THIRTY-ONE
M y little trick with the blood was far less impressive when facing an area so vast, I’d had no idea where to start.
So as Pholly and I trudged through the brush, I continuously cut my palms with my fingernails. We’d both changed out of our gowns. In knee-high boots, fitted brown tunics and pants, we searched the western woods while Phineus and Elion searched the east.
We’d surmised the eggs would be as close to the castle as Vane could have managed without detection, but after hours of searching, I’d been led to only one.
Pholly’s steps crunched in the distance behind me. As the blood bubble bobbed toward the crystal-cobwebs lacing an overgrown path ahead, I tensed, waiting for her to notice.
Since we’d begun the search, I’d pondered how I might explain something I couldn’t.
But it wasn’t Pholly who spoke when I retrieved the egg.
“Must you disappoint me on my wedding day?” Atakan’s voice froze my feet. “You managed to remove your gown without any help at all.”
“You were too busy gloating over your perceived victory.”
“Perceived,” he repeated, as if tasting the word and deciding he didn’t like it.
There was no sign of Pholly anywhere, and when I turned to Atakan, who leaned against the trunk of a tree, he explained, “She’s gone to find Phineus.” He flicked the apple in his hand toward the foliage surrounding us. “Who has mysteriously disappeared.”
I rolled my eyes. “He doesn’t wish to be found.”
“He always has been mostly useless,” he said, yet he didn’t seem bothered.
I snorted, but then spied what stood behind his boots.
He too had changed out of his wedding attire. He now wore a thin cream tunic that gaped at his forearms and neck. It was half tucked into his deep brown britches. Which matched his clunky military boots, and behind them…
An egg.
I hurried to him. “Where did you find it?”
“I suspect this one was hidden in a hurry, or the unseemly king is merely lazy.” He tapped it with the side of his boot, and I nearly winced. “Found it perched against a boulder just beyond the tree line.” He bit into his apple.
The crunch drew my eyes to his mouth. “The guards never noticed it?”
“Perhaps they thought it was a rock.” He chewed, staring down at the burnished scales. “It does sort of resemble one, don’t you think?”
I tilted my head, unsure I agreed but unwilling to waste more time. Daylight was fading. I set the egg I’d found upon the ground next to his, and gave the gray-and-black scales a gentle pat.
Atakan huffed.
“What?”
He shook his head, then tossed his apple over his shoulder. It crashed into the brush downhill. “You said there are more, so let’s get on with it.” I made to collect the eggs, but he said, “Leave them. They’ll only slow us down.”
I didn’t argue, though I wished to—merely to poke at him.
He walked ahead, and I gave up on trying to take any type of lead. As well as the thought of putting distance between us. He’d already scented it. “You’ve been bleeding.”
I wasn’t sure I should speak of it. I wasn’t sure why I shouldn’t either.
“I can hear the cogs turning in your mind, dread.”
I glared at his broad back, and ignored the odd feeling in my chest when he held back a sharp branch. I took it, releasing it as I followed him down a damp and rocky ridge. “The egg in the city,” I started, then squeaked as I slipped.
He turned, stopping my descent with his hands on my hips. Green flickered in his eyes. “Careful,” he taunted, that gaze falling to my breasts, then lower to my pants. “Perhaps you should walk ahead.”
“So that you can stare at my ass?”
Atakan grinned.
But I gave him what he wanted, mostly to keep from rising onto my toes to kiss that smile from his sinisterly handsome face.
“You found the egg with your blood,” he said a tense minute later. “I saw it.”
Halting next to a giant oak, I turned to him. “And how can you be so sure that’s what you saw?”
“You have Unseelie blood, and pytherions are native to The Bonelands.” He lifted a shoulder, the breeze swaying strands of his near-white hair across his forehead. “Blood binds all.”
I didn’t know that I agreed, but I continued walking until the blood on my hand stirred again.
“Go on,” Atakan dared, jerking his head.
He stood fascinatingly still as we watched the bubble float toward a ravine. We followed it across a shallow creek. The trees lining it were thin enough that I could see the rear gardens of Cloud Castle in the distance.
The location close enough to draw Vane’s pytherion army over the grounds.
Relief never came. A slow-moving sludge filled my stomach as I stared at the mottled gray egg. “What if we don’t find them all in time?” I gnawed at my lip. “Maybe we should’ve enlisted help from—”
“You seem awfully worried for a creature who cared little for this castle and its occupants a few moons ago.” Atakan stepped beside me.
“And you seem hardly worried at all.”
He said nothing.
Fear spiked my irritation further when I recalled the size of Surella. The foot that’d threatened to destroy the steel her claws had curled over. “I saw them, Atakan.”
“The pytherions,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Our armies are ready.”
“You don’t understand. They’re so big, so hostile…” Memories swirled. “Incredible but deadly. We truly don’t stand a chance.”
The prince—secret king now—remained silent, and I turned to discover his lips wriggling.
“You think certain death is amusing?” But then I searched those cruelly beautiful features and scoffed. “You certainly would.” With vivid clarity, I remembered what he’d done to his own father.
“But of course.” As if he knew exactly where my thoughts had gone, all traces of humor left his face. His eyes flared a burning bronze. “Atakan the heartless.” Noting the way my mouth slackened, he smirked, reaching for me. “You think I don’t know what everyone calls me?” He skimmed his knuckles over my cheek. “Dread, I practically begged them to.”
The gentle touch frightened more than the memories of fire-breathing beasts. So I turned back to the egg.
“You’re the only one to never ask me about it, you know,” he said.
Crouching, I carefully brushed some leaves from the egg. “Only what?”
“Lover, I suppose.”
The simple mention of his past lovers rankled. I blamed the bond. Blamed the heat of his gaze searing into my back as I pretended to fuss with the egg. “I’m not your lover.”
“Fated foe, then.”
At that, I looked up to find him grinning wolfishly.
I glared.
His grin only became more devastating until he said, “You’re right. You’re not my lover. You’re now my wife, yet that doesn’t seem quite enough either.” I nearly swayed when I rose, and he went on. “What do you call the only creature you want to watch and touch endlessly?”
I couldn’t meet his gaze. “I wouldn’t know,” I lied and braced for what I knew he’d say next.
It still raked claws over my chest. “A mate?”
Unsure why he was goading me this way, and even more unsure of what to make of it, my frayed nerves got the better of me. “Are we going to talk about how you tricked me, then?”
“Oh, you mean how you knew exactly what was happening but went along with it anyway?”
That sent my gaze straight to his, and I scowled.
But he was right. It was something else that made it impossible to accept I’d willingly thrown myself into a trap I hadn’t wanted to avoid. Belated self-preservation, maybe. I didn’t know.
His eyes shone, green and bronze and knowing, and that devious mouth curled.
Forcing a smirk of my own, I retaliated with, “Perhaps once we’ve found the rest of these eggs, I’ll consider indulging such fabrications.”
He didn’t try to refute it. We both knew I was the one lying. Instead, he dragged his thumb over his lower lip, and his eyes over my tightly clothed body. “Is that a promise?”
I said nothing, knowing that if I did, I’d betray myself more than I already had, or I’d surrender to the desire to climb him like a tree in these woods.
He sighed, then said, “Fine. Make your way to the eastern woods.” He stared through the trees to the mountains on the other side of the castle. “I’ll inform the others that they’ve been no help at all and they may as well head inside.” He added curtly, “If they haven’t already.”
He vanished, and I looked at the egg, deciding to take it to the two we’d found to collect later.
No guards were patrolling.
Atakan had likely sent them elsewhere, I surmised, unable to keep from staring at the garden shed while crossing the grounds.
By the time he found me, twilight had tentatively darkened the forest floor. During his absence, I’d been led to one egg, and it waited in a ditch by the tree line.
“Pholly found one,” Atakan said by way of greeting. He tossed it from hand to hand as if it weren’t twice the size of his pretty head and covered in scales with edges sharper than his cheeks. Noting my expression, he looked from me to the egg. “This one is dead.”
My eyes widened.
“That’s what they get for playing war games with their precious army’s young.” He set the egg on the ground, explaining, “I sensed no heartbeat.”
I hurried to it, lowering to my knees and carefully pressing my ear to the scales. “You’re right.”
“What do I gain from lying?”
“Maybe you can prove this is pointless and that I’m stupid if they’re all dead.”
“The beasts won’t care. If anything, sensing a dead babe will only enrage them more.” He eyed me for a moment, curiously. “Why would I want my own castle to burn?”
“ Your castle?”
His smile was maddening. “That’s what I said, and that’s what it is.”
“And when do you plan on telling your loyal court what you’ve done?”
“That I saved my mate?” He lifted his hand when I glared, amending, “Apologies, my wife , from being murdered?” He turned on his heel. “I’ll go spread the good word right now if it will appease your conscience.”
I seized the back of his tunic.
He whirled and hauled me against him with a hand at my lower back. As it crept to the base of my neck, he walked me deeper into the trees. “You might not like what I did,” he said, voice distractingly deep. “But it had to be done.”
When I failed to answer, he stopped walking and took my chin.
“Quite the contrary,” I said with sweet venom and hurled the truth at him. “What I don’t like is how much I like it.”
His head tilted. He studied me, determining whether I’d spoken true.
Then his laughter transformed his ethereal beauty into something so inviting that I itched to touch his face. Instead, I just stared, helpless and enraptured.
Atakan smiled down at me. “I’ll keep your secret, dread.” His eyes glinted, then narrowed. “On one condition.”
“Do I even want to know what that might be?” I asked, enticed by the challenge in his husked voice. I didn’t care if he spilled my secret.
His hooding eyes said he knew it. “Oh, you’ll be glad to know.”
“Then do cease making me perish from anticipation.”
Humor faded from his eyes, and if I wasn’t mistaken, a tinge of vulnerability ripened his tone. “You must put your mouth on mine and kiss me until I tell you to stop.”
My foolish heart skipped. Still, I taunted, “But what if you never do?”
“Trust me.” He dropped his forehead to mine. “I never fucking will.”
Relieved and desperate, I kissed him. Wanting to feel the softness of his lips, needing to taste his poison, I seized his face and lavished his mouth in adoration he certainly didn’t deserve.
But I didn’t care. I deserved it.
I deserved to take what I wanted, and I more than wanted him. I needed him in ways that would doom me, but when he looked at me, touched me, I welcomed my fate.
For years, Atakan had made sure the only thing I cared about was him. Since the moment I’d met him, he’d poked holes into my mind, recolored my heart, and snatched my soul.
He’d made sure the only thing I craved was the one thing I shouldn’t want.
I wrapped my legs around his waist when he picked me up. He navigated the dark forest with ease while I devoured his mouth with fervor that made him groan.
My legs refused to uncoil from his waist as he laid me down upon a pile of cool leaves. He took his mouth from mine to kiss my neck, teeth grazing as he ground his erection against my core.
My head tilted back. My body heated.
“I can smell you so much easier,” he said, hoarse and licking my fluttering pulse. “Never again will you be able to hide how much you truly loathe me.”
“You really do gloat too much.”
“Tell me I’m lying, then.” He moved away to remove my boots. “Or better yet…” He tore my pants from my legs. “Show me.”
They opened instantly, cool air brushing over my thighs.
But he didn’t look. No, he touched the scars on my ankle, given to me by the two-headed serpent. Almost reverently, he stroked them. “When you touch them, do you think of me?”
The velvet question should have been a statement. He knew I did.
Even so, I said, “I forget they’re there at all.”
“Liar.” His gaze moved to my core. “Open that lovely cunt for me.” Daringly, he ordered, “Show me the truth.”
Intentionally, I hesitated—just to earn that delicious look of disapproval when his eyes swept up my body to mine. I smiled, then bit my lip. My fingers parted my sex slowly, and my eyes absorbed his slackening features.
His lips, reddened from my kisses, parted. His lashes drooped. His nostrils flared as his chest heaved.
Then he was between my thighs.
He groaned as he gripped them and swiped his tongue over me. Through me.
My back arched, and I moaned to the canopy of towering trees above.
He began slow, as if savoring the taste of what he did to me. Long laps of his tongue that made me pant. Every inch of me, even the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, was tasted and licked clean, only for his ministrations to render me even more wet.
Then he feasted.
His fingers dug into my thighs, and his tongue into my body. The sound of his swallow and his hum of approval had me reaching for his hair.
I clenched it, and failed to keep from rocking into his face as he sucked my clit, then tormented it with fast flicks of his tongue. Just before I unraveled, he pushed a finger inside me.
All of me tensed, then liquefied in spasms as I moaned at the stars.
I sensed him above me before I opened my bleary eyes. He curled his finger inside me, and I flinched.
He tutted when I tried to reach for his hand and bit the tip of my nose. “I don’t leave until you stop clenching.” He kissed me, barely-there touches that tortured even more, eyes open and blazing green. As my body finally calmed, he crooned, “There we are.”
After another kiss, he withdrew and rolled onto the leaves next to me.
I blinked over at him.
He kicked off his boots and his pants, then sat up and hauled me onto his lap. Sliding his hands over my hips, he pushed my tunic until it sat rolled above my breasts.
Hoarseness lowered his voice. “Tilt back for me, dread.”
When I did, my half-bound hair brushed his legs, and his mouth latched onto my breast. He held me around the waist as he sucked and cupped and squeezed each globe.
Breathlessly, as he flicked my nipple with his tongue, I said, “We really shouldn’t consummate our marriage in the woods.”
The challenge did as intended, and he straightened my back by sweeping his hand up my spine to my neck. “It would be incredibly indecent.”
I laughed, and worsened the glazed look on his face by gripping his cock. Squeezing it gently, I took his chin to tip his head back. His eyes remained open, piercing as I ran my hand up and down his length and licked the taste of myself from his lips.
He shuddered.
He was so soft yet so very hard, and I wondered what he might do if I decided to learn how each vein felt against my tongue.
Swallowing, he blinked drowsily. “Have I ever told you that you’re beautiful?”
Stunned, my hand stilled.
Another game, I determined. So I rubbed him again and smiled against his lips. “You would never.”
“You are,” he said, voice thick. “Everything about you, even your tiny hand fluttering over my cock, is maddeningly perfect.”
I stopped again, frowning at him.
He smirked.
Then he kissed me, firmly before taking my lip between his teeth. He released it, eyes vibrant and daring in the dark. “Put me where I belong.” He angled his head and brushed his mouth and tongue across mine. “One inch at a time.”
Still reeling from what he’d said, I rose onto my knees. “Just an inch?” I held him at my entrance, unsure.
His throat dipped. “Yes.”
Gripping his shoulders, I lowered over him, gradually taking him into my body until he seized my hips and hissed, “Stop.” He looked down, then up at me with eyes of pure green. “Now a little more.”
My fingers dug into the grooves in his shoulders as I did.
“Good,” he groaned. “So fucking good.”
I wanted more, but this position made it hard to believe I could take all of him without it hurting.
His hands clenched my hips, and he pushed me down farther.
I tensed.
He whispered in my ear, “You can take it, dread.” He pulled me down again, pressing so deep, I whimpered. “You were made to handle me.” He placed a single kiss at my jaw. “To take me.”
His mouth smothered my airless cry. He remained still as I adjusted. He kissed me until I relaxed, then laughed scathingly soft when a howl echoed from deep within the woods and I tensed again.
He smoothed his hand up my back. “I’ll protect you.”
I stared down at him, a brow raised. “You once said that you were the one I’d need to be protected from.”
“You remember.”
The admission left me before I could think it through. “How does someone forget words that made them who they are?”
Atakan blinked, but rather than show an inkling of remorse, the monster I’d married just grinned. “Made for me indeed.”
My heart careened to a halt and swelled. Still, I scowled. “That wasn’t a compliment.” I bit his nose.
He snarled and claimed my mouth. Then every breath I failed to properly take as he gripped my hips to grind my body against his until it trembled.
My mouth slid from his, useless. He didn’t seem to mind, his spread lips gliding over my jaw and my galloping pulse. My hips rocked. Pleasure unfurled, and I chased it with mindless abandon.
He took control when it raced through me, sharp and seizing.
My head flopped to his neck. I clutched it as he used my body to milk his cock. I licked his throat, wishing I could taste the deliciously rumbled sounds he made.
“Fuck,” he groaned, holding me so tight, I moaned again as he shook beneath me. His hand crawled up my back and into my tangled hair.
My eyes closed.
Birdsong and the scuttling of creatures quietened, as if we’d sent them scattering.
Slumped over him, it took too long to realize what he was doing. His fingers combed through my hair over my back. He toyed with the strands while his other arm banded around my waist, trapping me against him.
I wanted to stay there.
I could get far too accustomed to holding him. To being held by him. To feeling the overwhelming heat of his skin against my nose as I nuzzled his neck. To hearing the beat of his heart slowing alongside mine within our touching chests.
But such a mistake could prove fatal.
Leaves rustled as I rolled off him and sprawled over them to stare up at the night sky.
Atakan watched me for a moment before lying down, too.
The moon, full and bright, flashed between the swaying branches above.
We should have left. I should have left. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to reach for my pants or even roll my tunic down. “Someone will probably come searching for us soon.”
“Unlikely,” Atakan rasped. “Most know we’re together.”
The way he said together was a blade grazing vital organs. Perhaps because I shouldn’t have liked the way it sounded even though it wasn’t what he’d meant.
“Mated,” he said, as if knowing what I’d been thinking. But he couldn’t hear any of my thoughts when we were in close proximity. “And freshly wed.”
I shouldn’t have given that a response. But I’d never been able to back down from him, and he was evidently not done provoking me. “You speak as if those things mean much at all.”
Silence, far too heavy for the forest, invaded. I could feel his attention like a kiss from the sun.
But I kept staring at the moon.
Even as he murmured, “You speak as if they don’t mean anything to you.” He shifted onto his side. “When you know that I know you, dread, and I always know when you’re bluffing.”
I looked over at him.
His arm was bent beneath his head. He ran his hand through his sweat-misted hair, pushing the strands back to worsen the beauty a creature so cruel and untrustworthy shouldn’t have.
But there was honesty in cruelty.
Maybe, especially now that I’d learned what gentle males could do, Atakan wasn’t as untrustworthy as he seemed.
At least, not to me.
I rolled onto my side. “I know when you’re bluffing, too.”
His teeth flashed with his half smile. “Are you sure?”
Nodding, I moved my arm to cushion my head.
Minutes might have passed, but neither of us moved nor spoke. We just stared. I told myself that I was waiting for a glimpse of his next move. When really, I was simply too content to study him.
But his next move was one I never would have anticipated. “You cannot love him.”
A shocked laugh left me. “Why? Because you’re my mate and I must love you?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t smirk. He watched me with a hardness to his features I’d never seen before. An intensity that hinted at uncertainty—perhaps even nervousness.
But that couldn’t be true.
Atakan didn’t get nervous or anxious. His malice and arrogance would snuff anything that made him feel that way before it got the better of him.
Yet he seemed at such a loss for words, I almost laughed and rolled into him to kiss him. Almost opened my mouth to say something. Anything.
Instead, instinct propelled me to touch his sharp cheekbone. The pad of my finger glossed over it, then dropped to his jaw.
As I traced the bladed edge, it unclenched.
His eyes closed. “I want your unyielding defiance, your mischievous curiosity, your ceaseless muttering in your sleep.” His eyes opened. “Your buttery hair in my hands.”
I wasn’t sure I breathed. Wasn’t sure that if I looked away from him, I would believe this wasn’t a game.
The conviction roughening and firming his voice held me utterly still. “I want you, Mildred. Always and incessantly, I’ve fucking wanted you.”
I might have been dazed, but I heard what he truly meant. I heard it, and I saw it in those eyes. Though I could hardly believe it, I did. He wanted me at his mercy.
He did want my love.
I didn’t say that. I couldn’t. But wanting to say something, I shifted closer and whispered, “And if I cease being defiant?”
His large hand covered my cheek, his eyes searched mine. He leaned in to rasp against my mouth, “Then I will assume I’ve failed in holding your attention, and I’ll be sure to remedy that.”
It was the closest thing to a promise that I would get from a creature I’d never expected to tame. Whether it was enough…
I hadn’t the ability to care when he moved atop me, and I was forced to my back. He smoothed a fallen braid away from my face. My body rewarmed instantly, matching the heat swelling the organ in my chest.
He kissed me once, lingering and soft.
As I reached for him, for more, he lifted his head. “Mildred, when they arrive, you must head underground to the dungeon and stay there until I return.”
Almost forgetting how we’d ended up in this forest in the first place, it took me a moment to grasp that he was talking about the Unseelie warriors and their pytherion mounts. “But once we find all the eggs, the castle should be—”
“Argue with me about anything you fucking like, but not this.”
I frowned. “Atakan—”
“Please.”
Beyond shocked, I laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you say that word.”
He grumbled, “Now you have.”
I wasn’t about to refute his request. I had no desire to be anywhere near those beasts when they descended upon these mountains. But as he glanced up at the trees, I noted the way his shoulders tensed.
I felt the energy around us begin to quake, and I said, “You know something.”
His glowing eyes dropped back to mine, and I realized it wasn’t the energy of the forest. As it kissed my skin in a whisper-soft caress that hummed as it increased, I recognized it. My own energy recognized it.
It was Atakan.
“Sense something,” he said in a voice so cold. A tone unlike any I’d heard from him before.
Though he’d yet to be formally crowned, Atakan was the Seelie king. It was said a ruler’s connection to their realm heightened their abilities. Now, he could likely sense a great deal of things the rest of his kin could not, and the forest…
It had been so unnaturally quiet for skies knew how long.
He leaped to his feet.
“Something comes.” Fear threaded into my voice. “They’re here, aren’t they?”
He snatched my arm to pull me up. After handing me my pants, he pressed his mouth to my forehead, and ordered, “Dungeon.”
I stepped into my pants on wobbling legs. Pulling down my tunic, I looked up to find Atakan walking backward into the trees. He said nothing. He just watched me.
Confused, I called, “Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. Features void, he stared at me for breathless seconds.
Then he vanished, mist curling over the greenery in his wake.
I’d reached the gardens before the first roar came. Almost stumbling into the bed of tulips, I turned back and looked up.
To a sky emptying of stars—because of the mass of darkness sweeping across it.