“I’m sure he knows that. But I know he’s hurt too.” She exhaled. “You know that while I did sleep with the other incarnation of you, I’d never betray you now that we’re mated. Especially not with your own son.”
“Not sexually, no. But it is a betrayal nonetheless.”
“No, it’s not.” She held up her hand. “Let me explain.”
“You mean the way you wouldn’t let me explain about Cassius?”
“That’s fair. But hear me out, anyway.” She could only hope that he would.
“Alright, Marchessa. I’ll listen.”
“That’s what makes you a good Alpha. To me, anyway. Is that you do listen. You hear. So hear me now. My intent wasn’t to betray you. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I was only trying to save you pain. We were only trying to save you pain. I know that your argument is valid—that it’s your place to endure. And it is, to be sure. But your son, he loves you. I… I…care for you. If we could save you this pain, we would. It’s not purposeful pain, it’s not productive. It gains your pack nothing to see Carolina again. It gains them nothing if you have to put her down.”
“I held her while she died. This thing, maybe she looks like Carolina, but she’s not.”
“Maybe.” She was willing to give him that. “But could you strike a creature down wearing her face?”
“If I had to.”
“But what if you didn’t have to? She has silver-tipped nails. Just like me. She has a maw of silver blades for teeth. Just like me. I will kill her.” She held up her hand. “And if you say it’s not my place, I will argue that until my last breath. I am your mate. You bit me. I’m yours. I am Rommulus. I’m the Alpha female of your pack. As such, it is my duty to suffer. My duty to fight. For my people. For my pack. For my mate.” As she spoke, she realized the truth of her impassioned words. The responsibility that she’d always thought would lay like chains around her neck was a privilege. An honor. One she was happy to have.
“I think you’re just afraid the silver will kill me.”
“I won’t deny that. Of course I’m afraid. Look what it did to Armand.”
“Silver won’t kill me, princess. I’m immune.”
“So you’re invincible?”
“No, not invincible. Not until you choose. You have to say it.”
“If I choose, you’re stuck with me. We can’t bite each other, can we? We can’t kiss.”
“I already told you, I’m immune to silver.”
“Then why doesn’t your bite give others that immunity?”
“I don’t know. Remus is the same. We’re the only ones of our kind. And now you and Armand.”
“I choose you, Antony.”
He looked down at her, eyes flashing predatory. “Then bite me.”
She laughed. “After what I saw Armand endure?”
“I am not my son.”
“I know that. What if we’re wrong? What if it kills you?”
“Then you will be the Rommulus Alpha and I trust you to see to the care of my pack and my people in the event of my death.” His words were written into the fabric of fate and destiny. They couldn’t be undone. They’d be imprinted on the marrow of the pack.
Tears pricked her eyes. “You do trust me.”
“Of course I do.”
“But you said…”
“Bite me, Marchessa.” He offered his throat.
It might have been the most erotic thing she’d ever seen, a prime Alpha male with his throat bared in submission demanding her bite.
He wanted what she had to give, not the trappings that came with her.
She locked her jaws around his throat and he clasped his arms around her, pulling her closer as he groaned in obvious pleasure. Her teeth fairly tingled at having him within her jaws and she bit harder, feeling the press of his cock against her leg.
Oh God, this was it. She was finally going to be truly mated to him.
“More, Marchessa.” His voice was like stone on gravel and it touched her deep inside her womb.
She wanted everything from this male.
When she pulled back, she watched that even as the wounds healed and tried to fill with silver, the process was reversed and he was well. Whole.
This could work.
“Greedy little wolf, you want your turn first.”
Marchessa submitted to him, showing her belly and her throat.
He didn’t hesitate. He tore into the flesh of her neck and it was an elegant agony. “Mine.”
“Yes.”
Embers sparked sharp and hot through her veins as his venom filled her and changed her yet again. Something eternal coursed through her, something Cassius. She felt his feelings, his hopes, his dreams, but there was nothing bad. No pain. Only this hope and love that burned eternal.
How long can a flame burn, he’d asked her.
Forever.
It lit something inside of her that would flicker until the last star burned to dust. When it did, she and Antony would be side by side. He’d become her best friend. Part of her soul.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, wondering how she’d ever survived this long without him. When she looked at him she saw the beginning, she saw the end, she saw something bigger than themselves, but smaller too.
“I should be put out to pasture, huh?” He repeated her thoughts about him when she’d first been told he was her betrothed.
“You weren’t supposed to see that.” Guilt twinged ugly and raw.
“You got Cassius’s memories. That’s what fed back down the line.” Antony didn’t seem at all fazed.
She wondered what else had fed back down the line. She was glad he was a confident male.
“Bummer,” she said, still in awe. “I got to see the birth of universes. And you just got my snarky commentary.”
“No, I had those the first time you kissed my cheek. It was just your turn.”
“Will you make love to me, my mate?” This was right, as things were meant to be.
He kissed her and all those warring emotions she’d had between he and Cassius were gone. It was as if this had reconciled them into the one male who held her in his arms. Which was as it should’ve been.
“Here in the grove, in the moonlight?” he whispered to her. “There used to be great revels here where we celebrated and worshipped the moon. Where we drank, and danced, and mated all together.”
“Sounds decadent,” she purred.
“It was.”
“Maybe we should bring it back.”
“You want an audience, my princess?” His hands roved over her.
“I want everyone to see how perfect my mate is. How strong. How virile.”
“I don’t want anyone to see my mate. That’s all mine.”
She laughed and kissed him.
“But,” he murmured against her mouth, “I wouldn’t mind being the recipient of your ministrations to Cassius. It was like a fevered dream, your mouth on our cock.”
She shivered. “Even with this mouth full of teeth?”
“Even with anything, Marchessa.” His mouth claimed hers.
She loved how he said her name. Loved how right his hands felt on her, loved that this moment between them was more than fucking. It was, in truth, making love. It was about bonding together as much as it was about finding pleasure.
That’s what she’d been lacking.
The connection.
Marchessa had laughed at other she-wolves when they talked about it, she thought it was a myth, a unicorn.
She always claimed to know the difference between good sex and emotion, and there was a vast difference. Part of her hadn’t believed that the emotion, the bond, that it was real. She’d always thought it was how females made excuses for thinking with their slits the same way males thought with their cocks.
But she’d been oh-so wrong.
This was new, terrifying. Even more so than trading bites.
“Are you afraid now, Marchessa mine?” He was tender.
/> “Yes.”
“Why?” He pulled back to search her eyes.
“Because.” She shrugged, unable to articulate all that she felt. Her fears. Her hopes. All the newness that surged bright and clear.
Marchessa saw from the look on his face that he did understand. Another piece of the puzzle clicking securely into place.
“We can wait.”
“I don’t want to wait. Remember what you told me about seeing everything the world has to offer? Experiencing all I can? This is what I want to experience now. Sure, I’m scared. But I think that’s what makes it wonderful.”
He kissed her again, but it wasn’t the kiss of a male marking his territory. She was already marked deeper than skin. It was the coming together of partners, equals, and she met him halfway.
Her arms twined around his neck, and while she felt the urgency to have him inside of her, to push toward that culmination, what she wanted more were these moments between. This kissing, this touching, this learning about each other.
She couldn’t stop thinking how beautiful he was and she wished he’d gotten that memory instead of her wondering how an old grey-tail like him was still fit to run a pack. He’d know she thought that forever. He’d never hear inside her head that she found him to be the most beautiful of all males, the most powerful, the strongest, the Alpha of Alphas.
She could speak the words as she wished, but it wasn’t the same. Not at all. Maybe she could show him?
He kissed her until her senses fogged, until her knees were weak and it was only his strength that held her up. His hands moved over her flesh, mapping the topography of her curves. Those giant hands made her feel so small, so breakable, so delicate. She’d never enjoyed feeling this until him and always resented the very idea that because she was female, she was glass. But she wasn’t glass, even if his arms made her feel that way. She realized it wasn’t a testament of her weakness, but of his great strength.
His thumb brushed over her nipple, bringing it to a taut peak. She loved how her breasts fit in his hands, how he held them, caressed them. Every stroke of his thumb over the peachy tips send jolts of pleasure straight to her clit. She wondered if she’d come, just from this ministration.
He took his time, content to wind her ever higher. Marchessa refused to beg for more, knowing that he pushed her for their mutual ecstasy. He’d make her fly.
His hands went to her waist and he lifted her easily. She wrapped her legs around his hips and he carried her out into the grove, out to that place where she’d lay absorbing the life from the lemon trees, healing.
Antony eased her down on the soft grasses and they seemingly welcomed her back into their embrace. He peeled the sundress from her shoulders, and she lay bare before him.
She felt like some kind of tribute—a sacrifice to a god.
Marchessa watched him as he stripped, bared himself to her. She decided that maybe he never needed to be clothed. Ever. He should always be naked so she could look upon his perfection whenever she chose.
He was like a sculpture, the male body in its highest form.
Antony rose over her, his hips between her legs and his cock thick and hot against her cleft.
When she took him inside of her, it was so good. He stretched her, filled her as he had before, but she recognized what the new sensation was. It was joining on a deeper level.
The bonds of true mates.
She’d always mocked women who cried during sex because it was “so beautiful.” Marchessa had thought they just needed a good plowing to get over that kind of nonsense, but she found tears pricking the back of her eyes, her nose felt like she’d been punched in the face.
Marchessa had never known that this was for her, that forever was for her, that there was a place in the world where she belonged and it was at any wolf’s side.
“Goddamn it,” she murmured.
The best part was that he wasn’t offended, he didn’t stop to ask her what was wrong. He just whispered in her ear, “I know. Me too.”
She clung more tightly to him. She didn’t dig her nails into his back, didn’t scratch and claw at him, or try to bite him. Marchessa just allowed the feelings and sensation to wash over her, through her.
And her culmination was more than an orgasm. More than a release. Marchessa couldn’t put a name to it, but it was something she wanted to experience again.
Antony lay on the grass next to her, combing through the long strands of her hair lazily with his fingers.
“Is this really our life?”
“It will be. After I kill Ardennes.”
“What if it really is Carolina?” Why did she have to ask that question? Why did she have to ruin the moment? The afterglow that she’d always mocked was damn nice and she didn’t want it to go away.
But there was still part of her that knew if she made it go away, he couldn’t. She just couldn’t trust that what they had was stronger than the past. Because that’s not how her life ever played out. She always sought the next adventure because what she was really seeking was happiness. She knew she couldn’t stay in one place too long because the good times always gave way to the bad. And if she found another adventure, she could find another piece of happiness.
She rebelled at the epiphany because she didn’t want it to be true. She wanted this moment, with this male, this world that had built up around them. She wanted that. She wanted it forever.
“You are my mate, Marchessa. Is that what you’re asking? If I’ll leave you for her?” He was incredulous. “After what just happened between us? You still don’t trust me.”
He started to rise.
She put her hand on his arm. “No, it’s not you, I don’t trust. It’s me.”
Fuck. The tears came.
“I don’t believe that you can want me. That I’m really your mate. I don’t feel deep inside that I… that I deserve it.”
“What nonsense is this?” His voice was calm and soothing.
“There is something wrong with me. There always has been. So it’s not you I don’t believe in.”
“Not believing in you is not believing in me,” he corrected. “We’re partners, remember?”
“You marked her. You loved her.”
“I did. And I tore out a part of myself to grieve her, to protect my pack from what I thought I’d done. If it is Carolina, I won’t say I don’t care for her or what happens to her and that should comfort you.”
“How?” Let him explain that madness.
“Love doesn’t disappear because people do bad things. Love doesn’t die because it’s inconvenient. When it’s real, when it matters, it lives forever. But that doesn’t mean there’s not more love. Or the nature of that love doesn’t change. I care for what happens to her. But you are my one true mate. It is for you that my heart burns and my soul reaches out for. And it is to my pack that I will do my duty. If she’s become a danger, we will do what we must to put her down.”
He held her for a long moment. “Now, tell me your plan about Woolven.”
“You want to hear it?”
“I would’ve heard it earlier, if you’d just asked.”
Chapter Nine
They’d succeeded in calling an emergency meeting of the Great Council and Marchessa sent word to Blake that she’d like to meet with him a few days before the heads of the different nations came together.
He’d agreed to meet her in the Sistine Chapel. She couldn’t argue with his taste. She’d never been to Rome.
Armand agreed to accompany her, and they traveled by night to allow for his new sensitivity to the sun—although he was able to spend longer and longer in the daylight when he pushed himself.
She arrived early and took the tour, just wrapping herself in the all the beauty that the place had to offer. Marchessa felt humbled in the presence of such art, but powerful too. She would now see the passing of the ages like this chapel. She’d see so much great art, great advancements in thought and civilizations. It made her realize she was an
optimist. Because she believed the beauty would outweigh the horrors.
She smelled him before she saw him when she stepped outside and found a seat at the café. It was a spice that was uniquely Blake Woolven.
“Your message said it was important,” he said as she turned to face him.
“Yes, it’s dire. It’s why Antony called the Council.” He was just as handsome as he’d always been, maybe even more so. But his pretty face did nothing for her anymore.
Blake eased into a seat and ordered an espresso for himself and one for her. “What’s happened?”
“First, thank you for coming. I didn’t know if you would.”
“Marchessa, I know you’ve never been one to want this war. But I won’t tell you War isn’t somewhere in one of these buildings with a sniper rifle waiting to pull the trigger.”
“That’s fair. Armand is here, too.” She nodded. “Not that I need his protection. But he insisted.” She smiled, baring only the white facades she wore to cover her sharp, silver teeth. Marchessa could bite through them if need be. “I know my father stole some tech from you.”
Blake nodded. “Go on.”
“I think there’s proof that the de la Lunas murdered your scientist to get it.”
“I plan on presenting that at the Council.”
The knowledge, even though she’d expected it, still hit her hard. “I’m so sorry. I hear that’s your mate’s father.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I know that,” he said kindly. “It took some doing to convince her that I didn’t kill him.”
“Oh God.”
“Is that all you have for me?”
“No. He sold what he stole to Ardennes.”
“Do you have proof?”
“Only that I overhead him talking about it.” She exhaled heavily. “I didn’t know what it was at the time. I asked, but you know how my father is. Luc Ardennes is in business with Breslin.”
“The hunter Breslin? Are you fucking with me?”
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