Lexa
Kaleb’s hand rests on my lower back as the guards move from the gate to the Glade. The small door cut within the metal of the ancient gate that towers so high I have to crane my neck to look up at the top of the wall gives way, and instead of constant shuffle, thunder of hammers and whining of saws, the Glade is… silent.
I’m used to people looking at me now–stopping what they’re doing to turn in my direction, to follow me with their eyes.
I’m not prepared for the bows. The bobbing of heads. The quiet, suffocating awe.
Kaleb’s fingers curl into a fist at the base of my spine, but I move with him like this is just another day, another day we’ll spend in the sparring ring together when things were easy between us. When none of this had happened yet.
People gather in doorways or peek through open windows. Children stop their games to watch us pass. I look everyone in the eyes, questioning the curious glances–the uncertainty. But they keep bowing. To Kaleb, of course.
Tension rises all around me, suffocating, until we reach that little courtyard, and my lungs heave, drawing in a much needed breath. Lis is hanging laundry and turns around, her eyes wide when we come into view, but she calms when she sees me.
“Goddess above! I was losing my absolute mind, Kaleb, thinking something had happened to her!” She points an accusatory finger at Kaleb before snatching my arm and tugging me toward the house, abandoning the laundry basket.
I meet Kaleb’s eyes, however. They’re lighter than before, especially as Lis shoves me with great effort through the doorway, where he follows, out of the glare of the sun lighting the courtyard. Kaleb’s shoulders relax, and I swear on the Goddess, I see the ghost of a smile on his lips before she slams the door shut and whirls on me.
“You’re filthy,” she says accusatorially, turning me toward the staircase. “I’m running a bath.”
“I’m not filthy! Not even close.”
“You smell like a man!” She gasps in the center of the stairwell and turns to look down at me, for once, standing several steps above me. “You smell like Kaleb. Why?”
Before I can answer, her eyes dart to my neck, and widen.
“Oh, my gods of the green valleys and goddesses above!”
“I need you to chill–”
“Did he do this to you? Against your will?” Lis is wild-eyed, damn near frantic as she clasps my throat and gingerly inspects the scar–still fresh, teeth marks slightly raised. I allow her to do it because I know I don’t have much of a choice. Honestly, in a perfect world, I’d bring not only Kaleb but Lis home. She’d love Silverhide and the women there–the strong, take-no-shit matriarchs who run the weaving circles and spend their days gossiping about their mates, their children, and their neighbors.
“Do you really think I’d let any man bite me unless I wanted it?” I laugh, and she draws her hand back in shock, but then I see it–a lingering panic in her eyes, and the dark circles beneath. “Oh, Lis, what happened last night? The king–” “A bath first!”
“I think maybe you need it more than me. When’s the last time you slept? Have you eaten anything?”
She toys with her apron, which is stained and grimy. This isn’t how I’m used to seeing her.
“Come on,” I grumble, taking her by the elbow and guiding her back downstairs. The rooms she shares with Chastan are right off the kitchen–nothing fancy, by any means. A single bedroom and a large, open bathroom with a basin sink and wide clay tub. This is where she washes the laundry, where she’s made me wash and mend laundry during my time as a guest in this house, where she’s scrubbed me down several times when I’ve come back from training covered in dirt and often blood.
I run the same kind of bath she’s run for me–hot, with fragrant herbs to spice the water, and her homemade soap, which doesn’t really smell like anything but does its job.
I sit on the counter and inspect my nails, giving her privacy while she eases her aching body into the tub, her skin shielded by bubbles, and I only look at her when she sighs heavily, her eyes fluttering closed when the hot water, which took forever to heat, rises to her chin.
“Better?”
She opens one eye. “You go first. What happened last night?”
“Well, it’s a rather long story and… I’m sure you’re aware how people are marked–what kind of circumstances… lead to that…”
“I’m pregnant, Lexa. Do you think I don’t know what sex is?”
“I want to know what happened here.” I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Kaleb returned earlier this morning and left me with Silas. What happened? Where’s Chastan?” I want to know if she felt it with him–the bond snapping into place, but I don’t see a mark on her neck or the ridge of her shoulders. She sinks deeper into the water, her gaze far off and tangled as she stares at the far wall.
“I was home. I was here—alone. I felt the shift first, and… everything got very loud. Chastan’s voice exploded through my head and told me to stay inside, to keep the doors and windows locked, so I did. There was howling all night long.”
“Did you try to shift?”
“No!” she barks, meeting my gaze. “Of course not. I’m pregnant. I wasn’t sure what would happen.”
“Have you ever shifted before?”
“No,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I never have. I–” She glances at me, at my neck. “You felt it? With Kaleb?”
“The mate bond?”
She nods, her cheeks glowing pink from either her question, inner thoughts, the bath, or all three.
“Yeah. We did.”
She rolls her eyes to the ceiling, sinking to her chin. Her disappointment is palpable.
“Did Chastan come back before the shields were dropped again?”
She shakes her head, sniffling. “He probably spent the whole night out with his mate.”
“Oh, Felicity, please,” I grumble. “You know that’s not true. He was out doing what Kaleb couldn’t. They wouldn’t allow us back into the Glade.”
Tears fill her eyes, but she blinks them away. “Well, he’s still not back.”
“Chastan wouldn’t do that to you.”
She sinks under the water, blowing bubbles, and when she finally breaches the surface again, giving me a sharp look through the wet locks of her hair, I take it as a dismissal.
I go upstairs to my room. I change into clothes that actually fit, kicking the clothes I borrowed into a pile in the corner. I wind my hair into a bun. Then, I hear male voices drifting through the floorboards at my feet, not long after leaving Lis downstairs to her own devices. I move like the wind, steady on my feet, and find Kaleb and Chastan in the snug foyer. Kaleb’s expression is stern like always, but his eyes turn on mine and soften, which makes my chest convulse, and memories of our night together come sprinting back to the forefront of my mind.
I push the memories aside and turn my attention to Chastan, who clears his throat, drops his gaze to his boots, and bows.
I feel my spine straighten against my will, confusion prickling through me, undoing me, but again, I push past these new, conflicting feelings and say with effort, “You need to go talk to your wife.”
Kaleb blinks and then turns to Chastan, who rises and winces at my tone. I take another step, standing on the landing where I’m approximately as tall as both men, looking them both in the eyes.
“Is Lis all right?” Kaleb asks gruffly, his voice tinged with concern.
“No, actually, she’s in pieces because he didn’t so much as check in with her last night, and now she thinks he’s found his mate.”
Chastan pushes past us and disappears into the shadow hallway leading to their room. Silence cloaks the foyer before a deafening click funnels toward us, the sound of Chastan closing their bedroom door and locking it pinging through my ears. I take a breath, turning my attention to Kaleb, who grips the banister, leaning to stretch his arms and shoulders. He looks up at me over the slope of his shoulder, tilting his head to the stairs in a silent command to go. Go upstairs, and not my room.
No–his.
He closes the door behind us as I move toward his bed, taking in the little details I’d failed to notice before. Kaleb keeps his space neat. Everything is dust free, the bed made, his clothes neatly folded or hung in the closet on the far side of the room where several windows pour light drifting between the equally tall buildings on either side of us. This space is strictly his, carries only his scent.
Our scent. Like I’ve already branded myself on him, his space, and his sheets.
There’s so much we need to say. So much we need to talk about. I can tell he’s thinking the same thing as he leans against the door, his hands resting on his hips, and I sit on the edge of the bed, crossing my legs.
But the next words out of my mouth are, “Are they mates?”
“Chastan didn’t catch the bond, and I’m guessing she didn’t, either?”
“No, but she’s never even shifted before.”
“That wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Did he feel the mate bond with someone else?”
“No, he did not.” Kaleb locks the door before moving in my direction. For a moment, I see him as he was during our time in the sparring ring–cold, calculated, a man who possibly hated me.
But when he sits beside me, keeping a comfortable distance, I see him for him.
He reaches over and takes my hand, winding our fingers together. I allow it.
“Chastan spent his entire night making sure no one died, and he was successful. We just did a round, stopped at the pack house, talked to some of the elders and everyone is all right.”
“I’m not sure why you’re telling me–”
“Because you’re the Luna now.” His grip loosens, and he rises like sitting still is impossible.
“We’re not married.” I have no idea why the words leave my lips, but they do, and they carry through the room. Kaleb looks down at me, his muscles flexed. He moves to his dresser, fumbling with a single book resting on its surface like he needs to do something, anything, with his hands other than touch me.
I wish we could feel the bond still. I wish it were still there, pulling us together, opening up a new line of connection that would make all of this so much easier, but…
I stroke my fingertips over the rise of my breasts, looking for those golden threads.
He notices, his eyes following the soft touch, and then he meets my gaze. “What’s your bride price, really?”
A choked laugh escapes my lips. “I don’t think I have one.”
“You mentioned that I paid it.”
“My dad,” I laugh, “Is from Crescent Falls, which is modern and flashy–and the shifters there are far removed from what we are on a cellular level.”
Kaleb arches a brow, but there’s truly nothing I can say to paint the intricacies, the borders, and the cities of Crescent Falls and Eastonia, so I just say, “He came to the Deadlands to start fresh, to give the Silverhide pack a better shot at happiness, of getting back to their roots. They were young men mostly. My mother was a young hunter, the daughter of a patriarch of Endova. And my dad brought gifts for Endova, trying to find an ally in a land that was mostly violent to them, and he accidentally paid her bride price.”
Kaleb is curious but trying to hide it. He angles his body away but asks, “What was her bride price?”
“A golden elk pelt.”
Understanding ripples through him, and I know, without a shadow of a doubt… like I hadn’t truly believed it before… Kaleb is from the missing tribes.
My mate is the Alpha King of the missing tribes.
“And they’re happy?”
“They’re in love. They’re mates.”
He nods but doesn’t look at me when he asks, “What was your bride price, Lexa?”
I bring my knees to my chest. He turns to the bed, his steps heavy and deliberate as he closes the distance between us. He braces his hands on either side of my hips, leaning down so we’re nose to nose.
This is crazy. Falling for someone, falling for him, here?
This was never my plan.
The words I said to Austin flood my mind. “I cannot be a precious little wife, making your meals, having your babies…”
I search Kaleb’s eyes for anything that says that’s what he wants from me.
I don’t see it. I just see myself reflected in his golden-hazel irises.
“If a man can beat me in a fight, he can have my hand in marriage.”
“And I’ve paid that a few times over.”