Chapter 31 - Stark #2
With several long strides, I nearly catch up to her. She turns down another alley and is briefly out of my sight.
When I round the corner, I’m not ready for her attack.
Meryn pushes me roughly into the building wall behind me. There’s a quick flash of silver, and then cold steel presses into my throat.
She’s drawn a dagger on me.
I stare down at her, holding myself still. Letting her hold the blade to me. For now.
Heat lashes in my veins. It turns me on way more than it should—the kiss of the steel on my neck, brandished by a woman I’ve tasted.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she hisses.
I raise an eyebrow. “Right now, my problem is that the person I’m supposed to protect is holding a knife to my throat,” I say coolly.
She scowls. “You know that’s not what I mean.” Meryn forcefully shoves her other hand into my chest, holding me tight against the brick wall.
It’s the only point of contact between our bodies, but the heat of her is just inches from me.
Blood rushes to my cock, making my pants tight. I can’t shift to adjust the pressure, not without Meryn’s knife cutting into my skin.
Fuck, I wish I didn’t respond to her this way.
“You’re really going to do this?” she asks scornfully. “Just pretend that what happened between us in the woods never occurred?” Her anger brings a flush to her face.
I try to suppress the memories, but her words bring them right back. Her legs parting for me. The taste of her on my lips, wet and wanting. The way she squirmed when I worked her with my mouth, teased her with tongue and teeth.
The way she begged me to order her around and the way I loved it.
The compliant woman from the forest has been replaced by someone ferocious, and I’m just as hard for it. Still, I say tautly, “It’s for the best. We should both pretend it never happened, my queen.”
Meryn growls in anger. “I’ve had a lot of unkind thoughts about you over the past six months, Stark Therion. But I never took you for a coward!”
The pain in her voice lances through me. She’s right, of course.
I’m being a coward, and that’s not like me. But her presence does something to my fucking head that makes me not think straight.
With a quick hand, I knock her dagger away from my throat. Then I spin her around, reversing our positions as I slam her into the brick wall. My hands go to her wrists, pinning them above her head.
For a long breath, I let myself lean into her. My cock is hard as a rock, the friction and warmth delicious as I press into her lower belly. Her answering moan is small and desperate.
“You’re right.” My voice is low and gravelly. “I should’ve told you right away that it was a mistake. I wish I could pretend it didn’t happen, princess. Don’t you see how you’re torturing me?”
I thrust my hips against her, and she moans again.
“The thought of you, bare for me in the woods, doing everything I told you to like such a fucking good girl? It’s driving me insane.”
I let go of one wrist and grab her chin, angling her eyes up toward mine. Her mouth parts, her gaze slightly glassy.
“You’ve been an unhealthy fixation from the moment I laid eyes on you,” I continue, voice low. “And now I’ve tasted you and discovered my favorite flavor. You haunt me. You consume me. And it’s sheer agony, because whatever that was, it cannot happen again.”
Her face darkens, and she tries to yank her wrist out of my grip. I don’t let her go. We can’t leave here until she understands.
When she looks back to me, she’s pleading.
“Why not, Stark? If that’s how you feel, why not?
I really do not have the space for getting my head fucked around by another man.
And if it was not absolutely clear, I want you.
I’ve been fighting it, worried it was our wolves’ mate bond, but I’m done lying to myself. So speak.”
I open my mouth to tell her about Siegrid—how the Sovereign Alpha wants us to get married so that she can proxy-rule the throne. Suddenly, though, it sounds so stupid. Meryn would never let anyone tell her what to fucking do.
Who gives a shit what Siegrid wants?
And it surfaces the true reason I’ve been fighting against this pull.
“I’m wrong for you,” I tell her bluntly.
I let go of her wrists, stepping back a few inches.
“Meryn, you… you could be the greatest queen that Nocturna has ever seen. You need to be with someone who nurtures the best parts of you. Not someone who pulls you down into the dark and relishes every moment.”
She opens her mouth to argue, so I hold up a hand.
“No. I’m serious. Think of the ruler you want to be.
Think about who will be ruling by your side.
Do you think the common people or the nobles would ever accept me?
A depraved butcher whose name is whispered in fear?
A person who sees you grappling with your power and urges you to seize it, fuck the consequences? ”
I watch the emotions play across her face, like clouds across a sky, and charge on.
“You need to be with an equal. Not someone who’s thought of as a monster.
It’s better that we stop this now while we still can.
Because I can tell, Meryn—I know what it’s like to be ruined.
And kissing you tastes like leaping toward destruction.
If we keep this going, neither of us will survive the consequences. ”
Meryn turns her face away from me then, and I ache at the loss of her heated gaze. Her jaw twitches, and there’s a sheen where tears form in her eyes.
It’s as if a direwolf were tearing out my still-beating heart.
I hate to be the person making her cry when every part of me screams that I’m meant to guard her, mop up her tears. But this is the only way to protect her in the long run.
To protect us both.
Because she will live to regret me, and I don’t know that I’d ever be able to let her go.
She turns back toward me and catches my eye again, tears bright and shining.
“It destroys me that you don’t know your own worth, Stark,” she snarls.
“I wish I could go back in time and cut off the hands of every single person who ever hurt you. Everyone who made you believe that you had only one purpose, one kind of value. You are a million times more than what you’ve been told. ”
Meryn draws a shaky breath, and I realize I’ve been holding mine, transfixed by her words.
“Besides, if you’re a monster, what am I? If you’re depraved, I am, too, you fucking asshole. You don’t get to claim my worst actions as yours. I make my own choices. And this thing between us?”
She steps in close, reaching her hands up to cup my face. And with her touch comes connection—she opens herself mentally, and it’s faster than ever this time, sliding into that place in our minds.
Our two heartbeats are one, stoking urgency and passion and some other emotion that hurts to look at closely, like the blinding light of the sun.
“What is this, Stark?” comes her voice in my head, her eyes alight with sorrow and wonder. “This isn’t just the mate bond between our wolves, and you know it. You alone are capable of joining with me like this and sharing my power. What are you if not my equal?”
Meryn’s breath is my breath, and I’m drowning in her, pulled under into a sea that I can’t name.
And then we’re interrupted by a harsh shriek.
Meryn startles. It’s a woman in danger—we both know it instinctively.
Our minds separate, and we snap back into ourselves as we both wordlessly take off toward the noise.
We tear down the alley, and as we round the corner, both of us already have blades drawn.
The source of the scream is obvious.
A blonde woman lies prostrate across a set of stone steps in front of a home.
Two Siphons are above her, both with fangs out—one pale-skinned and reedy, the other thicker with a malevolent smile.
The door to the home hangs open, and I catch a glimpse of scared eyes as a little boy peeks out and then backs away.
The pale one is inches from ripping into the woman’s flesh when Meryn’s voice rings loud and imperious. “Stop! What are you doing?!”
He looks up at us, and Meryn blanches at the look of cold indifference on his face.
“We’re collecting rent from our tenant.” He shakes his head as if annoyed by the interruption. “She’s late on her payment, so we’re taking our arrears.”
His thick friend looks on lazily as the reedy Siphon leans back in for a bite. The woman is sobbing, quaking in fear. Everything about this is wrong.
“Like fuck you are!” My daggers move before my mouth finishes the words.
And I liberate the pale Siphon’s head from his shoulders. It hits the paving stones and bounces once before rolling into the gutter.
The woman screams again as she is drenched in blood—a long, high wail.
The thick Siphon looks at me and Meryn in offended shock. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
At lightning speed, he grabs Meryn, hands wrapping around her skull in clear warning. Poised to snap her neck if I make the slightest move.
I freeze, assessing what to do next that won’t trigger his violence.
Just then, Elias and Davide race down the alley toward us from the other direction. “Unhand her at once,” Davide snaps.
The Siphons stand off, all three with fangs bared.
“Consider this an order from your king,” Elias says coldly. He reaches into his tunic pocket and pulls out a golden brooch, a sun with wavy rays.
Nobody moves for a tense moment. Then the Siphon man reluctantly steps backward, relinquishing his grip on Meryn and pushing her away. Clearly, the brooch must mean something—the symbol of Lucien Brightbane, perhaps.
“Our friends are new in town,” Davide interjects, conciliatory. He hands over two of the bags in his arm to the disgruntled Siphon. “They don’t know any better. Please take this with our apologies for your inconvenience.”
Elias grabs Meryn’s arm and drags her away from the scene as I follow. “Unbelievable,” he mutters under his breath. “Killing a civilian the minute I let you two out of my sight.”
He finally lets her go once we’re several streets away.
“What the fuck, Elias,” Meryn grates out.
Elias and Davide exchange a look.
“Here in Astreona, if humans can’t make payment owed by coin, Siphons are well within their rights to take blood payment instead. That landlord wasn’t breaking any law.” Elias’s face is impassive as he explains this barbarism.
I clench my fists. So much for this country being better than Nocturna.
Meryn is shaking in anger. “So you’re saying we just left that woman with a Siphon who’s going to feed on her without her consent! And it’s allowed.”
Elias crosses his arms. “It’s a payment. What’s not allowed is enacting your own sense of justice without any regard to the laws of the country you’re visiting. Moreover, someone is dead, and that human woman you thought you were helping will be held responsible for it.”
Meryn’s face reddens. “What does that mean?”
When no response comes, she stalks away in anger.
We all remount our horses in silence. Meryn sits as far forward in the saddle as she possibly can and manages to avoid touching me the entire way back.
By the time we get to the stables, wrath radiates off her. It’s a surprise she hasn’t summoned her shadows. I slide off the horse first and offer her a hand, but she swats it, getting down on her own.
She turns to walk away, but then stops and advances on me, her face an unreadable mask.
“You are a broken man,” she says tersely, speaking nothing but the truth. “The shattered pieces of me recognize the shattered pieces of you, and that’s why I am telling you: I will give you time.”
I want to tell her no again. But she’s worn my control so thin, and maybe she sees that on my face, because she presses onward.
“I will give you time, but it won’t be forever. So think about what I said. Take the leap, Stark. Maybe it will end in destruction. Or maybe it will end in two wrecked people finding a way to build something new in the rubble.”
She stalks off, leaving me in the horse-shit-reeking, hay-strewn stable. The mare we rode whinnies at me.
“On her side?”
It says nothing, of course. Useless beast.
Could Meryn be right? If every part of me screams to close the distance between us once again, would it really be so wrong to give in?