by Lila Felix
Tonight, however, was going to be the best of them all. Tonight, Knox and I would exchange our vows as mates before the goddess. No other audience was needed.
I went back to nibbling on his neck, hoping my attempt at wooing would make him change his mind on the whole dusk thing, and as I heard the rumble of his dragon build in his chest, I knew victory was well within my grasp.
“Dusk is traditional, but I can get us there in a half an hour.” He was already carrying me out the back door. Good mate.
“We should’ve taken the motorcycle,” I mumbled as he put me in the front seat of his truck. The motorcycle was faster and allowed me to keep close, our bodies pressed against each other. Darn dress-up clothes.
“Best. Mate. Ever.” He punctuated each word with a kiss before making good on his promise to get us there in record time.
“Are you sure you are okay with this… here?” he asked before turning off the ignition.
“I’m sure. This place is important to our people. It is where I first became one of you and where we will present our first child to the clan. It is only fitting that it be here, that I vow my life to yours.”
Knox turned off the ignition, but said not a word. I waited in the silence allowing my words to soak in. When he finally turned around, his eyes filled with more emotions than I could begin to decipher. He brought his lips to mine before mumbling, “You’re perfect.”
Knox was out of the truck and around to my side, letting me out in moments. This was it. We were going to walk away from the truck as individuals and come back as one; our souls intertwined in a way I knew I had yet to fully comprehend. My dragon was so close to the surface, practically giddy, if dragons could be described as giddy.
Hand in hand, we walked to the center of the clearing, just us and our dragons. I wasn’t completely sure what to expect, I just knew it was going to change my life for the better. The college degree and scholarship were fine and dandy, but this? This was the reason life was worth living.
“Kallie,” Knox began, his voice reverent, his eyes glued to mine, “from the first time I saw you I knew you were mine. Unfortunately, I let the dumb part of myself convince me otherwise and I let you slip away, a mistake I will never forgive myself for. And then you did the most amazing thing and came back.”
His words weren’t new, he’d said them before, but never all together, never like this. My heart was soring and my eyes beginning to tear and we had yet to utter one vow.
“Kallie, before we say the words of our people, the ones that will start the intertwining of our souls, I’m asking you man to woman, dragon to dragon: will you be my mate?”
His hand extended and in it was a ring and not just any ring, either. This ring was forged by him, the stone sparking red and far too beautiful to be a ruby. It was something else. I looked up at him through my now tear filled eyes, to see his shirt gone, and along with the missing piece of attire was a missing scale, covered not so elegantly by a band aid.
The scale that used to protect my heart is now yours, for so is my heart. The only thing that could harm me is losing you.
His words echoed in my head as the tears fell, and I murmured, “Yes.” I jumped into his arms and covered his face with kissed until my dragon stole the moment and sunk her teeth into the crux of his neck, claiming him as her own… our own. The iron taste of his blood should’ve been creepy or weird, but as his dragon instantly took the message and did the same, there was only us, together, as one.
You went out of order, sweet mate.
His humor had my dragon letting go of her grasp on his neck. She was happy. Her part of the mating was over and she staked her claim. I was still getting used to having her, knowing she was there in the backdrop the entire time, but it was coming. And when she took over, so far it was always for the best. Claiming Knox being a perfect example.
Eh, my dragon had enough of your feet dragging.
He had no idea how many times I had to hold her back, especially when the kissing became more. She had wanted to claim him from her first day, but as a human I saw the value in waiting. Or at least I convinced myself I did. If Knox hadn’t sublet a small place near campus for us while I completed my classes, chances are I’d have claimed him before now.
Vows? Home?
His meaning behind home, and the completion of our mating not at all hidden. Not that I was any better. I wanted him so badly. Home seemed miles away.
Vows. Here?
I was being saucy. Can’t blame a girl now sporting a ring beyond all rings and about to become the equivalent of a married woman.
Naughty dragon.
Your naughty dragon.
Luckiest man alive.
“Vows?” I switched to verbal words as I peered down at my ring. His heart, it was now mine to guard for always, and I would, with all that I was.
“I, Knox Renouf, both man and beast, swear to love you, Kallie Theron, as my mate. Your needs are now my needs, your desires are now mine. All that I have is yours, my mind, my body, and my earthly belongings. Please accept all that I am as yours.”
I repeated the vows between ever glamourous sniffles and snorts due to my freely flowing tears, and when I spoke the last word, Knox leaned in, kissing my claiming mark and sending shivers down my spine.
I did the same to his claiming mark before stealing his lips and throwing every last ounce of feelings I had for him into it. The kiss became more, became everything, right there in the place of his ancestors. When we had completed all three parts of the mating ritual, I had expected to feel different. How could one not? What I didn’t expect was to feel whole for the first time in my entire life. I was whole. There was no way I deserved this bliss, but I was going to take it and hold onto it for dear life. Knox was mine as I was his. There was nothing more beautiful than that.
About Delphina Henley
Delphina has been writing since she can remember and has always had a love of the paranormal. She is an avid reader and a self-proclaimed shifter crack addict. Delphina currently lives in the Midwest with her husband and four kids.
Delphina Henley also writes as USA Today Best Selling Author Dara Fraser.
Blog: http://delphinahenley.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DelphinaHenley
Twitter: @DelphinaReads
About Lila Felix
Lila Felix is full of antics and stories. She refused to go to Kindergarten after the teacher made her take a nap on the first day of school. She staged her first protest in middle school. She almost flunked out of her first semester at Pepperdine University because she was enthralled with their library and frequently was locked in. Now her husband and three children have to put up with her rebel nature in Louisiana where her days are filled with cypress trees, crawfish, and of course her books and writing. She writes about the ordinary people who fall extraordinarily in wild, true love.
For more visit www.lilafelix.com
Read on for a sneak peek of Mated Crazed: Liam
Mate Crazed: Liam
Of all the things to get stuck with, I get felon, best friend duty in the damn hallway of the bed and breakfast. I’d done a lot of things in my life for this clan. Mostly I’d organized and kept track of all of the records fit for human eyes so that no one could pry, and I was damn good at my job.
I also kept the unofficial records straight too. We had records going all the way back to our Viking ancestors.
I was in charge of all of that.
Yet, this is what I’d been reduced to: a prison guard.
“What’s that noise?” I heard a noise inside the room. Her name was Rhi and she was the best friend of our Alpha’s new mate. I hadn’t seen her, but she was now an enemy of the clan and an enemy of the clan was an enemy to me.
“Nothing. I fell,” she yelled through the door. I knew the rooms in this place. There wasn’t much furniture and it was big enough not to trip over. Either she was trying to escape or she was just dumb. And witches weren’t dumb.
/> I got up to my feet. I didn’t trust her. Derrick, one of the clan’s guards told me that she was a witch; that was just the beginning of everything she had done to us.
That was it. I was going in. I was told not to, but those noises sounded a whole hell of a lot like getting out instead of staying in.
“That didn’t sound like…” An ebb of power, something like overwhelming energy came at me at the sight of my prisoner, the clan’s prisoner. Her hair was long and black, pulled over her shoulder as she stood before me with coal-tinted tears streaming down her face.
“What are you?” The words came from my mouth before I could stop them. I knew what she was. She was a criminal. She was a witch. We dragons despised witches for what they had done to us over the centuries.
“Don’t you know? You’re watching me. What was that?”
Like she didn’t know what it was. She probably sent some of her voodoo crap at me in a wave of fury and fire.
What the hell am I thinking?
“I didn’t do anything. You busted in. Um, you’re probably not supposed to leave the door wide open like that. I am a criminal around here.”
I couldn’t even turn around. Turning around would mean not looking at her and not walking toward her and not wiping those beautiful and sad tears from her face.
Turning around would mean another second without knowing what she just did to me.
Because it didn’t feel like black magic. It felt like waterfalls and the wind under my wings when I’m flying.
Did I just quote a Bette Midler song?
She walked behind me and closed the door and locked it. I followed her every move with my eyes and my body followed.
She’d put me in some kind of trance.
“It’s you.” My dragon spoke for me since my tongue was currently out of order.
“I’m Rhi.” She stuck out her hand and I took it immediately. “Holy shit. It’s me. And it’s you. I didn’t think it was possible. I’m a witch and you’re a…”
“I’m a dragon.”
“You’re a dragon.”
“And you’re mine.”
She laughed and looked down at our still holding hands.
“You’re damn right I am.”
An excerpt from Burden: Book One of the Bayou Bear Chronicles
by Lila Felix
Available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited
Hawke
“I need a minute, file out please,” I commanded, sitting back in my tattered leather desk chair, scratching my almost full beard. Rubbing my belly, I tried to scour away the itch of frustration, to no avail.
Frustration was my leech and its teeth penetrated deep.
I really should take better care of myself.
But my appearance reflected my attitude of late, ragged, teetering on the edge of mania. I’d gone too long without a haircut, opting instead for buzzing the sides myself and letting the top grow longer than I’d ever let it before.
“Yes, Alpha,” they all replied, swiftly moving from the cedar paneled office—except River. As more than my beta, my best friend, he always thought himself exempt from most orders, and he was. I frequently needed an ear that felt like it was on my side, and not just because the rules told him he had to be.
My father had been Alpha before me, and his father Alpha before that. Every day I uncovered another piece of the effed up puzzle—the real story of the turmoil my clan was in—the legacy they’d left me. And it seemed while they were excellent Alphas in terms of protecting the lands and growing the clan—they weren’t proficient at financing or piddling things like paying property taxes. They allowed their females no say over anything, which went against everything we were taught as young males. They failed to practice what they preached. Their mates had to grin and bear it. A female probably would’ve pointed out the details that my father and his father ignored. And now, one year after my father died of cancer and my mother followed soon after, I stood in a falling apart house, up to my eyeballs in debt with every male and some female clan members working two and three jobs to help out. My clan was crumbling through my claws.
Something has to give.
River was the same age as me, though our appearances aged us considerably. He growled out a sigh and plopped down in one of the huge chairs, built specifically for us, thick and sturdy. He beat his hands on the top of his head to some rhythm. He was deciding how to tell me something.
“Hawke, we can barely handle what we’ve got. Let’s face it, we are up to our muzzles here. Clan members are paying for bills usually taken care of by clan funds. We are working ourselves to the bone. We do what we can, but it’s just not enough. And now the LaFourche Clan Alpha wants to merge? I don’t know, boss.”
I hate when he calls me boss.
“I can’t help it. I have no money left after paying over two hundred thousand dollars in property taxes, insurance, flood insurance and everything else we were up to our asses on. The effing government was about to auction off our land. I have little to nothing left.”
I stood and took the two steps to the window to face the swamp. I could almost hear the fluttering of the catfish’s fins in the murky bayou, the teeth of the nutra rat chattering, and the bowing branches of the Cypress tree in the beginning winds of a Louisiana thunderstorm. The swamp called to me, begging me to allow it to soothe the beast and the stress. I wished it could. But I didn’t even have time to run anymore—I hadn’t shifted in weeks. The neglect of my inner animal made my skin crawl and itch.
Let me out, he pleaded.
He didn’t answer my rhetorical plea for him to further his rebuttal, so I continued my side of the debate, “What else can I do? Have you seen the other clan members? They’re as mature as a newborn cub. If I don’t take over as their Alpha, they’ll scatter to the winds. And with the other clans vying for our land already—they would take over the LaFourche land and be a heartbeat away from our boundaries. I won’t have it.”
He grabbed the arms of the chair and leaned forward, and I could see his reflection in the window.
“Then something has to give. Things are getting out of hand. We respect you, Alpha and will obey anything you ask of us. But the Betas and clan are restless, the males and the females. You know our ways dictate that our inner animal obey an Alpha pair, not just a male. We need the strength of a pair. If you intend to do this, we should be stronger, at least.”
Didn’t I know it? If they were restless for a pair to oversee them—if restless was the word they were using, then I was downright violent with my need for a mate.
The craving almost consumed me.
My bear needed a mate, and I as an Alpha, needed the balance of a female—plus, even with my warmer body temperature; my bed, of late, seemed to grow colder and colder.
But who had time to seek out a mate when the clan was in a spiral of disorganization and failure?
It wasn’t like there was a dating and mating website for bear shifters. If there had been, its mascot would have been that yellow Care Bear with the heart on its stomach. The commercial would have him doing the Care Bear stare or some shit. I hated Care Bears.
Why am I thinking about Care Bears?
I knew he could feel my malcontent over bringing up the issue of a mate, so he relented and moved on.
“There’s another issue, Alpha.”
I turned to my friend with a fake smile, “Oh great, what more?”
“There’s been a report of a black bear, a rogue, in South Dakota. She seems to be part of a grizzly clan, but is not mated. They have seen her working on clan lands and running perimeters on their boundaries at all times of the night.”
I shrugged, “It’s the female’s choice if she wants to keep clan with grizzlies.”
“The thing is—she’s thin—worn. The wolf pack Alpha who reported her says she’s unhealthy. He says he can see her ribs when she shifts and she’s maybe eighteen or nineteen but none of the kids in his pack have ever seen her in school. And they all attend
school together up there, shifter and human. He assumes—he assumes she’s being held captive. He sent a formal request that you visit and see for yourself as the Alpha over all bear Alphas.”
I snorted in his direction, “I’m sure the grizzlies would be much obliging.”
“They don’t have a choice. We outrank them. Black bears outrank Grizzlies, you know that. They have no choice but to grant you entrance.”
Of course I knew that. I was just grasping at straws, trying to talk my way out of going to South Dakota for any reason.
“How can I leave now, with the clan in turmoil?”
“It will take us three days. It’s not gonna fall apart in three days. If she is what the wolf says she is, then we have to save her. We protect our own.”
I slammed my fist down on the table, more in frustration with the entire situation than towards my Beta. He jumped anyway, “I know we protect our own. Make the arrangements with the rest of the clan. I want you and Flint on my flank. Three days, no more.”
He didn’t answer with words, simply bowed his head in acknowledgement.
I couldn’t believe this. I was in the middle of a turf struggle, on the verge of taking on a new clan, and trying to calm the mate-craving animal inside me—and there was a lone female in cold South Dakota who’d gotten herself kidnapped and enslaved.
Perfect.