Royal Mate

by Juniper Hart

  “Deal,” she finally said, and shook his hand.

  4

  Cara had expected something amazing to happen when they shook hands. Maybe a lightning strike? The storm was starting back up after all. At the very least, she was expecting an ominous shiver.

  But, no. It was just like she’d shaken hands with someone completely normal – as if instead of discussing life and death, they were chatting about the weather.

  Speaking of the weather, it was late in the afternoon, but it was getting dark from an impending storm. Fast. At first, it was just some sprinkles on the windshield. At the speed they were going, the droplets were whisked away almost as fast as they came.

  “So,” she said. “How have you survived this long?”

  He grinned.

  “I’m hard to kill.”

  Looking at him, she didn’t doubt it.

  “But you didn’t turn into a wolf at my place.”

  “True. Can’t hold it without moonlight.”

  Finally, she asked the most important question, “What is it I’m supposed to hack?”

  “It’s…complicated. It’s going to need a bit of ingenuity.”

  She figured that summed up her entire day so far. She’d wanted to just have a nice weekend, but instead, here she was in the car with a werewolf, being hunted by vampires that had her on a death list. All she wanted was to relax. Was that really too much to ask?

  She reached into her pocket. Amazingly, she still had her phone. She unlocked it and opened up a text message to…nobody. She couldn’t think of someone to tell. What he had said before was cruel, but sadly true. She was walking through life essentially alone. She had a couple friends at work, but other than that, her relationships were pretty weak.

  She put her phone down and looked out the window at the approaching storm. Somewhere, there were magical beasts. Previously, she’d had her mind blown with relatively boring ideas, such as ‘grass is the fur of the earth,’ but here she was, confronted with the idea that creatures other than humans existed on the earth. She knew that there were at least vampires and werewolves, and Reuben had mentioned something about goblins. What else was out there? What other myths were real?

  She opened her mouth to ask, but snapped it shut. She didn’t want to know. All she wanted to do was curl up in her bed, snuggling in the sheets with a steaming cup of hot coffee in her hands and a sappy movie on her television. She wanted to go back to when her greatest worry was having her computer crash. She wanted to go back to being lonely. Now, suddenly, she was the most popular kid on the block. Everyone wanted her for something, either for blood or hacking skills.

  What a life.

  Reuben drove them to a hotel. It wasn’t a bad one, but it sure wasn’t the Ritz. There were a couple cars in the well-lit parking lot. They could still hear the sound of the interstate, but they were far enough to feel somewhat isolated.

  “Here?” She peered out the window as he pulled into the gravel driveway. “I thought the plan was for me to hack something?”

  “Oh, we’re going to need to take a break.”

  “Why?”

  “Just because.”

  “No.” She wasn’t sure why she said it, but something inside her stirred, so she kept talking, “I need to know. If you’re expecting me to trust you, I can’t take just because.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter.”

  He suddenly flickered between human features and werewolf ones. She wasn’t sure if it was just the lighting, but she could almost see his pupils vanish. For just a moment, his eyes were jet black.

  “Because if you’re stuck in here with me when I turn, I’ll rip your head off.”

  The light returned to his eyes as he looked up towards the sun. It was starting to go down.

  “We need to get inside.”

  He pulled up to the lobby and hustled inside, where he checked into a room he had apparently already booked. It took him only a moment to get the key. Cara stayed back, watching him. He was obviously powerful. The longer she got to know him, the more powerful he appeared to get. She wasn’t sure if she was afraid or attracted to him.

  He returned to the car.

  “Where am I supposed to sleep?” she asked. “I mean, if I don’t want to get my head ripped off.”

  “I booked an extra room just in case you lived,” he told her. He paused, as his eyes looked tenderly at her, “I’m glad you lived.”

  The tenderness was short-lived. The veins on his forearms were quite visible, and Cara became frightened.

  “Don’t worry. I can control it for now. An hour or two? Forget it.”

  He extended a key. “Room 221. I’m across the hall.”

  She wasn’t sure what scared her more, that she was being chased by vampires or that her best shot at surviving was sleeping in a different room to avoid her supposed savior from accidentally killing her in an enchanted stupor. Part of her was curious about what he would actually look like after the transformation. She’d seen a little snippet of it back at the parking lot, and then again in the car in front of the hotel. If that was him controlling it, she wasn’t sure she’d ever want to see him lose it.

  Reuben was right; the rooms were right across the hallway from each other. She was happier than she should have been about the number 222. It was nice. Even. She’d always had a thing for evenness. She liked to joke that she had CDO; it’s like OCD, but better.

  “Do you think anyone will come after us tonight?” she asked as he unlocked the door.

  Was he suddenly bigger? He looked bigger.

  “Maybe,” he said. He fished out his gun and asked, “Do you know how to shoot?”

  “Kind of. My father took me to a range a couple times before he died.”

  Did she see a shot of sympathy in his eyes? Maybe.

  “It’s easy.”

  He moved behind her and positioned her hand around the shaft of the gun. His body was so close that she could feel his taut muscles through his shirt.

  “Grab here, point and shoot. If you need to reload, push this and insert this.”

  “I think that was literally, like, five ‘that’s what she said’ jokes in a row.”

  He smiled with a strange intensity, then quickly grew serious.

  “If the bullets don’t do the trick, open my door.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Cara. Look at me.”

  She did.

  “Don’t open that door for any other reason. You must not open that door, no matter what you hear, okay? It can get violent when I transform. I might tell you to open the door. I might try to actually open it or tear it off. You must not let that door be opened. If someone else comes to open it, don’t let them. Do you understand?”

  “Won’t you be able to open it from the inside?”

  “Like I said, I might try to rip it off. But when the animal instincts take over, it usually doesn’t occur to me to use the handle. Lock your door and stay inside your room. It’s your safest bet. Again, do you understand?”

  She nodded, starting to get a little scared. Tear the door off?

  “I understand.”

  He smiled at her. He really was handsome. His nose was a little off center, like it had been broken in a fight a long time ago, but other than that, his square jaw, the mesmerizing eyes, the tossed hair, awakened every one of her senses. She was used to getting looks from men, but she hadn’t seen a man look at her like that in a while.

  Very slowly, he leaned towards her and gently cupped her face in his hands. His skin was hot, like he had been in the sun.

  She felt a little frightened, but mostly excited.

  Their lips met.

  At first, it was just a light tap, but it grew in intensity quickly. She tried to go in for more, but he pulled away with a playful smile and a wink. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer. Reuben leaned in to playfully bite her lower lip as he wrapped his arms around her and placed his hands at the small of her back. Excite
ment coursed through her entire body. She wasn’t sure if he’d enchanted her, but she craved his touch. He released her and turned to walk into his room.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said, opening his door and walking in. “Go to your room and don’t forget what I told you. Do not open my door, no matter what you might hear.”

  He shut the door, leaving her standing in the hallway of a mediocre hotel, with a glaring light above her and ugly wallpaper on either side, stunned. She tried to form words and failed. She tried to form thoughts and failed.

  She’d kissed a werewolf…and it was amazing.

  She walked into her room and plopped down on the bed with the chrome handgun on her thigh. She, Cara Stone, had kissed a freaking werewolf. What had happened to her? She liked this new life of action and passion. Old Cara, the one that sat around writing a novel that would never get published, was not just a character in her own story. Better yet, she was the main character. It was about time she started living her own story.

  Somewhat mindlessly, she opened the blinds and looked out over the parking lot below. She didn’t see movement. Maybe nobody would come during the night. Maybe someone would. She had no idea, but there was no way she could change it. They’d come or they wouldn’t. Her worrying wasn’t helping, but still, it continued.

  Cara was anxious the entire night, lying on the bed with the gun beside her where she could grab it in a hurry if the need arose. Did she know how to shoot? No. Not really. But then again, it wasn’t too complex. For heaven’s sake, she had a master’s degree in computer science. She was smart. She could figure out what brutes had done for hundreds of years, right?

  Just point and shoot. Yeah, like it was that simple. If someone busted through the window or through the door, she’d have a million things to think about. She wouldn’t be able to consider things like life and death, but there, sitting in a quiet hotel room and scared out of her mind, she sure could take a long, hard look at what it would feel like to get murdered.

  They’d thought she was a tasty treat before. Now she was actually working with Reuben, so she had probably made the priority kill list. If he was telling the truth—and that was a big if—the target on her back just grew. She tried to keep her mind on one thought: how to shoot. Load. Aim. Pull trigger. Again.

  Even with all those thoughts flooding her brain, one thing overpowered all of them: she’d kissed a werewolf.

  It had been crazy and stupid, but she liked it. A lot. And, if she felt completely alive from only a kiss, she hoped to find out what happened when it went a little bit further.

  5

  Halfway through the night, Cara heard something coming from Reuben’s room.

  It sounded like heaving and snorting, and it was loud enough for her to hear it all the way across the hall. It wasn’t as if she had a lot of other sounds to drown it out, but still, that was impressive. Cara hoped other guests hadn’t heard the commotion.

  She heard a crash, then silence. Then his voice.

  “Cara,” he moaned. “Cara!”

  She froze in her bed, unsure of what to do.

  “Cara! Come here!”

  Slowly, she grabbed the gun and snuck over to his side of the hallway. “What?”

  “Let me out.”

  “You told me not to do that.”

  There was a roar from the other side of the door and another loud crash.

  “Let me out! Now!”

  “I can’t,” said Cara.

  She wanted to let him out, but she had promised she wouldn’t.

  “This is different.”

  It was still his voice, but with a strange edge to it, like he was speaking underwater.

  “Cara…”

  “No.”

  He slammed his fist against the door with enough force to make her jump back and wonder if it would shatter. It held. Apparently, it was a solid door.

  “Cara!” he roared. “LET ME OUT!”

  She heard him growl loudly as he thrashed around the room. It sounded strange; his movements didn’t sound normal. They sounded erratic, like he was drunk and stumbling around. She had a feeling that despite his ability to talk, he wasn’t thinking clearly. If being a werewolf made him any stronger, or even did nothing to him, he should be able to escape. Some part of him didn’t think about it, in the same way that a dog never considers pushing through the fence when there is no hole.

  She put her eye to the peephole to see what he looked like. It was too small. They’re designed to work one way. The other way around makes it look weird.

  So, like a creeper, she tried to look under the door.

  The hallway was entirely too narrow for her to stretch out, so she had to curve in an awkward position to be able to do it. She arched her butt way up in the air and folded her legs under her, which was astonishingly uncomfortable, but she managed to get her eye close enough to the carpet to see under.

  All she could see were claws.

  Long, sharp claws. They didn’t look manicured or cared for. They appeared to be jagged and untouched, like those of a wild beast. Shaggy fur was tossed over them. She wasn’t as impressed as she had hoped. She’d known he would be covered in fur. No big surprise there. That’s what werewolves do. What she wanted to see was something other than his feet. Was his entire body covered in hair? Was his face different? Did he look like a wolf? Did he have a tail?

  She tried to scoot closer to see more, but the door was determined to block her view. Rather unexpectedly, he smelled different. She tried to catch a solid whiff to identify it, but she’d never smelled something like it before. It had a certain dog-like quality, but it also smelled like man and she thought she caught just a hint of the bodywash Reuben used. An unusual combination.

  “Dammit,” she muttered, getting back up to avoid getting a cramp from staying in the miserable position. “Goodnight, Reuben.”

  “Let me out!”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  Very quietly, she returned to her own room. The shadows were eerie, almost as though they were alive. She flicked on the light, banishing them. Screw it. She was sleeping with the lights on. She wouldn’t be able to sleep with them off, from the fear of hearing ghostly noises. In truth, she wasn’t going to be able to sleep with a glaring light right above her eyes either, but it was better than wondering if something was in her room with her.

  The rest of the night was absolute hell.

  Every time the tree outside would scratch against the window, it sounded like nails across a chalkboard. Every time someone turned on a car, she was sure it was vampires pulling up to kill her. Every single time anything happened, her mind feared the worst.

  She realized, as she stared at the fan slowly going in circles, that she missed her old life less than she’d thought. In the little time she’d had to think about it, she’d assumed the novelty of her new situation would wear off, but she was getting more and more eager to learn. She’d always been a creative person. The concept of having a world she had never seen before –a magical underground – was enough to confuse and excite her. For heaven’s sake, she had a werewolf in the other room. There were other people in the hotel that would leave the next day without having any clue about their monstrous companion sleeping near them. How many times had she run into enchanted people without knowing it?

  The hours clicked by, literally. The hotel room had a loud clock on the wall, which gave her a great reference point of how little sleep she was getting.

  Eventually, though, the sun was up. She gave it a little while before going over to Reuben’s room. She was pretty sure that werewolves returned to normal when the sun came up, but then again, she’d also thought werewolves weren’t real.

  “Hey, Reuben,” she whispered. “You awake?”

  “Yeah,” came a quiet response from within. “I’m up.”

  She glanced left and right down the hallway. She was mostly alone, except for one family at the far side that was going the other direction.

  “Are you still
all hairy?”

  “No.”

  “Are you able to get out on your own, or do you need me to open the door?”

  “I’ll come out. Just give me a minute.”

  “How do I know I’m going to be safe?”

  “You don’t, I guess.”

  That wasn’t quite the response she was hoping for, but then again, he wasn’t lying.

  “Come stand at the door,” she requested.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Take your shoes off and come stand near the door.”

  She looked at the family. They were almost gone. She bent down to look under the door and saw Reuben’s human toes. He had gone back after all.

  “Okay. You can come out.”

  Reuben opened it from the other side. He looked hung-over. His hair was a mess. His eyes were tired. She guessed he hadn’t gotten much sleep. He’d probably been walking around as a werewolf the whole time.

  He made a grateful expression before going to grab his suitcase.

  “We have to leave before they track us here.”

  She peered in his room and held in a gasp. The furniture was tossed everywhere. There were huge claw marks on the ceiling and walls. On the ceiling! Judging by the height, he must be tall as a werewolf.

  “Holy shit.”

  He shut the door, giving her a warning with his eyes. That was an off-limits topic to him, evidently.

  “You get everything you need? Do you have my gun?”

  She presented it to him. He didn’t take it.

  “You keep it. You need it more than I do right now.”

  She wasn’t sure if that was a nice thing to do or an insult, but it was true. He could handle himself in a fight. She could pull rugs out. That was about it.

  Reuben’s face was still purple from where the vampires had hit him the day before. She assumed they’d hit him with the silver crowbar. In fact, he seemed to be almost afraid of the silver. Wasn’t that something she’d read in an article somewhere? That silver was the only thing that could kill a werewolf? She started to believe it.