Page 28

“W ere you having sex while Rogue Prince bit you?” the Seer, who used to heal me when I got in trouble as a kid, asks me, looking very bored.

Cain could take notes from her.

We came to her for advice when we got back to my parent’s summer mansion—I asked one of the maids if they brought her with them. They always do.

“She was still filled with my semen,” Cain answers with a smirk, knowing it doesn’t work like that.

He just tries to mess with me again. He is in exceptionally good humor after I let him, without prompting, take one of the pretty swords from the wall on the second floor, where the Seer resides temporarily.

She looks back at him like she’s actually considering what he said, then lifts her brows with the nod of a chin to herself. “Hmm.”

I roll my eyes but don’t say anything, I know my safe place by now.

“Are you true mates?” she asks suddenly with a fricking chuckle.

Is that why I’m not healing? Because I was harmed by my true mate? I was sure that only happens after the marking… but I also thought the same about the mind-linking, and he swears he could hear me.

“Well, Ash, why don’t you answer that?” Cain says with another smirk, clearly having fun.

I scoff, with the intent of backtracking the conversation .

“What does it matter? We all know the rules of making the mark, and they are the same whether you are Goddess-given mates or chosen ones.”

One of you has to bite the other while having consensual sex, not randomly after. Otherwise, half of the battle bites would end up as markings.

“It doesn’t matter, of course, but it’s just obvious you would be perfect for each other. Someone to temper you, Princess, finally.”

Cain snorts with laughter, but quickly stops with amusement when I shoot him a warning look.

“Rogue Prince, if you know how much trouble she always caused me… and with her Royal Alpha blood, she annoyingly always gets what she wants. But we all love her of course.”

I stand up and lean my hand on Cain’s side, where he holds his brand-new shiny toy.

“Do you need your left hand for healing?” I ask her.

“What? No, why?” She looks down, worried that there’s something wrong with it.

I use all my werewolf strength and speed, to draw my husband’s borrowed sword, and slash it over the table where she holds her left hand. Well… not anymore.

She’s screaming, covered in red trickles, and looks with shock at her left hand—which is lying in the pool of blood.

Rogue Prince chuckles again. She shoots him a look and then falls from her chair. I look over the table at her lifeless-looking body on the floor, but I’m not concerned. I can hear her heart still beating when I try to focus on it.

“She just passed out,” Cain says calmly and stands up lazily.

“Yeah, I know, I hear it too.”

I turn to him and lift the blood-dripping sword to my face. I give it a good long lick. His eyes widen and he shoots one brow up, questioning my motives or sanity. Who knows. But he’s kind of turned on too, I can feel it. Sicko.

“She’ s a true seer, her blood can heal even the poison,” I explain while I give him the sword back. “She always gave it to me before I fully grew into my wolf power and could start to heal myself.”

“Hm.” He puts it back in his belt, not caring in the slightest that it is still dripping with blood. “Why didn’t you just make a small cut on her palm, or something?”

He is fully amused now. I can see the glint in his usually cold eyes.

“I felt like it was a limb-cutting kind of day,” I shrug my shoulders, “She said she doesn’t need it, you heard her.”

“God, women, if you are not my true mate, I will be very disappointed,” he says, grabbing me by my bloody shirt and pulling me for a quick kiss.

Then he opens the doors for me with another laugh.

“Yeah, like you don’t plan to kill your true mate the second you can feel her.” I roll my eyes and stride back to our guest room. “Save it for some girl who doesn’t know you. Alpha.”

“Of course I do,” he doesn’t even bother to pretend he wouldn’t kill me.

I was never as happy as I am right now, that I was right about something. Keeping our mate bond hidden from him? Best decision ever.

He stops me before I can ascend the stairs. “Wait, I was thinking… Do you want to go somewhere with me?”

“Where?” I furrow my brows. “You mean that date?”

“No, something else. Our date is already planned, and it will take place after we go back home.”

Home.

“You want to go right now? It’s very late.”

“So?” He smirks.

“Okay. But we need to go to our room first and change into something not soaked in blood.”

After thirty-five minutes of surprisingly light and fun conversation about LGBTQA+ books, Cain’s Beta passive-aggressively occasionally leaves on his desk, I park on one of the main city streets. Cain takes his leather-bound notebook and gets out of my SUV.

I still don’t know why he insisted on coming into one hundred percent human territory, how he knew where to go or why is he bringing that notebook.

I get out shortly after Cain and run around the car to catch up with him. He takes my hand in his warm, big one and leads me into one of the local stores. I notice I barely reach his shoulder. He’s so tall. I do feel like a little wolf next to him. I never was a petite woman, fit and lean, yes, but not small or short, so it’s a very nice feeling.

“Tattoo parlor?” I ask when my brain finally registers my surroundings.

He talks with the tattoo artist, and I can’t help but stare.

“We are almost closing…” The poor guy tries to explain, but Cain decides to be the client from hell and smashes his notebook before him.

I want to sneak a peek, but the guy lifts it and furrows his brows, looking at whatever is inside with weird intensity.

“Oh man, are these yours?” He lifts his eyes at Cain with curiosity.

“Are you up for it or not?”

For what? What did I miss at the beginning? Never mind, I can’t stand Cain being the worst tattoo client there ever was. Coming without an appointment, after hours, being rude, demanding something from some sketches… Does he expect the poor guy to draw him a new tattoo project right now? Why? Is he so jealous about my reaction to Atlas? I huff.

“You can pick him up in five to six hours,” the tattoo artist says to me dismissively, and he comes with Cain’s notebook to the scanner.

I cringe at the fact that Cain just made the poor guy work all night for something petty like that .

“I don’t know if I will,” I shake my head and stride back to the doors, where Cain catches up with me and leans to my ear.

“I’ll find my way back. I will always find my way back to you, now that I know the taste of your blood.”

I sigh heavily. It doesn’t work that way, but let’s let him have his dramatic moment.

I wake up in a cold bed at the break of dawn. It was my first normal night without Cain since the wedding, and I’m embarrassed by the amount of tossing and turning I was doing for half of it. I hate that his absence carries so much weight on me.

Stupid mate bond.

I stand up and go to the restroom. I can see in the mirror that my neck is finally healed. I feel a pang of anger at the thought that Cain bit me so recklessly—I plan to hold on to his words about coming back from the tattoo session on his own.

I won’t come for him!

I dress up casually and go to the kitchen for some breakfast, where Chef Susan is already in full hustle mode.

“Oh, Princess Asher, so good to see you, my dear! Do you want avocado toast like always?”

I’m about to say yes but something feels wrong, and I stop at the creeping realization. I miss him.

And I am scared of the consequences of not listening to him—that’s what I try to tell myself, but to be completely honest, that’s not the reason for my tightened guts.

“No, thank you. Can you instead prepare something to go, please? Two of them. ”

She looks at me taken aback, but quickly composes herself and looks down. No longer happy to see me and we both know it.

“Is there something Rogue Prince likes in particular?”

Lemons.

“I know you have a lot of work with my brother's birthday parties, so just give me whatever you have already prepared.”

She nods. Five minutes later I run to my car with two breakfast burritos in my hand, and a lemon pie recipe in my back pocket.

I go to the tattoo shop with my heart on my sleeve, but something stops me from entering.

It’s already way past the six hours the guy said it would take. What if Cain’s not there anymore? What if he is mad at me? What if he didn’t miss me? Of course he didn’t, I mean—

“Ash,” Cain bursts out of the door, almost running into me.

He has an upper half sleeve tattoo wrapped up in foil. I can’t see what it is yet, but it is big, and I lose my voice for a moment.

Cain leans down for a kiss, bringing his hand with the notebook to my face. Oh, my Goddess, how I missed those soft lips on me!

I’m catching feelings here quicker than humans catch STDs.

“I brought you breakfast,” I try to remain composed. Cain doesn’t deserve to know how much I like spending time with him.

“I’ll eat in the car. I’m so fucking tired, Ash, I swear I fell asleep in that chair a few times, like some weak human.”

And what did the poor tattoo artist have to say?

I give him one of the burritos and lead him to my SUV.

“Can you check your wolf app? Guy said it will take a few weeks to heal, and I swear Atlas is always like brand-new the next day.”

“I already checked, it will heal in four or five hours… shit, wait, you have royal Alpha blood,” I fish out my phone again. “Two hours.”

I sit behind the steering wheel and start the car as soon as he’s inside with a burrito in his mouth.

“Let’s pretend I don’t know you didn’t plan to come at first,” he says between bites, “You were lucky I was still there.”

“Will you show me what you got?” I steer with one hand and bite into my burrito, completely ignoring his veiled threat, because why should I not?

“After we take a nap,” he promises with a yawn. “What time does the party start?”

“Party?” I ask with a full mouth before the realization comes. “Oh. In the evening, don’t worry about it. We have a whole day ahead of us.”

He nods, chews his last bite, and falls asleep in the car before we manage to get back. I cannot stop thinking about the leather-bound journal he has on his lap. I want to look inside so badly!

But he wakes up as soon as I park in front of the mansion, and I don’t have a chance.

“Come,” I let him wrap his arm around my shoulders and lean some of his weight on me. “Let’s get you to bed before you make some other poor souls work after hours for you.”

“Hey, he said it was a pure pleasure to work with my drawings. Plus, I’m pretty sure he was lying about closing—did you see the open hours on the doors? He was not closing yet, and he was perky all night without any coffee.”

Is that what’s inside his notebook? Real drawings?

We go inside the Grey Room and I help him undress. He kisses me sloppily and pushes me onto the bed, where we fall with him on top of me.

He’s so heavy, I have to use all my force to push him off after he immediately falls asleep on me. My eyes dart to his notebook and I decide it’s my only chance.

That’s when I catch the bling of his new sword and I realize whatever is inside, it would not be worth losing a limb.

“That’s… that’s me!” I’m completely taken aback when Cain finally shows me his first tattoo after he wakes up. It’s fully healed and beautiful.

A wolf. The wolf. My wolf! It’s like looking at a photo, it even has a subtle pink hue over the gray and black ink. I can’t believe the freaking Rogue Prince put pink color permanently on himself just for me! It’s pretty big, and surrounded by black and grey geometric patterns and cute carnations, almost bleeding onto his shoulder. I remain silent about the fact that they are my favorite flowers, because he doesn’t need more proof of us being true mates.

I have tears in my eyes and I’m not even sure why.

He tattooed my wolf form on himself. Why?

“Do you want to see the original drawing?” He asks and reaches for his notebook.

He opens it to the right page, and there it is. The most beautiful pencil sketch of a wolf. And it’s in my likeness! On the next page, there’s my face. I look happy there, and my hair is still long and partially braided, exactly like on our wedding day.

“I can’t believe you can draw! It’s so beautiful.” I want to check other pages, but he closes it on my fingers and takes it away.

“You have a very beautiful wolf,” he says and brushes loose strands of hair away from my face.

“Thank you. Oh, my Goddess, I still can’t believe you just got a huge ass tattoo!”

He chuckles and gets up to take a shower before the party.

“Will your mate be here?” he asks again casually from the shower room, but I stiffen anyway.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m with you,” I say, taking my clothes off to join and distract him.

I’m helping him dress up into his warrior gear after a surprisingly timid shower—in which we devoured each other with our eyes but never touched.

When he is done, I blow-dry my freshly colored bubblegum-pink hair and dress into the only other black dress I own. This one is made of leather, strapless with a sweetheart neckline and a loose A-shaped mid-thigh skirt.

“I have something for you,” Cain says and gets my DIY leather choker out of the side pocket of our duffel bag.

I had no idea he packed it.

He puts it on me himself and it suddenly feels like a collar, not a choker. Like I’m his.

“Now we’re matching like you always dreamed of,” he says with a hint of irony in his voice.

I arch my brow in a questioning manner but when he chuckles the realization comes.

“Fucking Gregory!”

My brother told him I used to hate matching couples.

Before I met Cain.

“You know what? When I signed on to marry a Royal Princess I never thought you would be swearing so much. Aren’t you supposed to be all proper and shy?”

“I was never shy, and the swearing thing? I was surrounded by an army all the time, since I was fifteen,” I answer, putting on my new high heels that came with expedited delivery, while we had a nap.

Well, he had a nap, and I had an internal struggle about looking inside his notebook.

I’m not sure why I didn’t order any underwear, but it’s too late now.

“Did you design Atlas’s tattoos?” I look at his upper arm and recognize the style.

He nods.

“I can’t believe you can draw.”

“Well, you have to have some hobbies besides war, don’t you?”

Do I have hobbies besides the war? I wonder.

“Can you stop mind-linking me all the time? That’s creepy as fuck.”

I look up at him. “I didn’t. You know I can’t do that.”

He rolls his eyes.

Is that the fucking mate bond playing tricks on us? Shouldn’t it be impossible until we are marked anyway? Maybe it’s because usually people mark their true mates almost immediately. But it wouldn’t make any sense. There are other couples like us—when one of the wolves doesn’t feel it for years…

Ooh, maybe our abilities are heightened because of our royal blood?

“You did it again.” He attaches the sword to his chest-crossing thing on the back.

Okay, that will be a problem, but maybe I can block it, now that I know for sure.

Oh, or maybe he’s just messing with me to make me admit I feel the mate bond with him?

“What did I say when it first happened?” I ask suspiciously.

He looks at me blankly and opens the doors. I follow him out, my heels clicking on the hardwood floor.

When I try to pass him, he grabs my arm and leans to my ear.

“You were scared that your family would hear you moaning my name, that’s why I covered your mouth with my hand.”

He does it again the same way he did on the balcony, and I can’t help but shudder with anticipation. I feel his fingers gently brushing my thigh.

“Then, you said, and I quote, ‘Yes! Yes, Cain, yes!’ while you were coming.”

I’m sure my cheeks are bright red at this point, judging by their sudden warmth.

He looks at me and chuckles. “Come on, little wolf, let’s make your mate jealous.”

Oh, he will be jealous , my wolf part snickers, and I make sure to block my thoughts from him this time.

We turn the corner to go to the same ball hall as yesterday and someone suddenly bumps into me, drawing a roar from Cain.