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Not a single second of this was sexy or fun, yet he wascommanding me to feel like it was, almost in the same way an alpha could bark and force you to comply. It was so fake, and it was pissing me off.

When he started sliding his hand up the inside of my thigh, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Stop!” I cried, trying to push away.

He paused his approach, his fingers drumming along my skin. “Tell me you will marry me and be my queen, Marlowe, and I’ll stop.”

I swallowed, closing my eyes and offering all my love to my pack through the thin shreds of bonds we had left. I would never go through with this, but I could lie for now. “I’ll-I’ll marry you…”

The king slowly released me, sighing. “I almost wish you had put up more of a fight. You are so delightfully aroused, and I’d wanted to lick you from my fingers.”

Was he actually proud of himself? Did he really think he’d managed to seduce me?

The aqua in his eyes had disappeared as his pupils fully dilated, and he grabbed my chin. “When I finally taste you, I want you in my throne. I want my whole court to see the only female I’ll ever bow before.”

And then he crushed his mouth against mine, thrusting his tongue inside. Pointed canine teeth scraped against my lips and I yelped, withdrawing and checking the blood now dripping down my chin. Now this creep also had sharpened teeth like a vampyr?

The king wiped my lips off with his thumb, grinning sadistically. “Come, let me take you to your temporary quarters. Our engagement must be announced publicly before you’ll be allowed your own chambers close to mine.”

He held out his arm and I gingerly took it, falling in step as we walked through the woods.

Just me, the devil I’d made a deal with, and my brother, lurking in the shadows.

29

ARCHER

Every breath, since Marlowe had been taken, was sharp and painful, as though my lungs were coated with fiberglass. The bonds were thin and stretched so tightly I could barely dare to reach out, afraid the slightest pressure would cause them to snap.

The pack, the town… the whole shifter population around the world was in shambles, nothing but utter chaos left in the wake of the Conclave’s brutal execution.

Not that I was shedding any tears over those assholes, but General Roland Thorne was supposed to have been the strongest alpha in the world, and Ezra dominated him like he was no more than a beta pup. Shifters thrived on knowing the hierarchy, and Ezra just doused the whole thing in gasoline and lit it on fire.

We couldn’t even come together to discuss what had happened because the community had never been more divided, with fingers pointed in every direction.

Alphas versus alphas—those who had entered the Rite versus those who hadn’t out of loyalty to their partners or to us. Camden had decided he was going to personally beat every alpha involved in the Rite within an inch of their lives or beyond, and no one was stepping in to stop him.

Betas versus alphas—the Rite, combined with the Conclave’s strong-handed attempt to take whatever female they wanted, had brought old tensions to the surface between our two designations. Betas weren’t as naturally aggressive or violent as alphas, but they made up the majority of our population and were tired of having to deal withthese barbaric displays.

Females versus males—females mad at how Marlowe had been treated, and females mad at their partners who had fought in the Rite. Relationships, marriages, and even families had been torn apart in the aftermath. The town’s Facebook page was flooded with requests from alphas kicked out of their homes who were looking for a place to stay.

Under it all was the fear of the magic they had seen at the temple hall. Someone had taken a video of Marlowe’s attack against Ezra, and it had spread like wildfire across shifter online groups. The Vampyric Council had even tried to get in touch, demanding to know what powers we were hiding from them.

But nothing, not a single Moon-damned thing, could have stopped me from my work to find Marlowe.

It had been three days since the Rite and her abduction, and after the initial shock, I’d committed myself fully to research of this fae world. I’d read the journal from the shifter soldier cover to cover at least three times a day, trying to match it to a timeline and map of the war that had been widely published. Everything correlated except the soldier’s accounts of the real cause and enemy.

The pack had first refused to entertain the theory I’d presented, that the Great War had actually been fought against the fae to lock them out of this world rather than due to an unexplained hostility between us and vampyrs. But now that Marlowe had well and truly been taken by her brother, and we’d witnessed the magic they were both now capable of, the pack was finally starting to take me seriously.

A loud scratching at the door had me getting up from the desk in the office, where I’d set up all my things. Julian could finally shift as well, so I’d sent them all into the woods in pairs to see if they could pick up a scent trail, but it was as though Ezra had truly disappeared straight from the temple hall.

“Find anything?” I asked as Elias and Nolan padded inside, shaking their fur and shifting back to their human forms.

“Nothing concrete.” Elias pulled on a pair of sweatpants he’d left by the door. “But there’s a strange energy to the south of us. I’d like us all to check it out tomorrow.”

Nolan picked a twig out of his hair and sighed, grabbing his own clothes. “I’m beginning to understand why Ezra is so averse to pants. This is annoying.”

We headed towards the kitchen and I turned on the electrickettle. “Tell me about this energy.”

Nolan took out the pour-over coffee maker and started grinding beans. Elias gave him a pointed look until the noise had stopped, then turned to me.