brain — figuratively speaking. Although I was going to file that idea away for literal use at some point in the future. I knew a few assholes who deserved it. Maybe Ian.
Captive Mate (Mismatched Mates Book 2) Page 1
