by N. D. Jones
“He didn’t tell me where he’d run off to, but I think Alarick knows. Zev claims he lost his phone.”
“You sound like you don’t believe him.”
“I’m not saying he lied but … Okay, yeah, I think he lied. If not an outright lie, he’s definitely keeping something from me.”
“Maybe your brother has a secret girlfriend.”
“No, that’s Alarick’s thing. I have no idea why he and Solange are acting as if they aren’t doing more than having no-strings sex.” Crossing the small divide between them, Marrok kissed his daughter’s forehead then his mate’s lips. “Hmm, you taste good.”
“So do you.”
Marrok pulled back, when he felt Oriana deepening the kiss. They hadn’t made love since her battle with the witches. She claimed she was “feeling better,” while Marrok argued they should “take it slow.” While Oriana did seem mostly back to normal, her ordeal hadn’t only been physical.
“Stop looking at me like that. I told you, I’m fine.”
“I know what you said. I also know what I see.”
Oriana rolled off the bed. Her black, strapless tie front dress was a temptation as well as a reminder of where she had to go when she should be sleeping next to him.
Careful not to awaken Keira, Oriana picked up their daughter, carrying her through the door to the room that adjoined theirs. When she returned, Oriana sat beside him on the bed instead of rejoining him in it.
Marrok sat up, naked except for a pair of navy sweatpants. “It’s not good for you to keep your feelings bottled inside. Talk to me.” Sliding his hand over top of hers, he gentled his voice even more. “Please, talk to me.”
Oriana lowered her head. He hoped she would open up to him, that she would accept his comfort. For Marrok, loving and supporting his family was what it meant to be Cyrus of Steelcross. He had no desire to rule, to have billions of people’s lives impacted by his actions. He had tried, especially when Oriana had spent days in bed, to be the kind of co-ruler he thought she wanted him to be.
But on their wedding night she had told him, “Cyrus of Steelcross is a title with no ascribed meaning, Marrok. … Define it as you will.”
Before and after their marriage, Marrok had watched Oriana struggle to balance the expectations of her witch sisters with the moral weight of what it would mean for her to turn a blind eye to the systematic oppression of werewolves. To fully embrace equity and equality, she risked upending a thousand-plus-year-old system that had made Earth Rift a force to be reckoned with in their solar system. That level of responsibility, of grief and guilt, wasn’t an experience anyone who hadn’t lived it could understand.
“I do what I must.” She lifted her head, eyes shiny but tears held at bay. “They died for their beliefs while I killed to uphold the law. What makes it all so much worse is that, when it comes to our daughter and my own beliefs, I am willing to break the law I’m sworn to obey and enforce.”
Yeah, this wouldn’t do. Marrok grabbed Oriana’s shoulders, shaking her a little to make sure he had her attention. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s bullshit. You can’t compare what they did with your wanting to spare Keira the pain of a so-called healer shoving a needle full of liquid steel into her arms. Your convictions won’t hurt anyone. Those Crimson Guards and the others released over a thousand muracos, knowing innocents would die. It’s one thing to fight for your beliefs, to oppose the government’s unjust systems, but it’s something entirely different to deliberately hurt people in your zeal, to deliberately ruin lives to make a political statement.”
“But—”
“No, Oriana. I won’t sit here and listen to you beat yourself up about taking steps to give werewolves a modicum of dignity and respect. You aren’t the matriarch only of witches.”
“But you were the one who told me to go slow to go fast.”
Relaxing his hold on his mate, Marrok kept his hands where they were, thumbs stroking the points of her shoulders. “Yeah, and I still believe that to be the best strategy. But that doesn’t mean you have to move at a sloth’s pace. Change is hard. For some people, no matter the speed of change, it will always be too fast and too soon because they disagree with the new way of doing things.”
Oriana blinked, her gaze fixed on his. He could see her processing his words. Her face was less expressive than his, but she made no attempt to conceal her feelings.
“I know killing in the name of judicial punishment is part of being Crimson Hunter. It’s a necessary evil. I don’t expect you to feel good about taking a life—werewolf, human, or witch.” A hand lowered to her chest and over her heart. “I hate to see you upset, but it’s also a good sign that what’s in here is working as it should. You have the right moral compass. A conscience. You value life. Sometimes, to protect the many, you have to punish the few. Other times, to protect the few, you have to challenge the many.”
With his other hand, Marrok pulled Oriana to him. She didn’t cry, but she did burrow her forehead into his neck. Yeah, he would be this kind of Cyrus of Steelcross. Oriana didn’t require a co-ruler of Steelcross. What she needed was a life partner, as did Marrok. Their marriage was still young. They would learn how to ask for what they wanted and needed, trusting the other person not to take advantage of their open vulnerability.
A warm wisp of breath slid across his neck. “Thank you. You always know what I need to hear.” The wisps came again, followed by even warmer lips. “I love you. Need you. Want you.”
“Want me?” Leaning back, Marrok quirked an eyebrow. “Want me? Like now? Yeah, I can go for that.”
As he had hoped, Oriana laughed. “I tell you I love you, and all you hear is the word want.”
“Love is great, but sex is forever.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around.”
Up went his other eyebrow. “Sex is great, but love is forever? Nah, you got it wrong.” Marrok kissed Oriana, keeping it light and shallow. No need to get himself worked up for nothing. Even if she were up for messing around, her mother was expecting her. The sooner Oriana left for Iron Spire, the sooner she could return. When she did, he would kiss and lick every delectable inch of her before letting her treat him like the stallion she enjoyed riding.
“Wait up for me?” Oriana eased off the bed, found her sandals on the other side, and slipped them on. “I promise not to be too long.”
She would be longer than she intended. Kalinda would draw out the meeting if only to spend more time alone with Oriana. He had never met a more loving and devoted, yet subtly controlling, mother than Kalinda.
“I’ll do my best to stay awake. But if I fall asleep, wake me when you get back.”
“For sex?”
He did like the way she said that, a shy question undergirded by eyes that swept his bare upper body before settling on his lap.
Oriana crawled on the bed, a sensual witch predator on hands and knees. Across his lap she went, dress pulled up to her thighs, lips on his. “I want to have sex with you in your bleddyn form.”
Marrok sputtered, but Oriana didn’t retreat, neither physically nor from her statement.
“Is it so shocking?”
“Ah, n-no. It’s, well, we haven’t talked about it in a while.”
“But you want to?”
His sudden erection, which she had to feel, if her knowing smile was a clue, answered her question, so he didn’t bother playing her game.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, Oriana pressed her breasts against his chest. If she didn’t stop teasing him, she would find herself naked, on her hands and knees, and him in his bleddyn form, claiming her the way he had dreamt.
“I think we should try.” She kissed him, her tongue grazing the inside of his mouth, heart pounding in sync with his. “I want to know what it feels like to have you that way. Part man. Part animal. All wild for me, as I’m wild for you.”
His stomach clenched. Oriana’s fingernails raked his chest, the way he liked, the way she knew m
ade him hard. The woman was a menace.
“You want it too.”
He lifted his hips, letting her know how much he wanted her like that.
They both moaned, groaning their disappointment when she slid from him, flushed and on unsteady legs.
“Do not fall asleep. I’ll make this meeting quick.”
“You better, or I’m starting without you.”
Oriana’s eyes traveled to his lap again, his erection tenting his sweatpants. She licked her lips, slow and tempting.
“Go before I—”
A swirl of magic whipped around Oriana and she was gone, leaving him horny, hard, and alone.
Marrok staggered to his feet, erection heavy, need unfulfilled. He would give Oriana an hour before turning in for the night. But he had to do something about his hard-on now.
April 24, 2243
Irongarde Realm
Iron Spire
“It’s about time.”
Oriana rolled her eyes at her mother’s rigid back where she stood on the balcony of her office.
“I’m not even five minutes late for our meeting.”
“That’s still late.” Turning, Kalinda watched as Oriana walked onto the balcony through open, sliding glass doors. “You look lovely this evening. How are you feeling?”
Between Kalinda’s mothering and Marrok’s smothering, Oriana could barely breathe without one of them thinking she would fall back into her sickbed. Not that Oriana had been sick, per se. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, Oriana should’ve exhibited less guilt when dealing with her sisters. And she should’ve ended the battle sooner. She had held back, hesitant to use deadly force until she had no other choice. What her mother and consort failed to understand was that the witches had also held back. They had fought Oriana, without a doubt, but not with the same level of intensity she knew them capable of displaying, which made executing them that much more difficult.
“I’m doing well, Mother.” Oriana pressed her lips to Kalinda’s offered cheek, adding a heartfelt hug. “I’m healed. You don’t have to continue to worry.”
“I wouldn’t worry if you took better care of yourself. Why didn’t you bring my Keira?”
Twinkling stars that lit up the night sky drew Oriana to the edge of the balcony, her hands going to rest on the black cast iron railing. From this height, she could see all of Irongarde City, no building taller than Iron Spire. The buildings were made of magic and metal, growing from the ground like fantastical trees of a modern era, the past ignored, buried under concrete and blinders of convenience. Out of sight, often out of mind, but never truly forgotten.
The scent of rain hinted at what was to come, tickling her nose and teasing her senses. Perhaps when it came, wetting the city below with big, fat droplets, it would wash away the growing tide of suspicion instead of adding to the river of pain that threatened to drown her.
For long, quiet minutes, mother and daughter stood side by side. Oriana was afraid to broach the conversation they needed to have, although not the one she’d come there to discuss. She had no idea what thoughts ran through Kalinda’s mind. Oriana would like to think regret and guilt, but her mother regretted little and hadn’t ever shown a propensity toward faultfinding in herself, although she found plenty in others.
Swallowing down the urge to retreat, to back away from the precipice looming before her, Oriana plunged forward, taking the scariest jump of her life.
She turned to face Kalinda, back against the railing. “Why did you give me Grandmother’s journals if you didn’t want me to learn the truth?” Not the most important question Oriana wanted to pose but, of her long, heartbreaking list of questions, this one was the easiest to ask. Not because the question was simple but because she thought the answer would be easier to hear … to stomach.
Kalinda didn’t sigh, exhale, or prevaricate in any way. In true Matriarch Kalinda fashion, she stated her truth as if it was the truth … the only perspective that mattered in a world full of complementary and opposing opinions.
“You’re like a dog with a bone, Oriana. Stubborn on your best day, willful on your worst. I knew you wouldn’t stop hounding me for access to Mother’s journals and research until I gave you something to sink your mind into.”
“You didn’t give me all of her journals. You gave me just enough to keep me distracted, enough to give me hope but not enough to do anything of substance with the information. Why?”
“Must we do this now? Don’t we have larger concerns?”
“More distractions, Mother? Yes, we need to do this now. I’ve ignored the gnawing feeling for too long.” Longer than the time she’d had the journals, and about more than the journals themselves. “Tell me, please.”
“You know why. You’ve always known but until today you’ve never wanted to truly see.” Kalinda waved her hand in front of her, slicing the steady appendage through the open space before her, sure in her rightness in a way Oriana had never been. “This is our realm, Oriana. We do what we must to protect the people. For me, that protection begins with you, even if that means protecting you from your own good intentions.”
“You say that as if having good intentions is bad.”
“Only when it’s combined with naivete.”
“I’m not nai—”
“You. Are. You seek answers to queries better left in the past. You offer rights and privileges to werewolves without the insight to project the long-term ramifications on a complex society.”
“A society that oppresses a third of our population. There’s nothing complex about that.”
With slow deliberateness, Kalinda shifted her gaze from the night sky to Oriana, looking at her with a look she hadn’t seen since she had entered her mother’s office after being thrown from her stallion, wanting comfort but finding hard words instead.
“I suppose you want to cut into your arms and legs like Mother did? You think you can save werewolves by experimenting on yourself? Well, let me tell you something, Oriana. Your grandmother died believing she could rid her body of the metal. And, for what? Because she thought metal-free magic could curb the lust of werewolves?”
There it was, Oriana and Marrok’s theory laid bare in harsh, angry tones. The missing pieces of Matriarch Helen’s journals. Kalinda had known all along. In the deepest recesses of her mind, Oriana had suspected the truth. The arduous emotional journey Kalinda had taken Oriana on, her lies of commission and omission, pricked her trust and stung her heart.
“Matriarch Alba saved us.” Kalinda raised her arms, covered by a lavender silk blouse with ruffles at the wrists. “If not for the metal in our arms, we would’ve continued to be the victims of werewolves—our magic used to feed them, to give them power, while keeping us under their clawed feet. As witches, we deserve so much more than that kind of existence.”
“And werewolves deserve more than to be treated as second-class citizens. It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation, Mother. Have you once considered the role witches have played in fueling the magic lust of our males?”
Oriana no longer viewed it as blood-and-magic lust, as she once had. When muracos killed witches, ripping into them like the beast they were, it was easy to assume the white werewolves, like their black counterparts, craved both magic and blood. From reading her grandmother’s journals and her experiments with Tuncay, kissing him while blowing magic into his mouth, Oriana and Marrok had begun to view the relationship between werewolves and witches through new eyes.
“That’s irrelevant.”
Kalinda waved Oriana’s bigger point away, as she had done her entire life—in ways so subtle Oriana had failed to see her actions for what they were. Dismissals some. Indulgences others. But all were executed with strategy, with patience, with a bone-deep belief that Oriana would be proven wrong and Kalinda correct. The realization of Kalinda’s lack of faith in her hurt more than the knowledge of the stew of lies Oriana had swallowed over the years, spoon-fed to her at regular intervals.
“Janus Nether, S
teelburgh, my marriage to Marrok. You went along with those decisions, but you never believed in any of them. In me. You’re the Matriarch of Patience. You were just waiting for those actions to fail—one by one by one—until there was nothing of me left but a disillusioned, closed-minded, and hard-hearted Oriana. Your perfect co-ruler because you created me in your image.”
Oriana thought she would be sick. Her heart and mind battled her stomach. Her stomach won.
Spinning, she leaned over the railing, throwing up bile curdled in pain. Head whirling, throat constricting, heart raging, Oriana coughed, choked, expelling anything she could latch on to. Her body seized over and again, clenching in painful spasms.
“Oriana.” A hand touched her back, rubbing the center in small circles. “Oriana. Don’t. You’ve made yourself sick over nothing. I’ve always believed in you. That doesn’t, however, mean I must also agree with you. I failed to protect my mother from herself. I won’t make the same mistake with my daughter.”
Oriana didn’t know whether she should curse or cry. What in the hell kind of twisted logic was that?
Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, her tongue in need of a thorough brushing, she swallowed spit, thirsty for a glass of water.
“That’s it. Get yourself under control.”
She shrugged away from Kalinda’s touch, as much as she did her shallow words. Staring at the cityscape, glass buildings illuminated in red, pink, and blue lights, Oriana wished she could steal the serenity of the panoramic view for herself, hoarding it like a yellow pine chipmunk stockpiled food for the cold winter months.
Oriana stumbled forward, her equilibrium off. Reaching out, she caught herself on the back of a chair, the cushion soft, metal frame sturdy.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you.”
“You’re being dramatic.”