Chapter 29

Arik

"Let me down!" Jessalyn twisted against the ropes to no avail. While these bandits had been pathetically unprepared for a real fight, they seemed to have been terribly adept at tying up women. Which just made the rage I was trying to hold back flare hotter. I tried to tell myself it was the roseblood, but I knew better. The thought of that knife against her neck, that bastard bandit's hands on her, doing her harm and ready to do more… I shook my head, trying to dislodge the red haze of anger. She stopped pulling at her bindings and turned to face me. "You've had your fun, now—"

"Have we?" I stepped closer, allowing myself the small luxury of sliding my eyes down her nubile little body. I planted my feet wide before I turned to the others. "Hmm... There was a little fighting, a little blood, but would I consider it fun?"

"Needs to be a lot more blood to make me happy." I saw the look in Silas' eyes and that gave me pause. They glittered like green jewels, lit from within by a light I didn't often like to see. He grinned then, all teeth. "A lot more."

"And it would have helped if you'd found better captors." Roan cast a disgruntled glance at the bodies in the cave, then his eyes slid sideways when he saw one of the bandits twitch. He strode over and stabbing his broadsword into the man's spine. The prick didn't move again and never would. "I barely even broke a sweat."

"We did get terribly hot though, back in the inn." I stepped closer, feeling the evidence of it still in my blood. One of the names for roseblood was the red tide, and I felt it again. Just as powerful, just as inexorable as the pull of the waves, I could feel the heat radiating off my skin. "Know anything about that, Princess?"

Where she'd been all fire and defiance moments ago, that now faltered. I didn't necessarily like to see the change. When she was irritated, Jessalyn's cheek's flushed and her eyes sparked in a very distracting way.

Which was perhaps why I worked so hard to annoy her constantly.

But while she sagged on the rope for a second, she rallied again quickly. Her chin tilted up and she stared at me down her nose as she answered.

"I was trying to get away!" She tugged against the rope as if in emphasis. "I won't go to the capital to become the next casualty of your king. I don't want to die…!"

Fuck. I watched her brows crease as she choked up and then her eyes begin to shine as she blinked back tears. Something in me broke when her voice did because she was acknowledging the thing we were all been trying so hard to ignore: that my men and I had been tasked to take her to her death; that she would not sit on the Emerald Throne for more than a few months before the king killed Jessalyn. I took an involuntary step towards her, but Creed showed no such reticence as he stormed forward, desperate to take her in his arms, to free her.

But I couldn't allow that to happen, not yet.

"Wait."

Creed turned to me with a snarl, the wolf too close to the surface, but the beast and I knew each other. We'd been forced to fight it out more than once because that's what wolves do. Scrap it out—usually in a non-lethal way—to test the other's mettle and work out where we stood in the pack hierarchy. So I simply stared him down, not looking away until his hands dropped loosely to his side.

"And how did being taken by bandits and tied up here factor in your plans?" I asked, my lips twisting into a sneer.

There, I knew I was getting under her skin when she plunged forward only for the rope to haul her back. Silas was the one that liked to tie girls up, but I was beginning to see the appeal of it. Because despite the fact she'd been bound like an animal, her spirit remained unbroken.

"I won't go to my death." She was every inch a princess as she spoke, command vibrating in her voice. "I won't. I drugged the lot of you, and I'll do it over and over." There it was, the core of the matter. "That's what my mother told me to do."

My eyebrow jerked upwards. It took a lot to surprise me, but I hadn't seen that one coming. But the words that came after? They were all too familiar.

"Apparently the king isn't my father." Other lips had said these same words, and I knew the shape of them by heart. "It was one of the court knights, and my mother and grandmother think that no noble-born child is related by blood to the man who is supposed to be their father."

Except me. That was the thing about being born to his mistress, not the queen. Mother had no reason to try and trick him, because she came to his bed willingly.

"She told me to drug you, seduce you, and then—"

"Make us loyal to you and only you?' My mouth quirked up in a vicious smile. "Become your allies at court?"

"Well, yes…" The tension went out of the rope as Jessalyn peered at me quizzically. "And then she told me to poison the king."

"Kill King Magnus…?"

I had been doing so well in keeping the flames inside me tamped down. I'd wanted to tear these fuckers' heads from their shoulders the moment I reached the cave, but I hadn't. We'd worked as a well-oiled team, using skill, not the heat of battle, to take the day. But when I heard those words, all my self-control snapped, then and there. I moved without thought, the fire raging through my blood as I stormed right up to the little minx.

Stupid, stupid girl.

That was the thought pulsing through me, fast and hard, as I took up position behind her. She twisted on the rope, sensing danger, but was not able to escape it. And that was exactly what she'd done when she'd tried her grab for freedom and had gone blundering through one terribly thought-out plan into another. None of that gave me reason to snatch up great handfuls of her skirts, but that's what I did. There was no rationalising baring her little arse to my eyes, the slip of fabric she called underwear doing nothing to disguise the gentle curve. And there was absolutely no reason to haul my hand back and then smack her bottom hard enough that her hips jolted forward.

"You… spanked me!"

That outrage in her voice was what I needed to hear. It was like a cup of acid, the likes of which would burn my throat raw, but I would down it anyway. I wanted her angry because then she would be at the same level of fury and outrage as I was.

I was furious at her mother and grandmother, so blithely sending a princess to do a job that trained assassins had failed at. Poisoning was a daily risk at the court of Khean, and the king had many fail-safes in place to protect him from it. I was furious at the bandits for daring to lay hands on her. The flash of that bastard's knife had been a goad to my flanks, spurring me on a bloody rampage before I could think twice. But most of all I raged at the fact that she hadn't found herself men unburdened by the constraints of me and mine; men who would take her gold to get her as far the fuck away as possible from the hellhole that was Magnus' court. That's why my hand smacked down, once, twice, three times, because I wasn't teaching her a lesson anymore but teaching myself one.

I'd never done this with any of the other brides we'd ferried to the capital. Not even when they'd bitten, scratched, or just sobbed the entire way. I'd definitely never smoothed my hand across a reddened rump or listened to a woman moan when I did so.

My eyes glanced over her shoulder to where Silas now stood in front of her, his eyes dancing with a dangerous light.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, his voice as sharp as his blades.

"Yes!" Jessalyn snapped.

"Very badly?"

My hand moved of its own accord, mapping every inch of the flesh I'd struck.

"Ye…" Her voice trailed away as my hand continued to move, then something miraculous happened. She didn't buck away in anger or, worse, cringe back like a beaten dog. Instead, as my hand moved down, her thighs parted, and it was like the gates of heaven opening.

And all I wanted to do was work myself in through them.

"Does it really hurt?" There was something gently chiding in Silas' voice, as if prompting her to tell the truth. "Or does it just sting?"

"Stings."

Her voice dripped with the petulant kind of attitude that made me want to spank it out of her. I wanted to smack her until she danced on the end of the rope and promised she'd never run from us again.

That thought was like a cool, calming breeze in all this heat, but the roseblood didn't allow that clarity to remain. There was only heat pulsing in my veins, burning the curve of her arse. I tugged her underwear part of the way down, assuring myself it was only to make sure I hadn't hurt her, and was confronted by my handiwork. Her skin was reddened—I'd marked her—and that should've dragged up feelings of horror within me.

Instead, my cock throbbed sulkily inside my breeches.

"Our unit was formed out of a beating," Silas told her in a conversational tone, stepping in close enough he could have kissed her. He looked at me over her shoulder. "Do you remember?"

He might have been looking at me, but I wasn't the only one the question was directed at.

"When we refused to set fire to the fields of people who hadn't paid their taxes." Roan nodded grimly, also drawn forward. "They beat us within an inch of our fucking lives."

"They were supposed to kill us." I said through gritted teeth as the memories came back. "And if we didn't die from the flogging, then we were supposed to kill each other."

"Prey on each other's weaknesses." Silas nodded. "Just a few miscreants and malcontents left to lick their wounds on their own. We were such fucking bastards within the corps that they'd assumed we'd be the same if they threw us together, especially if we were injured."

"But we weren't." Creed joined us. "We formed a pack that day: brothers in all ways but through birth." His eyes flicked down to meet Jessalyn's. "And we knew then that we'd find one woman—our fated mate—to complete us."

His fingers gripped her jaw as he bent down to her, bringing her panting lips to hover a hair's breadth away from his. "The only woman we'll ever have, for our whole lives. But you…" I saw the banked embers come to life in his eyes. It had taken longer for the fire to catch alight in him than in me, but now that it was burning, a terrible intensity flared in his gaze. "You tried to run from us."

"To be free." That dissenting spirit that never seemed to dim for long with Jessalyn reasserted itself. "It's something men take for granted, but why shouldn't I have the same chances?" I watched her shoulders square as her spine snapped upright, despite her disgraceful position. "Why shouldn't I be able to pick and choose where I go, what I do?"

My hands locked around her hips as Creed tugged her chin closer, the two of us stretching her between us. His forehead pressed against hers as his eyes closed.

"Because you're not free. No one really is. They belong to family, class, country, but you…" His lips brushed through the air above hers and she strained forward, desperate to close that gap despite herself. "You're ours. You're not going to the capital. The king will never get his bloody hands on you, not while I have breath in my lungs. But you're not going to be slinking out the back door with some lad and falling into the company of other men."

He kissed her then, hard enough to bruise, but she didn't seem to care. Truth be told, she leaned into the kiss just as she had leaned into me when I'd spanked her impudent arse. I watched their lips clash, then my heart leapt into my throat as his fangs raked along too soft flesh. He didn't break the skin, just let out an animalistic growl, and his eyes had turned perfectly yellow when they snapped open.

"You're mine, all fucking mine, Jessalyn. And you're not going anywhere."