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EZRA

“WHERE IS SHE?”

My heart burst with adrenaline as the king forced his way into my room, his eyes wild with rage. Coupled with his messy hair and disheveled clothes, he looked more unhinged than I’d ever seen him before.

I’d been sleeping peacefully with Canna by my side, and pulled the blanket over her naked and now trembling body before getting out of bed.

The king was pulling my room apart, like he might actually find my sister hiding in the drawers.

“Your Majesty, is Marlowe missing?”

He paused his manic hunt, standing so still he hardly seemed to be alive. Then he turned around slowly, the air around him thick with his power. “You mean she’s not here?”

he asked through clenched teeth.

The dresser behind him began to shake, and I felt the overwhelming urge to submit to his anger.

I had never seen him lose it completely—I’d witnessed him punish people, including myself, but never explode before. Would anyone in this house even be safe if he truly let go?

“Canna,”

I said, keeping my eyes on the king. “Why don’t you go take a walk?”

I could feel her terror through the bond, and I kept my relief off my face when I heard her rustle behind me.

She didn’t make it two steps before the king held out his hand, slamming the door back closed with a quick gust of wind.

“No,”

he hissed, his voice laced with malice. “I think the omega should stay right here. With us.”

She whimpered behind me, and the threat Alaroth was making against her raised my hackles.

After everything I’d done for the king, was he really going to hurt her? He’d offered me any omega I’d wanted… Not that I’d planned on just throwing one over my shoulder cave man style, but I’d felt an instant connection with Canna, something I’d never felt with anyone else before. She was mine the moment she’d teased me, the moment she’d touched me, the moment her perfume had reached my nose.

“It seems she’s been a distraction, alpha. I should have known better. You shifters can be so single minded when it comes to fucking, rutting the closest cunt you can find until they’re good and bred.”

My brow furrowed in angered confusion. Had he always held such low opinions of shifters before? I mean, I might have accepted the insult since I had been distracted with my need to fuck and claim Canna as much as possible that evening. We’d missed valuable knotting time during that stupid dinner, and had been making up for it since returning to my room.

But he was being such a hypocrite, I almost laughed. The king reeked of sex, and not a single note of the scent wafting off him was from my sister. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say he’d been cuckolding our host.

“Did you check to see if Marlowe was still with Nivardi’s daughters? I thought they’d gone with his wife to another room for after-dinner drinks,”

I suggested, failing to keep the judgment off my face.

“Don’t play dumb with me. I’m sure you have surmised who I was spending my evening with. In fact, I had purposefully arranged it so Marlowe would happen upon us. She fled at the sight, and I had thought she’d come to you for comfort in my unfaithfulness, but she is not in the house.”

My jaw dropped open. “You wanted her to walk in on you with Nivardi’s wife?”

He paced around the room, trying to smooth back the hair from his face. “She has tempted, teased, and denied me for too long. I wanted to let her know that her games would no longer work on me, and that if she wanted my attention, she would need to submit to my advances.”

I choked back a scoff. What kind of fucked up, childish manipulation was he playing at, trying to make Marlowe jealous by screwing someone else? If he had asked me, he would have known that there was nothing that turned her off towards a male faster than cheating.

I knew she hadn’t been interested in Alaroth anyway, but any hope he might have had that one day she’d return even an ounce of his affections was now permanently dead. Like stick-a-fork-in-it dead.

I continued to block the king’s view of Canna as I thought about where my sister could have disappeared to. The walls around the keep were well over thirty feet high, and there was no way she could have climbed it with her puny human arms. And even if she’d managed to get the silver cuff off her wrist and shift, she still wouldn’t have been able to leap over. The only way in or out was through the front gate, but no one would have let her through.

“I will find her, Your Majesty. She couldn’t have gotten far with this many alphas around.”

Terror took hold of his expression. “Moons… they’d tear her apart if she was caught.”

Canna whimpered, taking a step towards me before putting her small hand on my shoulder. “Ezra, you must hurry!”

I’d seen the scars on her body—she knew firsthand what these alphas, deprived of the kind of love and pack bonds that were necessary to keep us sane, were capable of.

I didn’t have any reason to believe they’d gotten a hold of her yet, though. With her scent, she would have caused a riot, and it was still quiet outside.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding from them somewhere, scared of what they’d do if they caught her.

Even if she hated my guts, even if she wanted me dead, I still needed to protect her. And my own omega, as well. “Canna, go stay with Nivardi’s daughters, I’ll…”

“Not so fast,”

Alaroth interrupted. He stepped up to me, sneering over my shoulder at Canna. “She needs to be contained somewhere more secure. If my beloved has been hurt, whatever injury she’s suffered due to your negligence will be done unto your omega ten-fold. Do you understand?”

I bared my teeth in a growl, rolling my shoulders back and widening my stance. Did he really think he could just take her away and hurt her? “Absolutely no—”

Pain.

My blood turned into acid in my veins, eating me from the inside out. I bellowed and collapsed on the floor, barely cognizant of Canna screaming over me, of guards being called to take her away.

My body convulsed uncontrollably yet each movement caused even greater agony, and I just wanted it to stop.

With a snap of his fingers, the pain receded. “I will finish correcting your insubordination later, alpha. Right now, you need to find your sister.”

My vision blurred, the king’s bare feet beneath his pants the only thing I could see.

The urge to lash out was met with another sharp, knife-like piercing inside my skull, and I howled as I held onto my head, trying to ease the sensation of my mind fracturing into a million pieces.

The king crouched down and grabbed my hair, forcing my head back and hissing. “You are really testing me today, aren’t you? You bonded to an omega without asking my permission, you let your sister escape, and now you continue to disobey me? To think of doing me harm?”

How could he have known what I’d been thinking? Could he really see in my own head?

He lowered his lips to my ear. “You and your sister are mine to control, mine to command. You may feel safe in the fact that I cannot kill you, but believe me—there are worse fates than death. Do. Not. Tempt. Me.”

He punctuated each word before slamming my head back on the ground. “Go now!”

The king stormed out of the room and I took a moment to catch my breath, getting up on four shaky limbs before shifting to my wolf.