Max
He reached me before I turned. A wash of heat at my shoulder, the air drawing tight. Then Drakken was there, planting himself at my side, near enough that Xander had to leave off pressing his claim and lift his head.
Every heir in the room was straining to reach me, to pull me out of the Collector’s orbit. Drakken had gotten here first.
He gave Xander a short nod. “King Xander, excuse us. I’ll be claiming this dance with my lady.”
My already-pounding heart skipped a beat or two before it slammed back into rhythm. Drakken had claimed me in front of the Saint, as if the matter were already settled. An excuse, nothing more than a lever to pry me from the Collector. I knew that. My heart didn’t seem to.
Heads turned our way. The silent contest of power between the two of them was plain to anyone with eyes.
I had never been the kind of woman who liked being fought over, but this wasn’t that.
This wasn’t two rivals at each other’s throats over a prize.
This was Drakken putting his body between me and an enemy reaching to stake a claim.
“Lady Morning has promised me this dance,” Xander said, and Drakken cut me a glance that demanded, plainly, whether I’d lost my mind. My face went tight. “Now. Will you excuse us, Prince Dragon?”
I swallowed. I’d have to dance with him. He’d dangled my sister, and I needed every scrap I could pull out of him.
“Shall we, my lady?” Xander’s tone was courteous and smug in equal measure.
He held out his hand, and I had no choice but to lay mine in it. The one small mercy was the gloves. No skin against skin.
Fire roared up in Drakken’s eyes, the same rage echoing in every heir around the room.
Xander meant to add me to his collection, and he had no notion of how possessive these four could be. If they hadn’t already marked him for death, they’d just done it.
The music slowed, and Xander swept me away, past Caspian, who’d nearly reached me, past Aelindor and Nikolai, all of them brimming with fury and worry and something more dangerous underneath. I tipped my head a fraction, just enough to tell them I had this.
Then I was dancing with the enemy.
When Frost had drilled me for the Summit, he’d walked me through every scenario he could dream up, a dance lesson among them.
I’d have bet he pictured Aelindor leading me onto the floor: the gown, the necklace, the fine shoes, all of it staged for exactly that.
I’d have bet the major never once imagined the Collector would be the one to reap the reward.
The room was full of beautiful women in stunning gowns. Xander had come straight for me.
He danced like he owned the floor, and me on it. He led with small, insistent pressures, testing whether I’d yield, and I gave him just enough to keep the peace and not a hair more.
“Your sister is well,” he said, as though we were old friends catching up. “I took Missy in as my ward. She wants for nothing. She’s enjoying everything I give her. Safe, cared for, counting the days until she sees you again. As am I. I mean to bring you both home.”
“Then bring her here,” I said, my voice as light as I could make it. “Let me see her. Why leave her behind?”
“She’d never be safe in this hostile place.” His thumb moved over my gloved knuckles. “Don’t let them fool you, Max, just because they dressed you well. You’ve no idea what monsters wear those handsome faces.”
I could have said precisely the same about him.
We turned, and a panel of dark glass along the wall threw our reflection back at us. Anyone glancing in would have called us a matched pair made in heaven, never mind that I stood several inches over him in my heels, over everyone in the room.
I kept steering us back to Missy. Where she slept. What she ate. Who kept her company, who guarded her, how she filled her days. I gathered every crumb he let drop and filed it away.
Xander had other interests. Between my questions, he praised my face, my height, how regal I was, then dropped his voice to murmur things against my ear: obscene, ugly little pictures built to make me flinch or flush.
He told me in honeyed, filthy words what my looks did to him even now.
Every word of it was bait, cast to hook a reaction out of me, a blush, a flash of temper he could toy with.
So I gave him the one thing a man like him couldn’t stand. Nothing at all. I’d had a lifetime’s practice keeping my face shut while something vile played out in front of me.
“Tell me you’ll leave with me tonight, Max,” he said. “Tell me how eager you are to see your sister.”
And there it was. A soft pressure against the inside of my skull, smooth as oil, his will sliding in to fold mine around it. A weaker mind would have nodded along, helpless and smiling.
I might have nodded along myself.
But I didn’t house only myself.
My demon passenger let out a low, delighted snicker, the way you’d laugh at a child reaching for a live blade.
It rose just far enough to set its shoulder against his influence, and his power slid off me like water off oiled steel, finding no door, no crack, no purchase.
Xander’s eyes flickered. The smallest fault appeared in his smile, there and gone as he smoothed it over.
He’d felt the wall. He wouldn’t smile if he knew who had built it.
I sneered behind my teeth. He’d get a rude awakening if he thought he could own me. He had no fucking idea what waited inside those four heirs, how deep their possessiveness ran. Even Drakken would gut him for trying to poach me, and Drakken couldn’t stand the sight of me.
“I’ve had queens on their knees for me,” Xander murmured against my ear, his voice low and almost gentle, the tone of a man describing a thing already decided.
“Not one of them held my interest. But you. I want you on your knees, those full lips around my cock, every dawn, every dusk, every midnight. I’ll take my time.
I’ll mark every glorious inch of you, until you shake, until there’s not a single name left in your head but mine.
You’ll beg. You’ll scream.” A soft, satisfied breath stirred my hair.
“And in the end, you’ll thank me for it. ”
“Are you finished, sir?” My voice came out flat, almost bored, as if he’d been commenting on the bad weather.
He chuckled, low and almost impressed, as if my indifference pleased him more than a reaction ever could.
I had what I’d come for. Buried under all his filth, he’d let slip the one thing I needed: Missy was in his palace, in the old city they called Houston. I was ready to peel out of his arms and be gone.
But I didn’t have to. A warm, heavy hand settled at the small of my back from the side, and the dance stuttered to a stop.
“I’ll take it from here, Xander.” Caspian’s drawl had an edge under it like a blade still in its sheath. “My date owes me the first dance, and a wolf never forgets a debt.”
Xander let out a low chuckle. “Your date.” He turned the word over as though it amused him.
“Lady Morning is in remarkable demand tonight—Prince Drakken came for this very dance not ten minutes ago, though he hadn’t the charm to dress it up so sweetly.
” He didn’t move his hand, holding Caspian’s wolf-bright stare without a flinch, and let his own power roll up to meet it. Both sets of eyes all but growled.
When Xander had first led me out, others had drifted onto the floor to dance. Now the floor had gone still. Every guest in the ballroom had stopped to watch us.
His hand pressed harder at my lower back, aggressive now, and his grip closed on my gloved fingers and refused to give them up.
“I won’t surrender this dance, or any dance with Lady Morning, to you, Caspian.
Not to Drakken either. Not to anyone.” He pitched his response loud, and his voice carried to every corner of the room, rolling over the music and the murmur until both fell away.
“I’m not dancing with some girl. I’m dancing with my betrothed.
And I won’t allow a single soul to lay hands on my future queen. ”
“What the fuck are you saying?” Caspian snarled, his green eyes going molten.
The shock hit me like cold water. I shoved Xander back.
“Forgive me, Max.” He spread his hands, the picture of sincerity. “I should have told you sooner. I wanted to get to know you first. You belong with me. I’ve come to this hostile land to take you home.”
The heirs closed in, death in all four faces.
“Step away from her.” Nikolai’s voice had nothing diplomatic left in it. “Now.”
Xander turned to the room and lifted his voice for all of them.
“Lady Max Morning”—he let the name break, the pause deliberate—“star. The lost heir of House Scorpio and House Capricorn. Promised to me before she was born. Stolen and hidden away at only a few weeks old, lost for twenty years, until the cloaking spell laid over her wore thin and we felt her again.” He turned to the room.
“I have come to the Zodiac Covenant to claim my queen.”
The whole room reeled.
The heirs stood rigid, the violence in them strung tight enough to snap. Only Aelindor seemed less than blindsided, though his eyes burned with cold fire all the same.
Coldiron had tried to warn me. The false heir, the true heir—was this what my sentient metal had been chirping about all along? But Xander couldn’t be the false heir if I were the true one. He already ruled the Haven. He had no need to claim a title that wasn’t his.
And I didn’t want to be a fucking heir at all.
“Lies,” I hissed, fear and rage scorching through every thought I had.
Because if the Collector spoke true, the truth was a horror. I could not belong to a monster like him.
I would not.
They came at him all at once, their demanding voices overlapping, cold and lethal.
“Walk out of this hall while you still have a throat,” Drakken said.
“Put one more finger on her,” Caspian growled, “and I take the arm off at the shoulder.”
“There is no contract, no betrothal we will honor.” Nikolai’s voice was curt. “Leave her behind or be left in pieces.”