Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  Finally, I popped up into the pouring rain and smacked into a concrete pier. It jarred my senses. Vertigo spun the world, but I dug my nails into the solid surface of the pier and focused on the intermittent flashes in the clouds.

  Someone called out from above. Or were my ears playing tricks on me? The roar of the river was near deafening.

  “Queen Wren! Up here! Grab my hand!” I looked up to find Vincent, one of the Royal Knights, hanging above me from a rope and grappling hook. His boots were dug into the pier, the rope wrapped around one hand, while the other reached down for me.

  In the river to my right, Charles smacked into another pier. I couldn’t tell if he was conscious or not as the waves battered him against the concrete.

  “Get Charles!” I yelled up to Vincent.

  “No, you first!”

  As queen, they’d always go for me first. Arguing was a waste of time. The sooner they got me, the quicker they could get the others. I reached up and grabbed his hand. He yanked me out of the water so hard that I hung suspended in the air for a moment before he caught me with a strong arm around my waist. Above us, Vivian helped pull the rope as we both dug in our boots and climbed up the pier, over the barrier, and then the rail.

  Vivian held my hands as I climbed over the railing and onto the road. I coughed out the water that had forced its way into my lungs, gagging from the rotten fish taste.

  “Oh my gosh, are you okay?” Vivian was as wet as I was just from standing in the pouring rain. She wiped hair from her eyes.

  “I’m fine.” Except for all the parts of me that weren’t. But at least I was still standing. “Thank you.”

  “That’s my first rescue!” she said excitedly, rubbing her hands together as she bounced on the balls of her feet.

  “You did great.” I tried to sound encouraging but couldn’t bask in the glory of having Knights come to my rescue just yet.

  My mates were down there somewhere. Had I gotten Ashe back just to lose them all at once? Another of my Knights swung down the other pier and reached Charles. Vincent joined yet another Knight at the river’s edge. They blurred downstream. Vincent tied the rope to his partner’s waist and held on as the other Knight made a running leap and landed smack in the middle of the river. He emerged with Zac and Ashe, one under each arm.

  “Where’s Marlowe?” I limped to the other side of the bridge. Water still sloshed in my ears. Every damn thing hurt, so much that I couldn’t tell what was broken and what was sprained. My left ankle I was pretty sure would never be right again. It had swelled to the size of a grapefruit and turned numb. My wrist too. I couldn’t even feel the constant buzz from my tattoo - not even from the new fourth section I’d felt as we’d piled into the van like zombies.

  Squinting, I could just make out a man’s outline clinging to the limbs of a fallen tree on the opposite side of the river from Vincent. He struggled to pull himself along the tree to the shore. It looked like Marlowe. That had to be him. He was the only mate not accounted for yet.

  But then again, our kidnapper could be down there too. He could drown for all I cared. Or she. Whatever. I had to help Marlowe.

  I limped as fast as I could to the end of the bridge, with Vivian on my heels.

  She screamed, “Wren, watch—”

  I spun around to see her crumple to the ground. A dark-skinned man in tight black clothes stood over her. His eyes flashed with the kind of malice I saw in those who thought they could kill me. They were a deep red color, like old blood or vintage wine.

  “If she’s dead, you’re right behind her.” I crouched, baring fangs, suddenly aware that I was hardly dressed for battle. The Florida Gators T-shirt I’d thrown on after getting out of bed with Marlowe clung to me, barely covering my sopping wet panties. Not the good kind of wet either. In fact, something wiggled back there. I pulled the hem away from my skin.. A little fish fell out and flopped around my bare feet.

  “Well, that was embarrassing,” I mumbled.

  The dark guy’s eyes followed the fish for half a second too long. I sprang at him and threw an uppercut to his chin. He stumbled back, but just as fast, he kicked my legs out from under me. He caught me just before I hit the ground and then had me in a headlock against his chest.

  Lightning flashed in the clouds right over our heads. The glow reflected off a silver blade a second before its tip poked painfully between my ribs.

  “Don’t fucking move, or you’re dead,” he growled, pulling me back to the road, where the headlights of a vehicle sped toward us. “All it takes is one little push, and this blade goes right through your heart.”

  On the bridge, Vivian got to all fours, then staggered to her feet. Vincent and the two other Knights—I’d have to remember their names at some point—weren’t far behind. Ashe, Charles, Marlowe, and Zac were right behind them, stumbling along like a scene from The Walking Dead. I closed my eyes briefly, relieved they were still alive.

  I gripped my captor’s arm with both hands, partly to keep him from choking me and partly to keep the weight off my ankle. Blue light flashed from the tattoo on my swollen wrist. I turned it over just enough to see it fully without showing it to the asshole who’d ruined a perfectly good afterglow.

  Sure enough, a fourth section of the star pulsed with a soft blue light.

  Though I could barely feel it through the numbness, I knew exactly what it meant. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Keep quiet,” he said, tightening his hold.

  Vincent wiped rain from his eyes as he approached. His shocked gaze locked on my captor. “Hawk? What the hell are you doing?”

  “Me? What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m protecting the queen, like you damn well should be.”

  The asshole—or Hawk, I guess—laughed and dug the blade a little deeper in my skin. “You think this skinny wet rat is a queen? And the rest of them? They’re playing you and fucking up everything I’ve worked for.”

  “They’re not playing you or me or anyone. She’s Bronwen’s daughter,” Vincent insisted. “She’s been in hiding until recently. These guys are her mates. Well, three of them are.”

  “You’re stupider than I thought,” Hawk growled. “Desperate for affirmation from doing noble deeds just like Pop. And he’s dead just like the queen.”

  “So says the killer for hire,” Vincent bit out.

  “Listen to him,” I whispered. “You know he’s right.”

  “Shut up!” Hawk snapped.

  “Do not talk to her like that.” Charles’s eyes flashed deadly as he lunged, but the Knights held him back.

  “Put the knife down,” Marlowe shouted, straining to get to me as the Knights blocked him. I couldn’t help getting a little turned on from my mates’ protectiveness. It was sexy as fuck.

  “Let her go,” Ashe said, also blocked.

  The Knights were too good at protection.

  “She’s coming with me,” Hawk hissed. “If she’s who you claim to be, then she’ll be happy to answer some questions. Like why she’s fucking up my hits.”

  “You feel it, don’t you? Look at your wrist, Hawk.” I half hoped I was wrong so we could just kill him and get on with life. This trend of mates kidnapping me was like a marathon of bad reruns.

  “I said, shut up,” he grumbled, but then he twisted the arm he held me with and glanced down at his wrist. “What did you do to me?”

  I doubted the others could hear us over the river’s roar and pouring rain.

  Vivian winced, but managed to sound fierce as she screamed at him, “This is your last chance. Let the queen go or die where you stand.” Blood trickled from her temple. He must have knocked her out earlier.

  “No!” I said, waving them off as a car braked to a stop just behind us. “I’ll go with him. He’s not going to hurt me. Go back to the bunker.”

  “How do you know that?” Charles said, his voice so pained I could feel it in my tattoo.

  Marlowe clenched his fists. “Don’t do this, Wren. We c
an take him down.”

  Zac stood silent, his hard, cold stare focused on the ground.

  “Listen to me, all of you. Stay back!” I tried to convey what I meant with my eyes when I looked at Marlowe, but I couldn’t tell if he picked up on it.

  The panic in my mates’ eyes clawed at my instincts. Every muscle twitched, begging me to attack. But I couldn’t, for all our sakes. The way he held the knife, his lightning-fast moves, and extremely pissed-off attitude meant he wouldn’t hesitate to end me if I gave him an excuse. He dragged me backwards—to a beat-up gray Camry of all things—and shoved me into the back seat.

  Hawk jumped in beside me. The driver, a man wearing a ski mask, threw the car in reverse and spun tires as we sped backwards. He cut a sharp U-turn which tossed me right against Hawk, before speeding off down the dark, deserted highway.

  Chapter Two

  Hawk

  The Archduke of Devastation III and I sat at the top of the clock tower glaring at the pain in my ass on the couch across from us. One of many pains in my ass. The others, we'd left behind, so it would be up to her to drill into them just how important it was for all of them to stay the fuck out of my way.

  If we survived that long.

  "This place is too incredible. That view…" She shook her head at Timberlake’s view outside the glass and through the minute and hour hands marking the time. Four fifteen in the morning. Three more clocks just like that one crowded the rest of the wall space surrounding my living room and kitchen area.

  All of them ticked down to the other reason why I’d brought her here.

  I leaned forward on my knees, my hands balled into fists. "Stop. Avoiding. My. Question."

  She flicked her yellow gaze back to me, her expression hard, fierce. This pain in my ass had nuts since I was about twice her size, and she wasn’t recoiling in terror.

  "Pretty sure I already answered it,” she snapped. “You asked who I was working for, and I answered no one. I work for me. End of discussion."

  She'd folded the towel I'd thrown at her head when we'd arrived so she could cover her bare thighs and the part of her Gators shirt that clung to her breasts.

  No bra. Her jutting nipples were damaging my calm, more than it already was.

  The Archduke of Devastation III—or between him and me, just Duke—flicked his furry orange tail, likely as annoyed as I was. Smarter than most humans and vampires combined, he'd made it back to our home base before I had.

  I spread my arm along the back of the couch, and Wren mirrored me on the back of hers. "You and your crew back there—"

  "My mates."

  "You keep getting in my way. That stops. Right fucking now."

  "Getting in the way of what? We're just trying to survive, hopping from one place to the next and making it there by the skin of our fangs. Getting kidnapped.” She gave me a pointed look. “Repeatedly. Frankly, it’s getting real fucking old.”

  "Why?"

  She waved her hand through the air. “Well, ask yourself that.”

  “Why are you running?” My voice was normally gravelly and harsh, but with her, it sounded like I was snapping and snarling. Like I was on the defense when I’d always been on the offense. Probably because we were running out of time. And because of the headache slamming the insides of my skull.

  She lifted her shirt a little and flapped it to air dry it, giving me a glimpse of her toned stomach and smooth, pale skin underneath. "The queen wants us dead. She won't stop hunting us until it's done."

  “So finish her first."

  Vague surprise flickered over her petite features. "Bold words for yet another kidnapper. You think I haven't thought of that?"

  I grunted. "I don't care what you think. Hole up somewhere with your mates or go cut the bitch down. Just stay out of my way."

  "You keep saying that, but I haven't even seen you before. When were we in your way?” Her shirt snapped down again, hugging every curve of her chest even tighter. My new tattoo beat a steady throb to my dick. The mark of a mate. The mark that signaled devastation.

  Time ticked toward it, the same hammering beat as the one inside my head.

  "One job right after the other,” I said. “If I can't do my job, I don’t get paid. If I don't get paid, I get cranky."

  "You don't say," she deadpanned. "I would've never guessed that about you."

  Duke yawned. Sarcasm always put him to sleep.

  Wren narrowed her eyes and tapped her fingers along the back of the couch. "What kind of work are you in?"

  "The paying kind."

  "More specifically?"

  Well, if I told her, maybe she really would stay the fuck away. On the other hand, I'd never told anyone what I did for a living, not even Grandpa. My services were only found on the dark web or through word from anonymous mouths, and in sixty-three years, I'd never been caught. Could I trust her?

  “She’s dangerous,” Grandpa had rasped.

  But I was dangerous, too, and I could be trusted. Mostly.

  The clocks’ rhythm and my headache matched the pulse of my tattoo, bringing us closer to the predicted time, and I was just sitting here with my dick out. Caught unaware. No wonder I felt like she’d trapped me into a corner.

  She tipped her chin up. "You're trying to decide if you can trust me or not, aren't you?"

  "I don't go around telling everyone my business," I growled.

  "I understand. Believe me, I do." She pointed at my arm. "I see you got a new tattoo that's just like mine." She held her wrist up so I could see. "I hate to break it to you, but you're my mate. Which means you can trust me. If you ignore it, it won't go away, but if you want it removed, you're still going to have to trust me."

  "I know what the tattoo means."

  "And?"

  Fuck it. I’d stewed over it too long anyway. "I'm an assassin."

  She froze. "Oh. I was expecting…football player? You’re huge. No offense.” She shook her head, flustered. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

  “I’m lighter on my feet than I look. Few hear or see me coming until it’s too late.” I waved toward her. “I think I proved that with you tonight.”

  “Hmm.” She nodded. “So were you trying to kill the queen, and we got in your way?”

  "Not the queen."

  "Then who? I'm afraid you're going to have to narrow it down some since there have been quite a few deaths lately." Her voice cracked some, but she tried to hide it by clearing her throat.

  I knew why too. I'd been listening in to their conversations in the bunker through Duke's microphone dangling off his neck hidden inside one of Grandpa’s old glass eyes. Or…had been hanging off his neck. He must've scratched it off and batted it underneath one of the couches with the hundreds of others. If our cleaning lady ever looked underneath there… Well, we’d probably need a new cleaning lady.

  "I'm sure you know Devin, one of your mom's former mates?" I asked.

  Her eyes widened into saucers. "You."

  Sighing, I sat back and waited for her to put the pieces together herself. Duke hopped down from the couch and trotted toward the kitchen, done with the both of us, apparently.

  Wren leaned forward, her knees bumping the glass and chrome coffee table between us. "Jessica hired you to kill Devin. You stabbed Ashe when he showed up to kill Devin himself."

  "I’d just barely completed the job before Ashe showed up. I had to distract him to slip back out undetected, so I hid behind the curtains and"—I shrugged—"slowed him down a little."

  "He'll be so thrilled when he finds out it was you who stabbed him." She scoffed. From this angle, the city lights threw patterns across one side of her face like she’d dipped half of herself in shimmering paint that left her almost translucent. Barely there, like time was slowly sucking her away. "Who else? You said we kept getting in the way of your jobs."

  “Well, let’s see.” I ticked the numbers off on my fingers. “There was the bar fight in Faymont. The bombs at the concert in Nashville, and you and th
e damn witch at the lake house in New Orleans.”

  “Doreen,” she said. “That’s why you kidnapped her too.”

  And she got away by somehow freeing herself from the effects of Devil’s Breath. Fuck.

  “Too many distractions cause chaos,” I gritted out. “Chaos does not equal a clean kill. Devin was the last job I actually completed, so you and your mates getting in my way ends today."

  I stood, towering over her. Normal vampires would be pissing themselves right about now, but not her. Her gaze followed the broad lines of my shoulders, over my naked chest, and down to the trail of dark hair that led below my belt. Her obvious appreciation dipped to my obvious appreciation, which pressed painfully against my pants.

  "It wasn't intentional." She smiled, a cat-like one full of wicked intent. “I don’t care that you’re an assassin, by the way. I kill people, too, and I’m not done killing.”

  “Neither am I.” I glanced over and frowned at Duke sitting on top of the kitchen island and staring at me expectantly. Better to take care of him now before he wailed me the song of his people. I moved toward him, looking up the narrow spiral staircase that led to the loft where Grandpa…slept. I supposed that was the easiest way to put it.

  "Wow, you really do move silently," Wren said from behind me.

  "Practice," I grunted.

  "It's impressive.” Her gaze prickled along my back. “So maybe we can compare schedules or something so we don’t get in your way again. Sound good? And you can let me go now?”

  I opened the refrigerator to block her roaming gaze and my body’s throbbing reaction to it. And to get Duke's food.

  He wound around my ankles and head-butted my legs a few times.

  "Hey," I whispered, "we do this lovey-dovey shit when no one's around, remember?”

  He sat back and gave me the stink eye, which pretty much settled that. I'd met him on a rooftop while I'd been trying to get a lock on an elusive target. Since I'd been level with the roof, he'd sprawled out on my back, and when he wasn't dozing, he hunted an impressive number of mice and brought me their skeletons picked clean as gifts. I stayed on the rooftop for three and a half nights, and once the job was finally done, we went our separate ways. Or so I thought. That was twelve years ago.