Chapter 6 Kendra #2
There it is again. My queen. Like it’s nothing, like addressing a complete stranger as royalty needs no explanation whatsoever.
I’m a Black woman barely keeping my head above water in a city that’s been systematically chewing me up since my family left for Canada.
I’ve endured ignored job applications, compounding late fees, and the exhausting dance of constantly proving I deserve to be in rooms I’m already standing in.
I work twice as hard and perform ten times better than most people around me and still get held to a standard nobody else has to meet.
So when a stranger calls me “queen” in a run-down motel room, it doesn’t land like a compliment.
It lands like those men at the gas pump hollering “aye, big money” while I’m just trying to fill my damn tank.
“I’m Kendra.” The words snap out of me. “My name is Kendra Wallace.”
Kojo lifts his head and smiles at me, wide and genuine, and the warmth in it almost makes me forget where I am and how I got here. Then his mouth opens. “My qu---“
I hold up my hand so fast he flinches, which is both surprising and oddly satisfying. “Will you stop fucking calling me that? I’m scared and I don’t know why I can’t leave.”
His smile falters but doesn’t completely disappear. He straightens to his full height, filling the space between me and the door without deliberately crowding me, and his voice drops lower, gentler. “You were hurt. I had to bring you someplace safe and warm.”
“Well, I’m fine now.” I touch my throbbing cheek and immediately regret it as pain lances through my face. “And thank you for saving me. But I’m not thanking you for throwing my car.”
He opens his mouth again. “But my que---“ The word dies when I glare at him with every ounce of don’t-try-me energy I possess. A low rumble rolls through his chest. “Kendra.”
The name comes out of him slow and careful, like he’s tasting each syllable. His brow furrows and he swallows before continuing.
“You are not just the new queen of the Bouda clan. You are my fated mate.”
My mouth falls open. I stare at him, my body going rigid, every thought I was assembling crashing into an invisible wall at high speed.
Fated mate. I’ve heard that phrase on the news and in those documentaries about Wintermoon, always attached to some supernatural love story that felt as distant from my reality as winning the Powerball.
“My Bouda caught your scent when you delivered the pizza.” He scratches the back of his neck, the gesture almost sheepish, incongruously human for someone who just called me his fated mate. “I followed you through the blizzard until you stopped at the gas facility.”
“Gas facility?” I blink at the unfamiliar phrasing. “You mean gas station.”
Aiden shifts his weight behind us. “Kojo is a tribal people. He doesn’t have much contact with humanity outside of his village. The Bouda clan typically sticks with their own.”
I press a hand to my forehead, feeling a headache building behind my eyes that has nothing to do with my injured face.
I look at the door, then back at Kojo. His amber gaze follows my every movement like a predator cataloging its prey, every breath, every twitch.
The crushing weight of it hits me: I am not getting out of this room unless he decides to let me go, and that realization lands heavy enough to nearly buckle my knees.
“It’s obvious I’m not leaving this hotel room.” I exhale slowly, trying to find some center of calm in the middle of this storm. “So tell me. What are you planning to do with me?”
“I will care for you, my---“ He catches himself, swallows visibly, and bows his head again. “Kendra.” His forehead creases and his face transforms with a sadness that looks strange against all that hard bone and muscle. When he speaks again, his voice is barely there. “May I call you majesty?”
“No. You may not.” I fold my arms tighter across my chest. “Why do you think I’m your queen?”
Aiden steps forward, clearly sensing an opportunity to defuse tension. “It’s because you are the queen of the clan now.”
I throw my hands up, frustration boiling over. “I don’t understand.”
Aiden glances at Kojo before answering, as though checking whether he should continue.
“The Bouda clan is matriarchal. Women hold the highest rank, and the men spend their lives earning the favor of their mates.” He pauses, wipes his beer-wet hand on his thigh again, and his voice drops to something more somber.
“His queen was murdered by poachers, and his village was burned.”
He’s quiet for a moment before he continues.
“The radicals have been hunting him and anyone left alive. It took me three years just to get him to America, and I had to practically smuggle him here even though there’s a global law about supernaturals being allowed safe travel to Wintermoon.
” He shakes his head, genuine anger flashing across his features.
“There’s something about the Bouda that has these people desperate to capture and kill.
I’m not sure what, but getting Kojo to Wintermoon is my top priority. I don’t agree with what they’re doing.”
I turn to Kojo, seeing him differently now.
He holds his head down, mouth pressed thin, those massive shoulders drawn in like he’s trying to make himself smaller.
The largest, most dangerous person I’ve ever stood in a room with, folding in on himself at the mere mention of his dead queen.
It catches me off guard — not pity exactly, but a recognition of grief I wasn’t expecting to feel.
The throbbing in my face intensifies, a steady beat of pain that matches the hunger gnawing at my ribs.
The reality of my situation crashes down on me all at once: my Lexus is currently embedded in a gas station wall, I’m trapped in a motel room with a hyena shifter who thinks I’m his fated mate, and my cheek feels like someone took a bat to it.
I walk around Kojo, giving him wide berth even though he doesn’t move an inch, and climb back onto the bed.
I pull the blanket up to my chin despite its scratchiness and settle against the pillow on my side, drawing my knees up toward my chest in a position that feels defensive even to me.
“I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. And my face hurts.” The words come out with more vulnerable, but they’re the most honest thing I’ve said since waking up in this strange place with these strange men, and right now, honesty is all I have left.