I turned to Mom. “Wait, back up for just a minute. You didn’t know about my mates until I told you?”
She shook her head, a look of resignation filling her eyes. “No, Itzel.”
“Then that’s not what you were going to tell me.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
She sighed and took my hands. “First, I want to tell you this, Itzel. I love you and your sister more than anything in this world or the next. Don’t ever doubt that.”
“Okay…”
“How much do you know about the ocelot amulet?”
“More than enough,” I said. “It’s basically a love potion.”
I stopped there, not telling her what I knew beyond that. She already knew our father had murdered her. She didn’t need to know that after that, he’d started using the amulet to make young women fall disgustingly in love with him against their will.
“And how much do you know about a True Mate bond?” Mom asked.
“I know our father wasn’t your True Mate,” I said, shifting uncomfortably. “And I’m assuming he used the ocelot amulet on you to make you fall in love with him.”
She nodded. “It’s hard to describe what it does as anything other than love. But it’s not the same love as when you meet someone, get to know them, and truly love who they are as a person. What the amulet does is create the same chemical response in your body that you get from falling in love. It creates an instant bond, the high of falling in love. But it can’t force you to truly love the person inside the one you’ve been bonded with.”
“You didn’t love our father?”
“I certainly believed I did,” she said. “It’s powerful magic, Itzel. Dangerous magic. But what I was… The High Priestess… That magic had similar properties. It manifests in each High Priestess differently, but one thing is a constant. Men didn’t fall in love with me instantly, but they were powerfully drawn to me. That included your father. When he saw his chance to claim that for himself, he took it.”
“He made you fall in love with him.”
“I truly believed that he loved me,” she said. “But magic is not an exact science. Just as it manifests differently in its host, so it affects people differently.”
“Like making them lose their mind and murder you?” I asked bitterly.
“This isn’t easy for me to tell my daughter,” she said. “And it won’t be easy for you to hear. Do you want me to continue?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. If I somehow got back to the human world, if I was truly going to be the one in power, I would be in charge of sentencing my father. I needed to know his crimes.
“The magic I had is the magic of creation. In a large part, it is sexual in nature. It is both released and strengthened by the female orgasm.”
“That’s pretty personal information, Mom.”
She smiled. “I know. I told you it’s not a conversation that I wanted to have when you were younger. I always thought I’d have time to tell you when you grew older. And now I suppose you have.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, what then? You got more powerful than him, and he was pissed?”
“Oh, I was always more powerful than him. We were both shifters, but I was so much more. It didn’t threaten him… At first. But then, yes, he grew threatened, not by me but by the interest men took in me. I spent so much of my day reassuring him, and my nights satisfying him to prove that I was interested in only him. It was exhausting, but he was inexhaustible. And the more he wanted, the stronger my magic became. Eventually, it was too much for the two of us to handle.”
“So… What then? He killed you?”
“I had an affair.”
“Oh,” I said, drawing back. “That’s not what I was expecting.”
“It’s a shameful thing to admit,” she said. “The magic had taken over our lives. It was making us both sick in different ways. Your father was dangerously obsessed, so much so that he couldn’t stay away from me. But the more we were together, the stronger it grew. I couldn’t contain it, and the more I released into him, the worse he became. The only thing grounding me was your sister, and your father was jealous of even her.”
“How old was she?”
“Just a year or so,” Mom said, smiling as she stared out into the distance. “We’d left her with a nanny at home and flown to a conference of the ICFN in the Tiger Empire. That’s where I met him.”
I swallowed, my head spinning at the mention of the place where I’d been attacked.
“A tiger?” I whispered.
She shook her head. “No, he was a god.”
“A god?”
“A snow leopard,” she said. “They’re the children of gods. He was… Oh, he was magnificent. I’d felt the effects of my own magic, but nothing like this. This… Itzel, it was the most devastating thing I’d ever experienced. Because he wasn’t just a demigod. He was my god. The entire world shifted when we met. It wasn’t just my magic that claimed him. It was my soul.”
“Your True Mate?” I breathed. It was too terrible to imagine. Lord Balam had been married when his wife met her True Mate, and she’d left him. I’d never considered what would happen if a married woman met her True Mate and couldn’t leave.
Mom nodded, her lips tight. “I wish I could say I was stronger than my animal instincts, but there was no conscious decision. We had to be together as much as the moon must rise each night, as the sun must take its place in the morning. I would never have hurt my husband that way if I could have thought it through, resisted it. But the mate bond is not rational. It defies logic. It’s a law of nature in itself.”
“But if Camila was just a baby, then he didn’t kill you then,” I said. “Did it take him ten years to find out?”
She shook her head. “No. I went to him while we were still abroad, told him that I had found my True Mate. There’s an unspoken law among shifters to honor that above all else. But King Ocelot refused to let me out of our marriage.”
“You couldn’t get that decision overturned or something?” I asked. “Isn’t there someone you could appeal to?”
“He’s a king,” she said, giving me a sympathetic smile. “I came from nothing. Perhaps I could have gone to the ICFN. Perhaps I could have stayed, remaining legally married to him while I made a life with my mate. But there was one person whose happiness meant more to me than my own.”
“Camila,” I said, my throat tight. “You went back for Camila.”
Mom nodded. “I’d have done the same for you. I couldn’t leave her without a goodbye, and I knew that if I stayed, your father would never let me see her again. I couldn’t give up my daughter, not even for the one love I’d ever be allowed. Because once I met him, once I knew how that felt, I knew that I’d never felt that way about your father, and I never would. I couldn’t. You can’t love anyone the way you love a True Mate.”
I felt simultaneously guilty and left out. I had two True Mates—maybe four—and I didn’t get to feel for them the way they apparently felt for me.
But it didn’t matter, did it? Because I was dead. Their one and only chance at true love was already over.
“What happened?”
“I snuck away to be with my mate every chance I could get. We had those two weeks. That one conference. I knew I couldn’t stay, but I couldn’t stop myself from going to him. He managed my magic so well. Just having someone to help me contain it, someone else to take on some of the burden. The day we left was one of the worst days of my life. And when I got home, I found out that he’d been killed in a random attack as he was leaving the conference.”
She paused and reached for her teacup.
“That’s an awfully big coincidence,” I said slowly. “Or… Not a coincidence at all.”
It had my father written all over it. He’d probably sent one of his guards or hired a hitman. He did that kind of thing all the time. If there was one thing my father knew how to do, it was to dispose of his enemies.
“We’d already lef
t,” she said. “So there was nothing pointing to us as responsible. But I knew. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. It changed me, though. I sank into despair, not caring about anything. I was your father’s pawn. I let him have whatever he wanted. I didn’t think I’d ever come out of it.”
“Mom, I’m so sorry,” I said, hugging her hard. I wished I could tell my mates how sorry I was that I’d done this to them, widowed their souls.
Mom hugged me back with equal strength. “And then a miracle happened,” she whispered into my hair.
“He came back?” I asked, pulling away, wondering if this story had more purpose than to tell me what my father had done. Was this a lesson that would lead me back to my mates?
“No,” Mom said with a small smile, cupping my cheek in her palm. “You came.”
“The second child of a pair of shifters,” I thought aloud. It made so much more sense. No shifters had a second child. It was almost unheard of in our country. No one wanted a common human child who couldn’t attend their parties or inherit their titles or property. Not to mention that it made the parents look impulsive and irresponsible, like they couldn’t control themselves.
Tears pooled in my mother’s eyes. “I’m sorry I never told you, Itzel. You were a child, and King Ocelot was the only father you’d ever have or know. I thought I’d tell you when you came of age, but I never got the chance.”
“That’s what you meant about telling me who I am,” I said. “I’m not Camila’s sister. I’m not a princess at all, am I?”
“She’s your half-sister,” she said. “You don’t have to have royal blood, Itzel. You’re the child of an ocelot and an elusive snow leopard, a High Priestess and a demigod. You have incredible power inside you, my daughter.”
“Is he here?” I asked, standing. “I want to meet him.”
She nodded. “There was one silver lining to my death. It joined me back with my mate, and although I would have given anything to go back and raise my girls as I’d always planned, he made death bearable. I know that sounds ludicrous, but it’s something that only a True Mate could offer.”
“Let’s walk,” I said, too restless to sit with all the new information crammed into my brain. “Tell me the rest. I want to know everything. Even the ugly parts.”
She rose, and we left the gazebo and began to walk along a winding stone path through the soft green grass. “When we got home, your father locked me up in the castle,” she said. “I told him you were his, and I think he believed me. His pride wouldn’t let him believe anything else. But he never trusted me again. He liked us to have the appearance of being happily married, but I was a prisoner in my home. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without guards escorting me or waiting outside my door. He wanted to know my every move. And then he began to get suspicious of the guards. He’d have one killed because he imagined he was looking at me the wrong way.
“My magic took a while to build up to what it had been before,” she said. “But eventually, it built up again. Your father didn’t want to share that with anyone. At that time, the Panther Nation was being ripped apart by storms and floods. Some panther leaders came to visit the castle, asking if their people could seek asylum in our nation. When I dared to take their side against our king, he flew into a rage. He accused me of an affair with the panther chief even though we only saw the panthers every few years, and he killed their chief and seized all of their diplomats.”
“Oh my god,” I said, my mind racing. “Did he start a war?” Of course I knew my father hated the panthers, and I knew other Feline Nations hated us. Sure, we were seen as isolationists who wouldn’t help other nations in need, but I hadn’t realized we’d done something as extreme as murder their leaders. Until I met Shadow, I’d never heard anything but my father’s side of the story. As the saying went, history was written by the victors.
“No,” Mom said, shaking her head. “You would remember a war. Without their leaders, and with hundreds of their people dying every day, the Panther Nation couldn’t retaliate. Their people probably didn’t realize what had happened at first. When you’re fighting for survival, and every moment is life or death, you pay little attention to political maneuverings. I’m sure some diplomats had remained, and they probably contacted your father. I don’t know what he told them. It was too late for the visiting dignitaries, and too late for most of their people.”
“You couldn’t get them out?”
She shook her head. “He threw me into a cell under the castle that night, and I never saw them again. He told me a few days later that he’d had them all executed as invaders of our nation. As for me, he said the only way to keep my magic in check was to isolate me so that I would never see anyone but him again. I begged to see you girls, but he refused. He was maddened with jealousy and the magic. He brought in sorcerers to siphon off my magic, telling me that he’d protect you girls only if I cooperated.”
“And he killed you anyway?” I asked as we reached the top of the slope and a small house with a pointed bamboo roof appeared.
“Maybe we should stop here,” Mom said. “The rest is… Maybe unsuitable for my daughter to hear.”
“I want to hear it,” I insisted, grabbing her hand. “I want to know. I need to know, if I’m going to take his place one day. Tell me.”
Mom hesitated before giving a reluctant nod. “He would force himself on me each day, at first just once and then with increasing frequency until he barely left my room. And then one day he got carried away, as shifters do on occasion, and he bit me. But he didn’t stop at that, like a typical love bite.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, wracked with shudders. “He’s the one who did that to you? He told us panther rebels ate your body.”
Mom shook her head. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not something you want to know.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, taking a deep breath to steady myself. “I’m glad I know exactly what kind of monster I’ll be up against.”
“And you will,” Mom said, placing her hands on my shoulders and staring straight into my eyes. “You will go back, Itzel. One way or another, it’ll happen.”
“Thank you,” I said, emotion choking off my throat. I took her hands in mine and squeezed, a smile inching onto my face. “I’m ready.”
“Are you ready to meet Tsewang?” she asked, searching my face. “He’s dying to meet you.”
“Dying?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Really, Mom?”
“An unfortunate word choice,” she admitted.
I squared my shoulders and stood up straight. I was going to meet my father for the first time. I hadn’t even gotten used to the fact that the man I’d always known as my father wasn’t the man who had given me life. Somehow, I was ready anyway. Maybe it was the fact that I’d always felt a bond with mother and a distance between me and King Ocelot. There had always been a very clear divide. Camila was our father’s daughter, and I was my mother’s. We even looked like them. Camila had Father’s pale hair and fair complexion, while I had Mom’s unruly hair and dark complexion. And while I had never questioned whether I was his daughter, I found myself less surprised than one might expect when I found out I wasn’t.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m ready, but this might be my only chance. If I get an opportunity to go back and save my country from King Ocelot’s reign, I’m going to take it. And if anyone knows how to get me back to the human world, it’s probably a god.”
Four
Sir Kenosi
Entrepreneur, Cheetah Nation
“We should find Shah Tiger,” I said, pacing back and forth next to the body of the murdered princess. “He might have surgeons, healers, something. At least we can put the body somewhere cleaner than the dirt.”
“No,” Shadow rasped in that voice that didn’t match his boyish face. “We don’t know who attacked. It could be them.”
“It’s not,” I growled, turning on my heel. “The shah can be a bit eccentric, but he’s not a ruth
less killer. He was generous with his aid when my people needed it. He would not murder someone in cold blood.”
“You’re not an ocelot royal,” Shadow pointed out. “You’re a cheetah peasant.”
“Peasant?” I asked, turning on him with a scoff. “I could buy your entire clan and the swamp they live in.”
“And you’d still bleed red like the rest of us,” Shadow rasped, sitting on the ground next to the princess, his legs folded and his head bent forward so his hair covered his face. “You can be knighted and earn a thousand titles, buy your country house by house, but your blood will never be gilded like royalty.”
“I thought you didn’t care about that kind of thing,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the panther. I was fairly certain he was, as he put it, a peasant, too. And he’d stayed that way while I’d become a Sir, while I’d bought up enough land for my entire clan, gained worldwide notoriety, and fucked my way through every tight pussy in Africa.
“I don’t care,” Shadow growled. “But other shifters do. The shah might give charity to a nation that poses no threat to his, but he’s still a king.”
“The miniscule Ocelot Nation doesn’t pose a threat to him. The Tiger Empire is the most prosperous feline nation in the world.”
“You don’t know what their relations are.”
I knew enough to know that Shadow was right. It could have been a political move that left our mate dead on the ground. The Tiger Nation had given aid to the persecuted cheetahs in our clan, had given us food, supplies, even books. I owed Shah Tiger my life as well as the empire I’d built from knowledge gleaned by reading those books. Their king could be a bit depraved if his sexual tastes were any indication, but he had a good heart behind that stiff cock. I hoped so, anyway. I’d modeled half my life after his example—take what you can and enjoy the fuck out of it every step of the way.
But what if I’d been wrong? I’d never questioned my choices. Fame, riches, adoration followed me everywhere I went. Paparazzi followed me around the city, flashbulbs going off when I walked by. The most coveted designers sent me their wares in the hopes that I would sport them in public. Women from all over the world spread their thighs, took pictures, and sent messages begging for the chance to be pounded into the bed by the famous Sir Kenosi. And I was more than happy to fulfill their every desire.
Hunted Princess: A Paranormal Dark Romance (Feline Royals Book 3) Page 3