Sweat dripped from my brow while he held me there, pinned on his cock as he marked me. His bite was erotic; the growl that vibrated through him seemed to reverberate within me until I was humming with it. He was claiming me, marking my body in a way only he could. I should have been fighting it, but everything within me wanted to be claimed. I wanted to be his, and I had since the first moment I’d watched him on the shores of my homeland.
“You keep gripping my cock that tightly, little witch, and you’ll be knotted before I prepare you,” he groaned, licking the wound. His nose brushed against my neck, and something sharp touched my throat. “Try not to come this time,” he chuckled before he bit into my flesh. I exploded without warning. The first pull against my throat sent my body into a painful orgasm.
My moan turned into a mewling noise that was part pleasure, part wonder. In all the times we’d had sex, he’d never bitten me. He growled loudly, pulling away as something warm dripped down my throat. He licked at whatever it was and pushed me down, sliding his hand down my back until he touched against the arch.
“You are so beautiful,” he admitted, and I felt him preparing to let loose on my core. I clenched around him, needing him to lose whatever control he had. “You are mine, forever and always.”
“Forever and always, puppy,” I whispered, grabbing the blankets as he began to move behind me. He wasn’t gentle. He was savage. Braydon pushed my spine down, lifting my ass until he was buried within my body so deeply that it ached with every thrust. He jerked the moment my body clenched around his, the scream vibrating through me as I whimpered his name. The orgasm shook my body, creating a trembling that wouldn’t cease while blackness swallowed my sight, and stars erupted in my vision.
“Fuck,” he ground out and grew within me.
I felt him coming, felt the thickening of his cock while his knot sealed at the entrance to my womb. I moaned against the pleasure and pain it created, fighting panic and the need for it to grow more. Braydon was fighting it, trying to protect me from the pain. Growling, I slammed against him, turning to look at him with need shining in my vision.
“More,” I demanded, moving to show him it wasn’t enough. “Give me more, give me all of it.”
“Woman,” he warned.
“Stop being a pussy,” I whispered huskily. “Fill me, wolf, I can take you.”
He swallowed hard, turning me carefully until my leg rested against his shoulder as the other remained on the bed. He touched my flesh, forcing my eyes to where his fingers skimmed over where we were joined. He grew larger, rubbing his knuckles against my clitoris as he watched me closely. By the time he finished planting his knot within me, I was writhing against it, struck with a red-hot need to drain him.
“I should have knotted you the first time I took you,” he growled, smiling as he lowered my leg and adjusted behind me, pulling me against him as he took me over the edge once more, following me there. I lay there, exhausted but in a constant state of hunger as if he couldn’t sate the need to fill me fast enough. “Sleep, you will need it. I have no plans of leaving this pretty swollen flesh until it begs me to.”
“I need more,” I admitted with a blush spreading over my cheeks.
“You’ll get more,” he chuckled. “You won’t leave here until I have sated your needs, my hungry little wolf. Your body craves me, needing what it desires is natural. Your blush is cute, but when you leave this bed, you’ll never blush again. Right now every instinct within you is demanding I breed you, that cunt is aching for it. Your womb is sucking me deeper, drinking me in. It will continue until this first cycle ends. You will be in a constant state of need, and you’ll fuck me until I give you what you want, or it ends.”
“That sounds exhausting,” I muttered, fighting against the urge to uproot myself this time.
“Calm your heart; I have you. I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you.”
I closed my eyes, wondering at the irony of his words. He was the only one who could hurt me—or should have been. The hex had changed that, left me without magic and utterly defenseless against him. This Viking was the one man I’d ever loved, and the only thing I’d ever wanted in my entire lifetime. I’d searched countries, searched out witches who specialized in curses, and yet everyone had told me the same thing. It cannot be undone. Not without giving up everything I was, and even then, they wouldn’t guarantee it would destroy the curse. If what he said was true, and my father was a werewolf, it made sense why my mother hunted them and the Vikings down. It explained the bitterness in which she’d hunted them; using me as a weapon against them was just par for the course. But did it change the curse? Nope. It just added more salt to the wound, since I wanted this life with him.
I wanted him with every piece of my soul. The problem was, I’d twisted it with magic, changing it to erase the curse that marked it, and I was sure of one thing. My mother had given us an out: through my death at his hands, this ended. He could go on, have a family, and live. He just couldn’t do it with me.
Chapter 15
I awoke alone, my body aching with every subtle move I made. I’d been knotted for thirty-six hours, which Braydon had been cocky about letting me know was my fault. He’d been stuck inside of me like some rutting beast, and I’d goaded him on. I’d melted the moment he’d growled while stuck within my body. The noises he made were music to my soul. I’d lifted to his touch, wiggling for more like some bitch in heat.
No longer able to ignore the proof of what I was becoming, he’d held me through the hysterical tears, smoothing my hair away from my face before placing gentle kisses over my brow. His low-rumbled growl set me at ease, and any time I started to become hysterical, all he had to do was make that noise in his chest, and I melted into him.
I fucking hated it. I fucking loved it, and worse yet, I was sure I was craving him already. He’d left the bed without a word the moment he’d been able to. Like he couldn’t put enough distance between us fast enough. I rose from the bed, wincing before grabbing the clothes he’d left me. I was sticky, covered in the sweat of our bodies from the endless fuck-fest we’d just shared. Moving about the room was painful, and the moment I opened the door, I was stopped by a surly guard standing directly in my path. Green eyes slid over the sheer gown I wore, resting at the thin patch of red curls between my legs. Thickly covered tattooed arms folded, a sly smirk on his mouth.
“Welcome to the world, little wolf,” he chuckled.
“I’m a witch,” I said thickly.
“Yeah, and I’m a fucking fairy,” he said huskily, shrugging broad shoulders.
My heart hammered against my chest as panic rose inside of me. He made a sound deep in his chest, and my head tilted slightly, listening to the soothing noise he made. It was wrong, off, not deep enough and not strong enough like Braydon’s. A scream built in my throat while yet another wolf entered, growling to ease the panic that was steadily growing. I opened my mouth to scream, but a deep, soothing noise filled the house as Braydon moved through it, pushing me back into the room before closing the door behind us.
“You’re not leaving the room yet,” he snapped the moment the door closed behind him.
“I stink,” I countered.
“You smell mated,” he countered hoarsely. “You smell like me, your mate. Until you’re fully changed, you’re not safe from them trying to mount you. While I’d kill anyone who tried, I don’t wish to kill my men, Laura.”
“You expect me to stay in this room forever, don’t you?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Like some fucking dirty little secret? I am not some weak-minded wolf who needs guarding. You don’t get to lock me in a room and fuck me when you want to, mutt. I need sunshine, fresh air, and to bathe. I’m covered in sweat and your come.”
“You’re the one who kept demanding more,” he pointed out. “I was fine with the first twenty-four hours being the end; you held me inside of you and wanted more. Y
ou’re changing, and if you expect to live through it, you need to let me help you.”
“What is the point of surviving it if you’re going to go mad and kill me?”
“You don’t love me, right?” he asked with a guarded look in his eyes.
“No, I don’t,” I muttered, but if I was honest with myself, I’d admit that he held me tightly while knotted deep within my core, he had broken down some of the walls I’d built against him in the last fifty years. “It doesn’t change the facts, though, Braydon. The moment I fall in love with you, you will rut me until I am nothing, and you will kill me. I want to see Hope.”
“Hope was freed this morning,” he admitted. “She was spelled to forget you and taken to New Orleans, where her parents are searching for her. She’ll be watched until we reunite her with them, and then the wolves will return here to tell me when it has happened.”
“You freed her? She’s gone?” I asked, hating how alone it made me feel.
“I just said that I did, didn’t I?” he asked softly.
“So now it can end,” I said through trembling lips.
“No, no, it isn’t over for us. Now you become what you were born to be, what the magic within you prevented when it took precedence over your wolf. You will finish changing, and then we shall see if the curse ends.”
It was cute that he believed he would outsmart my mother. He still thought there was some way out of this curse when, in reality, death was the only way. I’d been searching for the cure longer than he’d been alive, and yet it was almost endearing that he thought he could change me into something else and prevent the curse from triggering. I’d tried everything, some things I’d even tried a second time to be sure I hadn’t missed it.
“I assure you, changing me into a horny ass werewolf will not make the curse vanish.”
“Touch your swollen cunt and then tell me it isn’t working. I’m not mad with the need to breed you, am I? I didn’t die last time, Laura.”
“You did, I burned you to ashes and spread them in the sea, Braydon. I sent you where I always do: to sea so you can return home to your wintery fjords which you loved so much. I watched your body burn to ash, which takes days. I stood there, sobbing hysterically while I said goodbye to you.”
“Whispering how sorry you are to have given me this life. You beg Odin and my gods to spare me returning to your poisoned soul. You beg the Valkyries to claim me, your proud warrior lover. You beg Brigid to take me home to my land, to give me the one thing you can never give me. A child to love, a wife who will love me more than the air that fills her lungs, and the love of a woman who can love me without ending my life,” he replied gently. “I know, I know exactly what you say to my gods. I heard you the last time, felt your pain as you screamed to your gods and goddesses that you concede defeat. To allow your soul to go with mine so that we can have whatever resemblance of peace monsters such as we can know in the eternal slumber,” he growled.
My mouth opened and closed several times. “What did you do?” I demanded hesitantly.
“A witch found me and told me she could help us. She was your father’s witch, Laura. Mary’s only purpose is to protect your line, and you are the only one still alive with the royal line running through you. She has been watching and protecting over you while she worked on solving the curse since the day your father died. She found me when she was searching for you, scrying to locate what posed a danger to the woman she intended to save. I was what posed the most danger to you, and so she came for me. She offered me a deal: accept her help or die before I could ever find and hurt you. You are the last remaining heir to the lycan hybrids of Norway. I turned her away, and she cast a spell on me, holding me in a cell until she could explain what would happen.
“Imagine my utter shock when she described the young witch with perky tits, hair the color of the leaves in autumn and burning emerald eyes that I’d dreamt of since my cock stood up as a young boy. I heard her story after that. I listened to what I was destined to do to you in utter horror. I wanted nothing more than to be buried in the naked heat of your flesh, and she promised that I would. That I would wreck it until you couldn’t take anymore, and then you would kill me to survive the monster I became. She told me that if I could withstand what she would do, that if I survived it, I could have you for a little while. She began the curse that would end the berserker once you ended my life. You didn’t murder me that day, littlest witch; you buried the monster that was cursed to wage war against you. I no longer house him, because that part of my soul was sacrificed to remove the curse. I did go mad before you ended that part of me. I even went mad when she brought me back with her magic. I hunted you in the mountains of Washington in my wolf form.
“I sought you with a hunger that burned hotter than it ever had in my human form. I’d been born to be yours, as much as you were to be mine. I am and have always been hybrid. I endured the madness within the wolf, running wild for over a decade. Mary brought me back here, and I began to build an empire fit for a queen. Your people are outside this house, Laura. Those who endured the hardship to find you, to find the rightful hybrid queen who was promised them. I made them that promise and assured them that I would bring her to them. When you accept who you are, we will tell them who you truly are. I am cured, just as you are cured to be able to fuck whoever you want. Mary isn’t some backwoods witch. She is older than you are, sweet girl. She is endless, and she is fucking brilliant. She also is aware of what we have to do to escape this curse your mother placed on us. Only one of us now carries that curse. It isn’t me. I’m not trying to save myself, Laura. I’m trying to save you from your mother. As far as we know, as long as you don’t fall in love with me, you’re safe from triggering it.”
“You’re fucking mad!” I snapped, trying my best to absorb what he had been telling me. “It doesn’t work like that. You can’t mess with a curse and unravel it. You have to find the way out. It has to be played out exactly as it was set. You saved yourself, but what is the cost? You don’t play with magic; magic plays with you. It comes at a cost, Braydon. If you are cured, that means I am already dead. Don’t you get it? My death is the price to undo the curse. My mother would have settled for nothing less. I betrayed her, broke her blackened heart with loving one man who was both things she hated most in this world. There is no way out of this that doesn’t end in my death, of that you can be certain. If what you say is true, then good for you,” I whispered thickly as my throat closed off with emotion. “I’m glad you are freed of it, but I will never be. Not until my death will I be free of my mother.”
“You will die, and you will be reborn as a hybrid wolf, sweet girl. To become a hybrid, you have to die a mortal death. You are mortal, with no magic running through your veins. Your mother assumed you were only witch, never imagining that you were the two things she hated most on this earth. You are the daughter of a Viking, and Queen of the Lycans, Laura. You will die to become like me, forfeiting your life as a witch to evolve into something that can’t be killed. You’re my wife, the woman I have craved since the first moment I clapped eyes on the emerald fire that burned in yours. You just have to survive long enough for me to bring that little wolf to the surface, and she’s coming. You took my knot and held it. You placed your teeth at my throat when I jerked against you, assuming I meant to withdraw it from you. You are more wolf than you think you are. I was born a hybrid, but you, you are forged from an ancient line that predates the first man. You were born with it pumping through your veins, but that magic that runs through you was much stronger than it was. I took your magic, and I awoke the wolf within you. Let it out, Laura. Let your wolf out to play with mine, and see what happens.”
“You are insane, you realize that, right? I was born a witch, and I will die a witch. You think me someone I am not. I thought you knew who I was, Braydon. I thought you knew me inside and out, and yet here you are, thinking I am something I am not.”
&n
bsp; “You were at my throat when you thought I would remove my knot from your tight pussy, woman. That isn’t something a witch would do. You lived through my bite, sweet girl. You took my knot, and yes, I removed it from you, but we expected you to fight me to keep it. Removing it started your change, making your wolf fight to come to the surface. That’s why this time when I jerked against you, you fought me to keep it,” he said as my entire head spun with every word he uttered. “I mated you a second time, and you did fight me to hold it in your body. You growl, and mine soothes and calms you. I’m not insane. This is our way out of your mother’s curse. You can change; you change into the one thing she never planned on you becoming. You become your father’s daughter. Become the one thing that was too strong for your mother to chase after or kill.”
“Based on what, exactly? The fact that you think I can become this hybrid queen? I am the fucking queen, Braydon. I’m the queen to an entire coven who needs me. I need them. You’re asking me to change everything I am and to become something else. Something I don’t even know or understand how to be. That wasn’t the deal. You were supposed to love me for who I am, who I was when you met me. You’re saying you’ve plotted with this witch to change me into something else. You say you didn’t die, but I watched you turn to fucking ashes! I mourned you, and you were what?” I snapped, throwing my arms up into the air. “Out fucking other women or agreeing to marry Moira,” I asked through clenched teeth, hating saying it out loud.
“I saved her from being abused.”
“And yet you abuse me?” I countered coldly. “Get out.”
“No way, little witch. You’re not just turning me down. I have fought for us. I have been forced to stay away from you so that I could be cured of the madness to protect you.”
Wicked Hexes Page 12