by A. K. Koonce
Because he’s mine.
All of them are.
I look up at Rime, and he hasn’t moved a single inch since last night. His light lashes are fanned over his sharp cheekbones, and I lean into him, pressing my chest to his until my temple rests against his.
Rime…
Muscles tense beneath my touch, and his eyelids flinch, his entire body going rigid before a rasping voice enters my mind.
It’s about time, my Tamer.
Warmth flares to life inside my heart from the simple use of the playful name he gave all that time ago. I push my fingers back and forth along his white t-shirt, and the shifter catches my wrist just as his eyes open.
We need to strengthen our bond. It helped Kain.
Mmm, what do you suggest?
His body shifts until the hard panes of his chest are pressing down on me, serious cutting attention shifting across my features.
We don’t actually have time for that.
A small smile parts my lips, but when his hand glides up my leg and between my thighs, the smile slips away. Gentle touches tease my skin in a leisure, roaming pace. With leisure, he runs his index finger gradually over my sex, slipping deeper before pulling his hand back and sliding his fingertip across his tongue and sucking slowly. His tongue rolls over his lower lip as he watches me carefully with hooded blue eyes.
Tastes like there was time for it but I missed out.
My breath increases, my breasts pressing into his chest with every small inhale I take.
Tell me what I missed, Tamer.
I swallow hard, and my body aches for him, even if I know I won’t give in.
Rime and I have always connected in a carnal way. The attraction’s always been this sparking thing that I’ve always felt, but there’s more. Even if he doesn’t realize it. We’re the same in so many ways.
There’s just one thing I know he needs more than sex.
Love.
“You missed a lot lately, Shifter.”
Ice-blue eyes narrow on me, but his hips settle against mine like we might come back to the earlier conversation at any moment.
I explain it to him, my mind trailing over the painful details.
You missed the way I flailed around in this kingdom, just as I did in the previous kingdom. You missed the terrible things Ellise did to Chaos and to Kain. You missed the way I struggled without you but overcame it with time just because you were near.
I pause as I slip my fingers through his hair.
You missed the way I said I loved you, Rime. Several times. All you ever asked me was to never tell you how much I loved you. And once again, I didn’t listen. I love you so much that I didn’t even realize how much love I had until you were gone.
Cold fingertips skim along my jaw, his lips pressing slowly to mine. It’s the gentlest touch, the sweetest kiss.
“I love you, too, Tamer.”
I fist my fingers into his shirt and hold him to me for several long moments. He’s all I wanted, and now he’s here, and I’m just not ready to let him go.
Strong arms wrap around me, holding me to his chest in the silence.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, me just listening to the sound of his hard-beating heart. I glance up into those pale-blue eyes, his attention shifting over my face slowly.
“Help me wake Chaos.” I take his hand and pull him close to me as we walk quietly over to the sleeping shifter.
Chaos.
I pause, but then Rime is right there in the bond. He’s in the bond I share with Chaos as if we’ve shared this link between the three of us our entire lives.
Chaos, wake up, Rime says.
Dark lashes sweep up to reveal deep, two-tone eyes. Chaos looks from me to Rime, his big hand slipping into mine before his attention settles on the ice shifter kneeling at his side.
Seconds pass while Chaos just stares curiously up at his friend.
Rime leans closer.
Arlow said all this shit to me, and it got me thinking that…I never told you I loved you. Rime clears his throat, but his words never waver. I think after all of this I should be honest and let the people I care about be honest. I shouldn’t avoid affection. I—
His words halt the moment Chaos slams his lips to Rime’s. The ice shifter digs his fingers into Chaos’ strong shoulders, and both of them pull away before it deepens any more than it already has.
“You don’t have to tell me you love me for me to feel it. I get it. It’s not a big deal.” Chaos glances away for a single second. Then Rime reacts.
His fingers catch Chaos’ jaw, and he drags his attention right back to him. “I love you. Don’t brush off my affection just because I’m shit at giving it.”
Chaos smiles one of those big perfect smiles that flares warmth inside me.
The two of them quiet until Rime dips his head lower and gazes up at him. “Are you going to say it back to me?” There’s a little bit of anxiety in the man who always plays it so calm.
Chaos lifts a careless shoulder. “Well, I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. Did he pressure you like this?” Chaos looks to me, and I narrow a taunting glare at him for making Rime look so uneasy right now. “I’m kidding. I loved you before you even knew I loved you.” His voice lowers into a serious tone. “For a long time. For always.”
“That’s not possible. I always knew you loved me.”
“Since when?” I ask Rime, making both Chaos and myself too curious about his reply.
“Since we were kids. I knew he loved me and I knew he deserved better.” He looks away before bringing his attention slowly back to us. “I thought…I thought he deserved better. I…I don’t believe that now.”
Aww, my heart is this puddle of mush just watching the two of them right now.
“You don’t believe that because you think you and Arlow balance it all out. She makes up for your terribleness just like you make up for her craziness.” Sinister walks over to my side, pulling his dark shirt over his smooth chest as he goes.
Craziness. My refined fanatic mindset is insulted.
“What makes you think that?” Rime asks with an arch of his brow.
Sinister kneels at my side, brushing his lips against mine. “Because that’s exactly how I feel.”
“She’s coming,” Kain growls from behind us, and the men immediately stiffen around me.
The door at the top of the stairs swings open, flooding the darkness with light. Just before they all pull away from me, Chaos kisses me softly. It’s sweet at first. Then his tongue slips slowly against mine before our lips ever fully meet.
He steps back from me in a rush, his gaze searching like there’s so many things he wants to say but there isn’t enough time.
“I forgot how good you taste, Low,” he whispers. He presses his lips to mine one more time before standing.
The four men leave me sitting alone on the floor, and I imagine I look even more pathetic there on the grimy stones when I peer up like small child to the Solstice Queen glaring down on me.
“Our plans in Minden did not go as I had expected.” Her cold gaze slides to Kain, and the shifter remains standing impassively as she scrutinizes him closely. “When our work is not finished, when it is done incorrectly, when orders are blatantly unfollowed, punishments will ensue.”
It’s then that I stand. I stand at the front of the cell like I’m guarding innocent puppies rather than four destructive men.
“I think,” I let that word carry with too much aggression but I can’t stop it, “you should calm down, my queen. Reevaluating is what we need if things do not go our way.”
Not a fucking royal tantrum.
“Move, Arlow.” She grinds those two words out, her gaze cutting right into me.
I grip my fingers around the cold metal bars, but it doesn’t stop her from jerking the door open. Long fingers fist into my hair with a sharp pain stinging through my roots. I claw my nails down her arm before she throws me off of her and strides into the cell.<
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My back hits the floor, and I stumble to stand.
“Kain, come with me.”
I push off fully from the floor and watch with big eyes as Kain strides out. She turns swiftly, and he follows, his attention darting to me for a single second before he disappears into the staircase.
“Rime, lock the door. No one leaves the dungeon today. Possibly tomorrow. I’ll have to…reevaluate some things.”
The echoes of their footsteps dissolve into nothingness. The door upstairs closes with a heavy thud, and I don’t know why I listen so intently after that. I listen like I’m waiting for someone to die.
Either Kain or Ellise, I’m not even sure.
But not another sound is made.
“Fuck this, we’re not waiting down here while she punishes him like a dog.” Rime takes a single hostile step as Chaos pushes his hand against his shoulder, stopping the ice shifter in his tracks.
“We need to wait.”
“That’s an absolutely terrible idea,” Sinister whispers.
The three of them glance to me all at once, and I didn’t really realize how in charge I am of everything until I now have a small army of vicious shifters waiting for me to make the call on what’s right or wrong in this moment.
I’m not going to lie, I feel a little bit of pressure. Just a bit.
“I think we should wait.”
Rime’s jaw tics, but the other two nod.
“Wait for what?” Before Rime can open his mouth again with all the rage that’s shaking through him, I cross the room to them, studying them one by one and knowing fully that they’re capable of anything we’re about to go through.
“Kain’s strong. We can’t show our cards. We just need to wait until we have our plan.”
I started all of this with a half-cocked plan to match the queen’s power. The four of us alone aren’t a match.
We just have to buy us a little time.
Twelve
The Worst Torture
It really is the most awful torture to simply do nothing.
She won’t kill Kain. I’m not really sold on the idea that she’ll harm him. She needs him and she needs him in the immediate future. She won’t hurt him.
Those are the repeated words I continue to tell myself for hours into the evening.
The door at the top of the stairs spills white light across the dark dungeon floor and the little bit of hope that I was clinging to leaps to life inside me. Silence builds into something unmanageable in my mind, and it kills me that I don’t hear the heavy footsteps of his boots during that time.
Until he comes into the light in front of our cell.
“Are you okay?” I shove open the unlocked door the moment he’s close.
Every inch of him is naked and damp. His big hands shake, but his jaw is strung tight with strength and pride. When I slip my fingers through his, his skin is freezing to the touch. I pull him closer to find every part of him is unnaturally cold. A violent tremor trembles through his frame; it’s enough to bring him to his knees and take me right along with him.
That fire of heat I keep inside myself to keep out the chill of the dungeon sears through my skin until I’m sweating, but I give all that unbearable heat to Kain as I hold him. He shakes his head, his damp hair skimming along my neck.
“She took me to Minden herself.” His voice is a growl that hums through the room. “I thought she’d torch the kingdom just like she wanted, but we landed in the center of the village. She strode off of me and into the crowd like an idol ready to be idolized. The town’s people knew who she was immediately. She wanted to be worshipped, and they did just that. She promised them she’d be back to take care of them as she did in the old days. She said she’d return to them no matter the cost.”
“Why the fuck are you like this then? What happened?” Rime lowers himself down on his hunches, pulling off his shirt and draping it across Kain’s shoulders. Rime’s cold eyes eat up every weakness in his friend right now.
There’s a murderous glint in Rime’s gaze that’s fixated on the very next thing Kain says.
“When we flew over the gate of Attika, just past the border, she leapt off of me. In mid-flight, she just jumped off.” Kain’s jaw clenches at the same time his fists do. “Her voice was like an echo through the wind. She said I could walk back. That she knew I loved my mate and that I’d return to her at all costs. And to ensure that what happened yesterday never happens again, she was going to take away my biggest strength.”
I notice then that the halo around his head is just a dark line of steel. The warm burning color like Rime, Chaos’, and Sin’s is no longer in Kain’s device.
It’s the smallest detail, and it’s all I can think about for several seconds.
“What?” Chaos’ voice is so loud I flinch.
“That fucking cunt.” Rime’s growl immediately intensifies the frigid air wafting through the room.
“What…what did she take, Kain?” My tone is barely a whisper while the aggression of the other two shifters seems to press in on the quietness.
I feel like I’m the last to understand. Even Sinister looks like he might be sick at any moment, avoiding my questioning glance and keeping a distance from the four of us.
It kills me the longer the silence spans.
“What did she do?” This time, my scream scratches through the brick room, carrying so far that the people farther down shift anxiously.
Kain trembles once more, his muscles tensing in my arms before he peers up at me with a deadness in his deep-green eyes. “She took my ability to shift.”
The beating of my heart stops, restarting, catching, and stumbling to find its pattern again.
She took his fucking dragon?
My fingers shake when I casually run them over Kain’s thigh. Dark jeans form around his nakedness. He doesn’t even glance down. He keeps his eyes focused on me while I work and try to process what he just said to me. I run my index finger down the etching line of his abs, and a thick, long-sleeved shirt follows in its path. I drum vacantly along his arm as I think and, without really thinking, I add black shining boots to his feet, bringing the long laces up, crossing them in the air and tying them neatly without lifting my hand from his body. I busy myself with the mundane task of making him look completely presentable. Not a crimson hair is out of place on his head.
There’s an eerie calm inside me. The thoughts fly through my mind, though, one after the other, even as I skim my hand slowly up his shoulder, along his jaw, and through his wet hair. I press my lips to his in a single, chaste kiss. His brow lowers in confusion at my odd behavior, but he kisses me back.
“I’m going to murder her for hurting you,” I whisper against his mouth.
His head hits the floor hard when I stand abruptly. I manage to make it a single step before all four men catch my wrists at once.
“That’s…a little hasty, love.” Sinister searches my gaze, looking for some form of rational thought.
And finding none.
I take a small breath. Try to see it from his point of view. Tilt my head slightly to see if I can almost, sort of see logic from his angle.
Nope. I’m going to kill that bitch.
Four strong hands slip away from me when they seem to think I’ve found my rationality again and I start up the stairs in a flash of angry adrenaline.
My small steps are drowned out by the thundering sound of four storming men behind me.
“Low, stop. You have a plan.” Chaos’ chest slams into me, pressing me into the door, and he cages me in with his arms like a rabid animal. “Just think. Take a breath. Calm down.”
“You calm down.” I shove pathetically at his big body, pushing my fingers at his face, beard, and ear, but it only makes him wrap me up in a constricting bear hug.
“You’ll get justice.” His lips brush the shell of my ear with every quiet word he says to me. “I know you can do this. You’re going to save so many lives. But not if you walk out this door.”
His fingers tangle through my hair, and he kisses my temple, breathing me in and calming me just from the feel of his body holding mine.
My lashes flutter. The fury in my chest still burns, but the fight within me fades away. I lean into him with the full weight of my body, knowing he’s right.
I hate this. I hate that she keeps fucking with me and the people I love.
And I’m here. Waiting.
It truly is the worst torture.
Thirteen
Floppy Cocks
I’m teetering somewhere on the crumbling edge of justified genius and complete fucking psychopath.
I’m leaning real hard into that psychopath side: arms spread wide open, ready to fall into the bliss of chaotic rage.
“Did you rest well?” I ask the queen, sitting at her side, delicately sipping from a teacup over a dainty little breakfast this morning.
Ellise gives a small smile. And I’ve mimicked that smile, both of us looking like we’ve lost our fucking minds for over an hour now over a plate of delicious scrambled eggs.
Sinister arches a dark eyebrow at me from across the room, but I ignore all four of them.
I’m fine.
Are you, though? Chaos answers like the creep that he is in the back of my mind.
I grind my jaw and only spread that crazed smile wider at our queen.
“I slept very well after my long flight yesterday, thank you, Arlow.”
Her long flight.
Some women have petty passive-aggressive down to a subtle art form.
Ellise’s isn’t subtle. It’s a prestigious display put on for the whole damn world to see.
I purse my lips for a single second before the manic smile pulls harder.
She pauses with her fork of creamy eggs held near her lips, her emerald gaze shifting over my features in slow, sweeping passes. The fork lowers quietly.
“I think you and I are connecting. The longer you’re here, the more I feel…empowered just by your presence. Do you feel that?”
I nod. I’d nod no matter what she just said. Do I feel connected, severed, hungry, tired, a little over worked and underpaid?