Authors: Violet Walker
A
fter that, Elizabeth shared Luthias’ bed each night. She forgot why she had been so worried about giving herself to him; he proved himself time and again to be attentive, protective, and passionate. Her loneliness dispersed like a cloud in sunlight—for so briefly, it seemed as though the traumas she had endured in her life had come to an end.
Unfortunately, her life was never easy for long. The dizzy spells she had attributed to her growing feelings for Luthias didn’t leave her after her feelings were requited. They worsened, intensifying from a vague dizziness to pounding headaches, some so powerful they rendered her incapable of walking until they had passed. She hid this from Luthias, whose days were still filled with duties that he didn’t care to explain to her.
Just three weeks after they had started sleeping together, Elizabeth sat out in the gardens, confined to the bench she had been sitting on when one of her headaches started. She held her head, focusing on her breathing, in hopes that that would help. It did not.
As the pain intensified, she focused on a sound that seemed to be some distance from her, muted by a fog of noise she couldn’t quite decipher. Unable to do anything but stare at the rose bushes along the path before her, she concentrated. The more she concentrated on the distant sound, the closer it seemed. The closer it seemed, the more it sounded like laughter.
You’re so sweet with him, was the noise of her thoughts.
She thought she was going crazy. She whispered to herself, wanting to hear her own voice to be sure she wasn’t dreaming.
“I’m awake.”
He’s loving it, that sound, that voice, continued. You’re the fragile flower he wanted me to be.
“I’m hearing things,” she whispered.
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
She buried her face in her hands, terror overwhelming her. Of all the times to finally lose it, why did it have to be now?
“Oy, Elizabeth.”
Her attention snapped up at the sound of Kieran’s voice, aggravating her headache again. When Kieran saw her pain, his smile faded to concern.
“Hey, do you need me to get a healer?”
“Y-yes,” she managed a small nod. “Maybe…”
He touched the top of her head to comfort her; not knowing how urgent the situation was, he left quickly to find help. Elizabeth was alone again in the garden, only able to soothe herself with breathing. Tears fell steadily as she questioned her sanity, hoping that the voice wouldn’t come again — because she knew who was talking to her, and she desperately didn’t want to.
She heard footsteps approaching. Assuming it was the healers, she didn’t look up, too focused on her own pain and confusion. It was then a hand came from behind the bench, a damp rag pressed suddenly against her mouth and throat.
“Boss, you can’t do that yet!”
“I hear a moron giving me advice.”
Elizabeth tried to scream, but she was already fading. As soon as the rag left her mouth she slumped limp onto the bench, unable to move. Consciousness began to fade, but not before a red-haired man leaned over her—mostly naked, except for a loincloth of furs. There were jagged scars across his chest, old enough to have faded to a vague silver on immortal flesh. He draped her over his shoulder, standing.
“Let’s see Lord Luthias track a wolf.”
THE END
Demon Romance
Forbidden Mate: Chained to the Alpha
Secret Blood World Series Book Two
Lucile Wild
Forbidden Mate: Chained to the Alpha
L
ord Luthias Cennasaí was an ideal ruler of his kind, trained to appear at all times poised, intent, and above all cruel. His meeting room consisted only of one long table, with him seated at the far end in a chair that was more of a throne, with three sharpened claymores hung by their sheaths over an arm of polished oak. Those who requested his audience had to seat themselves at the other end, nearly too far to make proper eye contact with him—yet even their guests could feel the intensity of his dead stare, which was known to make subjects spill truths that ended lives. Behind him was always his son Avery, intimidating in his own right but rarely interested in the conversation at hand, and his thin-faced advisor Ezekiel, a lesser Canine noble whose family had always served the Cennasaí sons.
Yes, Luthias looked the part of the Canine Lord. No one knew though that his mind was elsewhere, and that he stared with impatience not as a tactic, but because he very much wanted the day to be over. Particularly since Elizabeth had begun sharing his bed, he kept his meetings as short as possible. Food is scarce on the island? Import food from the mainland until game repopulates. Squabbling over lineage? Ezekiel will give you an hour in the hall of records. Canine nation in Russia rebelling? Send a notice to all other nations that the first to serve the Russian lord's head to Luthias will earn rank for their family. The prisoners are fighting? Let them kill each other and send the scraps to the butchers, no one will notice and there's a food shortage anyhow. After almost five hundred years of hearing variations on the same nonsense, he was bored.
He would have handed the lordship to Avery, if it weren't for the issue of Avery's human blood, which meant that doing so would incite lesser principalities to revolt. It was a headache he didn't need, and certainly not one Avery was ready for. Just one more way Emilie rose from the grave to drag nails down his back. But thoughts of Emilie drifted to thoughts of Elizabeth, treating him to rousing memories of her heaving breasts and cries of delight. She had made his life exciting again. Even as he sat in a meeting listening to the whining of a sharecropper who disliked his servants, life didn't seem so dreadful. Across his disinterested gaze played images of Elizabeth writhing around his cock, clutching at the headboard as her eyes rolled back and her talented tongue pressed into her upper palette. She begged him for more, and more he gave. Whatever she wished of him—for her, he was a kind lord indeed.
"I just find the idea of halflings being paid for their labor absurd," the sharecropper went on, to which Luthias gave no reply. "The fact that I allow them a place in my home is charity enough, but I should hardly be forced to pay them wages like true demons. Someone of your pedigree ought to understand my aversion."
Luthias, still distracted by the naked Elizabeth of his thoughts—far more appealing than this man who had somehow fattened himself despite their kind's unnatural metabolism—answered with surprising clarity.
"If you do not pay your workers, you are confessing to me that you keep slaves. Slave owners are put to death in the public square. Do I make myself understood?"
The sharecropper was immediately silent. Luthias had raised his hand to dismiss him when the doors burst open. He was unsurprised to find Kieran there, his long white hair as always an unkempt mess, holes in an overcoat that was surely presentable at some point. His halfling brother's mere existence undermined Luthias' authority.
"Mutt," was Luthias' greeting.
"This isn't the time, asshole," Kieran said, apparently agitated. "Elizabeth is gone."
He must not have fully processed these words, when first said. He stared at Kieran, the mask of indifference lingering for a long, long moment. Yet though he remained motionless, Ezekial recognized the danger, and quickly collected the sharecropper.
"I'll see you to the door, Mr. Hennessy," Ezekial urged.
White as a sheet, the sharecropper would follow his lead. Avery sighed, exchanging a look with Ezekial before the advisor closed the doors behind him.
When only the family was left in the room, Luthias slowly came to his feet. His eyes never left Kieran, whose impatience was now an insult to the lord's gift of prolonged silence. The mask was now falling—red swirled in the whiteness of his eyes, gaze narrowing to slits as his tense fingers arched on the table, cracking the smooth surface as claws extended.
"I must have misheard," Luthias said, tone still smooth. "The mutt's sole task was ensuring my woman remained on palace grounds. The mutt did assure me that he was capable of simple tasks."
"Jesus Christ, Luthias," Kieran said—not nearly as afraid as he should have been. "She was sick and I left for a second to get someone, how was I was supposed to know there were Wolves—”
"Wolves?"
"Father—”
Avery's hand on his shoulder did nothing to restrain him. The span of the room was crossed in an instant and Kieran was left dangling off the ground, snarling and clawing at Luthias' iron grip.
"Fucking h-hell, bastard," Kieran spat, struggling to force the words out of a collapsing windpipe. "I'm trying to tell you what happened!"
"My woman has been stolen from my own castle due to your ineptitude, by a species more flea-ridden than you. I would sooner see you dead than suffer your excuses."
"Father, please put Uncle Kieran down," Avery said, exasperated. "He's clearly your only lead."
Avery's relative calm inspired a fleeting moment of clarity in Luthias; the lord dropped his brother, who gasped the air back into his lungs. He rubbed his neck, cursing.
"It's always right for the throat with you, god damn."
"Speak before I change my mind."
"I was trying to say that the idiots left a note," he said, finally revealing a scrap of paper from his pocket. "They clearly have a death wish, the cocky sons of bitches."
Luthias snatched the paper out of his hand, tearing it in his haste. He was shaking with rage now, all composure lost. The scrawl on the page left him all but feral.
Dog:
I took your girl. She's fine, for now.
Let's see how the bite measures up to the bark.
-Rion.
"Avery, what do you know of a Wolf named Rion?" Luthias asked.
"Little," Avery admitted. He continued quickly though, not foolish enough to mistake pointedness with calm. "Our scouts track the movement patterns of the Wolf packs. A couple years ago, two of the packs inexplicably merged. The scouts said they were being led by a red-haired Alpha who had beaten down the long-time leaders. I believe that was the name they called him by."
"Where is his pack?"
"Scotland," he said. "Possibly. Since Rion took over, the pack stopped moving in a predictable pattern. He appears to know how to avoid our scouts. We thought he was last in Scotland, but that's a long way to travel if he was just here."
"I want a report from all the scouts in the mainland. Prepare to handle affairs here while I travel."
"Do you really think it's wise to be leaving your post again over a woman?" Avery asked.
Luthias gave Avery a look that would have made a lesser man weep.
"Don't test me, boy."
Avery grimaced, but was silent. Luthias grabbed a claymore from the side of his chair, headed to the door. Kieran flinched as he passed, though the half-demon tried to pass it off as natural movement, passing a hand through his hair. Luthias had nothing in his mind but a pounding bloodlust—fury at Kieran for allowing this to happen, at Elizabeth for being foolish enough to be taken, and at himself for ever taking his eye off her. This Wolf had shattered his peace of mind, and for that, Luthias would make him pay.
T
he creaking of the floorboards is what eventually shook Elizabeth from her dreams. She opened her eyes to a dark world, where light seeped dimly through cracks above her, and the sound of the ocean lapped against the walls. She was on a ship. More concerning than this realization was the fact that she wasn't alone—looming over her was the bare-chested man she had glimpsed before losing consciousness, hair red as blood, shoulders broad and his hands rough and calloused, his manhood concealed lazily by a sort of fur loincloth. There was something beautiful about him, though. Despite her fear, the wild gleam to his emerald eyes entranced her, making it hard to look away.
"You're up," he said. His voice wasn't as deep as she thought it would be, though there was gravel to it.
"Where am I?" Elizabeth asked, still in too much shock to be angry.
"On a boat."
"Obviously, but—”
The sound of crates toppling over directed their attention to the other members of their party: both in fur garments, like the red-haired man, but these men were bald and far more scarred. Their smiles came freely, though. The scrawnier man climbed onto a sturdier pile of crates, while his buff counterpart sat on the ground, scratching at a gash on his leg.
"Don't mind us," he muttered. "Just trying to get comfortable."
"Can you introduce us to the girl?" asked the man on the crates.
"This is...ridiculous," Elizabeth said, finally sitting up—her back ached from being tossed around. She was finally beginning to get angry. "Whoever you are, my lord won't allow you to keep me."
"We plan on that," the man on the crates laughed.
"We know full well who your lord is," said her red-haired captor, even as he yawned. "He'll track you down eventually. That's the sport of it."
"Sport?" Elizabeth asked, horrified.
"Rion is the strongest wolf in the northern hemisphere," the sitting one declared, with a devilish smirk. "With all the Alpha Wolves afraid of him, the only way to see how strong he is now is to take on the Canine Lord."
"So my life is a game to you?" she said, feeling sick. "You're just trying to hurt Luthias?"
The red-haired Wolf Demon, who must have been Rion, gave the most infuriating shrug.
"You want to fight a bear at her strongest, you take away one of her cubs. You want a Canine to fight you as an equal, you take his woman. It's nothing personal. Just instinct."
Elizabeth stared, mortified. He seemed impervious to her judgment, however. He gestured to the wolves in his company, deciding now was the time for introductions.
"Call them Bull," the sitting man nodded, "and Zak," the man on the crates waved.
"How can you be so casual?" Elizabeth said, frustration building. "You drugged me and took me from home!"
"You've only been there like what, a few months?" Zak asked.
"Yeah, and you're probably going back soon anyhow," Bull said, twisting his finger in his ear. "Might as well be civil."
Feeling helpless, she looked to Rion with half a hope that he was sympathetic, but he betrayed no such feelings. He leaned back against the panels, calm, as if attuned to the sound of the ocean all around him.
"We'll dock soon. I have no formal mate, so you'll remain by my side until Luthias comes for you," Rion said, relaxed enough to close his eyes. "It's the safest place you can be, in the wilds."
Elizabeth was dumbfounded. It was one thing to kidnap her, another to behave like it was just another detour on their vacation. To her disbelief, Bull and Zak also seemed to be lounging about, just getting comfortable until the ship dropped them off at God-knew-where. She held her head, doing her best to make sense of it all, but she was coming up blank.
Should she scream? No, they would probably kill her, she knew enough about demons to know that any one of them could probably kill her if she moved too suddenly. It was more frustrating to think that she was probably just like them—but with her blood "dormant," as Luthias and her tutors vaguely called it, she was as helpless as the average human. She had little choice but to lay back down, keeping a wary eye on Rion as she tried to figure out the best way to get out of this unscathed.
Nice piece of ass, isn't he?
That voice—Emilie's voice—came at her again. The headache returned, but it wasn't as pronounced as it had been. She closed her eyes tight, trying to block it out. Emilie's dead, she told herself. If I was her, it would be impossible to be hearing a voice that isn't mine...
Go on pretending I don't exist, the voice laughed. Doesn't mean you can't take a good look at the wolf.
Perhaps it was morbid curiosity that drove her to observe the demon, as the voice recommended. She noticed then how well shaped he was, up and down, forged by the forest into a burly hunk, with definition on his legs, arms, and abdomen that would be the envy of any Chippendales dancer. His hair was neither as long nor well cared for as Lord Luthias', but the stunning red locks were healthy and thick, even where they rest unevenly over his shoulders and chest. Stubble lined his strong jaw, shades darker than the hair on his head, though the color was echoed in the fine shadow down his torso, trailing down beneath his loincloth to what she assumed, proportionally, was an intriguing endowment.
Once she realized how far her eyes had wandered, her attention snapped away, shame setting in. This is a kidnapping, she reminded herself. I'm unhappy.
A nice Alpha just stole you away and gave you a place in his cave. More direct than Luthias, with a better ass. An upgrade, really.
She tensed, shutting her eyes tight. She would drown out Emilie's words with a nonsense song she hummed to herself. The wolves would sleep, but she couldn't. Not while her mind was broken.
You can't stay awake forever.
As long as she focused on her own humming, and the steady sloshing of the waves, she thought she could. Luthias will come, she told herself. Luthias will make this right.