Page 8 of Bound to the Dragon (Wild Fated Shifters #3)

BLAZE

S he knows more than she’s saying for sure. I have no doubt that Madison is holding something back now, and that alarms me more than I can put into words. I have just been mated to a female I can’t trust.

One eye remains firmly on her as we begin yet another descent to the jail cells.

Every step fuels my determination. I will get answers about what this is about, either from the rogue shifters or from Madison herself.

One way or another, someone is going to give me something.

The question is, what do I do with that information afterward?

But as my foot touches the last step, I sense more chaos before the chatter of my enforcers reaches my ears.

“…let this happen?” Vigo yells as I round the corner. The room reeks of tension, and I stifle a groan.

Now what?

His face is redder than I’ve ever seen it before as he towers over one of the other enforcers. I step between them.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Look!” Vigo gestures at the cell.

It immediately becomes clear what all the fuss is about. Every one of our captives is dead, piled on the dirty, cement floor.

I pale. “I told you to leave two alive!”

“Two were alive! And I left this idiot with them for ten minutes. When I came back, one killed the other one and then himself!” Vigo is so incensed, I can practically see steam coming off him, and he’s not even a dragon shifter.

My head whirls toward the inattentive guard. “How did he manage that?”

“I-I don’t know! I didn’t see or hear anything. I just turned around, and they were both?—”

“You’re relieved of your position,” I interject. “Get out.”

He visibly swallows, and I catch Madison’s jaw relax as he stalks by her, heading up the stairs, leaving me alone with my Beta and her.

“We’ll have to run facial recognition on them.” I look at their corpses and back at Madison. “Unless you can offer any insight here.”

She grunts. “I already told you I don’t know them.”

“I don’t believe you,” I retort sharply.

She balks at the accusation. “I don’t need to listen to this. I’m going back to my suite.”

She starts back up the stairs, but I chase after her. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not done with you yet.”

Her attempt to slip past me is successful, only because of her slight figure, and she jets up the rest of the steps faster than I expect her to run. Maybe she does have more assets than I gave her credit for.

Oh, it’s on now. I half expected her to shift into her crow form, but she’s fast enough at running to make it to the main floor.

By the time I catch up to her, she’s halfway to the stairs again, but something stops her.

Before I can call out accusingly to her, she puts her finger to her lips, silently telling me to be quiet.

My patience with her has completely expired, but before I can bark at her, I hear voices from the front room.

She’s listening to a conversation inside.

Curiosity overrides my annoyance with Madison for the moment as I take in my mate’s bewildered face.

Clamping my lips closed, I approach her, honing in on the conversation. I immediately recognize the voices of some of my packmates speaking in half-hushed tones.

“…any surprise something like this happened today, of all days, though?”

“Of course not. It was obviously Silver Glade,” one of the others replies. “This whole thing was a big setup, and we have to pay the price with an untrustworthy Luna and an Alpha who can’t defend us.”

My eyes widen in disbelief as I realize they’re talking about us, under my roof. Madison catches my gaze, and a gleam of sympathy ignites in her sultry, dark eyes. Before I can react, Madison steps out of the shadows and into the front room.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hiss after her.

If she hears me, she doesn’t acknowledge my question.

I have no choice but to follow after her, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.

“Hello,” Madison drawls, marching into the center of the room. “I don’t think I’ve formally met you all yet.”

The collective looks on their faces remind me of children with their hands caught in cookie jars.

“Luna.” The murmur is barely audible.

“That’s right. I’m the Luna, Madison. You know that because you all just attended the ceremony where my birth pack was right beside yours, injured and fighting.”

I catch the eye of one of the earlier speakers, and his complexion fades to gray as he realizes I had heard him, too.

“I don’t expect you to like me, at least not yet. You don’t know me, after all. But I will not have you disrespect your own Alpha in his house.”

“We didn’t—” one of the shifters tries to interject, but for once, Madison’s forthcoming attitude comes in handy.

“Don’t insult me.” Madison’s words snap like a whip, silencing the denial. Her dark eyes bore into the small group, and she glowers at them. “I don’t know how forgiving your Alpha is about these kinds of things, but if I were him…”

She shrugs and looks back at me. A fusion of pride and awe twists inside me at her completely unexpected speech. It takes me a minute to gather my own thoughts in the aftermath. I hardly know how to follow that up.

So, I don’t. “Get out. All of you.” I look toward the door. “I don’t have the time or patience to deal with any of you right now.”

“Alpha, we didn’t?—”

“Did I stutter? I gave you all an order.” I point toward the exit.

They reluctantly head toward the door, but I note the looks of respect they toss toward Madison. I can’t blame them. I’m developing a begrudging respect of my own.

I wait for the last of my pack members to leave before I utter a single word to Madison, mostly because I’m thinking of what to say to her.

I study her pretty side profile for a long moment, taking in the fine bone structure of her high cheekbones, the curve of her full lips.

If she weren’t such a pain in the ass, I bet she would be an amazing kisser.

“I can handle my pack,” I tell her. “You didn’t need to say anything on my behalf.”

She flips her raven tresses over her shoulder and faces me. “Is that your way of saying thank you?”

A reluctant smile tugs at my lips. “Yes.”

Her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “Oh.” She clears her throat lightly, equally surprised by my answer. “Well, I am the Luna. It’s my duty and oath to stand by you. They shouldn’t be talking about you behind your back. That’s how dissent starts. It’s happened in other packs. It…”

She stops and frowns as if she were going to say more, but thought better of it. “You need to monitor your grumblers. You know what happened with Willow Grove. Things could have been a lot worse there.”

I turn down the urge to remind her of her place after the way she had just stepped up for me.

It’s hard to tell the difference given the way things started between us, but with the earnestness in her voice, I believe she’s trying to be helpful, even if she’s going about it all wrong.

For the first time, I realize that maybe we aren’t so different, after all.

Is it possible that we’re after the same goals?

A single strand of black hair falls over her perfect cheekbone, and I have to physically hold myself back from touching her.

Her head lifts abruptly, her chocolate gaze locking onto mine, and my heart erupts into abnormal thuds inside my chest. A flood of headiness overtakes me, followed by a sweeping sense of confusion.

Her pupils constrict, those luscious full lips parting as a full exhale touches my face.

Her scent consumes me, every detail of her face, hair, and smell overstimulating me as the throb of my chest intensifies.

I’m suddenly electrified, drawn to her like we’re connected by an invisible string.

Madison takes a step toward me, her own pupils enlarging in tandem, lips parting, and I swear I hear the thud of her heart matching mine as if it’s inside my own chest.

What is going on?

The question is far away, like someone else is asking it from the sky, in a voice not my own. But when Madison’s hand rises to touch her chest, the gesture tells me everything I need to know. My gaze rakes over every inch of her skin, and a headiness sweeps through me, the euphoria overwhelming.

“Oh, shit!” I choke, throwing my hands up as if that will somehow fend off the inevitable wheels already in motion.

The pull of my body to hers is already overpowering, like my legs are made of lead weights as I try to back away and add distance between us.

But it’s futile. The mate bond is snapping in place faster by the second, and there’s nothing either of us can do to counter it.

“No!” Madison’s voice is a croak. “How?”

Our denials aren’t going to change what it is. I turn my back and struggle to breathe normally, but it’s more difficult than it sounds when the fated mate bond is cosmic and interfering.

“Do you know what the chances of this are?” Madison is almost hyperventilating.

She doesn’t need to cite statistics to me. They’re infinitesimal. It’s extremely rare to find one’s fated mate in the first place, but to find one in these circumstances? An arranged mating? The gods are mocking us.

“Did you have something to do with this?”

I whip my head around and scowl at her. “How would I have anything to do with this? Do I look like I can go around making fated mate bonds? Why would I even want to be mated to you?”

That came out harsher than I intended, and a gleam of hurt veils Madison’s eyes, but it’s gone just as quickly.

“The timing is awfully suspect, isn’t it?”

I grimace. “I’m not jumping for joy over this, either, Madison.”

She has drawn closer to me, clearly inadvertently, but I don’t move away.

Her spicy scent is making me feral. I want to take her right there on the ground of the front room and not care who walks in.

She licks her lips, her eyes pleading with me—no, daring me—to do it. She’s right here, in my arm’s reach…

No. No, I’m not going down this road with her. She is my mate. We will need heirs, but this is and always has been a business arrangement, nothing more.

I can’t even have her sleeping in my room now, or I’ll never get anything done. We’ll have to make a schedule or something… I can’t think clearly when she’s so close to me, and all I can think about is bending her over and fucking her senseless.

Dammit, this is going to fuck everything up!

“I should go.” Madison spins around, but I can see how much effort it takes for her to make that simple movement, and I don’t try to stop her, as much as I want to seize her by the waist and pull her back against my throbbing cock.

I close my eyes, allowing her to leave before I do something I’ll regret.

By the time I open my eyes, Madison is gone, but the intensity of our bond remains long after she leaves.

It’s here now, and it’s not going anywhere, no matter how far she goes, but especially when she’s under the same roof.

Her scent lingers all around me, driving me crazy, and I have to resist the unbearable desire to race after her and finish what is starting inside me.

I collapse on the sofa, willing my raging hard-on to subside when Vigo finds me. I move my leg, so he doesn’t notice the massive bulge. The Beta sniffs the air with his sensitive cougar nose.

“It smells weird in here.”

I almost laugh out loud.

“We have some pack members who have a little bit too much free time on their hands,” I inform him. “They apparently don’t have enough work to do, so they stand around talking about my mate and me. I’ll get you a list of names to deal with them accordingly.”

Vigo blinks, surprise coloring his face. “I haven’t heard anything like that, Blaze.”

“I don’t think you have,” I reassure him. “It’s idle chitchat, but I want to make sure they’re made examples of.”

Vigo sinks into the wingchair Madison had been using earlier. “What do we make of the new Luna?”

I’d like to make out with the new Luna.

“Can she be trusted?”

A shiver of worry rushes through me at the question. “For now, I don’t have much of a choice, do I? Until we know who was behind this attack, all we can do is keep investigating. I don’t understand how they got through our security.”

I eye him deliberately, and Vigo looks properly ashamed by the question. “As you said, Alpha, this is still an intensive investigation, but it will be solved. You can count on that.”

“Fine.” I stand and rub my temples. “We’re going to need to redo this ceremony.”

Vigo laughs dubiously. “What?”

I gesture vaguely around the room. “This wasn’t much of a mating reception. I don’t think it fares well for the future of the pack if this is how we’re starting things, do you?”

Vigo’s eyes shade more, and he picks his next words carefully. “I see what you’re saying, but Blaze…” He trails off as if he’s trying diplomatically to think of a way to tell me I’m crazy.

“I’m not saying we’re doing it tomorrow. It’s legal and binding, anyway. I’ll deal with it. Actually, I’ll have Madison deal with it. She can probably use a project to keep herself occupied so she stays out of my business.”

Vigo shrugs and stands, too. “If that’s what you want, Alpha.”

“It’s not what I want, Vigo; it’s what’s necessary for appearances. It’s what the pack demands, and I have to adhere to certain norms.”

He doesn’t understand. No one ever does. Being an Alpha comes with all kinds of unpleasant tasks that no one wants to do. It’s a thankless job. Someone is always trying to kill you. And then you get mated with the one person who hates you most in the world.