He tied it around his neck and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her body against his own and kissing her hair.
“I love it,” he said again. And I love you.
Miss Balek insisted it would be better for Adira to take the rest of the day off from training. Of course, only the three of them knew why. The rest of the home had no idea Adira would be handed over to the regent tomorrow. When all was said and done, they were going to hate Alec, but probably not more than he already hated himself.
“I want to show you something,” Adira said, leading him out the back of the house.
Alec followed, stepping over fallen branches as they made their way into the woods. She didn’t stop walking until she reached a large clearing where the sun poured in. A table-like stone rested in the middle, and Adira guided him toward it.
“Miss Balek thinks this was an altar for one of the Othala witches. Probably whoever ended up as the first regent of Sector One.” She traced her hand reverently along the edge of the chalky white stone. “Do you think this is where they did it?” she asked, peering up at him. “Do you think this is where they cast the original enchantment on our sector?”
Alec kept a safe distance. He didn’t want to be alone with Adira right now. He wanted to know she was okay, that she was ready for tomorrow. She was. And then he wanted to do what he had to do and get as far away as possible.
“Alec?” She stepped in front of him. “What’s wrong with you today? You’ve barely said a word.”
He reached up and touched the pendant on the necklace she’d given him. “Why a sundial?”
“Here.” She held out her hand. “Give it to me. I’ll show you.”
Alec unfastened the cord from around his neck and handed it to her. She placed it on the stone altar. The sun cast a shadow, revealing the time at about two in the afternoon. He only knew because his father had taught him to keep time. Back when people still kept it, back when there were farmers. All that changed the day he’d lost his sister and his home.
Adira’s hand slid onto the altar again. When she lifted her hand, a twin sundial sat beside the one she’d given him. When he looked at her, she was looking up at him with an almost sad expression. “No matter what happens,” she said, “our hearts will always beat to the same time.”
Would she still think that if he left? Would she hate him, or would she understand?
Before he could respond, her lips were on his, her arms snaking around his neck and shoulders. His body responded immediately, and all his worries melted away. He lifted her up, wrapping her legs around his waist, and laid her body down in the tall grass.
He leaned over here and paused, staring into her eyes.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked.
There was a time Alec Kladivo was afraid of nothing. So much had changed in so little time.
“Everything,” he whispered.
She took his face in her hands. “This is it, Alec. It’s now or never.”
Adira was right. After today, their lives would change forever. He would regret it every day of the remainder of his life if he let the man he was supposed to be tomorrow stop him from experiencing life today.
He pushed up at the sides of her shirt, lifting it over her head and tossing it to the side. Then he tugged down her pants and pulled those off as well. He kissed the dimple on her knee. Nipped the faint scar where he had cut her thigh during training. Caressed the soft skin at the very top of her thigh. His lips traveled over her stomach, lingered on her breasts, and teased at her collarbone until his mouth finally found his way back to hers.
This wasn’t the first time they’d been in this position, nothing more than her underwear and his pants between them. His cock throbbed at the heat radiating from between her legs, and he reached down, fanning his fingers over her mound.
Adira’s sigh against his mouth made him twitch with need. She wiggled out of her underwear and slid her hands over his shoulders and down his back, pulling him tighter against her. He pushed his pants down to his knees, freeing his arousal.
When Adira lifted her hips, he slipped against her wet folds and groaned. She squirmed until the head of his cock dipped against her tight inner walls.
She wanted this as badly as he did. If she were anyone else, he would be inside of her already. He would have fucked her until she screamed with orgasm.
But she wasn’t just anyone. She was the future queen.
In the distance, a branch cracked, snapping Alec out of his daze, reminding him that everything he was doing now, he was doing in secret. He was hiding, and he was hiding because he knew it was wrong.
He winced as he pulled back, rolling away from her and pulling up his pants.
“Alec,” she said softly, reaching out to him, but he pulled away.
“I can’t do this with you, Adira,” he said, sounding angrier than he intended. It was as much his fault as her own, but she would never be the one to stop it, and that was why he couldn’t live in the castle once she was there. “Tomorrow, I’m turning you in. How can you be with me knowing that?”
The space between her eyebrows puckered as if she didn’t understand how something like that could come between them. “You gave me the time you promised,” she said. “And you were right. I need to do it. I need to become queen.”
“Which is why we can’t do this,” he said. He tossed her clothes to her. “Get dressed.”
She covered herself with her shirt, but otherwise, she didn’t move. “Why are you ignoring the way you feel? If it all ends the same anyway, why are you denying that much?”
Alec swallowed around the tight knot forming in his throat and rose to his feet. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
He paused by the altar, staring down at the sundial necklace. After he lifted it, he tied it around his neck and looked at Adira one last time before walking off. One last time where he could see her as the woman he loved, and not the woman meant to be queen.
The hurt in her eyes was not the way he wanted to remember her, and he immediately regretted looking back.
On his way out of the woods, he punched a tree and cursed under his breath, then stormed off toward the city. He was full of regret and yet unsure exactly what he regretted most—that he had almost dishonored his loyalty to the sector…or that he hadn’t.
Chapter 15
Adira sighed, shaking her head as she pulled on her clothes. That was one tormented man. She hadn’t ever met anyone so conflicted in her life. At one time, she’d thought he was motivated by loyalty or duty. But over the course of the last week, she’d decided it was something else.
Alec wasn’t driven by righteousness. He was ruled by guilt.
Her opportunity to learn why had passed, but if Adira had taken away anything in her time at Miss Balek’s home, it was that things were what they were. Alec had been one to help her realize that. If only Alec could accept that himself.
He’d spent so much time and energy convincing her that this was what she needed to do, but maybe he’d only been trying to convince himself. Adira had realized the truth early on. She’d accepted that and sought to spend her last days of freedom…well…free.
Ironic that Alec would remain free when he was the one trapped in his own prison.
As Adira pressed to her feet, the trees in the distance rustled.
“Hello?” she called. “Alec?”
“No.” Erik came out into the clearing. “Just me. You okay?”
Adira’s skin crawled. How long had he been standing there? She forced a smile. “Fine,” she said, lifting her sundial from the altar and fastening it around her neck. “I didn’t realize anyone else was out here.”
Erik stuck his hands in his pockets and tilted his head back to face the sky. “Yeah. Sorry about that.” He checked over his shoulder, then looked back to her as he approached. “Adira,” he whispered, “you don’t have to go through with it.”
Adira felt the blood rushing from her face straight down to her feet. “I don�
��t know what you’re talking about.”
He grasped her hand and stared into her eyes, then swallowed. “I heard you two talking. You could just leave. I could help you.”
Her brow furrowed. “Erik, I can’t. I need to do this.”
Erik scowled. “He’s got you brainwashed, Adira. Don’t you see that? You’ve fallen in love with a predator. You think he loves you? He’s going to turn you over to the regent! Have you even thought about what that means?”
She’d actually been trying her best not to think about it. Carrying the regent’s child could only be achieved one way, and that certainly was not the part she was signing up for. But Alec hated that as much as she did. If either of them could think of a way around it that didn’t risk every life in the sector, they would have acted on it.
She snatched her hand away and poked her finger into Erik’s chest. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, pushing her nail into him harder. “You don’t know anything about him or me.”
When Adira turned to storm off, Erik grabbed her by her arm and pulled her back to him, her body slamming against him as his lips came to her mouth.
Adira pushed him off and slapped the side of his shoulder. “What is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” Erik’s eyes darkened. “You’re the one pining after your enemy. I want to help you! We can leave,” he said, reaching for her hand again. But she stepped back before he could take it. “We can run away. I can protect you.”
“I can protect myself.”
“Then why don’t you?” he asked.
Adira rolled her eyes and turned away. “Erik, I’m going inside now, and we’re going to pretend this conversation never happened. And you are to never, ever touch me again. Is that clear?”
“Fine,” Erik said, storming past her toward Miss Balek’s home. “All that intelligence, but not a lick of common sense.”
Giving Erik some time to cool off before heading back to the house, Adira hiked toward the sector outskirts. Truth be told, some of what Erik had said seeped a chill into her bones. He wasn’t entirely wrong; she could understand why he perceived things the way he did. Adira needed to be reminded of why she was doing this.
The hike left Adira plenty of time to be alone with her thoughts. Time to reflect on why the sector had been created and why a queen needed to be found.
Dvorak had enough magic to maintain the old runes, but even though he was a descendent of the Othala witches, he was still not powerful enough to cast new ones or repair the ones that had broken. Every now and then, Dvorak found a lost one that hadn’t been destroyed, but those wouldn’t protect the borders, and not just because he used them for things like enchanting witch testers.
As much as she despised Dvorak, it was true that his hands were tied when it came to protecting the border.
She sighed, jogging down a steep incline toward the open field that stretched out to the border. Halfway down the hill, she stopped, staring off at the land ahead. Deserted. Once upon a time, farmers kept this land. That was back when no one feared the fence posts failing.
When the original sixteen were the ones to rule the sectors, the enchantments they cast had been strong enough to power not only the fence posts on the border and on the lampposts around the city, but also various objects as well. When the very first regent was still alive—or so the stories went—anyone could simply touch a rune on a well, and water would flow into their container. Plows were forged with runes that, at a farmer’s touch, pulled themselves without any oxen. The sector had thrived then.
How things had changed. Most of those runes’ meaning had been lost over time, and the bloodlines had diluted until they were left with the weakest regent yet.
Adira continued down the hill and across the open fields. She didn’t stop until she reached the outer fence posts. With her toes flush against the border, she stood there and waited.
Although it started raining—a cold, autumn shower—Adira did not move. Not even when a ravager stalked toward her on the other side of the electrical force field. She simply remained, standing stoic and staring it down.
She’d never been this close to one before. The energy radiating off the bolts alone were enough to repel any encroaching ravagers, but if it took one more step—if it tried to cross the magical force field between the runestone posts—the clouds above would send down a fresh bolt of energy, shocking the hideous creature.
The force field, however, was not dangerous to humans or witches. Indeed, if anyone wanted to leave, all they needed to do was cross that boundary. But only foolish youth playing “chicken” ever dared test that theory. Who needed a force field to keep them in when such monsters were on the other side?
The ravager hissed, barring yellowed, fanged teeth, its face turned toward her as if it could see her without eyes, or smell her without any visible nose or nostrils. She could practically feel its breath on her face, feel the balmy moisture radiating off its gray, almost-translucent skin.
These grotesque beasts had existed as far back as anyone knew. Long before Othala was divided into sectors. The witches had hunted them, had kept them in check, for centuries before the beasts started multiplying in numbers too quickly to control.
At first, it had only been the humans who died. The witches could protect themselves. But as more and more humans died off, the magical source of the world faded. It was the existence of humans that fueled the magic the witches tapped into.
That was why the original sixteen saved the world.
The situation was now even more perilous than it was then. How could she turn her back on this? How could she let her choices be ruled by fear? No longer could she sacrifice the sector to these beasts. No longer could she run from who she was meant to be…who she already was.
Black clouds spit down electricity at fence posts in the distance, surely shocking another ravager that had dared to take that final step. The one in front of her, however, remained still, aside from the heaving of its chest and the saliva dripping between its teeth.
Adira shuddered. Those clouds were centuries old, brought here by one of the original sixteen. One of the Othala witches. And it was their bloodline that Regent Dvorak was trying to keep alive…his ancestor’s bloodline. Because without that, those clouds would fade. It would take a very powerful witch to create new magic to power the sector, and with the original bloodline diluting more with each passing generation, they were not likely to find anyone like that.
But they had to try. Rumor had it that sometimes the human-born witches were the most powerful, because the Othala witches themselves had been human born. Maybe Adira, though born to two human parents, was strong enough to spark something in the genes Dvorak would pass down. That was all she needed. She didn’t need to be the strongest. She just needed to be strong enough that Dvorak’s child could repair the border’s runestones.
There was hope for that now. Only an Othala witch could repair or make new border stones, but if Adira was able to repair and create other runestones, then between her ability and Dvorak’s bloodline, it just might be enough.
The time for Adira’s doubts had passed. Now she needed to trust who she was. She couldn’t let fear stop her—couldn’t let desire for personal survival weaken her or make her shy away from a higher purpose.
Sector One couldn’t wait for another witch with her unique ability; no one could even recall the last time there had been a witch, regents included, powerful enough to cast new runespells or revive ones that had burned out.
This was why Adira had to marry the regent.
This was why it had to be her.
Chapter 16
Alec had until tomorrow morning to find a better way.
The question was, a better way for what?
Did he hope to save Adira from being queen? Or just to save her from being doomed? She would defeat the ravager. He was sure of that much. But what about the events that came after she did?
He’d been so con
sumed by his own selfish desires that he’d lost sight of who he was, in more ways than one. He hadn’t just soiled his loyalty to the regent or to Sector One. He’d ruined his honor. He’d forgotten that none of this was about him.
As if not being with Adira should be his biggest concern. As if her life wasn’t still on the line, even now that she’d made such strides with her magic. He’d feared for every doomed queen before her, worried what would happen if they didn’t become pregnant.
And yet, with Adira, he’d been wrapped up in her sleeping with the regent, instead of what would happen once she had.
Idiot.
Although he’d stormed the path back to the castle, he slowed as it came into view. If there were answers anywhere in the sector, they were inside that building. Somewhere…
Alec continued up to the castle doors and entered quietly, letting one of the large double doors ease closed behind him. When the locking mechanism clicked, he winced. He turned around, surveying the foyer.
Empty.
It was past lunch hour, but Alec wasn’t sure by how much. Regent Dvorak was out, either by the stables or in his study determining what magic he could spare the following day. He sometimes had hundreds of requests to go through, but that still didn’t give Alec much time to find what he was looking for—especially as he didn’t know what that was or where to find it.
He crept across the marble flooring to the grand staircase and headed up, mindful to keep his steps as light as someone his size could. At the top landing, he peered both ways down the hall to scout for any guards. It wasn’t that he was forbidden to be where he was right now, but he wasn’t allowed to be where he was headed. He couldn’t have any witnesses.
Finding the halls clear, Alec took the corridor toward his room. Then he kept going. A few doors down, he stopped at the regent’s room and listened.
Nothing.
He took a few more steps, even quieter than the last ones, and strained his hearing by the regent’s office door. Papers shuffled. He was inside.
Origin: an Adult Paranormal Witch Romance: Othala Witch Collection (Sector 1) Page 12