by Lila Felix
Whatever the memory was that Harrison was thinking about made him look downcast.
“Were you lonely as a child?”
He shrugged and took the lids off several silver platters full of a tailgater’s dream spread. “What about you? I’m tired of talking about me. Do you have brothers and sisters? They told me nothing about you other than you were educated and beautiful. They were correct on that account, by the way.”
“I have four brothers, all older. They weren’t allowed to come tonight.”
His shoulders fell as he picked up an empty plate and selected one of each item. “I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules. You said you were hungry?”
He held the plate out to me, and I was so taken aback, it took me a few seconds to react. When I did, our hands brushed, and the feeling of warmth from before came back with a fury.
But this time the sensation reverberated all over my body.
“Do you feel that, or is it just me?”
He looked stricken. “I thought it was just me. It must be because you are new here or something. We have to go to the Court of the Sun and the Moon to get your tattoo tomorrow. Maybe after that, everything will be normal again. It might be the only chance for us to get out of the castle grounds for a while, so enjoy it.”
From the tone of his voice, normal wasn’t something he wanted.
“So, tell me about this place. I mean, there are rumors, but I was blindfolded from the time I stepped off the airplane until I got to the room in the castle where my dress was. It was kind of ridiculous.”
He sat next to me. I noticed he didn’t make himself a plate. “There’s too much to tell you tonight, but I can tell you some. Havenwood Falls was founded in the 1800s by a few families who were fleeing persecution. They were attracted to this place because of the location, and they swear there’s something magical about the falls.”
He spouted the history like a teacher lecturing students, like he had no attachment to it.
“Your family was one of those?”
“No. We came a few years later. It’s a point of contention with my father. That might be a subject to avoid in conversation with him.”
The alpha from my clan back home in Louisiana was apparently very different from Harrison’s father. Black bears had one alpha over all clans, which was Harrison’s father. Then each smaller clan had their own alpha. Ours was Kar. He was the leader of a big family. We didn’t walk on eggshells around him. He was kind, just, and fair to all bears, and he certainly didn’t see my lighter hair as anything lesser.
He was one of us.
No wonder these people needed a bridge to the real world.
“Maybe you can take me into town someday.” Harrison looked uncomfortable again. “What?”
“We aren’t encouraged to leave the castle or the grounds. We are protected by a separate veil than even Havenwood Falls. The town is protected by a ward to keep the supes around here protected, but that wasn’t enough for the alpha. My father is constantly paranoid that the mages from the Luna Coven are out to get us. So he had a mage from Romania, who is not tied to the Luna Coven, come in and guard the castle with new veils.”
If I had a bunch of balloons, he would’ve just popped all of them with one stick. When I looked back up, my new mate was studying me. His gaze made me nervous again.
Harrison smiled. “Good thing I wasn’t a very well-behaved child.”
I couldn’t imagine a naughty bone in this prince’s body, but I perked up at the notion of getting out of this stuffy place just hours after arriving.
“Can we go to the falls?” I was a little eager already.
“I know a way. But first, we have to get your tattoo. It will protect you from hunters and make you recognizable to other shifters. And there are other things we have to take care of before we can even think about sneaking you out of the castle. Like . . . the mate marking.”
I knew the conversation was coming, I just hoped to avoid it for . . . forever.
“Do we have to do that tonight?”
Chapter 6
Harrison
I swallowed against the thought that she didn’t want to proceed with the marking. “We do. Trust me. There will be people tomorrow morning who will not only notice, but will be looking for the mark. It’s our first test, of sorts.”
Atlas twisted a piece of her long brown hair around her pointer finger.
“What if this doesn’t work out?”
I took a long, deep breath and stood up to stretch my legs. “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
She stood up as well. “Same page?”
“You obviously aren’t planning on letting this mating go any further than it has to. Is that right? You’re just here to make the ninety days and then go back to your life, money in hand?” The tone of my voice reminded me of my father in the worst way possible. I paused at the callousness of my own words and shook my head. “I’m sorry. That was wrong to say. It’s been a long day. We haven’t even been mated for a few hours, and I’m being an asshole.”
She didn’t answer at first. Before long, her slim hand ran over the top of my shoulder, and I shivered at her touch. “Look, this is hard,” she finally said. “Let’s not pretend it’s not. As long as we are honest with each other, we can get through this. Right?”
I kind of liked this woman already. This wasn’t the plan.
“You want honesty? Okay. My father will be looking for the mark tomorrow morning. I don’t even want to think about what will happen if you don’t have it, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
There was so much truth to that last sentence. I’d just met this female, and yet something gnawed at me to protect her from my father, like I’d always protected my mother to the best of my ability.
“Well, we have to keep the alpha happy, right? Are you ready?” She looked around the room. For what, I had no idea. “The bed would be appropriate, right? Although, we don’t want to get blood on the comforter. Prince’s choice.”
Atlas calling me Prince was like running fingernails down a chalkboard. It made my jaw clench.
“Harrison, please. Let’s not call me Prince. Unless you want me to sing. I do a mean Purple Rain.”
She tried, in vain, to quell a smile. “You know, I think I knew that about you already, somehow.”
“There’s a ton you don’t know about me. And probably a hell of a lot more that I don’t know about you.”
Atlas grabbed my hand and led me toward the window seat, a place that I’d never really sat. I knew it was there; it just seemed impractical.
“So who goes first?” she said, and a touch of a blush came over her face.
I cleared my throat. The moonlight filtered through the slivers between the sheer curtains, making sparkles dance on her already shiny brown hair and causing her skin to glow with an ethereal opalescence.
My father had chosen well.
“I don’t think it matters. Maybe I should.” With one swift movement, I was next to her. Our knees and legs met, and my face was inches from hers. She sucked in a breath, and this close, I could hear her heart racing and tripping over skipped beats. “I’ll make this as painless as possible.”
She nodded, and I hoped it was because she was as breathless as I was.
“I, Harrison, mark you, Atlas, as my mate and future queen of the black bear shifters. You shall always be protected, taken care of, and nurtured as long as you are my mate.”
I made up the last sentence.
I pulled her shirt to the side, exposing her right shoulder. The pulse on her neck grew frantic. My hand trailed from her ear down the curve of her throat before cupping her fair shoulder. My other hand slid behind her neck, threading my fingers in her hair, mostly because I needed to know how it felt, but a little to keep her in place so she didn’t struggle against the pressure.
I counted to three under my breath and then marked my mate.
Chapter 7
Atlas
I t
ried like hell to be brave, and I was, until his hand ran down the length of my neck. Then there was no point in pretending. I was scared as fuck. Not of the bite or of the pain. I feared this male in front of me. The way his voice blanketed my senses scared me. The way his brown eyes bored directly into mine whenever he spoke made me anxious. Whenever he touched me, my insides burned with a desire I’d never felt, and I feared I never would again.
This can’t be happening.
The moment his teeth grazed my skin, I let out a wail that was a concoction of pain and complete and utter passion. Euphoria and pleasure shot through my shoulder and didn’t waste any time reaching the rest of my body. He was there, with me, a part of me, sucking and drinking my blood, my life source, and connecting us in a way that I’d been naive enough to think wasn’t intimate, wasn’t inflaming, wasn’t somehow permanent.
When his arms moved around me, my body gave in to all the sensations, and I allowed them. I sunk into his hold like molten metal flows into a mold.
My body in his arms was absolute perfection.
When he pulled back, I groaned at the loss.
“That was . . .” he started, but couldn’t finish.
I nodded, still unable to form a coherent sentence.
“Hold on.” He stood up, and I slumped against the window, still feeling like goo. “Let’s get that cleaned up. I’m sorry. I probably took more than I should’ve. We can wait a few minutes before we . . .”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. With a new surge of energy, I reached out, fueled purely by instinct, and pulled him down to me. There was barely enough time to pull his T-shirt away from his shoulder. “I, Atlas, take you, Harrison, as my mate and mark you now.”
They weren’t the right words, but in that pulsing moment, I didn’t fucking care. I needed him, then and there.
A moan poured from his lips as my teeth pierced his flesh. A burst of warmth hit my tongue as his decadent blood cascaded into my mouth. Sammy had said something to me once, in shifter class, that royal blood was rumored to taste different, but I wasn’t prepared for the richness flowing down my throat in waves of connection.
“Atlas?” Harrison’s voice broke through my haze and back into reality.
“Oh!” I jerked back and gasped. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
“It’s okay. I just want to make sure I have as much energy as possible for tomorrow morning.”
As he’d just explained, I knew I’d be going to the Court the next day to get my tattoo, but other than that, I hadn’t planned on running a marathon.
“What’s tomorrow?”
He ran a finger lazily down the side of my face, looking absolutely uncaring about the blood seeping through his shirt. “Tomorrow I start protecting you from my father and, I suspect, keeping you out of trouble. You’re going to cause me trouble, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. Wasn’t that my goal in this arrangement? To cause as much trouble as possible for this pampered prince, so that by the end of the ninety days, or even before that, he would toss me out along with the other lessers they found so easily expendable.
That was still my goal.
Harrison’s face fell a little when I didn’t react to his lure. I would have to guard myself against this prince. I’d already given him too much. Too much of my laughter. Too many of my smiles.
Less than a day in this forsaken palace, and I’d lost who I was.
Lost in his eyes. Caressed by his hands. Drunk on his blood.
Fuck.
“I’m going to take a shower.” A coldness came over me as he walked toward the bathroom.
No, it was just my imagination. I couldn’t possibly be cold just because Harrison Xavier wasn’t near me.
Chapter 8
Harrison
We’d slept in the same bed, but hadn’t touched the entire night. The rope that tied us together through our mating marks had thinned during the night, as though we were both tugging our bond in opposite directions.
It was too weak to not fray in the middle.
Atlas was awake. Her breaths were steady, but purposefully shallow. She’d taken a bath after my shower. Her hair, straight on the day of our mating, was now in waves and absolutely everywhere on the bed. The strands of cinnamon brown were a stark contrast to the gold of the silk sheets around her.
“Good morning,” I said softly. There was no time for her to answer. A knock at the door jolted us both out of bed. Already nervous about who was on the other side of the door, I put my hands on her shoulders. She winced in pain.
“I’m sorry. I forgot. That might be my father.” The fear and desperation for her to survive every encounter with my father made me sound weak. I hated to be weak in front of this female. “It’s going to be okay.”
She looked at me, sleepy crinkles still at the corners of her eyes. “Is he going to eat us?”
I laughed. She made me laugh at the weirdest times. “No.”
“Bring it.”
Trouble. The female was trouble.
“Come in.” I tried to yell, but it sounded more goat than self-confident prince of a kingdom.
I heard his footsteps and smelled his overbearing cologne before the servant cleared the way for his entrance. Leave it to my father to risk interrupting an intimate moment between a newly mated couple, and think it was perfectly okay.
My father strolled into the bedroom. His gaze moved around the room. He’d expressed some discontent about my sparse furnishings, but I liked my side of the castle simple and less gaudy than his. Even my mother had confessed a gag reflex in regard to her side of the castle and all the gold trimmings it held. After his appraisal of the room, he zeroed in on Atlas, now my marked mate, still waking up.
“Neck,” I seethed at Atlas.
We both tilted our heads and bared our necks, showing respect. Atlas reached out and took my hand, but there was no fear in her smell.
One of my father’s eyebrows rose. “I see the little couple are up bright and early.”
Like he gave us a choice.
“Good morning, Alpha.” Atlas spoke first, and I suppressed the need to cover her mouth with my hand so that there were no repercussions from my father. She had no idea what he could do—what he had done.
“Good morning, little cinnamon princess.” There wasn’t a lick of sarcasm in his tone. “I see you two have gotten along quite well on the night of your mating.”
My bear nearly clawed his way through my chest at the sight of my father’s hand on her shoulder where my mark was. He knew it, too. The alpha’s black eyes shifted to mine in an unspoken dare for me to say something to him about it.
“We have, Alpha. I’m so grateful for your kindness and for choosing me as your son’s mate.” Damn, she was good.
“We are thankful to have you here, Atlas. Well, I am satisfied that things are going as planned. The Court of the Sun and the Moon are awaiting you this morning. As you know, all supernatural beings must report to them. They think highly of themselves, especially that supposed representative of the shifters, Ulrich Kasun.” My father spat Ric’s name.
“Of course, Alpha.”
He turned to leave. “Good job, Harrison. I had my doubts.”
Those were his last words before leaving.
Atlas stood in silence, still holding my hand while she waited, for what I had no clue. “And I thought we were supposed to be the lessers.”
“What?” The word choked out.
“Seriously, you guys are so pampered and proper, but at the same time, completely passive-aggressive and rude. I’d rather stick a screwdriver in my head than ever speak to that man again.”
“You guys?” I asked, attempting to veil the knife in my back.
“I guess not you. You know what I mean.”
I stepped closer to her, grabbing her other hand. “I’ve tried all my life not to be like those people, Atlas. One day you will see that in me.”
“What do I need to wear for the Court?” S
he changed the subject.
“Not completely casual, but not anything too dressy. Just whatever.”
Chapter 9
Atlas
The alpha gave me the creeps more than I was afraid of him. The way he touched my shoulder was a little too intimate—a little too personal.
I shrugged on an emerald green dress and black stilettos before taming my wild, golden brown locks. I wanted them out and free. The royal hair-people had tied it all up for the mating ceremony, as though they were trying to hide my cinnamon.
I was letting my cinnamon shine.
I came out, and our bedroom was already being cleaned by three servants, all cinnamon. For a moment, meeting each of their eyes, I felt like a traitor.
My mate assessed my outfit. “You look . . . Are you ready to go?”
Harrison wore gray pants with a lighter gray button-down shirt. His stubble had already started to grow into a beard, and it took all there was in me not to reach out and touch it for myself.
I had to stay the course.
This was only temporary.
“Yes. I’m ready.”
We went downstairs and entered a car that cost more than all my student loans combined. The alpha and his wife were in the car ahead of us, and I had yet to meet my mother-in-law. This place was absolutely ridiculous.
“Want to give me some background? What am I walking into?”
“Nothing that’s a big deal. You have to introduce yourself to the Court, because you are now future royalty, and then get your tattoo. Ric Kasun, the seat holder on the Court, will officially introduce you. The rest is formalities.”
It was the formalities that scared me the most.
“Who is Ric Kasun?”
Harrison looked out the windshield before speaking. He reached between us and pushed a button that made the privacy screen rise between us and the driver. It was like a movie or something. And also ridiculous.