Huntsmen (The Better to Kiss You With Book 2)

by Michelle Osgood

  “Kiara, love, hey.” Ryn was there in an instant, her eyes wide. She grabbed Kiara’s wrists and lifted them gently away from where they clawed at her throat.

  “I need it off!”

  “Here.” Ryn’s fingers were quick and deft, unwinding the scarf and helping Kiara out of her coat. “It’s gone.”

  Kiara’s panic didn’t abate; her chest was tight and heaving. “Ryn.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong.” Ryn’s hands rubbed soothingly over Kiara’s arms.

  Kiara jerked away, her gums itching as her body’s fight-or-flight response warred with itself. “I failed Foundations of Mechatronics.” She had known going into the final that she wasn’t as prepared as she could have been. But she’d done the readings the night before. She only had to get a sixty on the final to get a passing grade.

  Ryn laughed, and the response was like a bucket of cold water dumped on Kiara. “That it? Jesus, Kiara, I thought you’d killed someone.” She picked up Kiara’s bag and took it into the kitchen. Kiara followed.

  “That’s not it! You don’t understand. Between this and the course I withdrew from—”

  Ryn shrugged. “I don’t know what you thought would happen. You’ve gone to what, half a dozen classes this semester? Maybe university just isn’t your thing.”

  “It is, though.” It was. It had been. Kiara had always gotten top grades. She’d never failed a course.

  She glimpsed herself in the hallway mirror; her eyes had gone pale and gray. The pounding of her heartbeat was overwhelming—she could feel it, thick and urgent, in the hollow of her throat.

  “Kiara, control yourself.” Ryn’s voice now had a sharp edge to it. “Sheena’s in the next room.”

  Now that Ryn had drawn her attention, Kiara could just make out the sound of a third heartbeat and the rustle of tinfoil that meant Ryn was with a client in the middle of a color.

  “You need to calm down; you need to focus.” Ryn stood between Kiara and the door to the bedroom. Outwardly, Ryn was calm, but there was the slightest shift in her stance that told Kiara Ryn wasn’t wholly certain Kiara could get herself back under control.

  Oddly enough, that uncertainty pulled Kiara back into herself. Turning away, she sucked in several deep breaths. Her hands gripped the cool metal of the sink, the sensation grounded her, and she felt the itch in her gums slide away.

  “Hey.” Ryn touched Kiara’s back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of it. We’ll figure it out, okay?”

  Kiara turned, and Ryn held her arms out and wrapped up Kiara as tears started to fall. “Shhh, it’s okay. It’s just a class. You can retake it, or whatever.” She kissed Kiara’s temple.

  Kiara clung tighter to Ryn. Her body shook, though now without danger of an uncontrolled shift.

  ***

  “Alpha-designate,” Ryn mused. Kiara’s head was in her lap, and Ryn was giving her a head massage that had Kiara absolutely lax with pleasure. “What does that even mean?”

  “Mmmm, don’t stop.” Kiara closed her eyes. “It just means that, like, I’ll be the next Alpha.”

  “Aren’t you a little, I don’t know, young to have your whole life planned out for you like that?”

  Kiara shrugged—but carefully, because she didn’t want to dislodge Ryn’s clever fingers where they dug into her scalp. “It’s always been that way. I’m the most powerful next to my dad, so it’s my job to take over. I have to be the one to protect the pack, to keep us safe.”

  “But do you have to do it? Like, what happens if you don’t want to? It’s not like they can make you, right?”

  “You can decline it. Alpha’s more a title than a literal birthright. But no one does that. I mean, why would they?” Now Kiara twisted, reluctantly, out of Ryn’s grip to face her.

  “So you’re gonna do it. No matter what happens in your life. No matter what other opportunities come up—things you wanna do, people?” Ryn added with a sardonic grin that didn’t meet her dark eyes.

  Kiara pressed her lips together; her thoughts spun in every direction at once. It had never occurred to her to think otherwise—why would it? But Ryn had obviously been thinking about it. And it sounded as if she saw a clear, dividing line between Kiara-as-Alpha and any kind of future the two of them could have together.

  The thought of Ryn not being in her life—of losing Ryn to gain a title—clenched a hard fist around Kiara’s heart. She couldn’t imagine a future without Ryn. She couldn’t imagine a future without a pack… could she?

  Chapter Fourteen |

  “Wow, so that’s fucked up,” Nathan commented after she’d returned downstairs and repeated the details of her phone call.

  Ryn stood near one of Nathan’s long windows with her arms wrapped around herself and her back to the rest of them. The urge to cross the room and wrap Ryn in her arms was strong enough that Kiara actually took two steps forward before she stopped herself, remembering that Ryn probably wouldn’t appreciate the gesture.

  “What do we do now?” Deanna asked. She and Jamie sat on the couch. Their hands were twined in Jamie’s lap while Deanna stroked Arthur’s head with her other hand. Jamie was looking at Ryn, who hadn’t said a word since Kiara stopped speaking.

  Cole rubbed his thumbs against his temples. “I don’t know. Kiara made a good, strong case to the GNAAW rep.” He gave Kiara an approving nod. “That doesn’t mean GNAAW or the Huntsmen will respect it.”

  “I’m going to go.” Ryn turned from the window and met each set of eyes in turn. “This is about me. We’ve heard that over and over again. It’s my problem, not yours.”

  “Please don’t.”

  They turned to look at Kiara; on each face was a different look of surprise. Kiara closed her eyes and swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “Please, please don’t go.”

  “Kiara…”

  “No, Ryn. I can’t—” Kiara shook her head. “I can’t let you go. I can’t let you. They might kill you. They might have already, if we weren’t there on Friday. Do you know how that feels?” Her voice was rising now; all the control she thought she had regained was gone. “That I might never have seen you again?”

  “Kiara.” The gentleness with which Ryn said her name broke something in Kiara.

  “One more night. Give us one more night. You—you still haven’t done Cole’s hair. And it’s a mess. There’s a reason he hasn’t had a date in a year.” It was possibly the flimsiest excuse Kiara had ever come up with, but she couldn’t let Ryn walk out that door if it meant that Kiara would never see her again and would never know what happened. “Stay, just for a bit longer, and we’ll figure it out. Once we know it’s done, once we know they won’t come after you, then you can go.”

  “It’s Sunday.” Nathan spun idly on one of his barstools. “You might as well all stay for another night, right? Kiara can give GNAAW a few hours to get their shit figured out and then she can give her dad a call.” He gave a wry grin. “I suspect Davis might want to go through him from now on. Presumably they’ll have reached a solution or an agreement by Monday, and the rest of us,” he said, gesturing to everyone but Ryn and Cole, “can get back to our regularly scheduled programming. One more night with the gang all together, what do you say?”

  “I thought you were a pack, not a gang,” Ryn pointed out. But she’d relaxed, was no longer looking as if she was prepared to bolt.

  Relief left Kiara weak and she sank into the beanbag. Cole gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Kiara grabbed his hand, holding on tight as she tried to get her emotions under control.

  “Gang, pack, murder, parliament.” Nathan waved his hands dismissively. Then, there was a sudden gleam in his eyes. “Besides, six is the perfect number of people to play the Game of Thrones board game.”

  On the couch, Deanna let out a groan. “Not that. Come on.”

  “Sorry,” Nathan replied. “You prom
ised on my birthday that you’d play it with me.”

  “I’m in, as long as we can order pizza for dinner,” Cole said.

  “You’re not touching the Iron Throne with greasy pizza fingers,” Nathan warned.

  Jamie rolled her eyes. “We’ll break for pizza. But we’d better grab a couple growlers of beer and maybe a bottle or two of wine. There’s no way we’re getting Deanna to play sober.”

  Deanna beamed at her girlfriend. “Love you, babe.”

  Three hours later, Kiara regretted everything. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but her reluctance to attack her friends had lost her Moat Cailin, and now she was trapped in the North. That’s what she got for picking Stark. She knew better than to think the Starks had a chance to sit on the throne without suffering first. She could have built a fleet and gone around—she thought—but now it was too late. Nathan as the Greyjoys and Jamie as House Baratheon had filled the sea on either side of her with their own ships. Now she was just speculating from Winterfell. She was pretty sure her only choice was to make a deal with Nathan, but he was playing a despicable Greyjoy way too well for Kiara to consider it. He smirked every time he offered to let her through Moat Cailin, so he had something else up his sleeve.

  She had no idea how he could torture her for this long and without looking remotely exhausted. If anything, he seemed energized as he refilled his beer glass.

  “Can we stop now?” Jamie was lying flat on her back on the floor with her forearm thrown over her eyes. “Can we just… stop for a bit?”

  “Oh, come on.” Deanna poked her in the side. “You didn’t mind half an hour ago when you took King’s Landing from me.”

  “Well, I was winning then, wasn’t I?” Jamie said sourly.

  “It’s actually not that bad,” Cole remarked pushing his Dornish troops to Highgarden.

  “I hate both of you.”

  “Cole’s attacking you.” Nathan jabbed Ryn with the cardboard Valyrian Steel Blade to get her attention. Ryn put her phone down and sighed, stared at the board, tried to find hope of holding onto her garrison.

  “What’s your address, Nathan? It’s definitely pizza time.” Cole stood and stretched. Kiara caught Nathan watching her brother and didn’t miss the way he wet his lips as Cole’s T-shirt stretched over his biceps.

  Not quite focused, Nathan rattled off his address until Cole nodded and reached for his phone. Then, perhaps aware he had been staring, Nathan blushed and fled to the bathroom.

  “Oh, thank god, it’s break time.” Jamie hauled herself up from the floor. “Though I think I’m going to need a refresher on the rules before we start up again.”

  “Do you have an extra hour?” Ryn muttered, still staring at the board. She reached forward as though to play a card and then thought better of it and pulled her hand back.

  “Let’s play some music,” Deanna decided. “Staying still for too long is bad for you. So you know what that means…”

  “No,” Jamie whimpered. “Don’t say it.”

  “Dance party!” Deanna crowed. She jumped to her feet and crossed the room to Nathan’s impressive sound system.

  Deanna fiddled with the buttons until Justin Bieber blasted through the apartment. Deanna let out a whoop and twirled to the beat. “Come on you guys! You can’t resist the Bieb!”

  “You only like him because he looks like a lesbian,” Jamie argued, but she gamely rose to her feet and took a swig of her beer.

  “I like you ‘cause you look like a lesbian.” Deanna gave a cheeky wink and grabbed Jamie’s hands, forcing her to dance. “Come on, people, get dancing!”

  “I mean, it is a catchy song,” Ryn agreed. She unfolded herself from the floor beside the coffee table and bent, groaning at the stretch, to touch her toes. Kiara caught herself staring at Ryn’s ass, which was encased in a borrowed pair of leggings. Heat rose in her cheeks when Ryn, as though she knew Kiara was staring, turned her head from where it was nearly pressed against her knees and winked.

  Standing as abruptly as Nathan had, Kiara tore her gaze away and picked up her half-empty glass in a wild pretense of refilling it. “We need more beer,” she announced to no one in particular and set the glass on the coffee table before fleeing into the kitchen, where there was another growler in the fridge.

  Coming from the bathroom, Nathan met her there. His eyes were bright, and his face was flushed, and a few stray drops of water caught in his black hair told Kiara that he’d been splashing his face—probably with cold water. She might consider doing the same.

  “I see Deanna’s in charge of break time,” Nathan observed. They turned to look at the living room, which had indeed turned into a dance party. Deanna bounced, her hands in the air, absolutely carefree. Jamie moved with a bit more self-consciousness beside her, but Kiara’s cousin was grinning and, even as they watched, her movements loosened up. Cole was, absurdly, dancing with Arthur. He had the dog’s front paws in his, and the two of them cavorted with surprising grace. Arthur’s tail waved madly, and he barked as Ryn joined in.

  Kiara turned away. She leaned against the island and faced the kitchen, avoiding the amused look Nathan sent her way.

  “What happened with you two?” Nathan asked. His voice was low, barely a whisper, but this close, Kiara had no trouble picking it out despite the music.

  Kiara shrugged, feigning disinterest with every ounce of her pride, though Nathan had seen her beg Ryn to stay. “The same thing that happens with everyone, eventually. We fit for a while. And then we didn’t.”

  Nathan snorted. “Don’t give me that bullshit. I think we’re all past that.”

  “Fine.” Kiara clenched her hands against the lip of the island. She gripped until she could feel the sharp edge dig into her palms. “What happened was, I nearly flunked out of university. What happened was, I barely spoke to my family for months. What happened was, I lost track of everything that was actually important to me—and worse, I was willing to give it up. All of it. All of this—” She jerked her head, indicating her brother and her cousin. “—for her. What happened was Ryn. And I can’t let that happen again.”

  Nathan frowned. “That’s probably a bit unfair, don’t you think?”

  Kiara stared at him, taken aback. He was supposed to be on her side. “No.”

  “I mean.” Nathan shrugged. “It can’t have been that one-sided, right?”

  “Ryn had a lot less to lose. Trust me.”

  Nathan let what she’d said hang in the air between them. Kiara looked away as shame clawed up her throat. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “How did you mean it?”

  “I just…” Kiara glanced over her shoulder to where Ryn’s arms were now twined around the neck of a furiously blushing Jamie while Cole and Deanna danced just feet away. “This is her life. Strangers and parties and, and, hair appointments. She doesn’t have responsibilities, like me. She doesn’t get it. She nearly had me running off with her. Giving up my pack, my position. That stuff doesn’t matter to her.”

  “Family? Belonging?” Nathan shook his head. “I think those things matter to everyone.”

  “Not her,” Kiara insisted. “Not to Ryn.”

  “She said that to you, did she?”

  “No. But she didn’t have to.”

  “Oh.” Nathan nodded. “Kiara, the mind reader, sussed it out on her own.”

  “It’s not like that! You’re twisting what I’m saying.”

  “And you wouldn’t know a thing about that, would you?”

  “What does this even matter to you, Nathan? You don’t know her.”

  He cocked his head. “I know you, though. You’re the most bullheaded, stubborn, and selfish bisexual werewolf I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m not selfish.” Kiara’s face was hot, with anger now, not a blush. “You don’t know half as much as you think you do.”

 
“I’d say that makes two of us. Did anyone ever teach you how to have a real conversation, to actually listen to other people, or did this ‘Alpha-designate’ bullshit go to your head too early?”

  They were nearly nose-to-nose now. Nathan’s blue eyes bored into hers as Kiara tried to gain control of her temper so she didn’t do something she’d regret.

  Nathan opened his mouth, and Kiara was just waiting for it, when his phone buzzed on the kitchen island.

  “Must be the pizza.” He grabbed it, hitting the button to open the front door.

  “Or not.” Kiara was instantly on alert and sent Nathan a withering glare. “Did it occur to you that we’re in hiding, and you just buzzed someone in without confirming who they are?”

  Nathan began to retort, but paled as the implication of what Kiara said became clear to him. He swallowed. “I didn’t think. I’m not used to this—”

  Kiara brushed past him to the door. She waited in front of it, ears trained on the hallway outside. The elevator slid to a stop; the doors dinged open. Someone stepped through. The scent of pizza didn’t follow.

  Alarm spiked. Nathan came up behind her, and Kiara reached back, grabbed a handful of his T-shirt and yanked him forward. Outside the apartment, heels clipped along the hallway, came to a stop. The person knocked.

  Kiara nodded at the peephole. “Do you know them?”

  Nathan peered through; his shoulders were tight with tension. They relaxed as soon as he got a good look, only to tense again when the woman knocked for a second time.

  “It’s Amy. Fuck.”

  “Who is Amy?”

  Nathan didn’t answer, but attempted to wrestle Kiara out of the way. “Would you open the door?” he demanded.

  Kiara narrowed her eyes and elbowed Nathan back. At the third knock she swung open the door a few inches and found herself staring at a tall woman with bright pink hair and precariously high heels. Her muscular legs were bare up to the short hem of her coat; her collar was flipped up. Kiara wondered if the coat hid lingerie or an axe tattoo.

  “Who are you?” Kiara asked.