Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  I nodded, blinking back tears.

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps they didn’t want you to be sad.”

  I glanced over at Marlowe, who watched us intently. The look on his face told me this wasn’t Albert’s first time acknowledging my mother’s death. Except now he was face-to-face with someone who’d witnessed it firsthand.

  “Do you know what happened?” I asked Albert.

  Marlowe abandoned the cleanup and pulled up a chair. “Tell him. It’s time he knew the details.”

  I wondered if even Marlowe knew the details. Perhaps this was his chance to hear it for himself.

  But Albert had to know. If anything, his mania was probably made worse from not knowing what had happened that night. It was like floating in a foggy void when a loved one’s fate was a mystery, much like I was feeling now about Ashe.

  Closing my eyes for a moment, I had to let the memories come back to the surface, even though I knew they would tear open old wounds that had never quite healed.

  A heavy quiet settled over the bell tower. The wind stopped whistling through the eaves. The owls, crickets, and tree frogs stopped singing. It was as though the whole world waited to hear the story of how the wicked queen had murdered the good queen, except the ending had yet to be written.

  “I was eight years old the night my mother died…”

  Chapter Eight

  Marlowe

  I was beginning to think Ashe was really dead.

  I still hadn't heard a word from the quadruplets I'd sent with him, and it was so unlike them not to check in. If everything was okay, then they'd surely seen the VTV news report declaring Ashe and Elsie Mae dead and would check in anyway. But they hadn't, and they were the best of the best. If Ravana and her minions had taken them out, I might as well have used Wren's scepter to remove my tattoo yesterday.

  Because Wren was losing this war she had started. Even if Ashe were alive, how could she take the crown while trapped down here in the bunker? How could any of us help her if we all had a price on our heads?

  Yet at the same time, I couldn't deny her strength. After she'd recounted her escape with her mom to Albert, their struggle for survival while on the run, and then her painful, emotional description of watching Queen Bronwen be murdered right in front of her. Then how she had held Albert as he wept - for the hundredth time - over his mate’s death while only shedding a few silent tears of her own... Well, it was pretty amazing she didn't appear to carry mental baggage. Like me. Sure, she was broken up over the loss and still affected by her past, but she didn't let it drag her down and defeat her.

  Would Ashe's death? I honestly didn't know. She cared about him a great deal. Charles, too.

  “So.” Charles rubbed his hands together and nodded at Vivian, who stood next to him on the large blue mat in the bunker gym. They were both dressed in workout gear with multi-colored racing stripes on all of it. “What are three ways you can tell someone’s concealing a weapon just by looking at their clothes?”

  He was training her for the Royal Knights while I looked on with my cell in my hand, wireless earbuds in my ears, waiting impatiently for a call and too uneasy to sit down and work. Zac was still on the hunt for Ashe but had turned up nothing so far. In the meantime, I had taken over the job of listening in on Queen Ravana through the chip in her dog’s collar Elsie Mae had planted. So far, she hadn’t said one word about Elsie Mae or Ashe’s supposed hangings. Which was odd. Did she know we were listening in?

  At the moment, I wasn’t focused on any of this, however.

  Wren was blowing off steam in the corner of the gym while beating the shit out of a punching bag and making the chain rattle with each of her blows. Sweat glistened all over her bared skin and clung her black sports bra even tighter to her. I hated the idea of openly ogling her, so I stared at the many reflections of her around the mirrored walls.

  Because that made it so much less creepy.

  But I couldn’t stop. She moved with such grace and power. Like a goddamn queen. I couldn't deny it, at least in the way she carried herself.

  Vivian straightened her pink headband and held up her fingers as she ticked the weapon concealment ways off. “One, any obvious bulges that shouldn’t be there. Two, wearing an oversized jacket or shirt. Three, open jackets in cold weather or closed jackets in warm weather. But the best indicator is their behavior.”

  Charles held out his fist, she bumped it, and then they exploded hands. Even I had to admit that Charles was a good teacher. He knew his shit and presented it clearly.

  “How about Marlowe over there?” Charles pointed at me in the doorway. “Is he concealing any weapons?”

  Vivian turned her gaze toward me and frowned, though on her it looked more like a pout. “I seriously can’t tell. He’s drooped against the doorframe.”

  “Mind being less droopy?” Charles asked, tipping his chin at me.

  I chuckled, and so did Wren, who’d stopped her punching and held the bag still, a curl of humor pulsing through my tattoo. I could feel her emotions almost as plainly as I could feel my own. With my arms hanging loosely by my sides, I straightened and willed my dick not to grow into a noticeable bulge. With Wren around, that was next to impossible though.

  “He’s not armed,” Vivian announced and crossed her arms, obviously proud of herself. “See? I told you I’d be good at this Royal Knights business.”

  “Actually, I told you that,” Charles said with a smug grin.

  Wren caught his eye as she untaped the gloves from her hands. “Guess you made her believe it.”

  He winked. “All in a night’s work, little lady.”

  “Oh shit. Work.” Vivian’s jaw dropped as she stared around the gym in exaggerated horror. “I’m supposed to start tonight at the SFBI Records Department. It’s only part-time clerical stuff, but still. I’m so excited I could seriously scream.”

  “No,” Charles cut in. “Screaming’s not necessary. Just give me five more minutes. I have one more thing I want to show you, and then you can scream far, far away from me.”

  “Five minutes.” She jabbed a finger in his direction, the motion bobbing her curly blonde ponytail around her shoulder. “I’ll seriously hold you to it or else.”

  “Got it.” Charles turned to Wren, who was crossing toward them over the mats, her steps lithe and predatory. “Wren, you’re about to pull a gun on Marlowe.”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “I am?”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” I said. “Usually I don’t get a warning.”

  She curled her finger for me to join them on the mat. I wasn’t dressed for a workout, but I’d play. Anything to distract me from the fact that my phone still hadn’t rung. I stored it in my back pocket and stepped onto the mat.

  “So, plot twist,” Charles began. “Marlowe wasn’t concealing a weapon, but Wren sure was.”

  She drew a finger gun and pointed it at my head. “You feeling lucky, punk?”

  Charles snorted.

  Vivian mock gasped like we were in a weird mishmash of a stage production and I was the masked phantom and Wren played the beautiful sharpshooter.

  A full laugh tripped from my mouth. Of all the ways I expected my day to go, this hadn’t even made the top twenty.

  A soft smile spread across Wren’s mouth. “I don’t think you’ve ever laughed full-out before. I like it.”

  Charles stepped behind Wren, his bare feet slapping the mat. “Okay, so normally the threat doesn’t talk about how much she likes or dislikes your laughter. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of a threat.”

  Wren’s smile grew wider. “Sorry.”

  “Number one rule of Royal Knights training,” Vivian said, wagging her finger at Wren, “is never apologize.”

  “The same could be said for queen training. Accept responsibility and move on.” Wren nodded at Charles. “Nice one.”

  “I do my best.” He shrugged, pressing in behind her and sliding his hand al
ong her outstretched gun arm. “Wren’s wrist here is—no offense—super weak.” He wiggled her wrist back and forth. “Everyone’s is, even vampires’. So the trick is to take advantage of that, especially when someone is pointing a gun at you. Aim for the wrist when you disarm someone. You’ll probably break or snap off their trigger finger while you’re at it. A good thing to shove down their throat later on.”

  Vivian whistled. “Damn.”

  Wren raised her eyebrow at him as he stepped back. “And here I thought I was the violent one.”

  I frowned, unsure what she meant by that. If anything, she had a quiet strength, nothing violent about it.

  “Second rule of Royal Knights training,” Charles said. “Don’t hold back.”

  “Noted.” She flicked those yellow eyes to me, which sparkled with humor. “Please don’t snap off my trigger finger and shove it down my throat. Although on the other hand, I’ll be okay.”

  I grinned. She was just like her dad with the bad puns he’d say when he was lucid. “I’ll do my best.”

  She stared at me for a long moment, as if seeing through my mask and beyond the scars, her smile still written all over her face regardless. I liked when she looked at me like that. It made me feel…real somehow.

  Charles kissed her temple before he stepped back and nodded toward me. “Marlowe here has had SFBI training and probably knows all about the weaknesses of wrists and fingers. Think you can get that gun away from Wren?”

  Should be no problem, given that it wasn’t real. Plus, I’d had years of training in jujitsu and Muay Thai.

  I struck out my hand lightning fast and aimed for her wrist to knock it aside.

  That was the plan anyway. But she came up with her other arm while stepping into me. Suddenly gravity gave out. My feet appeared over my head, and then my back slammed into the mat. Hard. Reflexively, I came to my senses fast and found my target. I whipped out my hand, grasped her lower leg, and yanked. She landed on my lap with her legs spread over my hips.

  Target acquired. She was exactly where my dreams had placed her, only this time, it was no dream.

  She fit snugly against my body, and my head whirled with her nearness. A jolt of heat rushed to my cock, and she had to feel every inch straining against her inner thighs.

  She leaned over, the movement tilting her pelvis even tighter against me. My hips involuntarily rolled up to meet hers, and I ground my teeth together on a groan. Damn. Wren was the perfect mix of raw power and soft femininity.

  She pressed her finger gun to my masked forehead with a grin. “Bang.”

  “Yeah,” Charles said, “just like that, but with less dry humping. You’ll practice the takedown part tomorrow.”

  “Less dry humping,” Vivian said. “Got it.”

  Their voices drifted away toward the exit, talking about the next session, but I could only focus on the woman on top of me. I still didn’t know how I’d ended up on the mat, but it sure didn’t bother me at the moment. She was still leaning over me, providing me with quite an eyeful of her chest almost spilling out the top of her sports bra.

  Her gaze dipped down to my mouth as she sat back on my lap again, a coy smile on her lips. Every nerve inside me reignited all over again. Then she wiggled her hips just slightly, rubbed up against me real slow, deliberately driving me mad with lust.

  And it was working.

  “Wren.” Her name rumbled to every point of my body and echoed back in the hot pulse of my tattoo.

  Charles and Vivian’s voices were no longer audible, so I gripped Wren’s ass to hold her against me as I ground my cock against her. With my other hand, I twisted my fingers through the back of her hair and pulled her down toward me again.

  She hit her hands against the floor on either side of my head before her lips could crash into mine where they belonged. "So you don't hate me."

  "Hate you?" She thought I hated her?

  She rubbed one hand up underneath my T-shirt as her hips moved in time with mine.

  My dick throbbed. Fuck, I wanted her. I slipped both hands down the back of her shorts and groaned at the feel of her smooth flesh, at how round and perfect her ass was.

  "Yes.” She licked her lips as she gazed down at me. “Hate me."

  She sounded like that turned her on, and a part of me wondered if she was asking me to hate her or asking me if I already did. My brain was too scrambled to process much of anything except the feel of her, how close I was to being inside her.

  Hate sex. Lust sex. Fuck, at this point, I was too far gone to care. I needed her naked and screaming right fucking now.

  Somewhere far away, or maybe from my back pocket, a phone rang, pulling me only slightly back to reality.

  "It's mine," Vivian said from the far edge of the gym. “Hello?”

  At the long stretch of silence that followed, Wren climbed off of me, her brows drawn together in concern.

  I tore my gaze away from Wren in time to see Vivian sink to her knees. Her knuckles grew white as she gripped the phone tighter, still listening, and tears tracked down her pale cheeks.

  Alarm streaked through me, and I jumped to my feet to check my own phone. Still no messages.

  "Elsie Mae." When Vivian dropped her phone with a loud clatter, she didn't even seem to notice.

  "What?" Wren strode toward Vivian. "What about her?"

  My gut dropped. I knew before she said another word.

  "She's dead."

  Chapter Nine

  Wren

  Charles was at my side before I even had time to react. I held on to him to keep my knees from buckling. He wrapped his arm around me as though supporting a wounded warrior. I suppose that description fit me well. The wounds kept coming, but as the past few weeks had reminded me, the inner wounds hurt a lot worse than the outer ones.

  All the evidence we had pointed toward Ashe’s death, even though the glow on my tattoo suggested otherwise. I wanted to trust that little beacon of hope, but how could I? It was all still so foreign to me.

  Marlowe led Vivian to a bench and urged her to sit. He sat beside her, hand on her shoulder. Tears poured from her eyes, but I had to give it to her—she was holding it together better than I expected.

  “Okay, tell me who called you,” Marlowe said and handed her a towel that happened to be lying on the bench beside him.

  Wiping her eyes, she whispered, “It was my mother. Our mother.”

  “Ravana?”

  “No! She may have turned us, but she’s no mother. It was our human mother. She’s still alive, lives in a trailer park just outside New Orleans. She said someone delivered Elsie Mae’s body. Just left her lying on the porch. She’d been gutted, her head cut off.” Vivian stood and paced away, then spun around and screamed, “They gutted my sister like a hog and just tossed her head up on the porch! Mama had to scoot it aside to get the door open. And I can’t even go to her because they’ll be watching the property.”

  “I’m so sorry, Vivian.” It sounded completely useless, but I didn’t know what else to say. I wouldn’t blame her if she blamed me for all this.

  She huffed a bitter laugh. “Can you believe that Mama was okay with us getting turned?”

  Charles, Marlowe, and I all looked at each other.

  Arms crossed and fangs extended, Vivian’s eyes flashed red. “Seriously. She said, ‘Girls, this is your chance to get out of here. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you again.’”

  In a blur, she picked up a folded chair and hurled it into the mirrors by the punching bag.

  I flinched as glass shattered and the chair clattered to the floor. Vivian fell to her knees. I crossed toward her, my bare feet grinding the broken glass down to dust, and knelt beside her, resting my hand on her back.

  She pulled her knees to her chest and cried bitterly. “Mama was wrong. Ravana and her thugs have hurt us time and time again.”

  “It’s all my fault. We should have never involved your sister in all this.”

  Lifting her red, wet eyes to me, she s
hook her head. “No. Ravana hurt us long before I knew you, starting with all those false promises. Elsie Mae decided to do what was right. I’m proud of her.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to ask, but Marlowe beat me to it.

  “Did your mother say anything about Ashe?” he asked.

  Vivian shook her head. “Nothing.” Then she stared at the broken mirrors, wide-eyed. “I’m so sorry. I’ll replace them.”

  Marlowe waved off her apology. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Come on. Maybe Marlowe can call the SFBI Records Department and tell them you’ve had a family emergency.” Charles offered his hand. “I’ll take you to your room.”

  Vivian wiped her eyes once more before she let him help her up. A tiny wave of jealousy mixed with distrust rippled through me. But there was no desire in his eyes, only empathy and fatherly protection. He’d be a good dad, I thought, should we ever get to the point that I felt safe bringing an heir into this world. That possibility seemed about a million light-years away.

  Their footsteps echoed down the corridor and faded to silence, leaving Marlowe and me alone in the gym. I sat there on the floor while emotions raged through me like white-water rapids. I didn’t know whether to grieve or scream or pummel the stuffing out of a punching bag. I should have run the other way the night Zac found me and opened this fucking can of worms. But if I gave up now, Ravana would continue killing and ruining people’s lives until she was so powerful no one could touch her.

  That is, if she wasn’t already.

  One thing was for certain—I couldn’t stop her alone. That meant I had to have as many mates at my side as I could. Loyal mates who wanted to be with me despite the cost. The only one I knew I could count on now was Charles. Ashe’s fate was unknown. I still had two mates I hadn’t even found yet. That left the problem sitting in front of me on the bench.

  Marlowe watched me with an unreadable expression as I sorted through my thoughts enough to come up with something to say.

  “Your mask isn’t there just to hide your scars, is it?” I asked.

  He wrinkled his brow. “I’m not sure what you mean.”