Kaleb
I’m fucked.
My chest aches as I put distance between me and Lexa, walking steadily through Pantharas toward the castle, resisting the urge to shift. Shift, for what would be the first time in years. My body sizzles with fragments of desire left untouched. This is a damning night, to say the absolute least.
My hair is slightly damp with sweat, tucked in soft curls around my fingers as I run my hand through it, trying to force my mind back to reality, but it’s currently trapped between my mates legs. It’s the mate bond. There’s no other explanation for this need to claim and consume her, bending her to my will, and she wants me to. Lexa, who has never knelt for any man, any king, knelt for me. Lexa, who could kill a man with her bare hands, begged me to fuck her, to take her as mine, and I regret not doing it then and there, leaving my mark on her skin with my cock buried deep, unburdened, not thinking of the future we won’t have and the risk of a child–a beast like me–taking her into an early grave.
I had to physically tear myself from that bedroom and leave her. Every fiber of my being is screaming to go back.
The gate to the Glade doesn’t open when I approach. Fae guards stand ready, armed, and refuse to move, now allowing me to pass.
“The king's veil over the Glade is lifted,” one of them sneers. “You can’t enter.”
“I’m the king of the Glade,” I snarl, but the guard’s wings expand, and he steps forward, jabbing a long, curved blade in my direction.
“Sleep in the arena like the filthy fucking dog you are, halfling!”
My nostrils flare. I scan the line of guards. This was the trick, the plan, of the fae king. He had no idea that Lexa and I are mates, but he knew damn well that chaos would funnel through the Glade the second he dropped his magical veils and allowed the full moon’s power to take hold of every shifter within. He didn’t want me to return tonight. He wanted me separated from my people, unable to rule like I’m entitled to.
I won the Trials ten years ago. My prize was exactly what I asked for–his fucking blessing to unite the packs under one Alpha. Me.
It made us stronger. It kept us alive. Infighting died.
The king has found ways around my attempts to keep the peace in the Glade.
I shake my head at the fae men posturing in front of the gate. Howl’s break through the silence. It’s a chilling, foreign sound after so many years without even seeing a wolf.
I turn from the gate. It’s no use. Once the moon sets and morning comes, I’ll be allowed back inside to deal with whatever mess awaits me.
The real issue at hand is being back in Lexa’s presence.
She’s exactly where I left her when I arrive back at Silas’s house, curled in the bed, her eyes wide and fully awake as she lifts on an elbow to watch me. I lean on the door to close it. Her hair falls loose over her naked breasts, heavy and perfectly rounded in the slivers of moonlight now breaching the clouds, and my dick hardens at the sight of her glowing in the center of the bed.
She feels it, too, through our bond. The bond I should reject. The bond I prayed I’d never feel for anyone, but there she is, my mate, beckoning me back to bed like a siren.
Lexa doesn’t say a word. Her expression is guarded, cast in darkness. She slowly leans back against the cushions, the sheets grazing her belly and thighs as they drift down her body to pool between her knees. She lets her knees fall apart, giving me a stunning view of… everything. Everything I’ve denied myself for as long as I can remember.
She doesn’t understand why. Either that, or she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care in the slightest evidenced by the way her fingers trace over her breasts, her stomach, and then between her legs.
I press my back to the door, turning the lock in the off chance the Architect returns from his mission at the palace, or whatever the hell he planned to do after hours upon hours of conversation about the layout of not only the palace but the arena.
“We need to talk about this,” I manage to grind out, but her fingers glisten as she strokes herself and I can’t think. I can’t look anywhere else.
“Come to bed.”
“That’s your wolf talking.”
“And yours is listening, isn’t it? It wants this as badly as I do.”
“You aren’t used to being told no, are you?”
A sly smile cuts through me, nearly bringing me to my knees. I want this. I want her. I want her more than anything I’ve ever desired before. I would burn the world to ash if she asked it of me. I doubt she’ll need my help on that front, however. She’d burn it herself. I'd hand her the torch.
And that’s why the Goddess gave her to me. She’s a test of my unshakable patience. The shock I needed to break into action. Something to fucking live for.
Yet in a week, I’ll be sending her back into the games to fight for her life while I’m forced to watch from the sidelines… possibly with our child in her belly if I can’t… fucking… control myself.
Her lips part in a breathy, faint moan that rattles me to my core. I grip the doorknob tight enough to crack the bronze as she brings a hand up to clutch her right breast. I wet my lips, growling, “You’re in heat.”
“Please?” she whispers, the word hitching in her throat. She draws her knees together, chasing friction, anything she can find, and I feel everything through the bond, every flicker of pleasure, every want, and her scent… gods. It wraps around me, forcing me into action. This is my mate. Mine. Every inch of her. Her mouth. Her breasts. Her pussy.
She rises on her knees, her hair falling in that thick, messy mane of curls, and crawls to the edge of the bed.
She moves with the grace of a dancer barefoot across the fine, shallow carpet, moonlight illuminating her long, muscular legs. She’s not wearing a single scrap of clothing. The confidence in each step is my undoing. She knows exactly what she wants. She’s used to taking it, bending others to her will. I’m the same. We’re the same.
Before I left, I took my shirt back. I didn’t even bother to button it, and now her hand is traveling down my chest, her eyes shining as they meet mine.
“Keep testing me, Lexa, and you’ll find out the hard way not to fuck with an Alpha,” I say through gritted teeth.
She arches a brow, her fingers slipping over my belt buckle, then lower. I grab her wrist. She tries to yank her hand back, but I spin her around, clutching her to my chest. I draw a hand down her body, nudging her legs apart with my knee, and slide my fingers through her folds.
“Oh!” she moans, arching her neck, her eyes fluttering closed.
“You’re ravenous, aren’t you? I didn’t expect this from you.” I toy with her clit, loving the way her knees go weak, how she trembles. “All of this power, this strength, and I’m your fucking weakness, aren’t I? How long, Lexa, have you been wondering what it would feel like to have me dominating you? Me calling the shots? Me being the one to bend you to my will?” Now, my wolf is talking, taking over, and I let him, let those wolfish, brutal tendencies finally take control. I’m rough with her, losing my fae side while she writhes, her skin slick with sweat, and her heat pooling in my hand, but I don’t stop until she’s silent, focused, her pleasure reaching its peak.
I won’t let her have it yet. If she wants to play games, we’ll play. I’m a champion, after all.
I pull my fingers out, and she whimpers with disappointment, but the sound is short-lived. She gasps, sucking in a startled, heated breath when I grip the back of her neck and walk her back to the bed, shoving her belly down on the mattress. I’m out of my mind.
“Is this what you really want, little wolf?” I free my cock and swipe it through her folds before I thrust in so hard and deep she tries to draw her knees together, but I pin her legs down.
***
Lexa
Kaleb fists my hair and pounds into me until I’m screaming his name. Blind pleasure rockets through me, unending, searing and splitting me into pieces. I come immediately, tightening around his cock, and he growls, slamming into me again and again. Rough. Unhinged. Years of denying himself. Weeks of denying himself of me. It all comes together, converging at this moment, and when he ropes an arm around my belly and pulls us to the side with my back to his chest, his cock still buried to the hilt, I realize I might have gotten ahead of myself.
His hand snakes between my legs as pressure swells, his cock expanding, locking us together.
“Kaleb!” I cry out, but his other hand curls around my throat, forcing my head back.
“This is what you needed,” he rasps against the rim of my ear before groaning deeply, the sound sending another jolt of feverish pleasure rippling through my body. “This is what your wolf wants, isn’t it? To be knotted.”
Pain radiates through my core, but I fight against it, focusing on the way his fingers move over my clit instead. I rock against his hips, meeting him with each aching, slow thrust until we’re trapped together and he can no longer move.
“I want you to come again,” he breathes, his voice heavy and heated with need. “Come for me.” He nibbles my ear before dipping his head to suck my neck. I moan–deep and breathy, a sound straight from my soul.
I feel the orgasm building as his body starts to tighten. His fingers leave my clit, reaching up to roughly clasps my breast, kneading and rolling my nipple. He comes absolutely, positively undone. He shudders, groaning, “Lexa,” before biting down on the hollow between my neck and shoulder… hard enough to pierce the skin.
Kaleb marks me, knotting me, filling me with his seed, and I lose all sense of reality.
The orgasm that rocks through me is long and slow, blossoming in soft waves before crashing down on me like a tsunami. I’m swept away, tears of relief in my eyes when my body finally settles.
We stay locked together, his leg pressed between mine. He drags his tongue over his mark, and I shiver at the sensation that settles deep in our bond.
Mine. Mine, mine…
My mate.
I found my fated mate.
I close my eyes and what seems like a second later I open them to full, startling daylight. Just like he said… no wolf. Only an emptiness that feels wider than before.
Kaleb is asleep beside me, his arm a dead weight across my waist.
I reach up and gingerly prod the mark on my neck to make sure it’s still there, and this wasn’t all a dream.
It wasn’t a dream.
Reality sinks like an anchor.
I can’t leave him here. I won’t. I can’t leave this place without him and his people. Our people.
I’m going to win the games. I’m going to kill Meg. Then, I’m taking all of us home.
Kaleb stirs, settled against me with his legs bent behind mine, the two of us fitting together like a lock and key, and it’s perfect, but those feelings from last night…. Goddess, he mentioned how chaotic things become when the fae king lifts whatever he uses to keep the mate bond at bay. I can only imagine what things are like in the Glade right now.
We should be there. I didn’t even ask why he came back so quickly. I’d been deranged. Out of my fucking mind with lust, and I’ve never, ever, felt like that before.
Guilt washes over me, forcing me out of bed. Kaleb remains, asleep, his face totally relaxed like he hasn’t slept this deeply his entire life, and that’s the only knowledge that keeps me going. I rifle through an armoire and find a men's shirt and a pair of trousers that aren’t going to fit, but seeing as the ballgown, and my panties, are in pieces at the bottom of a stairwell somewhere in this massive mansion of a house, this is going to half to do.
I roll the trousers, securing them with a belt. I tie my hair back with a ribbon I find in the drawer of a seldom used, slightly dusty vanity. I glance at my reflection only once and see… myself. Just Lexa. Lexa the daughter, the sister, the warrior, and now Kaleb’s mate.
I decide to find some food to occupy my time in Kaleb’s absence and wander down the empty hallways of Silas’s house, peeking into random rooms and running my fingertips over the fine furniture, the freshly polished side tables, sculptures, and vases that bedeck every surface.
I end up downstairs, walking through the shadows that stretch through the glare of early morning, and just when I decide to turn around, to seek solace in Kaleb’s warmth instead of inside my own head, I turn into a sitting room off the foyer.
Silas looks up at me. I startle, grabbing the frame of the archway for support after I stumble over my feet. “What are you doing here?”
“Me? I live here. What are you doing here?”
“Kaleb said you were away on business?”
He sighs, rising from an armchair near the dormant hearth. But when his eyes meet mine in the soft, golden glow of early morning sunlight, his gaze drops to my neck, to the fresh, healing scar Kaleb left on my skin. He arches a brow.
“Well. This situation just got a whole lot more complicated for all of us, didn’t it?”