Andromeda's Reign

by K. S. Haigwood

  Slade walked in the room, but my eyes didn’t deviate from the spot on the wall I had been staring at for the last twenty minutes.

  “I want to be the one to interrogate the prisoner,” he said.

  I still didn’t move, out of fear I would look at him and place all the blame on his hands. I really didn’t want to do that, but ‘How could he have let this happen?’ had already gone through my mind more than once.

  “Ace?” Slade said in a low voice.

  Leaning forward, I pulled my hand out of Andra’s and ran my fingers through my hair, then just stared down at my lap. It was then that I realized just how much her touch had been helping. An agonizing cry ripped through my chest into my throat, and I closed my mouth to keep it from turning into a full-blown sob.

  Andra’s anxiety washed over me, but just before her skin touched mine, I shot to my feet, gripped the corners of the coffee table in front of the couch on my journey to a vertical position, and then I launched the piece of furniture across the room.

  “Ace!” Andra shouted as my fury-filled gaze settled on Slade, but I jerked my arm free of her and let out a growl of warning. My lion needed to feel the rage. The beast welcomed the explosion that was about to happen. It didn’t need to be tamed by her touch. “Stop this, Ace!” Andra demanded, but I either didn’t comprehend what she expected of me or I didn’t care, because stopping what I was about to do wasn’t going to happen. She was my mate, not my Alpha. I had no Alpha. I was Alpha, and I answered to no one.

  After ripping the t-shirt over my head, I pointed at the floor as I stared at Slade. “Right here, right now.” My jaw clenched when Slade held his hands up and took a step back. He knew better than to back down from a challenge, just like he knew better than to let any of our pride fall.

  “Whoa! What the hell is going on?” Kai said from the archway that separated the living room from the foyer.

  “Do you want me to say I’m sorry?” Slade said, anger finally rising in his tone. “I am!” he shouted as he pointed to his chest. “I never meant for anything like that to happen to Rogan. They were all human. We underestimated them. I underestimated them. That’s on me. It’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. Rogan was my fucking best friend, Ace. Do you think I’m not hurting or that I don’t blame myself that he is no longer here? I do, but fighting you is not what I want. I want to find out who is behind this and fight them, and I want to start with the bitch locked up downstairs.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, I moved my head from side to side and rolled my shoulders back before letting the oxygen expel from my nose. Slade’s little speech calmed me a little, enough that I didn’t feel like scrapping with him anymore, but not enough that I wasn’t still looking to fight someone.

  “They had mad skills, Ace,” Kai said. “It wasn’t Slade’s fault—”

  My hand flew out to point at Slade as I glared at Kai. “It was so his fault! And it was your fault! If I’d have been there and any of my pride had fallen, it would have been my fault, too! We—” I dragged in another ragged breath and spun around, looking for something else to throw. There was nothing but the sitting furniture in my immediate vicinity. I covered my face with my hands and counted to ten in my head instead. I was surprised that it helped, but it had somehow. I needed some major woo-sa. No, what I needed was to either fight someone or get laid. I hadn’t gone this long without sex since I was a human teenager. “We don’t fall,” I finally said. “So, yes, I do blame Slade for the loss of Rogan. He is a Beta. It should have never happened.” After a moment, I looked at Slade. “I sent a mass text to the rest of the pride. Everyone should be here by dawn. Let me know when everyone in my pride is accounted for… minus one. And stay the fuck away from the prisoner.”

  With that, I grabbed my shirt from the floor and headed for the stairs.

  Wednesday, February 4th 2015 10:49 p.m. PST

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Andromeda

  Andra helped Slade and Kai pick up the pieces of the broken coffee table, and the hutch, vases and canvas painting it had smashed into when Ace had hurled it across the room. She told herself that she was giving him time to cool off on his own, but the truth was that she just didn’t know what to say to him.

  Keeping her mind locked up tight, she went in search of a trash bag, broom and dust pan.

  The kitchen was spacious, with oak cabinets, gray granite counters, stainless steel appliances and ceramic tile flooring in cream and tan. It was beautiful and modern, just like everything else in the huge house. She wasn’t even sure it could be classified as a house. It was more like a fortress in disguise, an impenetrable palace even. Ace was their king.

  She could sense that he cared for his people very much, though she wasn’t sure she would have handled the earlier situation with Slade quite like he had.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me,” a male voice said from behind her, and she turned around to see that it was Slade. How long had she been staring at the broom in her hand? Moreover, how had it gotten in her hand to begin with? She hadn’t even remembered finding it. Obviously she had, because she was standing in front of a dark storage closet.

  “I don’t feel sorry for you, Slade. I was only thinking about how I would have reacted if that had happened in my pack.”

  “What did you come to realize?” he said, intrigued.

  “I’m not sure. Probably not like that, but I haven’t grown my thick skin yet. Still trying to shed my humanness, I guess.”

  “That’s why you’re here. If anyone can teach you how to be an Alpha, it’s Ace,” he said, with a sly grin.

  Andra raised an eyebrow. “Did you mean to say Alpha or do you really mean ass?”

  “The ass is Alpha for a reason, Andromeda. We respect him. And he’s right. Rogan wouldn’t have lost his life tonight if I had been doing my job properly. It was my fault, and I deserved everything Ace said and wanted to do to me.”

  “But he challenged you,” Andra said. “He was ready and willing to kill you over—”

  Slade let out a hard laugh. “No—no, he just wanted to fight me…” he put up his fists and bounced on the toes of his boots, “… like boxing. We’ve gone a few rounds in the past. It’s nothing. He feels better after he gets a Knock Out. Doesn’t really matter who it is, though I’m one of few who will volunteer to swap licks with him. Maybe I’ve been hit one too many times in the head. Whatever it takes to calm him down, though.”

  “If you don’t mind boxing him, why did you back down tonight?” she said.

  He shrugged. “I guess it was because I doubted I would be the one lying on the floor passed out in the end.”

  “Oh, so you normally let him win. I see.”

  Slade chuckled. “I’ve never let him win. I’m just pissed tonight. I didn’t feel right about the fight. I feel like our aggression should be aimed at the problem. That can’t happen until we find out who the hell those humans were working for.”

  “Do you have an idea of who it might be?” Andra asked, hope filling her expression. She needed answers, and Ace obviously wasn’t in the mood to answer any.

  Slade studied her for a few moments, and then he reached out and took the broom from her. “I’ll finish cleaning up. Ace is probably expecting you.”

  Andra blinked in confusion as Slade turned and walked back the way she had come.

  “Well,” she said, and then sighed heavily. Glancing around the kitchen, her eyes settled on the refrigerator, and she went to it and opened the door without thinking too deep about her intentions or what Ace and the others might say to her if they found out.

  Someone kept it stocked with a variety of food. With a houseful of mostly men, she had been afraid there wouldn’t be anything except beer and hot wings in the thing, though those items were there, too.

  She spotted some grapes and cheese on the top shelf and quickly grabbed them. It would have to be enough for now. Slade was right, Ace would be expecting her soon—probably was already wonder
ing where she was, but she had her mind closed up tight and her emotions in check. There was no cause for him to worry or come looking for her. This shouldn’t take long.

  After peeking into the foyer and seeing that nobody was around, Andra crossed the room to the hallway where she had seen Kai and another guy carry the unconscious girl.

  She didn’t exactly know where to go from there, but Slade had mentioned that the girl was being held captive downstairs. A basement shouldn’t be too hard to find, even with how large the house was: find stairs that lead down. Easy-peasy, right?

  Music was blaring from the first door on the left, so Andra skipped that one, and the one after that on the right, since a dim light from within proved that room to be a bathroom.

  There were two doors remaining on her right, one at the very end of the corridor facing her, and a set of stairs leading up to the second floor on her left.

  “What are you doing, Mena?” she whispered to herself, before pressing her ear to the first door on the right. She couldn’t hear anything, and no light shone from under the door. Gripping the doorknob, she twisted it until the door began to move. Light from the nearly full moon lit up the room enough that she could tell it was an empty bedroom. She pulled it shut and walked to the next one.

  A woman’s soft sobbing came from inside that room—definitely not a basement, nor was it anything she could afford to deal with at the moment, either. If she tried to console the woman in her grief, it would make her sad, too. Ace would find her in no time.

  She placed her hand gently on the door and said a quick silent prayer for her, and then she walked on, to the door at the end. Glancing up the stairs to her left, she listened for any sign that she wasn’t alone, but felt or heard nothing, so she looked back to her last option. This has to be it, she thought.

  Feeling in her gut that she was right, she didn’t hesitate before grabbing the knob and pulling the door open.

  It was a storage closet.

  “Andra,” Ace said from behind her, and she whirled around, causing the grapes and cheese to slide off the plate.

  “Shit!” she said as she knelt down to pick the food up from the maroon carpeting.

  Ace only watched her. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m picking our snack up off the floor. I got turned around in this house somehow and couldn’t find my way back to your bedroom,” she said, but refused to look up at him until every white grape was accounted for.

  “Are you hungry?” he said, without emotion.

  She looked at the plate as she stood, avoiding eye contact with him. “I thought we could snack on cheese and fruit while we talked. Food always makes talking easier.”

  The corner of his mouth lifting caught her eye, and she stared at his mouth. It was a nice mouth. A kissable mouth. Damn! Why did he always get her so flustered?

  “Is it a date? It could be date number three,” he suggested.

  Andra shook her head. “No—no date,” she said quickly. “Just talking… and snacking.”

  “And kissing,” Ace said. “Remember our agreement?”

  She sighed. “I remember.”

  His grin was huge as he held out something to her in the palm of his hand. “Your boyfriend is on the phone. He said you wanted them to call every hour or something like that. Didn’t want you to miss his call.”

  Andra’s heart began to pound in her chest at the realization that Phoenix was on the other end of Ace’s cell phone and had more than likely heard the whole conversation that had just happened between her and Ace.

  She snatched the cell phone from his hand and put it to her ear. “Phoenix?”

  “Hey, Mena,” Phoenix said softly. He sounded sad. Crap!

  Before Ace turned to walk away, he said, “If you wanted to feed the prisoner, all you had to do was say so. Don’t lie to me ever again, Andra.” He pushed on the wall next to the stairs leading up to the second floor, and a large rectangle piece of wall bounced back against his palm. A hidden door? “She’s dangerous,” he said. “Don’t get close enough that she can touch you. Grab some more cheese and fruit before you come up to bed, baby. I’m ready to… talk.” He winked at her, and then looked at his phone that was at her ear. “Good night, Phoenix,” he said, and then he walked away.

  Chapter 9

  Wednesday, February 4th 2015 11:04 p.m. PST

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Ace

  It was a little bittersweet how that had happened. I knew Andra was pissed at me for letting her boyfriend overhear our conversation—I could feel her irritation as I walked away—but the guy knew I wasn’t ever going to stop until he was out of our lives for good anyway. They both should have expected me to do something like that. And I wasn’t done. Nope. Far from it.

  The way I saw it, she couldn’t hate me forever. She needed me.

  We hadn’t had much skin contact throughout the day. The bond was getting antsy. Fatigue was weighing heavily on me and wearing me thin. I needed to touch her soon. We didn’t need a recap of what happened back in Alabama. Worst eight hours of my life! I had never felt so close to death than when Andra had spent the night in Phoenix’s bed instead of ours. The worst part was she had threatened to stay there and face that all over again just to keep me from forcing their break-up.

  I knew she loved Phoenix. And maybe it was destiny for them to be together. Fate could do strange things sometimes, though. I refused to question how this would all end, because I already knew how it would end: Andra would be with me if I had to kill that damn vampire to prove my point. She wasn’t linked to him by the Nexus spell any longer. I didn’t want it to come down to that—mainly because I didn’t want to experience a grief like that through her—but I would do the job or have it done if and when all my other options expired.

  After walking into my bedroom, I realized I had some time to kill, since Andra was hell bent on feeding the human. It didn’t bother me that she had enough heart to make sure it was fed. What bothered me was that she had lied to me about it. I hadn’t intended to mention the kiss she owed me so Phoenix could overhear until she had done that. Maybe it was childish, but I hated being lied to. I hoped I got my point across.

  Grabbing pajama bottoms from the dresser and the towel I’d used earlier, I headed for the shower until Andra got back with the grapes and cheese.

  I grimaced at the thought, not because I didn’t like fruit and pasteurized dairy, but because I was actually looking forward to snacking and just talking with her.

  What the hell am I turning into? A pussy?

  Steam filled the room, and I stepped under the spray, letting the hot water attempt to wash away everything that was crushing me: Andra, Phoenix, Justice, the pride meeting Andra, the bond, Slade, Kai, Rogan and the humans who had attacked them and taken the life of my friend. I wanted all of it to go away for a while. Just a little while, I begged to whoever might be listening. I would be happy with only five minutes’ peace.

  “Ace?” Andra said from the bedroom.

  “Yeah,” I said loud enough that she could hear me. “I’m in here. Come on in.” She didn’t reply or come into the bathroom, but I could feel that she wasn’t upset with me over outing our upcoming kiss to her boyfriend. She did seem nervous, though. I really hated all these feelings she was forcing me to feel. I had never in my existence been nervous about anything before I met her. “You don’t have to,” I said. “I wasn’t inviting you to shower with me. I only wanted to talk and have you near me, Andra.”

  “I brought us some fruit and cheese,” she said, from inside the bathroom. Chaos had followed her, his nails clip-clip-clipping on the tiled floor. “I found wine, too. Is it okay to open it or does it belong to someone who might try to challenge me over it?”

  I snickered. “You can open the wine, Andra. Everything in this house is yours. Help yourself.”

  She let out a breath of air. “Good, because I’m on my second glass.”

  My eyes widened, and I
peeked around the shower wall to see that she was sitting on the toilet lid, the glass of white wine in her hand. “You haven’t been gone that long. Did you guzzle the first one?”

  She shrugged. “Pretty much,” she said, and then the sadness hit me like a wrecking ball. Fuuuuck!

  “What did he say to you?” I demanded. She only shook her head and sniffled. “Shit,” I breathed out on a huff, and then cut the water and grabbed my towel off the hook, wrapping it around my waist before walking out to her. “Come here. We need contact before the bond gets pissed off again.” I could feel myself weakening fast, and knew that if I didn’t get some skin-on-skin time with her we’d have another episode soon. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if we were separated and the bond took us out, and nobody was around to get us back together. I knew we would only have four hours, tops, before lights out, forever.

  She didn’t object when I took her arm to help her stand, so I led her back to the bedroom and over to the bed. She already looked a little dazed, and I knew it probably had little to do with the wine. That damn bond was about to take us both out.

  “I’m gonna go through your suitcase to find you something comfortable to sleep in. Is that okay? Or would you rather sleep in one of my t-shirts?”

  She lazily blinked a few times then finally shrugged as her teeth began to chatter. “A t-t-shirt is fine.”

  Through my blurring vision and the chills rushing through my bones, I nodded, stumbled my way to the dresser, grabbed the first shirt I saw, and then made my way back to her. “Here, lie back on the mattress. I’ll do all the work. We have to do this fast or we’ll have to get fully naked to feel better.”

  I was thrilled when she raised her arms over her head so that I could get her shirt off easier. Not for the sole reason that I was about to see her tits—though I was happy about that, too—but because I didn’t know if I had enough energy and time to get her dressed before I collapsed myself.