by A. K. Koonce
Contents
1. Unrecognizable Love
2. The Puppy and Prisoner
3. Distorted Love
4. A Mother’s Love
5. Hope
6. Reaching Rime
7. Two Tamers
8. The Alpha and His Toy
9. Fire Face
10. A Perfect Endless Night
11. Together at Last
12. The Worst Torture
13. Floppy Cocks
14. Don’t Disturb the Dead
15. Armies and Apologies
16. Crimson Snow
17. The Last Remaining Mages
Epilogue
Afterword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
About the Author
Also by A.K. Koonce
Reigning
Copyright 2019 A.K. Koonce
All Rights Reserved
Cover design by Killer Book Covers
Editing by Studioenp
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without express written permission from the author. Any unauthorized use of this material is prohibited.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
One
Unrecognizable Love
I try really hard not to take this situation out on the oblivious shifter seated across from me, the bright-white sunlight casting across his pale features until he himself looks like he’s carved from ice and snow. I try. Really I do. But every beastly thing he does pisses me off this morning.
The emotions that have spiraled through me in the twenty-four hours since we’ve arrived here have had so many ups and downs that I’m just exhausted. Being taken from my cell early this morning to be escorted into the largest dining room I’ve ever seen didn’t help. The room was empty, and I was alone for a total of three minutes before Rime slipped in.
I shift in my seat, and he huffs a breath, his frosty gaze glaring down in disgust at the demon blood that’s still coating my hand. My hands are offensive to him now that he’s different.
She chased the humanity from his mind. As well as his affection for me, it seems. The hard glare of his eyes a murderous glint that he reserves especially for me.
“You’re so pretentious now.” My voice carries into the silence of the grand sitting room.
The Attikan castle is cold, letting in too much of the icy winds outside, and I haven’t seen a single one of the magnificent fireplaces lit that decorate every single room. The one against the far wall sits blackened with ash, icicles collecting along the forgotten logs.
I shake my head at the man across from me who doesn’t acknowledge my ranting, and it only makes me rant even more. “As if your hands are sexy and flawless and I’m over here with peasant hands.” My attention drifts to Rime’s big hands, long fingers, and all the dirty things he’s ever done to me with those fingers flashes through my mind. “Like you’re so perfect.”
I fold my arms, and he follows the movement, his gaze lingering on the curve of my breasts, really looking at me with something more than disgust for the first time since the Solstice Queen attached that damn halo device around his head. Rime isn’t in there. He’s just a beast in a man’s body. So I shouldn’t like the way he’s watching me so much right now.
It’s the first bit of attention he’s even shown me. It reminds me of the way he used to look at me, the way he used to see me when I was a woman with no value in the world.
He used to look at me like he wanted me.
Just like he is in this moment.
The charred brick that lines the walls appears darker when I focus on his bright eyes. There’s something really wrong with me, because I lean forward in my chair, watching him watch the curves of my body with something less than hate in his gaze.
Is Rime in there?
His hand lifts, and I mirror his movement with so much hope strumming through my veins. I splay my fingers to take his, to touch him and just know he’s here in this terrible imprisonment that I got us into. I just need to feel him, to see he’s really still in there.
His big palm snatches my wrist so fast I gasp when he drags me into the table. He pulls me hard until the edge of the steely table bites into my thighs and I’m forced to fight against his violent grip.
“Rime,” I grind out, but he pulls me harder. “Rime” I shove at his hands, and for a moment we grapple and fumble with one another, but he never releases his painful grasp on me. “Bad, bad…” Shifter? Dragon? Mate? “Bad, boy.” Well that—that was not the right choice of words.
He’s seething heavy breaths through his teeth and I think all he really wanted was a fight all along. This man might kill me and I don’t know if I would save myself if it came down to a fight for our lives.
If it was a choice of me or him… I’d choose him. Over and over again.
I glance up at his glowing crown that encompasses his pale hair and then I’m climbing over the table and letting him drag me across the crystal-like countertop. He brings me to him, and I leap into his arms like the lovers we are. But it’s different. There isn’t a lover’s touch at all when he catches me. As he stumbles back, he continues to clutch my wrist, and his hand on my thigh is painful as he crushes my hips against his. When we fall, he rolls us immediately. I wrap my fingers around that fucking halo device but when I pull, it doesn’t budge. He’s pinning me down with his body, seemingly winning, but I have a goal. The goal here is to get this damn device off of my mate. But his goal is to fuck me, and mine is to save him, and both of us are failing rather miserably, and a seriously screwed-up form of bestiality is becoming a real threat right now, and I’m not doing the best job of pretending like it repulses me.
“Rime!”
I shove awkwardly at his face, and he growls into my pressing fingertips. Magic flares to life in my palm, and I hold him in place, forcing him to halt all of his powerful movements. For several seconds we just stare at one another, panting and trying to understand what the other wants.
“I-I need you here with me.” My voice cracks, and he doesn’t blink with my power wrapped around him. But he does listen. I mean, he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter, but it feels nice to be held somewhat romantically in his arms while he listens against his will.
The definition of romance at its finest, I’m sure.
“I wish you were here.” My fingers leave the metal device that won’t budge and trail down the sharp angle of his jaw. “I wish I’d told you I loved you before it was too late.” My throat hurts when I swallow, and my words shake hard on my next breath. “I hate that I’m in your arms talking about you as if you died that day.” I skim my index finger over his bottom lip. I peer up into those beautiful, familiar eyes and I lift slowly, watching his pupils dilate just slightly before I hesitantly press my lips to his. “I love you, Rime.” I kiss him softly once more, and somewhere during our struggling and my irrational meltdown, I release my magic.
And he kisses me back.
It’s a tentative flick of his tongue along mine that I crave the moment it happens. It’s like a memory flitting through my mind, fleeting before I ever really grasp the details of what I once had. Rime’s holding me, he’s kissing me, he’s here.
His fingers on my thigh dig into the flesh, and he flips me. It’s a flash of movement, and one minute, I’m melting in this man’s arms, and the ne
xt he’s pressing his erection against the curve of my ass like a dog. A very…demanding, very sexy, very bad dog.
Fuck.
“Rime.” I shove the heel of my palm into his cheek again, twisting myself beneath him to shove him away like the bad fucking boy that he is. “Go lie down. Get. Shoo. Go hump a pillow or something.”
Long tangled locks of my brown hair are fanned over my face, my body arching, my fingers slipping over Rime’s eye and temple to try to get a grip on this weird situation.
And then it gets worse.
The enormous white door swings open, and Queen Ellise glides into the room with all the grace in the world. All that grace in front of a disaster of the graceless couple tangled up in front of her.
We look like a pile of something a shameless pet left behind for her to find in the middle of the floor.
“Good morning,” I say breathlessly, still pinned beneath the shifter, still lying like a complete mess slopped on the floor.
“Rime, sweetheart, let her go.” Ellise doesn’t even glance at the two of us lying at her feet when she passes by to stride toward the head of the long table.
Rime releases me in an instant, his narrowed eyes shifting over my body. Everything about us is confusing and strange now. I purse my lips when I stand, skimming and tangling my fingers in my hair to try to find some form of a professional appearance.
I had a plan for how my meeting with the Solstice Queen was going to go, and wrestling with an out-of-his-mind shifter was not on the agenda.
The yellow skirt I have on is now crooked and tangled around my hips, and I straighten it discreetly as I walk back to my side of the table.
I look presentable.
Ish.
“Please be seated.” Ellise smiles a sweet and delicate smile at me as she takes her seat with perfect posture. A glittering white crown rests against her hair, nearly matching the color of her locks, but her mossy-green eyes remind me of her son.
Not Rime, but Linden.
I left Linden and his father in Warf when they found out my dirty little secret. For the first time in my life, I hope I’m found by the two men who are probably hunting me.
I hope they find me before Ellise destroys everything I care about as well as two of the strongest kingdoms in the world.
But that’s where my plan comes into play.
Rime sits like a good fucking boy, and I stand there still staring at the beast and man that I don’t actually recognize. When his gaze drifts to me, I slowly sit. He watches me curiously, his brow hooding over his gaze like the aggression within him is on standby, ready and waiting.
“Thank you for joining me this morning,” she says. As if she didn’t send a demon down after me to haul me up here for this morning’s delightful meeting.
It’s curious that Rime snuck in to see me before his master did.
His master. I barely suppress a groan.
“Thank you for inviting me.” The sweetness in my voice is something I’ve never even heard before, and Rime growls at the offensive kindness in my tone.
I feel the same way, boy, I feel the same way.
I don’t dare look at him.
Ellise’s eyes shine with a smile while she studies me for a moment, checking my motives, as she should. She’s holding me and my mate here in her fucking quest for mage domination.
I’m here because Rime is here. And I’m also here because I know she’ll never let me leave. She’s been an unseen a part of my life for years. I’ll never just get to walk away. She wants my magic.
So I’ll give it to her.
For now.
“I’m pleased with how far you’ve come, Arlow. I’m going to need you to go a bit further, though.”
My smile physically hurts my face, but I widen it to keep from screaming or laughing or both.
“You’ve been trained by a powerful demon, powerful shifters even.” An affectionate nod is passed toward the good boy seated across from me. “And now you’ll be trained by the most powerful mage in the world.”
Insert my excitement here.
“Great,” I beam, dazzling smile in full force.
“I’m surprised by your change in attitude.” She arches her brow at me, and I have to be at her level of evil genius if I’m going to save myself as well as the asshole shifter who nearly murdered me just moments ago.
I straighten my back and shift my gaze away from her, looking up at Rime for the briefest moment.
“Rime and I were both outcasts growing up. He’s himself here. I didn’t realize that until this morning, but he’s more himself than I’ve ever seen.” That’s not entirely untrue. He’s one hundred percent dragon. The voice of the man who used to tame this beast isn’t in there anymore. He’s himself, if himself ever existed in his beast. I grind my teeth together before I take a breath and carry on with the speech I’d rehearsed all night in my little cell. “I want to be me, too. I want to be the mage I should have been.”
That’s not untrue either. I’m being so honest this morning I’m surprised I haven’t been awarded a good citizen’s merit yet.
I really did want to learn from her, too. Before I met the Solstice Queen, I wanted to learn from her, I wanted to be her.
And now all my naive dreams are coming true.
It feels like shit to have these dreams come true.
“I’m so happy to hear that, Arlow.” Her voice is cold but calm. Her head tilts as she studies me.
I feel watched on the deepest level possible, and it’s hard for me not to squirm under her gaze. Her lips part as if she’s made up her mind about me, but before she speaks, the doors swing open once again.
And in walks…another demon.
Gray smoke wafts around his steps as he rushes toward the queen in his flat black armor. His crimson eyes remind me of my own demon, but the hard look of his gaze is different, as if he’s forged from a merciless place in Hell.
A place Sinister has never known.
The demon bends at the waist and whispers a stream of rasping words that I can’t hear into Ellise’s ear. Her lips thin, but the annoyance turns into a pleased smile. She nods and waves the demon off.
His gaze slides to me for a short moment, and I smother my cringe at the way his attention rakes over my body.
Demons like him give his hellacious kind a bad name.
“I know it’ll take time for you to trust me. Because it’ll take time for me to trust you, I’m afraid.” She glances my way before flicking her attention to Rime. “We have visitors trekking through the mountains from the south.”
My men?
“It seems King Barron is prepared to make the journey to my kingdom to retrieve a mage on the run.”
It’s then that she does focus fully on me, and I have to keep my breath even as my heartbeat pounds in my ears.
“Of course, it’ll be surprising if the old man can make it the final mile up to the top of our mountain on foot, but we will see.” Her smirk is serene and mocking all at the same time. “Do you want me to show you some real protection spells, my dear?”
I hate how much I truly want that. A stupid part of me really does want that. But a smarter part of me tells me it’d be good to learn everything I can before showing all my cards.
“I’d love that,” I say on a quiet breath.
The way her eyes shine is the kindest look I think I’ve ever seen from her.
“Then we better get started before our guests arrive.”
Step one: Form an unbreakable bond between two isolated women.
And then be ready to break it.
Two
The Puppy and Prisoner
Rime’s stiff shoulder brushes mine with every long stride he takes down the hall. I rush to keep up with the quick steps of the queen in front of me. She guides us down endless brick corridors. The castle here seems to be made up of dark, maze-like hallways, each one colder than the last.
I can’t help but wonder if Rime knows I’m his mate. I don’t know w
hy that seems important to me, but it terrifies me to think he might forget me during all of this. I feel it. I feel that bond between us like a knife forever lodged in my heart. It hurts with slicing emotion to be so near him to see he feels absolutely nothing when he looks my way.
And I just smile right through the pain.
When we near a large wooden door, Rime’s long fingers run over my bare shoulders as he covers me with a thick fur shawl. The pure white fur is warm against my skin, and it surprises me even more when he kneels at my feet and offers matching fur boots. It’s the strangest thing. Ellise must have told him to take care of me, but it feels oddly affectionate.
It’s…infuriating. I hate knowing that he’s not in there, but she’s manipulating me into making me feel all these things that are just distracting me from the real task at hand.
She’s good. She’s really fucking good in her evil-doer ways.
My palm meets his shoulder, and his body is rigid beneath my touch as he quickly prepares the boot. My body reacts the moment his fingers slide up my calf. I refuse to fall apart. I refuse to let my emotions tear me down when my mind is so determined.
When his fingers skim along my other calf, I shove his hand aside and tie the damn thing myself.
I smile at her as I finish. She stands at the door, her palm on the black metal handle, watching me closely.
“Ready?” I ask with just the right amount of enthusiasm.
Fuck her and her games. I will win in this snowball fight of evil wits.
She pulls her fur hood up over her pale-blonde hair, and the moment the door opens, a chill races over my flesh beneath the thick cloak. We walk out into the blinding whiteness of the world, and all I see is layers of emptiness. Mountain peaks angle up into the sky, but each line of the scene before me is blanketed in snow. This place is void of color—even the sky is a pale gray among the fresh ice of this land.