by Victoria Sue
“Are you bleedin’ mad?” he whispered. “I thought Gabriel was gonna bust something this morning when Asher told them you’d gone.”
“I need a diversion. I have to be able to get up the steps without being seen.”
Attica sighed. “The lot of you are off your bleedin’ heads.” He paused and grinned evilly. “Best lark I’ve had in ages though. Give me five minutes and be ready.” He moved away casually and soon was back at the coffee vendor. Kit had barely time to think what he was going to do when a fight erupted over by the coffee stall.
“Thief!” Attica yelled at the top of his voice and threw a punch at Henry. Henry dodged then fell, landing in the middle of the stall which went crashing to the floor. The stall holder went crazy and yanked Henry to his feet. Within seconds another three fights had broken out next to them and humans started screaming and running in panic when another stall tipped over. The gammas looked at one another, and one gestured to the two nearest the stall that also happened to be the two between Kit and the steps. More screams and the gamma standing at the top finally moved to help the other two drag the humans apart.
The second he cleared the steps, Kit ran out of his hiding place and shot up them. He was through the large doors that were open at the top and with his back to a wall out of sight within seconds. He looked around quickly and saw a wide, imposing staircase leading upstairs. There were two corridors leading away from him behind the staircase and three doors at either side of him. He had no idea where to go. Then just as he was beginning to panic a little he spied a small black door set in the corner behind the stairs, almost out of sight.
Kit shot forward just as he heard voices from down the corridor and reached the door just in time. He opened it, entered, then quickly closed, it drowning out the voices above. He was looking at narrow, descending stone steps. The staircase was dark and dim torches were fastened to the walls every few feet. This must be it. Dungeons were always underground and Lucas had said it was underground.
He went down. The stair opened into a chamber with four huge wooden doors. A small grill was cut into the top of each and iron bars set in each of them. The sound of a loud snore nearly gave him heart failure. He stared at the guard making the awful noise. The man sat in a chair next to a small table with a jug of wine and an empty glass on it. He’d propped his feet up on the table. Kit heard another noise from one of the barred doors and glanced up to see Sam’s face peering back at him. Kit felt almost giddy with relief, but put his finger to his lips to warn Sam to be quiet. The doors all had huge locks in them and Kit could see the keys fastened to a chain hanging from the guard’s belt. Kit grinned and flexed his fingers, deftly lifting them free. He hadn’t used that particular talent in a good five years.
Kit quickly unlocked the door to Sam’s cell and Sam dragged him in. “Where’s Luca?” he whispered.
Kit’s heart dropped. “I hoped he would be with you?”
Sam shook his head. “They hit me and when I woke up I was in here.”
Kit quickly told Sam where he was and what was going on outside. Sam silently took the keys from Kit and motioned Kit to keep behind him. They found Luca in the third cell, and Kit’s heart almost gave out when he saw him. He was unconscious, pale, covered in blood, and had an obvious wound behind all the crusted and dried blood stuck to his shirt. He was tied in the chains held together by a lock, which meant if he was conscious, he could barely move.
“I need him to shift,” Sam whispered and tried all the keys in the lock with no success.
Kit leaned over and closed his eyes, putting both hands on either side of Luca’s cheeks.
Luca. My love. Please shift. You need to shift. I need you. Ari and Adera need you, Neira needs you. Askara needs her King. Please.
“Well, well,” drawled a voice behind Kit. Sam swung around only to be stopped as three guards all raised their guns. A man stepped close and looked Kit up and down. “So, you’re the omega,” he mused. “I must say I expected something a little more impressive.”
Kit stared into the gray eyes. “You’re his brother. How could you?”
Kieran sneered. “How could I what? Put up with never being strong enough, fast enough, or clever enough?”
“Your father’s sins are not Luca’s.”
Kieran grabbed Kit’s arm. “Oh, yes they most certainly are. All my life I had it rammed down my throat that I would never be the Alpha-heir, and for what? Seven fucking minutes! Because he was born first. I even shifted first. My wolf was always the more powerful. It should have been mine, and now I’m going to take what rightfully belongs to me.” He gestured to Luca. “Bring him.”
Kit and Sam were dragged out and one of the gammas hoisted Luca onto his shoulder. Kit struggled, hearing the small hurt sound from Luca as he was manhandled. Kieran turned back sharply and lifted his hand. The blow to Kit’s jaw would have sent him reeling if he wasn’t being dragged along by the guards. Kit could hear the noise as they got to the top of the stairs, and it was louder as they reached the entrance.
Kit gaped in astonishment. The crowd was huge. Humans, wolves, all shouting. He recognized Gabriel take a step forward and shout, “Bring us the Alpha King!” He looked to his right and left and the shout was quickly copied by those around him.
“The Alpha King!” the crowd roared. “Bring us the King!”
Kieran took a step and held up his hand for silence. “I am the King,” he roared. The jeering that followed clearly wasn’t what he was expecting. He held his hand out again for silence but before he could speak, a defiant voice rang out from the crowd.
“We want the one true King. Luca. Luca Hightower is our King.” It was Christoph.
Kit saw Kieran’s face change when he recognized him. “Luca is no king. Look!” he screamed and dragged the gamma who was carrying Luca forward. He dumped Luca unceremoniously to the ground where he lay still, and the crowd’s cries fell silent. They were all staring in shock. “We know an Alpha King can heal people. This impostor cannot even heal himself.”
“You know that’s not true,” Kit shouted. “You fooled him because he is your brother.” He turned to the crowd. “This man shot your King.”
The boos and shouts rose from the crowd quickly and Kieran grabbed Kit tightly. “I will prove he is no king,” Kieran screamed. “This human impostor claims he is the King’s omega. Everyone knows there is no such thing as a human omega, but I will give them one chance.” The crowd was silent. “This human impostor will be put to death. If he is the true King’s omega then the King will save his life.”
Kit froze. He was barely aware of sudden fights breaking out in the crowd. Sascha being overpowered by three of Kieran’s gammas. Then, sudden gunfire and the cry of a woman. “Stop,” he shouted. “Everyone stop. Enough people have lost their lives already in this senseless war.” He held his head up high. “I accept your challenge because death doesn’t frighten me. I am the Alpha King’s pure omega and I cannot die by another’s hand.”
Kit closed his eyes and focused deep inside his heart. The special place his love for Luca was. How he had questioned that love the day of the games when he had run from him, doubted what was in Luca’s own heart when he should have known all along. He heard the sound of the drawn steel, but he had no fear for Kieran’s sword. Nothing could ever hurt him while ever he had Luca’s love to keep him safe.
The blade was cold. For a second Kit didn’t even realize he had been stabbed until he tried to breathe but instead of air, liquid seemed to bubble in his mouth. Screams and shouts rose from the crowd. The gammas holding him let go and he slid to the ground and his eyes fluttered shut.
“You see?” Kieran taunted. “Your so called Alpha King still lies at my feet, and his omega is dying by my hand.”
So many people needed Luca. The poor, the desperate, the hungry, and the weak. Their babies. The children who had no one to stop them having to put their hands in boiling water. Kit lifted his hand. It was red. His dreams were always red. Red wa
s the color of death and he had seen enough of it. He reached out in his mind and poured all the love he had in his heart into every word. It was true, so many people did need Luca. But just for this second Luca’s omega needed him more.
Shift, now, Luca my love. I was wrong. Askara does need you, but I need you more.
From what seemed to be a great distance away Kit heard a deafening roar and Kit absently wondered where it had come from. Then the ground started shaking. Screams rose from the crowd and Kieran shrieked both in temper and frustration. Kit forced his eyes open just in time to see Kieran raise his sword to his brother. For a second, time seemed to be suspended and then Luca leaped and shifted, all the chains snapping instantly.
Luca growled in fury and shook his white coat out, all blood instantly gone. He snarled and shimmered, half-shifted into human, and rose on two legs, his claw-tipped hands reaching out and grasped Kieran by the throat. Kieran dropped the sword and scrabbled at the hands that were choking him. Luca roared again in temper as walls collapsed and the sky started raining bricks and stone.
The ground shook and tore. Huge cracks appeared in the stone steps and great cracks spread up and down concrete walls as if they were made from nothing but paper.
Buildings shook and men cried out in terror and panic. Kit closed his eyes and tried to breathe. He had to get Luca’s attention before someone got hurt. Luca, Luca. Please. Kieran is nothing. Leave him. I need you my darling. I am hurt.
Love me, he whispered in his head and in his heart.
Suddenly, large hands were reaching for him and wrapping him up. Instantly he was able to breathe and he gasped as oxygen and Luca’s scent filled his lungs and calmed his racing heart. He stayed still, eyes closed, and let their love wash over him. He would never forget this perfect moment however long he lived.
Finally the warm lips that he needed so much caught his own and he clung to Luca’s body and let him maul his mouth. It had, after all, been far too long.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You have got to be joking,” Luca said, horrified. Half my people don’t have enough to eat and you want to waste money on a coronation?”
Gabriel extended his arms. “Sire, tradition demands it. Christoph agrees,” he added hopefully. Sam snorted and Asher hid his face. Kit lowered his, but Luca caught the smile before he bent his head.
Just you wait until I get you upstairs.
Promises, promises. Kit arched an eyebrow and Luca chuckled. He was getting quite good at that.
In two weeks, he had mastered the raised and condescending eyebrow to perfection. It had started with the missive from Luca’s mother. She had written a long gushing letter extending congratulations to them both on the birth of their twins and offering to relocate to help care for them. Luca had suggested she relocate to Arrides...permanently. Kit had suggested she merely be retired to the small house Luca had found out he had inherited from Hendrick. The fact that the house was at the northern most point of Caedra at the base of the Tzion mountains and took a full day to get there on a sled as it was too deep in snow for the horses, was, as Kit had explained, simply a bonus. To make things even better, Tara had accepted a mating proposal from an Alpha-heir to the east of Tethra and had moved away, probably terrified that she be asked to accompany Luca’s mother.
Molly, Iris, Tomas, and Danni were traveling south and would be here in a few days. Danni would be staying permanently of course to help Gabriel who, much to his delight, had discovered locked and untouched vaults beneath the ruins of the great library, hidden for centuries but uncovered as a result of the earthquake. There had been many books destroyed, but there were hundreds that had been saved.
In the end it hadn’t been Luca who had killed his brother. Kieran’s own men had turned on him as soon as Luca had let go. He was at least glad he didn’t have to live with the thought of killing Kieran. After that, Luca had become so busy he had barely had time to do anything, but he at least in the last two weeks he had achieved three things. He had immediately removed the license requirement for having children. All papers would be granted to whomever asked for them, meaning all humans had the same rights. He hadn’t broken the news to the werewolves yet that he wanted registration from them. Baby steps. Eventually, Luca hoped to integrate both species fully, but it would take time to repair the hatred so many years of neglect and abuse had caused. He had made Sam his senior beta-commander, and Sam, with Luca’s approval, had then offered commander positions to Asher, Sascha, and Christoph. Christoph had declined for the time being, but instead asked to lead a group of wolves and humans into Solonara to make sure the boiling pits were either closed down or they found an alternate method of labor.
Sascha had his father’s blessing to stay in the capital as long as Luca needed him. Taheesha had her fourteenth birthday the day after they had arrived. She was busy with various advisors regulating the health care that Askara so desperately needed.
“I don’t know why you’re looking so pleased,” Luca had shot back at Kit as they were discussing the coronation. “If I’m having a coronation, then so are you.”
Kit squeaked. “Me? But you’re the Alpha King.”
“And you,” Luca wrapped his arms around Kit’s delicious body, “have a crown on your neck the same as I do. “The twin crowns, apparently, have been safely found in one of the vaults below the palace.” Luca smirked as Kit went a little pale. Suddenly the idea of a coronation might not be a bad thing.
“You’re evil,” Kit thumped him ineffectually on his arm, but he went quiet. Luca bent his head but Kit shifted to the side and laughed when Luca growled his frustration.
Luca got caught up in King-things for the rest of the morning and it was a few hours until he realized Kit had disappeared. He eventually found him just as he was shutting the door to the twins’ room after putting them down for their afternoon nap. Luca turned him around quietly and searched Kit’s pale and drawn face. There was something bothering him.
“I have a surprise for you, two surprises actually.” Luca said and steered Kit into their own rooms next door. The palace was in a dreadful state. The three rooms the old Alpha stayed in were decorated in the height of luxury that would have put Hendrick’s pack house to shame but Kit had flatly refused to go into any of them. Luca agreed. It remained obscene for them to live as the old Alpha had when half the people shivered on bare stone floors, and hadn’t enough to eat. It would take months, possibly years, to right the wrongs that had festered for generations. Sleeping in a simple room, especially curled around his omega, was hardly a hardship. Luca clasped Kit’s hand and pulled him into the smaller room just off theirs, which they had been using as a bathroom. Kit gasped and his eyes lit up.
Luca had managed to get him a bath. A bath currently steaming with hot, fragrant water. Kit groaned and Luca turned him around so he was gazing up at him. “The necklace I had planned was spoiled, since Tara got her hands on it, but there was something else I had made. Gabriel has been keeping it safe for me.” Luca very carefully sank to one knee and brought out a small box from his pocket.
“Luca,” Kit pulled at his hand. “Get up. What are you doing?”
Luca beamed. Gabriel had unearthed a lot of human history and tradition. This one he doubted even Kit knew about. He opened the box carefully and Kit’s eyes grew huge at the simple platinum band set all around with Tanzanite. Each stone glinted and reflected the blue in Kit’s eyes. “My darling, will you promise to be my mate? To love me forever, and never let me go?”
Kit’s eyes swam, and Luca jumped up and hugged him tight. “Only if you promise the same.”
Luca slipped the ring on the third finger of Kit’s left hand as Gabriel had said it went. Then he quickly undressed them both. “Get in before you get a chill,” Luca instructed. He stepped in and held out his hand.
Kit opened his mouth, but Luca stopped him. “Marianne arrived just before I found you. Aislin and her two brothers are coming for tea.” Marianne was the twins’ new nanny.
She was also mother to three children, one of whom was Aislin, the little girl with the burned hands Kit said he had met while on his way to rescue Luca. All four of them adored Ari and Adera.
“So we won’t be missed for a while, then?” Kit clasped Luca’s hand and groaned in delight as Luca lowered him into the water, then pulled his back flush to his chest.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Luca asked as he drew the sponge up and down Kit’s chest. Kit stilled. Luca tried to think about the last thing they were talking about. “It’s the coronation, isn’t it?”
Kit seemed to try and slide lower, but Luca cupped his cheek and tilted his face so he could look at him. “What is it, sweetheart? What’s bothering you?”
Lucas couldn’t help brushing a kiss on the side of Kit’s neck, but looked back up when Kit didn’t reply. Kit’s eyes filled and Lucas felt the pain in his heart. “Darling, what’s the matter? Did someone say something?” He growled and the water sloshed alarmingly.
Kit sniffed and couldn’t seem to help the giggle. “Remind me never to get in a boat with you if you are angry.” Luca grinned and the water calmed. Kit sighed and settled back onto Luca’s chest. “It is the coronation, yes. I had a word with Gabriel and he is as convinced it’s as important for me to be there as you.”
“For the humans,” Luca agreed. Kit nodded, then he swallowed. “You don’t need to be nervous, you know. It’s basically a big party.” Luca tried not to groan as Kit wriggled slightly, and really, between the twins and his new job, he hadn’t enjoyed much “alone” time with his mate recently.