To Mate an Assassin: The Lost Alphars Series, Book 1

by Ceri Grenelle

  “Matthew,” Aaron called into the phone as they ran through The Mansion towards the front door. “Soldier, answer me.”

  “Matthew cannot come to the phone right now. But if you would like to leave a message, please do so after the beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeep.” A sing-song voice resonated over the line.

  Kerrick grabbed the phone from Aaron. “Who the fuck is this?” he growled into the speaker.

  “Language, Captain,” she said, mistaking Kerrick for Aaron. “I will be all too glad to introduce myself but first I would like to speak to the Alphar.”

  Kerrick guided Aaron in a new direction, heading for the large windows that overlooked the front lawn. He needed a shortcut to the entrance and a good line of sight to see the damage the woman had wrought. Also, how many people she had with her because no matter how inexperienced, Kerrick had trouble believing one woman could defeat his entire outlying guard.

  “I am the Alphar. Be very careful what you do with my men, for if it is anything I think even the slightest bit combative or threatening, I will rip your throat out with my teeth.”

  “Oh, I am quite scared. Right, Matthew? Doesn’t that tone just make you shiver in your generic military boots?” Kerrick heard incoherent mumbling through the speaker as they finally made it to the front windows. The lawn was the size of a football field with an iron gate surrounding the property. The checkpoint to enter the compound was dead ahead and the eight guards he had stationed around the entrance were strewn about the lawn, either unconscious or dead. An Alphar’s fury ignited in his heart and roared a Lion’s cry across the property.

  “Alphar. There.” Aaron pointed to the roof of the front gate security house. A woman, a small woman with short, curly brown hair all dressed in black, stood with her arm around a kneeling guard. It wasn’t an outwardly threatening position. From far away they looked like buddies hanging out with one another, her hand holding the phone was waving in the air.

  “Greetings,” she said as she brought the phone back to her ear. “Come chat with me, Alphar. I do not think your underqualified guards need to be a part of this discussion, do you?”

  Aaron placed a hand on Kerrick’s shoulder. “Let me go first.”

  “No.” Something inside Kerrick whispered he needed to go, needed to see this woman. “I’m going. Secure the vulnerable in case she brought reinforcements.” Kerrick nodded at Aaron and took a flying leap from the window, landing on the soft lawn swiftly and sure footed. Aaron could have handled this one woman, but in the mood Kerrick was in, he was all too happy to take this on himself.

  “My lady,” he called out to her, bowing as he walked with a sharp-tooth grin. The crazy bitch wanted to play games? He’d play right along with her. “Welcome to my home.”

  Kerrick’s rage-hazed vision skewed her face, leaving him unable to focus and reliant on his other senses. He could vaguely see what was probably a nasty grin as she let Matthew the guard go by shoving him off the roof. Kerrick watched as Matthew dexterously rolled to a stand, pointing his spare weapon at the woman. Kerrick held his hand up to stay the soldier. He wanted to deal with the woman himself.

  The crazy lady gracefully hopped off the roof and walked toward him, a small smile adorning her face. One filled with her very own sharp teeth. “Thank you, Alphar. Although I must say your hospitality is a tad lacking.”

  Large, golden-ringed eyes came into focus, and as they closed the distance they both slowed. Her smile slipped from her face and his determination to annihilate her as a threat ebbed, replaced with a new and all-encompassing knowing blossoming in his heart.

  “I am—I am the Incendiary,” she stumbled, coming to a halt and pressing a curled hand to her chest. She clutched her black T-shirt, staring at him with wide, angry eyes, her breath heaving.

  “What are you doing to me?” Her voice was a rasp.

  The Beast within Kerrick, the endless well of power that represented his Alphar nature, roared in joyous triumph. One word rang like bells in his head and his heart, echoing to the very depths of his soul. No. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be so lucky to have found her.

  They were less than a foot away from each other now and Kerrick couldn’t stop himself as his hand reached out to cup her cheek. She jerked but melted into him once their skins met. She was petite and pale. Her skin felt perfectly smooth until his fingers tripped over a thin scar that trailed from her left earlobe down to her neck. But the scar didn’t detract from her beauty; it only enhanced the inherent wild nature of her. Her eyes were black, as was the way of the Weres, circled with a singular ring of color. A gold so pure, so brilliant, he was sure he could see his reflection in it. Her curly hair fell just down to her chin in delicate, chocolate-brown waves. Her body was small but it overflowed with undiluted power and strength.

  To Kerrick, she was perfection.

  She leaned into his touch, looking more horrified with every passing second. Her hand reached up to cup his over her cheek, stroking his knuckles then encircling his wrist. Her touch sent shockwaves across his skin, his body recognizing hers.

  “You are doing something to me, I know it,” she growled in an odd cadence of speech, feral yet formal. Along with the strange dichotomy of her speech patterns, her body was completely at odds with the rage and confusion he heard in her voice and saw in her expression. She was an enigma. “What is this?” She hissed. “If it is some fucked-up power play—”

  “We are mating.” Kerrick’s other hand reached forward to complete a frame around her face, unable to look away from her captivating eyes. “Our Beasts, our animals are choosing each other.”

  “What? Why? Why would they do that? That is a terrible idea.” She looked like she was on the verge of a mental breakdown but that didn’t stop her body from responding to his touches and shivering as he trailed his hands to her neck and then her shoulders, pulling her closer. He needed to feel the heat coming off her skin.

  “From where I’m standing it seems like a brilliant idea.” He wrapped one arm around her waist to bring their bodies closer, rubbing up against one another. His other hand returned to her face, his thumb tracing the scar. He was fascinated by that scar. He wanted to lick and discover its taste.

  “You are…this is impossible,” she said, her voice turning breathy, her hands stroking his chest as her eyes trailed over every inch of him. He felt devoured.

  “Kiss me,” he demanded, his need to taste her taking over, pulling her face towards his, bending to meet her halfway.

  “Another terrible idea.” The woman’s eyes were on his lips now. She wanted him as much as he did, felt what he felt. He could hear it in the rapid pounding of her pulse fluttering away in that delicious neck of hers. Smell it in the tempting scent of her arousal. “I am a bad kisser,” she whispered, still staring at his lips. “You should save yourself from the tedium while you still can.”

  “I doubt that,” Kerrick said, enjoying her futile attempts to stop the unstoppable. He would have laughed if his body hadn’t been screaming for him to take her, make her his. His mate. “Your lips look like they were made for kissing.” Kerrick’s lips rested against hers, soft as sin and plump enough to bite. “Kiss me,” he said against her lips, withholding the demand this time, instinctively knowing he needed her to make that final move.

  “What if you are the bad kisser?” she asked, pulling back slightly as her eyes flicked from his lips to his eyes. If she was feeling half of the sensual torture his body was being put through, he didn’t understand how she could resist submitting to the will of their Beasts calling for their mates. Kerrick couldn’t take it anymore, the Alphar power within his soul reared its wild head and demanded he take his mate and make her his.

  “Shut up, woman, and kiss me.”

  Her eyes sparked fire. “Do not tell me to shut up!”

  He pulled back, looking into those mystic eyes of hers. “You scared, Incendiary?”
r />   Her gaze burned bright with a barely contained fury and her eyes narrowed. Got her.

  She slammed her mouth onto his and his soul exploded into shards of colors and lights of crystalline joy. His mate. She was his mate. Their lips danced together and he pushed his tongue into her hot mouth, wanting her to feel what it could be like if it were their bodies entwining instead of just their mouths and lips. Gods, he needed to feel this woman surround him, become part of him. His woman.

  I found my mate.

  Her body molded to his. She went on her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around his neck. Their groins collided and she moaned as she rubbed her lithe body against his. Kerrick tugged her head back, hand gripping her lustrous curls and growled, “Mine. You are mine.”

  She stared back at him, eyes heavy lidded with lust. But he could see something shift in her mind, her expression was less panicked and more determined. She leaned back in and nipped his bottom lip, giving him more of the wanton creature she’d become in his arms.

  “Say it,” he growled. “Say you’re mine. Say it.” He didn’t even know her name. The only thing he knew was that she was crazy and thought she was some sort of shifter bogeyman assassin. But he didn’t care. She was his delusional little psychopath and he was keeping her. “Say it.”

  “Ssh, I’ll say it.” She leaned towards his left ear, nuzzling her lips and nose along his jaw line.

  “Then say it.”

  “I—”

  “Yes?”

  “I quit.”

  “What?”

  She slammed her knee into his groin and shoved him away from her. The pain was excruciating. “I resign from the position of Incendiary, not that you even knew what that was,” she said without any further explanation, the lithe and wanton woman vanishing into the ether, leaving this cold and emotionless being staring down at him. The woman that would be his mate turned to walk away but stopped when she reached the gate, looking back over her shoulder. “And I am not your mate. I am not your anything.” With that she dashed away from the compound and into the surrounding forest at a dead run.

  Kerrick groaned and cupped his balls, pain radiating from his poor, abused groin. “Demon woman,” he muttered, shaking the pain off and rising to stand and watch her run. “I’m in love.”

  “Kerrick!” Aaron shouted, running over to him with about a dozen soldiers on his tail. Kerrick didn’t even care how potentially embarrassing the situation could be, his soldiers seeing their leader brought to his knees by a stranger. It didn’t matter where mates were concerned. All embarrassment was well met and sometimes joyfully endured. He’d endure a lot worse for a mate to say she was his and he was hers.

  “I always said I would be the one to find my mate, Aaron. But I was wrong,” Kerrick said, his Alphar power leaking into his voice as he prepared to run. “She found me.”

  She may have gotten the drop on him, as the fading pain radiating in his groin could attest to, but the vicious woman was his mate, and he wouldn’t let her get very far.

  As Irisi would say in one of her more darling moments, fucking-balls-shit-fuckety-fucktard-dickwad-shitfuckers. Mated? Mated to the Alphar? Of all the rank balls of shit fate had thrown her way, this one had to be the most malodorous. Mated to the Alphar of North America.

  The Alphar with his wide shoulders and strong arms. He’d been wearing a simple blue Henley with gray slacks. He had been barefooted. His waist was tapered like a swimmer and under the clothes she could see the powerfully taut muscles that lined every inch of his masculine body.

  Stop thinking about his muscles.

  But she could not stop. Just as she could not stop running away from him, a force the strength of an erupting volcano urging her to get as far away from him as she could. An image of his body as he advanced on her across that lawn flashed in her mind. Oh, but Gods, that body. The power in his frame alone had beckoned to the Wolf within and urged her to lunge and rip his clothes off. She’d never responded to anyone so viscerally in all her life, her twenty-five years as a human included.

  Within one instant of looking she had memorized his face, his beautifully untamed and wild face. He had deep black eyes with no ring of color around them, a sure mark of the Alphar. They were solid, reflective pools of obsidian that compelled her to want things she was told never to allow herself to want in the past.

  She jumped over a fallen log as she continued her mad dash through the trees. Her mind tripped over the image of his slightly wavy hair, a shade of black akin to volcanic rock that hung down to just below his ears. The strands framed a solid jaw sprinkled with day-old stubble. Rugged but composed. Dangerous yet reassuring. Everything a leader of the most wild and sometimes untamed creatures in the world should be. Three minutes in his arms and she had memorized him.

  The man was a walking furnace fueled by coals of molten sex. Cimby had wanted to rub her body all over his and bite that muscular neck until he lost all composure and began to sweat with need, just as she had been. Which was one of the many reasons confirming her need to run the hell away from him.

  She was not made to love or have a family. She was especially not made to care for thousands of Weres, as she would have to do as the mate of an Alphar. She had been training to kill since she was a child, for fuck’s sake. That was not the type of person the Weres would want at their Alphar’s side.

  A snap of a broken branch echoing in the distance reached her ears and she knew he was in pursuit. A mere kick to the groin, no matter how much strength she had put behind it, would not incapacitate an Alphar for long. She knew little of mated Weres, as mating was never a topic her trainers had deemed necessary to teach her. But she had observed enough from her outsider status to assume the males when mated were a tad possessive, their dominant natures rearing to the fore. And an Alphar? He would be the most possessive and dominant shifter of all. Cymbeline smiled, feeling her mouth tilt up into what she had been told was a crazy-faced grin, and pushed herself to run faster.

  Was she enjoying this chase? Nah, she just needed a good hard run to get her blood pumping. That was all. Maybe she wouldn’t mind fighting him in hand-to-hand combat, not that she had any chance of winning against the Alphar, but it would still be an enlightening experience. She could almost feel him hot on her back, chasing her with that mad smile of his own he had given her when he told her to shut up. Hell, maybe he liked it rough. Her mind began to fill with naughty fantasies of her and the Alphar rolling around on the ground, fighting and kissing and worshipping one another all through the night. Oh yes, he would like her particular brand of rough.

  Her legs were slowing, the fantasy dragging her down. What was happening to her? Her concentration was completely shot and she did not even know what direction she was running in anymore. She left her car about twenty-five miles north of the compound, almost to the California-Oregon border. She needed to stop and get her bearings. Something that was impossible as she could hear the pounding of feet behind her. Just one set of feet.

  All of a sudden the forest ended and she sprang from the trees, landing on pavement, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car. Cymbeline ran along the highway, using the smooth concrete to gain traction and pick up speed. She knew where she was now. She was almost to the car, almost home free. She would figure out what the hell she was going to do with the searing need slamming against her heart afterwards.

  There was a slight curve to the highway and a cliff side blocked her view of any oncoming traffic. She slowed her pace in case she would need to make a quick maneuver, and took the curve at a steady run. As the curve came upon a shaded area, a pale hand stretched out and dragged her back into the forest. She was thrown, at least thirty feet, before her back slammed into a tree and she dropped to the forest floor.

  She ignored the pain and stood, bracing herself for another attack. A sharp sting lanced across the hand that had been grabbed, blood pooled in a slash across her palm. T
he pain was throbbing, radiating up her arm. She brought the wound to her nose to sniff. Poison.

  “Fuck,” she cursed, her body feeling sluggish, her keen and well-trained senses fading.

  “Let me see it,” he said. She’d sensed him approaching, even though his tread was silent as the grave, but hadn’t had the energy to keep running. The Alphar’s shadow appeared before her, not waiting for her compliance before gently taking her hand to examine the wound.

  “Shut up. Kiss me. Say it. Let me see it.” She mimicked to his downturned face as he sniffed the cut. “Ever heard of asking?”

  “Not when it comes to you, apparently.” He glanced up with a short smile before turning back to her hand.

  Her body slumped against the tree, the poison taking hold of her limbs. The Alphar scooped her up into his arms as if she weighed nothing and began to run back towards The Mansion.

  “No,” she slurred against his chest. Mmm, he smelled good. “Don’t want to go back.”

  “You’ve got Vryk blood in your system.”

  “Won’t kill me.” She thought she’d smelled Vryk on the creature that had flung her back into the forest. What the hell was a Vryk doing attacking her? She had never had an issue with any Vryks. In fact she had worked amicably with many in this area in the past.

  “No, but it will leave you paralyzed and helpless for about a day.”

  “Leave me.”

  “You really are crazy if you want me to leave you—my mate—in the middle of a forest crawling with my enemies when paralyzed and vulnerable. Even if you weren’t my mate I wouldn’t do that.”