Chapter Fourteen
Ayala
CIAN’S brEATH IS HEAVY against my neck, his arms and legs a fortress held over me, though even in sleep, he keeps his larger weight from crushing me. I raise my hand to where my throat throbs. When I pull my fingers away, they’re streaked with blood.
Did he...?
I dreamed it. I’m sure I dreamed it.
Maybe it’s a hickey, and he pressed too hard. I think that’s okay, but honestly, I’ve got no idea how marking works. Only stags can sense a marking.
Seems like stags are the only ones who can do a lot of things, like mark does without telling them.
Rage, swift and bright red as the blood on my fingers, races through me. I may be the weakest doe ever made, but I have rights. I think.
Why don’t I know these things?
Turning is difficult, but once I manage to face him, I start beating at his chest. “Did you mark me? Did you fucking mark me?”
“Love...” He blinks at me, his eyes heavy with sleep.
“Did. You. Mark. Me?”
Sudden comprehension clouds his expression as he tries to gather his thoughts.
“You bastard!”
“Not true. My parents were married.” He runs his hand through his hair as I seethe, except my anger is already flowing away even as I try to hang onto it. It’s hard to stay mad when he looks so adorably mussed and terribly un-regal.
“You had no right,” I whisper softly.
“I had every right. You’re mine.”
“I didn’t consent, you... you lunkhead!”
“No, not specifically. But you agreed to be my plaissance, and with that agreement came the sub-clauses that everyone knows: you’re mine to breed, mine to mate, mine to set aside. Mine.”
“Not everyone knows that.” But even I hear the defeat in my voice. “I didn’t know that.” I sniff back tears and struggle to place more space between us. Sitting up to face him, I shake my head. “You said you wouldn’t.”
Slowly, he raises to a sitting position as well, his legs pretzeled and his cock—for once, the magnificent hard appendage lies soft and weak-looking between his legs.
“I didn’t intend it until it happened. The feelings were so overwhelming.
It felt so right. But you’re correct, I should have told you or. .. asked you, I suppose.”
“Yes, you should have. It’s ridiculous that a doe has so little say in her life.”
Slowly, he nods his head. “I suppose it is. I’ve never considered the matter before.”
“Never considered the plight of does, never considered the plight of the weak... how wonderful it must be to be you. Strong, proud, titled... you’re.
..” But I just wave my hand, because the only words to finish that sentence would have me telling him he’s a wonderful sex god, and please, can we do it again? “What happens now?”
“Now, you take your place beside me as my mate.”
The mate of the king. The mate of the strongest stag to live in memorable history. I’m suddenly the highest placed doe in the kingdom.
“Do I truly hold half your powers?” Because I don’t feel very different. I stretch out my hand and study it before quickly drawing it back. I’m trembling. No need to let him see further weakness.
“I think so. We’ll test it later by seeing if you can shift.” For a moment, he seems reflective. “I don’t feel much different, either, just fatigued. We didn’t get much sleep,” he adds with an insouciant smile.
Memories pour back into me. After he bit me, we fucked another five times throughout the night.
Fine. I won’t think about that just now. I’ll lose my place in the argument. If it’s an argument. I’m no longer sure.
“Are you alright, love?”
“And there you go, distracting me with your niceness.” But I scoot a little closer to him until our knees brush.
I can’t help it. I need to feel him. “But I guess being the mate of the king might have some advantages to being the under-baker who can’t even shift.
Just a few, anyway, though none come to mind at the moment. ”
“King for the moment, anyway.” He chuckles before he reaches for me and drags me onto his lap, but his eyes are serious when he sweeps back my hair. “Truly, if I’d asked first, as I should have done, what would you have said?”
I’m about to offer a quip again when I settle against him. “Honestly? I might have tried to get you to see sense. You at half power, and what it means for the kingdom, and people already hate me...”
“But what would you have said?” he presses.
“I would have said yes, of course. And not because I get my kicks from dethroning the best king Cerf-Biche has ever had.”
He holds up his thumb and forefinger close together. “Just a little bit of kicks?”
I widen his fingers with mine until he laughs and kisses me soundly on the lips.
When he pulls away and sighs, adding kisses along my jaw, I ask, “How will anyone know we’ve mated?”
“In addition to seeing the mark, you mean? Stags smell it. It’s a sense we have that does don’t. Every male will know you’re mine.”
“No chance of me marrying a street sweeper then,” I joke.
His fingers, gentle until now as they stroked my skin, curl as he grabs my jaw tight. “Don’t even fucking say those words. Any stag who tries to take you is dead, and believe me, there’ll be those who try simply because I’ve chosen you.”
“Ow.”
“And because you’re so fucking lovely it hurts.” He unlatches his fingers and kisses my lips instead, a hard, possessive kiss that claims me as much as the mark. When he’s done, he growls. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Like?”
“Like flirt with other stags.”
“What about flirting with other does?”
I swear, my tongue never did know when to quit moving.
A sudden, happy, hot light sifts into his dark eyes. “If you flirt with a doe, I expect to see the both of you in my bed within the hour. That’s the rule.”
I don’t know why, but that’s kind of hot, too. I wriggle on his lap, suddenly uncomfortable, and he laughs again, this time the sound dark and fathomlessly deep.
“Oh, love, we’re going to be happy. I swear it to you.”
“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, seeing as you’ve already broken the one about not mating me.” I tap his cheek. “Here, let me up. I have to pee.”
Instantly, he unwinds from around me. Getting off of him and out of bed is a lot harder as he keeps petting different parts as I try, making me want to cleave to him instead.
My mate. I wish I could find my earlier anger, but it’s gone. Concern about the future and what his impetuous actions might mean still swirls in my gut, but the rest of me has never felt so happy.
When I return, he’s pacing the floor, dressed in his robe again.
While I shrug into mine, he says, “I’ve called for Hunter.
Decisions must be made. Fast.” His hand sweeps through his disarranged dark hair as he pauses and looks at me.
“I don’t feel any weaker, but I must be. I need you to try to shift.”
“What? Here? Now?” Panic races through me.
“Here and now. Do it. Half my magick is more than enough.”
“But I...” Three times I’ve used borrowed magick to shift. “I can’t, Cian. The other times were hard. Painful.”
“Less so with practice. I don’t even feel it anymore. One day, you won’t, either.” He kisses my forehead. “Please. Try. For me.”
When he puts it like that, what else can I do?
I close my eyes, face tipped to the ground as I try to connect with the earth, but it’s so far below—too far below—and I only sense a tingle.
But I do sense the tiny bit, which is more than I should for my level while perched so far above the ground.
“It’s no use,” I say, looking up.
I expect to find him disappointed, but he’s not. Instead, he nods. “It would have been unusual if you could, I suppose. Your feet need to touch earth, at least, the first time.”
Before I can explain about the tingle, a knock sounds.
The earl strides in. “What’s happened?” His gaze roves over us, searching for the nature of the alarm, and instantly pinpoints on my neck.
His mouth bows open as he stares before he shuts it with a resounding click of teeth.
“No.” His gaze turns full on Cian. “Are you fucking crazy?”
Cian doesn’t answer.
The earl sinks into a crouch, his head hanging heavy in his hands. “Fuck. Fuck!”
Cian draws me slowly into the circle of his arms. There’s protection there as he brushes a kiss against my forehead, a calm I need to borrow. I don’t know how he can be so placid in the face of the disaster he’s wrought. Seeing our new reality on the earl’s bent form makes it all too real.
“It was beyond me, Hunter. Call it fate or the god’s interference. Hell, call it a test I just failed. But here we are.”
Hunter surges to his feet. “Here we are. How much power have you lost, you crazy bastard?”
“I summoned you so we can test just that. The forest, by the waterfall, I think. We’ll measure my loss by Ayala’s gain.”
Hunter’s gaze latches onto me. “You think she can shift now?” His eyes bore through me, but once he reads whatever he sees in me, he loses all expression. “By all means, let’s go see what a fuckery you’ve made of your life and the kingdom.”
Disengaging from me, Cian strides to the earl and clasps an arm around his shoulders before leaning the side of his head against the other man’s. “And your life too, I’m afraid. If—when—I abdicate, you’re next in line.”
“Abdicate? There’s no abdication possible in our world, as you very well know.”
“Then you challenge me. You win, you rule, the kingdom will continue.”
Hunter pulls roughly away, his placid reserve shattered. “It would serve you right if I chose a challenge to the death.”
Cian laughs. He doesn’t seem bothered at all by the threat, by his loss of the throne, by any of it... and I don’t understand. “I’m not worried.”
The earl waves his hand. “I might as well kill you. You think the other stags won’t set upon you once you’re banished from court?
And your plaissance—sorry, your mate... people already despise her for bewitching you.
When they learn...” He shakes his head and squeezes shut his eyes before sighing. “It’s going to be civil war.”