“I came for the shower. Not conversation. I never want to talk again.” I slipped past him and then hesitated. Moving backwards, I wrapped my arms around his waist and sighed. “Maybe we’ll talk.”
“There she is.” He hugged me tight and kissed the top of my head. “G’won, get clean. I’ll make some coffee.”
I took a long shower, making a pathetic attempt to let the scalding water wash away the memories from the night before. Not even the illegal ones. Just the ones of arguing with Kon. My life was so close to perfect if it wasn’t for the one little thing. Only not so little. One huge, ginormous thing, rather.
When I finished and dressed in a pair of leggings and one of Gray’s T-shirts, I found him on the couch, two cups of coffee in front of him. I settled next to him and rested my head on his shoulder. “Life is shit.”
He laughed. “Oh, yeah?”
“I almost got arrested last night. In some sad attempt to take some kind of control back, I threw a stink bomb through a hotel window.” When Gray’s face fell open in shock, I chuckled. “Yeah. Kon’s future mate was inside the room.”
He fell out laughing. “You did not.”
“I did.”
“You little hellion.” He tried to stifle his laughter. “Didn’t Dad teach us how to make something a little more dangerous? C’mon, you remember homemade explosives 101, don’t you?”
I slapped his arm. “Seriously, Gray?”
“Nope. I try not to be.”
I sighed. “I feel like the world is spinning too fast. Everything is just sort of going off the rails. You’re some ex-super spy with bad guys after you. I am trying to become a felon while having an illicit affair with an almost mated man.”
“Kon’s not mating that woman.”
“Everyone keeps saying that, but last night, he asked me to come with him to Siberia, to be his mistress.”
Gray growled. “No, he didn’t.”
“Yeah, he did.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Sounds good to me.” I sighed. “Not. But I wish I really felt that way.”
“Whether you feel that way, or not, I may still kill him.” He shook his head. “Did he mark you?”
I felt my cheeks burn. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ve already witnessed so many sucker bites and so much beard burn that I’m tempted to gouge my eyes out with a red hot poker. But, I’m talking a claiming mark.”
“I know what you mean. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
“He did, didn’t he?”
“Gray.”
He grunted. “I’m going to ring his neck. That fucker shouldn’t have claimed you if he knew he wasn’t going to be able to honor you the way you deserve. You’re going to be fucking stuck pining away for him for the rest of your life. You two are bound by that mark. It’ll drive you both crazy.”
I burst into tears and slapped his arm. “Shut up!”
He swore. “I’m sorry, Grace. I… I didn’t think.”
“I’m just going to go back home.”
“Home?”
I got up and wiped my face. “To Freebird. I want to run. I’m tempted to get the hell out of here because it hurts so much, but I’m not going anywhere. I want to set up my life here with my new friends, and you. I’m not going to break because of Kon. He won’t be here for much longer, anyway.”
He pulled me in for a hug and then ruffled my hair. “Go and sleep it off. Something will work out. It has to.”
I left, keeping my face angled away from Alexei so he didn’t see me crying. A quick wave without making eye contact, and I set off down the beach. I was heartbroken over a man I barely knew. I’d decided to change my entire way of living in the matter of a week. And, despite what I’d said to Gray, I wondered if saying goodbye to Kon might, in fact, break me.
Normally, I would’ve been more alert. I’d have heard the men coming up behind me. I would’ve known exactly what to do. But, so into my own self-pity and heartache, I might as well have been as helpless as a baby. As one of the men wrapped his arms around me, I opened my mouth to scream just as another hand shoved a rag into my mouth. Immediately, I knew I’d been drugged and my world started to close in on itself.
Anger peppered my hazy thoughts as I lost consciousness. Whoever it was that thought they could fuck with me was going to be hella sorry.
24
Konstantin
As I sat across from Valentina first thing in the morning, I was thinking how much more pleasant it would be to spread honey on my balls and straddle a fire ant mound. I wasn’t going through with the mating. No matter what I’d told myself the night before, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think about anything other than the hurt on Grace’s face. Anger, too, but it was the pain that I couldn’t live with. It came down to a choice between grace and the P.O.L.A.R. team, and in the end, I had to choose Grace.
“I am not going through with any of this.” I clasped my hands in front of me and sighed. “Grace is my mate and I claimed her. She wears my claiming mark and I am proud and honored to have her by my side.”
“Proud and honored? Proud and fucking honored?” Valentina stood up and started pacing behind her chair. We were in the lobby of her new hotel in Miami. “You claimed a human when you were promised to me?!”
I left a claiming mark on her which I could try to explain away to myself as an accident, a mistake, but that would be a lie. Even then, when I’d done it, although I had yet to admit it, I knew I’d never belong to anyone else. I’d never leave for Siberia, I’d never choose to be with anyone but her.
“No. You think I give a shit about you and your human mate? I am supposed to be queen. ME, dammit! How dare you think our people will accept a human as the alpha queen. Look, I’m willing to forget your indiscretions—all of them. After we’re officially mated, you can assume all the dalliances you want, provided you’re discrete. I really don’t care. But I refuse to lose everything because some human slut couldn’t keep her legs together. You will go with me, go through with the mating ceremony, ascend to the throne, or you lose everything.”
“I don’t want any of it.”
She let out an angry scream. “You’re not doing this! You’re not going to ruin all of my plans for some pathetic human, Konstantin! If you walk away from me, you’re never going to be anything. You and your entire little band of misfits will be banished. You’ll be stuck on this hellish island for the rest of your miserable lives. Our species will hate you. You’ll be a nobody—a nothing.”
“The only person I care about being anything to is Grace.” I shrugged. “Maybe, you’re right. My team will probably hate me for doing this to them, but I have to think that they’d do the same for their mate. I hope you meet your mate one day, Valentina, and you learn what it is I’m choosing over you and why.”
“Fuck you, Konstantin! You’re going to pay for this!” She picked up a floral arrangement and chucked it at me. “You think that it’s just your father you’ll face consequences from? Just wait. You’ll be lucky if your mate isn’t dead by the end of the week.”
I growled at her, my bear threatening to come out and rip her to pieces. “If a hair on Grace’s head is harmed by you or your people, I’ll hunt you down and rip your throat out.”
She seemed to believe me. She slumped in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. I didn’t stick around to see what tantrum she’d throw next.
I’d just double crossed my team and it was time to face them and accept whatever anger or wrath they hurled at me. Lord knew I deserved it. I headed to the office before going to Grace. I needed to get it over with. As much as I owed them my loyalty, I owed Grace more.
Serge and Alexei were sitting behind their desks when I walked in. Serge frowned at me. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here.” I sniffed the air, scenting Gray. “What’s Gray doing here?”
“He might be working here, too.” Alexei laughed. “Seems the spook is bored
sitting at home. He wants a job.”
“Well. Before he joins the team, he might want to know something. You all need to know something. Where are the others?”
Serge shrugged. “It’s a slow day. They’re on their way. What is it?”
I sat heavily in one of the chairs in front of Serge, just as Gray emerged from the back. Judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t glad to see me. I stood back up, preparing for the wolf to charge me, for whatever reason.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve, you bastard.” He bared his teeth at me and rolled his shoulders. “My baby sister is not a fucking mistress.”
I winced. “You’re right.”
“Then why in god’s name did you suggest that to her? She came over to my house crying this morning. I should take your head off.”
“She was at your house this morning?”
Alexei grunted. “She was crying when she left, too. You really suggested that she be your mistress, man?”
“No! Of course, not. That’s not what I meant when I…whatever, listen…” I ground my teeth together and rubbed at my face. “I was wrong. I’m going to find your sister as soon as I’m done here and I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to her.”
“Here? Or in some hidden room in your palace halfway across the globe?”
I shook my head. “I’ve abdicated. I just spoke to Valentina and I’ll get on the phone with my father soon, although no doubt Valentina’s already chewing his ear off.”
Serge raised his eyebrows. “What took you so fucking long? I hate to speak ill of a woman, but fuck, I’d rather be locked in a dungeon of torture than mate that awful woman.” He shuddered.
“What took me so long was…I’m not walking away without a huge price. A steep one.” I sank back into the chair, willing to let Gray attack me if he really wanted to. “A price that we’re all going to pay.”
“Why did my stomach just sink down to my asshole?” Serge groaned. “Just get it out there.”
“IN order to back out, I had to throw P.O.L.A.R.—all of you—under the bus. The team is going to be cut off. And, not just fired from P.O.L.A.R., banished from Siberia—permanently.” I swallowed, not untouched by what that meant. “No more Siberia. No visiting. No going back. We’re going to lose everything. The main office will probably call any minute with orders to disband the P.O.L.A.R. office here.”
Alexei leaned forward. “And you?”
I laughed bitterly. “A lowly peasant, I suppose. A commoner and a prince no more. I’m being stripped of my title and cut off from my family.”
“And you’re doing all of that for my sister?” Gray sat down next to me and sighed. “And here I was looking forward to kicking your ass. I guess now we gotta make nicey-nicey.”
Serge laughed suddenly. “I guess it’s fitting that we got sent here because of the first of us finding a mate and now, we’re being stranded here because of the last of us finding his mate.”
“You don’t look as angry as I’d anticipated.”
Alexei joined him in laughing. “Brother. We were stuck here before you made this choice. You really think our mates were going to willingly leave here and head off to Siberia? I can’t get Heidi away from the beach.”
“I never want to see Hannah in those big puffy jackets again, if I’m being honest. I like watching her when she does her tiny-shorts-wiggle.” Serge stared into space with a half-grin on his face.
“And there’s sex in the water.” Alexei also seemed to be re-living his fantasies.
Roman, Dmitry, and Maxim walked in, grinning. Maxim patted me on the shoulder. “According the scream queen, you’ve been demoted to lowly serf. Is it true? I hope to hell it is because, man, I was worried that I was going to be here alone without you assholes. I’m not leaving Parker and this is her home.”
Dmitry shrugged. “Plus, I love Kerrigan in a bikini.”
Alexei sighed. “And, there’s sex in the water.”
Maxim groaned. “Are we done here? I was going to do some work, but I’m gonna need a couple hours off. I think I need to find Parker.”
I shook my head. “None of this is a big deal to any of you guys?”
Gray nodded. “The part where you stop fucking up and make my sister a happy woman—that’s a big deal to me.”
Serge rubbed his chin. “Honestly, I was thinking of going in a different direction with P.O.L.A.R., anyway. We were being strangled by the main office, as it was. This just cuts through all the bullshit for me.”
I stood up and kept shaking my head. “All this time I was worried that I was going to be throwing you all under the bus if I chose Grace. I should kick all of your asses for not saying anything sooner.”
Gray snorted. “Nice try, blaming them. That was all you, dickless.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I’m going to make it up to her.”
The front door flew open and Parker ran in with Heidi and Megan. “She’s gone!”
My heart instantly tried to break through my rib cage. “What? Who?”
Parker gestured wildly with her hands. “We went to see Grace and she wasn’t there. When we walked towards Gray’s house, I caught her scent. With two humans. And chloroform.”
“Did you follow her scent trail?”
“To the boat dock. It ends there.”
I gripped the desk as my world spun around me. Someone had my mate.
Gray looked as alarmed as I was. He turned to me, his face drained of color. “I hope I’m not wrong about how much Grace has retained from our childhood.”
25
Grace
I woke up slowly, a sour taste at the back of my throat. My stomach lurched and I twisted sideways to avoid throwing up on myself. The slight rocking told me I was on a boat. Lovely. I wasn’t a huge fan of boats. I was prone to motion sickness and just the idea of it had me ready to toss my cookies.
I tried to sit up, still not sure what was happening, but my hands were locked to my ankles. I tugged at whatever was keeping me in place and forced my breathing to slow, but when the memories began coming back, panic set it. Someone kidnapped me. I fought to regain the memory of how I’d ended up tied up on a boat, but I couldn’t.
Panicking wasn’t helping anything, so I made myself remain as calm as possible and did my best to take in my surroundings. It was dark, no light coming in from anywhere in the room, except for glowing sliver from a small, narrow window at the very top of the room. Wherever I was, it was dark out. We were on the water and the last thing I remembered was leaving Gray’s house. Had I been knocked out all day? Scary thought, but also a blessing. More time for Gray to find me.
Until he did, though, I was going to have to help myself. I started working on the ties on my wrists and ankles. The good thing about our father being a paranoid conspiracy theorist was that he made us train for so many different scenarios. While they’d seemed cruel at the time, especially the ones he put Gray through, I’d come to develop a grudging gratitude every single time I’d found myself in a sticky situation and knew exactly how to handle myself.
The knots were too simple, the work of someone that underestimated a petite, unarmed woman. I was out of them in under a minute. They were wrong about the weapon, too. I unwound the silver beaded bracelet from my wrist—one of my own Etsy creations—and stretched it out in front of me letting the beads fall off. The thin wire would do serious damage in a pinch.
Feeling around the room, I found a pole with a hook on the end of it, something used for dragging in fishing nets. Smiling to myself, I felt my way over to the stairs that led to the upper deck of the boat just as the door above opened and heavy footsteps stomped down toward me.
I backed into the shadows and just as the man got to the bottom few steps, I swung the pole out as hard as I could, taking out his legs. He fell down the few three steps and landed hard on the ground in front of me. Unwilling to take a chance that had incapacitated him, I brought the blunt end of the pole down hard on his head, making sure he wasn
’t going anywhere for a while.
I searched his body quickly as shouting commenced above. Under him, he had a semi-automatic weapon. These must have been the guys Gray pissed off to be handling weapons like that. I shook my head and yanked the gun free before taking cover behind a couple of boxes on the other side of the room.
“Gregor!” A booming voice echoed through the hold. “What are you doing?”
When Gregor didn’t answer, more footsteps came ploughing down the stairs. When bad guy number two noticed his friend on the ground, he shouted and raised his weapon. I aimed and fired off a few shots at his weapon, hitting him in the hands. When he screamed, I fought the urge to throw up again.
“You stupid bitch! I’ll kill you!”
“Come any closer and the next round goes into your head, asshole.” I really prayed he didn’t come closer. I didn’t want to shoot him again—especially in the head. I’d shot up plenty of targets, but I’d never actually shot a living, breathing person before. I was already thinking of joining some kind of gun control campaign after having shot him the first time.
“Come out here and face me, bitch.” Unless he had a very high pain threshold, I didn’t think I got him too badly, probably just grazed him, but he was dripping blood all over the floor.
“Where are we?” I held the gun trained steadily on him. “Who are you and what do you want with me?”
More shouting came from topside, urgent and harried sounding. Gunfire rang out and then a wild, bellowing roar seemed to shake the entire vessel.
“What the fuck was that?”
I didn’t look away from my target or allow myself to relax. “That would be my ride off this rowboat.”
Another growl sounded closer, the anger and fury evident in it. It was Konstantin. I knew it like I knew my own name, well, better than I knew my own name because sometimes my name…never mind. Konstantin had come for me.
“What the fuck is that?!” Bad guy number two was grasping his useless and bleeding hands to his chest, his face frozen in horror. “What is that sound?!”
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