Her throat.
Shit, she had marks all over it.
Love bites.
A shiver rasped down his spine when the man, still sitting, and the obvious giver of said love bites, cleared his throat. His gaze darted over to the TriAlpha princess’s mate. Aside from mates of the TriAlpha, he’d never heard of a female having more than one male, so this was definitely a situation he didn’t want to get tangled in.
The speaker sounded: “Ma’am? Are we good to go?”
The steward, who’d disappeared after Thalia dismissed him, peered around the partition wall where he worked his first class magic on whatever the princess needed.
She didn’t seem to hear the intercom, didn’t seem to see the steward. At that moment, he knew what it was to be utterly at someone’s whim, and he didn’t like it.
Maybe she sensed that because she cocked a brow. “Well? Are we good to go?”
That she’d just put the power back in his hands didn’t escape him. He cut the steward a glance and nodded.
Seeming to realize that was as good an order as the princess’, the steward tapped on the door separating the cabin from the cockpit and slipped inside.
“Would you take a seat?” she asked quietly, managing to sound diplomatic when Mikkel could see that she wasn’t feeling that way.
He’d been in enough high pressure situations to recognize when a person was feeling the strain. Thalia was definitely feeling that.
Her top lip had beaded with sweat, her eyes were overbright, and she was running hot. Her cheeks bloomed with heat, large rosy circles flowering on the crests as she tried to remain composed.
Remarkably, she achieved it. Only the fact he was truly looking for signs of her discomposure did he notice she was flustered.
That level of control impressed him. Enough to say, “Sure.”
She held out a hand for the seat opposite her mate. But she didn’t wait for him to sit first. Instead, she slipped back to her own seat, touching the male’s shoulder as she passed him.
Only when he was the last person standing did he move, and just in time too. The steward returned from the cockpit and the captain asked everyone to sit down and strap themselves in over the intercom.
As he obeyed the basic security protocol, he eyed Thalia and her mate like the anomalies they were.
After, as the plane began to taxi down the runway, he rubbed his chin.
There seemed to be an unspoken agreement to remain silent until the plane was in the air. When it balanced out and the captain indicated they could freely move about now, the steward headed to their side.
“Is there anything I can get you, sir?” he asked Mikkel.
“Coffee. Please.”
Thalia asked for green tea and the male gruffly requested, “A whiskey. Three fingers.”
Knowing Lykens didn’t often drink, the order was telling. Thalia cut him a look, then turned back to peering at Mikkel like he was a specimen under the microscope.
When their drinks were served, fancy porcelain for him, a nicer china teapot and matching cup for the princess and a crystal tumbler for the mate, Thalia asked, “Is there a seat in the cockpit for you?”
The steward didn’t find the question amiss. “Yes, your highness. Would you like me to sit in there?”
“Please. And,” Thalia waved a hand at their drinks. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
The steward stared with curiosity at Mikkel as he passed, but within seconds, the door to the cockpit opened and closed.
Thalia let out a deep breath as she poured herself some tea. That was the only indication she gave that she was nervous. Her hand didn’t shake or tremble as she poured the hot drink, and her gaze was steady and even as she moved.
Her control impressed him, and Mikkel wasn’t easily impressed.
“So,” she started after she reached for the teacup which was seated on a matching saucer. “I suppose it’s time we discussed this unusual situation.”
Mikkel rubbed his chin again. “I’m not certain this situation is unusual.”
The male laughed, but the sound was hoarse. “I know you’re bullshitting. There’s no way you can’t feel this.” He reached for the whiskey, and where Thalia was calm, the male wasn’t. His hand shook as he pressed the rim of the glass to his lips.
Mikkel shrugged. “I’m not sure I feel anything.”
The male snorted after he took a sip of the liquor. “Bullshit.”
Unused to being called out so spectacularly, Mikkel narrowed his eyes. “You trying to tell me how I feel?”
“Yeah. I am,” the male snarled, leaning forward to declare, “we both know you’re as fucked up in the head as I am. You’re just not showing it.” He released a bitter laugh. “A human male can control his responses better than I can.” He shot Thalia a look. “Still think I’m worthy?”
She scowled at him and her hand moved over to reach for his. When he pulled away, Mikkel jolted in surprise. Not at the move, but at the low, deep, and very unsteady growl that rumbled from Thalia’s lips.
The glass froze halfway up its descent to the male’s lips.
His breath bellowed out of his lungs as he slowly turned his head to look at the princess. Mikkel was staring too, and the control she’d been emanating had most definitely left the building.
Well, the plane.
Mikkel blinked as the lines that made her up began to blur. He reared backward, his shoulders jolting up to his ears at the sight.
“What the fuck is she doing?” he snapped at the male, hoping he’d know and could stop whatever the shit was going down.
“She’s trying to control the shift,” the man said shakily. “Thalia, I-I’m sorry.”
Another rumble escaped the woman who was still in human form, just.
The lines blurred once more, and Mikkel hissed, “Isn’t it dangerous to shift in confined spaces?”
Nothing more confined than a goddamn pressurized cabin.
The male shot him a look. “Shut up.”
Mikkel guessed he had his answer.
The other man unfastened his belt and turned in his seat. When he spoke, his voice was low, set to a soothing pitch as he placed one hand on Thalia’s knee and the other, he rested on her cheek. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pull away,” he crooned, and the timbre set Mikkel’s nerves on edge.
He wasn’t sure why when the male was trying to calm Thalia—a feat that was actually working. The lines surrounding her were coalescing once more as the gentle stroking, the soft touches, and the low, tender murmurs worked on her She-Wolf’s uneasiness.
That the woman was so controlled and the beast wasn’t, added to the tension roaming around his system.
He watched as she calmed herself, still feeling uncomfortable with the way in which the male was touching her. Not because it was wrong, if anything, a sense of wrongness wasn’t there at all. But because it was so intimate.
So utterly private that no one should be a witness to it, and yet, neither Thalia nor the male thought anything bad in it.
Neither saw anything wrong in his being there.
That was why he felt unnerved.
Had they expected another mate? That was the only thing that made any sense. Why wasn’t the other male jealous, raging with possessiveness?
He pinched the bridge of his nose, sought some control of his own, then reached for his coffee cup.
By the time he’d taken a sip, Thalia was back to herself, but she was trembling. She’d slumped into the male’s side and he grabbed her and tucked her into a hug.
“Don’t pull away like that, Rafe,” she whispered softly, weakly, the words mumbled into his throat. “You know what it does to me.”
Rafe. So that was the man’s name.
Mikkel watched as his shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry,” he told Thalia. “I didn’t mean to. I just… this is… I didn’t expect him to be—” Rafe shot Mikkel a look, but it wasn’t nasty or mean. If anything it was just as conf
used as he himself was feeling.
“I thought we’d have more time,” he said hoarsely, and Mikkel heard the apology as well as the reason in his tone.
“You think I didn’t?” Thalia whispered, but Rafe didn’t move his gaze from Mikkel’s.
For a second, they just sat there, looking at one another. And discomfort filled him. This wasn’t a sexual look, but it still set him on edge. He wriggled his shoulders, trying to dispel the unease, but it wasn’t working.
“What’s going on?” Mikkel asked when Rafe refused to let the link between them break away. He heard the rasp in his own voice. Knew that whatever the fuck was going down, though his brain might not be up to speed, something else was—not just his body, but it was like his fucking soul was working at hyper speed too
And as far as he knew, souls didn’t exactly run to a speed limit.
His heart was pumping like he’d been running, or if not that, like he’d been in a firefight. The hairs at his nape were standing to attention, and his skin felt too tight for his body.
“You’re my mate,” Thalia murmured softly, her tone low and pitched so as not to jerk the link binding him and Rafe apart. “But I think you two are brothers.”
A sigh escaped Rafe, one that spoke of acceptance of such craziness. But Mikkel scowled. “That makes no sense; we’re not related.”
Thalia simply sighed. “You don’t deny I’m your mate.”
He blinked, and that finally broke the connection between him and Rafe. His words had indicated that, hadn’t they?
Thalia surprised him by pulling free from Rafe’s hold, then she rubbed at her temple. The gesture denoted confusion, and he guessed they were all in the same boat because not a one of them looked like they were on even ground.
Grateful that he wasn’t alone in that, he murmured, “Why is my connection stronger to him than to you?”
Thalia sucked in a sharp breath, and he realized he’d hurt her. It had been inadvertent but he’d caused her pain nonetheless, and he felt guilty about that.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “It doesn’t feel like that on my end. But considering Rafe’s response to your arrival, I suppose that makes sense.”
Curious, he tilted his head to the side. “In what way?”
“Your blood is singing to me.” She closed her eyes, and her face took on an almost dreamy cast. “It’s like the baying of a thousand wolves. It’s beautiful,” she murmured, opening them again and pinning him in place with those aquamarine orbs that skewered him in place.
His nostrils flared. “Why?”
He’d admit to no one that his voice was croaky as fuck.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just how the bond is supposed to manifest. No Lyken has had three mates before. Well, three separate, non-fraternal mates like I’ll have. I don’t know how much you know, but… The TriAlpha are triplets. Born from a set of a triplets, with not one father, but three.”
“I know that already, even if it makes zero fucking sense from a scientific perspective.” How three men’s seed could create triplets was beyond him. But then, Lyken were born from magick, weren’t they? Very little was within the confines of human reasoning.
Just thinking that made it his turn to rub his temple. “I think you’d better start at the beginning, Thalia. If I can at least understand this, then that’s half the battle, surely?”
She licked her lips. “There is no beginning, Mikkel. There is no end. At least, neither has a demarcation point.”
He scowled. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It should begin with her birth,” Rafe said somberly, his eyes fixed on the amber brew in his glass as he swirled the liquid around. “It should begin there. But it doesn’t.” He speared Mikkel with a look. “Where would you have her begin? With her grandparents? Who reared her parents? Who reared her? The first female descendent of a TriAlpha?” He huffed. “I’d be surprised if you even knew how the TriAlpha work.”
Rafe’s scorn irritated him. “Look, I might be human, but I’m not an idiot. I know your ways. Well,” he conceded. “I know some of them.”
Thalia narrowed her eyes. “How? How does a human come to know of our ways when he isn’t mated into the pack?”
“I was mated into the pack,” he said woodenly, then noticing how her hackles rose, and not wanting to make her do that weird as hell blurred-lines shit, he quickly continued, “Through my mother.”
She blinked, but ceased bristling—thank Christ. The last thing they needed was her control to falter once more.
That had to be one of the freakiest things he’d ever seen, Mikkel realized. And he’d lived through three wars, had been in countless firefights, and had served in four tours of the Middle East.
Shifts were quick. Painless. Lykens switched from one form to another in the space of the blink of an eye.
That steady pulse of power? That slow transformation, where she’d simply started blending into the air around her?
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
He swallowed. “When I was a child, my mother mated a Wolf. That’s how I know about the pack.”
“And that’s how my grandfather knows you?”
“Knows of me,” he corrected, then he sighed. “Sort of. He knows my stepfather, and because Stephen is proud of me, Louis has learned of my promotions.”
“Why do I feel like that’s an understatement?” Rafe mumbled.
“Promotions?” Thalia asked, her curiosity evident. “You said you were Special Forces, right?”
“Still am, until your grandfather pulled the rug out from under me.”
She winced. “I’m sorry.”
His tone was wry as he stated, “No, you’re not.”
“Maybe not, no, considering what and who you are to me,” she admitted ruefully, and at that moment, her heart was in her eyes so he couldn’t find it in himself to be mad at her.
Not even irritated by her evident pleasure in his presence.
Thalia, for all she was the current pain in his ass, was a beautiful woman. What man didn’t want a gorgeous creature like her to be gawking at him like he’d set the fucking moon and stars in place overhead?
But, something wasn’t right.
There was a line brimming to life between him and Rafe. It was hot and vibrant. Filled with an energy that reminded him of electricity. Either that, or lightning.
Considering he wasn’t gay, and figuring Rafe wasn’t either from the glum look on his face, that kind of link wasn’t something he could really appreciate.
But, that didn’t take away from the fact that there was something brewing between him and Thalia too.
No, it wasn’t as present as his link with Rafe, but it was potent.
The more she stared at him, the more tense he grew. It was a normal tension, he guessed. That of a man responding to an attractive woman’s flirtatious look. But said response was like that of a Ferrari rather than a Ford.
“Okay, I get that there’s no beginning or an end, but can you at least tell me something?”
Thalia pulled a face. “Do you know why my grandfather wanted you with me?”
“No. Just said you needed a guard, but anyone can see that’s bullshit.” He was human, through and through, no dilution in his lineage and even he could sense her power. Her strength.
And after the way she’d pulled that funky shit with her shift?
Jesus Christ, that was more power than most Alphas could control.
Ruefully, she confessed, “He hasn’t seen me in a long time. He doesn’t realize I’ve come into my powers.”
“Your powers? Makes you sound like a witch.”
“Not really,” she teased. “Although I’ve been called worse.”
He grinned, and her eyes flared in response. The aquamarine turned hazy, green appeared out of nowhere, and they glinted like fresh cut grass on a summer’s morning.
His stomach twisted, and his cock hardened. The dual reaction had him sitting straighter in his chair.
“Carry on,” he bit off a little roughly.
A knowing look crossed her face, but she tried to hide her smile… he still noticed the delicate flaring of her nostrils though, and knew she’d scented his arousal.
Goddamn Lykens. You couldn’t hide shit from them.
He sighed. She just blinked—innocent as a fallen angel.
“If you know anything about the pack, you’ll know Thalia wasn’t often in the press,” Rafe broke into their visual flirtations with a bark.
Mikkel cleared his throat. “Yes. You were in exile. I never figured out why.”
“No. Neither did most of the pack,” Rafe retorted. Slurping down some whiskey, he continued, his voice rough with the potent liquor, “Her fathers banished her for being a danger to her mother.”
Thalia’s cheeks, once bright pink and rosy, had blanched. “I went through puberty early, Mikkel. Earlier than most. And it happened with a bang.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, confused. Getting a period wasn’t exactly explosive, after all.
“I have this nasty habit of seeing things about my mates in my dreams.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What kinds of things?”
“You with other women,” she said gruffly, and for the first time, she avoided eye contact. “My bitch reacts… aggressively. She doesn’t appreciate your touching other females, and unfortunately, I was with my parents the first time it happened. Ever since that day, they viewed me as volatile because only recently did they believe me when I spoke of these visions.”
He scowled. “Why wouldn’t they believe you? What reason did you have to lie?” He found he could only focus on that and not the fact she’d had visions of him, and Rafe, with other women.
What the fuck was even happening here?
Shitting hell.
“I’m an unknown in many ways. They thought I was a danger to my mother, who isn’t fully Lyken and therefore susceptible. If they didn’t believe the reason I gave them, they had to think I was just mad as a hatter and more of a liability. It was easier to contain me to my quarters in the palace than anything else.”
Trinity (The TriAlpha Chronicles Book 1) Page 24