Page 46

“A m I married to a toddler?” Cain asks one of the waiters with annoyance, who keeps asking him about the specifics of my order. “Ask her yourself.”

He’s an old grey-haired man with the body of a scrawny teenager, and the beliefs of a medieval man.

“Relax, your Highness, it used to be normal for Alphas to pick up everything their Lunas were eating or doing. Some still do it, especially when they are not alpha-blooded, or to establish dominance when they are.”

Cain rolls his eyes.

Knowing I am his true mate… Of course, he can’t fathom ordering food for his date when she’s perfectly capable of doing it herself. I would hate it if he wouldn’t let me choose for myself.

I smile at the stressed-out waiter, and order a well-done burger with sweet potato fries and kale salad. He flees to the kitchen with werewolf speed, as soon as he can.

“So, when will I finally get my punishment?” I look back at the menu. It’s way more elevated than I expected from the pub in a small northern rogue town, where we came for some pack business.

It’s been a week since I accidentally admitted to the unauthorized use of Cain’s laptop, and he keeps hinting at the inevitable punishment but never gets to it. I can’t take the anticipation anymore. I’m a stressed-out mess.

He takes me everywhere with him, even here, just to rub salt in my wound, I guess.

I look back up at him, and he just shrugs his shoulders with a smirk. Jerk.

“So, what kind of cousin is Claudia?” I finally gather the courage to ask all the hard questions. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know, but I can’t take it anymore.

“We have the same fourth-grandfather, so we don’t even share point-zero-five percent of DNA, if that’s what bothers you.”

“Oh. I thought it would be way worse. With your logic, we are cousins too, so whatever. You made it sound like a close family.”

“She is close family,” he is not helping his case at all.

I look at him with narrowed eyes. “Okay…”

Soon, the waiter comes back with our plates. The food smells amazing, but I almost choke on my first bite when I see who's coming to our table.

As a trained princess I’m not easily stirred, but it’s the very last criminal I personally sent over the border to Rogues—after our prisons were already up and running with success.

“Alpha, how good to see you. And Luna… I owe you everything.”

Wait, what?

“Jake is a chef here,” Cain automatically says, “Do you know each other well?”

I nod with a polite smile, wondering if my burger is poisoned. Should I switch meals with Cain in front of Jake to gauge his reaction?

“Luna fought with her father over sending me here, and thank the Goddess she won. Being sent here was the best thing that ever happened to me, Alpha.”

Cain arches his perfect full brow at me, demanding an explanation. I clear my throat.

“Before our prisons’ capacity was adequate, we still had to reject and throw out some of the criminals,” I admit. “Everyone always wanted to get rid of the worst ones without any useful skills, but I was an advocate for teaching them these skills so they could start honest lives after their punishment—and to throw out people that wouldn't be useful for you in the war. Like cooks, and other people who could increase the quality of life here enough for you to not want to convert them into warriors. Or have a war at all.”

I take a few sips of my orange juice just to do something with my hands.

“And here I was thinking all your cooks are notorious criminals,” he winks at me, and Jake laughs at his Alpha’s joke as he should.

I smile at the guy, trying to guess his intentions. He starts fidgeting with his hand.

“Don’t get me wrong, I always respected your father and the royal family, but my previous Alpha was a dick…”

“Alpha Timothy?” I vaguely remember that Timmy was present at Jake’s judgment.

“Correct. Luna, I know I was mad at you for sending me here, to put it mildly,” Yeah, he tried to choke me, only cementing his exile, “But Rogue Prince gave me this whole awesome life—even when I was just a prejudiced criminal rejected from another Kingdom. And maybe I miss the internet sometimes, but I wouldn’t change it for anything else in the world. He’s a very good Alpha, good for his people, and I’m happy for you.” Jake’s eyes drag over the mark on my neck, making me feel exposed.

And a little bit embarrassed—which is not a feeling I’m very familiar with.

“I met Alpha Timmy recently. He is a dick.” Cain says, and takes a spoonful of heavenly-smelling stew. “Fuck, you have to give Greyson a recipe for this.”

“Of course, Alpha.”

“It got so cold so quickly,” I whine while putting a leather jacket over my sweater, and Cain comes to rub my arms. I’m sure it’s still sunny and warm back at my parents’ home.

He’s wearing a black shirt with long sleeves under all the leather straps and a wolf fur cape. When he brings me in for a hug, all his knives and the handle of the sword are pressing into my body .

He wants to kiss my head, but I slip away.

“Hey, you don’t get to be all cute and caring while I await my punishment. You’ve got me so stressed, I’ll never have an orgasm for the rest of my life,” I grumble and get on my horse.

“I won’t stop trying to give you one,” Cain laughs and hops on his horse.

“No. You just make it worse! I can’t take it anymore, every time you kiss me, I can only think about the possibility of you literally stabbing my back,” I nudge the horse with my calves and make him trot forward.

Cain catches up with me and sends me a smirk.

“Okay, your punishment is over,” he finally says, not making any sense. “You are officially forgiven.”

“Um, I don’t understand.”

“That anticipation was a punishment in itself.” He stretches his arm to me, and I reluctantly intertwine our fingers. “It’s not like any real punishment would work on you with your royal alpha-blooded healing and military background. And you seem to like rougher sex and spanking, so whipping you with a crop wouldn’t be a real punishment either.”

“Oh, crop, can we—”

“See, it wouldn’t work,” he cuts me off with a squeeze of my hand, but I am sure, deep in my core, I’ll have plenty of occasions to regret that excitement I had in my voice just now.

“So, you made me stress out about punishment that you never planned to impose?” I try to wrap my mind around it, to finally ease my nerves after a week of this torture. “But you will never be able to do it again and you said it yourself, that was the only way to punish me.”

“Well, Ash, do you plan to break into my office ever again?”

“No, I don’t,” I deny with conviction, and look around while we leave this small tranquil town built on the hill in the middle of the woods. I can’t get over how idyllic most of his Kingdom is. All these small towns are surrounded by forests, hills, and mountains. I guess werewolves do take care of nature better than regular humans.

“See, you learned your lesson. But I’m still waiting for you to tell me what you were doing on that laptop.”

“Reading the news,” I say with a dull voice, because I catch a glimpse of something moving on our right with my peripheral vision. I concentrate on the spot, and my other senses—but I don’t see, feel, or hear anything there.

But I know better.

“We haven’t had any Unwanted attacks for a long time,” I say in a low voice as casually as I can be, but not too low for everyday conversation, and I turn to look at him with a small smile and a squeeze of our intertwined fingers.

He looks dangerously gorgeous and gorgeously dangerous, but I didn’t turn in this direction to admire my wicked husband. No, I’m waiting for another movement.

“Yeah, it’s suspicious,” Cain admits with a slight pout, that somehow makes him look even hotter.

“Maybe they finally know they shouldn’t mess with you,” I look straight at the road again and switch the conversation to the mind link. ‘Or they are on your four o’clock in the forest. ’

“You are so fucking sexy, I can’t wait anymore,” Cain says while steering his horse closer to mine.

He brings me for a surprisingly soft kiss and presses a bowie knife into my hand. ‘Quarter horses are slightly faster than regular wolves at this distance.’

He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t have to.

I know our wolf forms don’t stand a chance of catching whoever is there in the forest, especially if we are not even shifted yet. Even if we sacrificed our clothes and wouldn’t get stuck in things, we don’t have time to unbelt. Especially when we are out in the open without a chance of surprising them.

Cain nudges his heels at his horse and steers him in the right direction, mine is following closely behind. I catch the reins, still holding the bone handle of the knife in my right hand and I lean forward—slightly raising my body from the saddle, using my knees to support me, and the pressure of my legs to make my horse go faster and faster.

As soon as our horses start to gallop into the forest, something moves, and whoever it is, they make a run for it.

But we are faster and soon I can make out the shape of a big, dull gray wolf with the unmistakable true rogue smell. I throw the bowie knife right into his left hind leg. He rolls over, shifting into a human form, a naked teenage boy, and pulls on the knife that is stuck in his inner thigh. That’s all it takes for our horses to catch up with him, and even though he manages to get up, it’s too late for him.

I jump off my horse onto his back and pin him to the ground. He’s bigger than me and… feral. He writhes under me, almost tipping me over, but he’s not an Alpha so I don’t back up. He manages to punch my side, but quickly regrets it when I sink my elongated claws into his forearm.

I hear Cain jumping off the horse and taking a few slow steps.

“I want him alive,” he demands with a bored tone, and my instinct says to pick up the knife that lies a few feet away and send it through his sexy neck.

It’s just the alpha blood talking, hating being under anyone’s command, so I choose to focus on fighting this Unwanted boy without sending him to the Gods. Boy’s not that bad—he is tall and big already and apparently smart enough to sneak into Rogue King’s territory.

A lot of punches, scratches, and a few desperate kicks later; I bring the boy by his neck to Cain’s feet, pushing his face into the forest ground.

“Your Highness,” I say with a sour voice.

“Good job,” he says like I was a pup, so my adrenaline-induced alpha blood boils.

But I can see his boils too.

I flinch when he kicks the teenager in the head, with a precision that allows him to lose consciousness. The boy lies lifeless but is still breathing. Now when I finally have time to really look at his dirty face, I think he might be sixteen but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was already eighteen either. I’m not that much older than him.

“I will fucking kill all of my officers for that kid crossing the borders, without any alarm.”

“Oh, can we put them in a good mood first? So, they don’t expect anything?” I say with excitement.

Cain lifts his eyebrows at me in amusement, “I did rub off on you, little wolf.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I used to do it all the time with Greg.” I start lifting the limp body of the teenager. “You don’t mean to kill them for real, right? Just punish?”

He rolls his eyes at me, neither confirming nor denying, and takes the boy from my hands.

“We should cover him,” I say, helping Cain arrange the unconscious body over my horse. “It’s cold, and he’s, well, possibly underage and butt naked.”

Cain takes off his fur cape and tugs it around the boy.

I wait for him to climb his horse first. When he stretches his arm to help me, I quickly regret doing so. He forces me to sit straddling him, front to front, just like the first day we met.

Seriously?

I wrap my hands around his waist with resignation, and bring my body closer to his. He kisses my head and clicks his tongue at the horse.

I hug him for my own comfort. Because despite all the confusing things he did to me, and even more things we should discuss honestly, starting with questioning why he keeps telling me he loves me— this level of intimacy is the only thing I feel I can control. I hug him because I want to. I don’t care what he feels, I don’t care what he thinks, I don’t care if I should put some boundaries between us, and I certainly don’t care about the mate bond pulling that I constantly ignore. I’m not doing it for any gain, or because of any feelings for him. I do it because it simply feels great on the physical level. The hardness of his muscles, the softness of his shirt’s fabric, the calming movement of his chest with every breath, the warmth of his body …

I can’t even tell how long it took us to get to the Capital City’s gates, because I was in my head the whole time, hugging my Prince of Darkness .

There is no happy ending here. Cain won’t stop acting arrogant and brutal, because that’s who he is. It’s not acting, it’s being. I can see he wasn’t lying about that. And he’s not some human male who can go to therapy. He’s a Rogue Alpha Prince werewolf, and thousands of people depend on this primal form. There is no way in hell or heaven, for people to ever warmly call him Alpha Cain instead of cold Rogue Prince, at some impossible end of our story.

It dawns on me that even if I had the right to fix him, he’s not broken. No matter what I thought the reason for Moon Goddess’s decision to pair us was, I can’t make him a good man.

Because he already is one, in his own, twisted, wicked way.

“I asked Beta to get the Unwanted discreetly to the dungeon for now, until you prep my officers,” Cain pulls me out of my thoughts.

I try to look around his shoulder at the other horse and the still unconscious boy riding on its back.

“Can you gather all of them in your office, Alpha?” I add the title because we are back in the Capital, and there are lots of people everywhere around—I’m not in the mood for another sick punishment.

I’m sure he would come up with a different one if he had to.

“Okay.” He pauses for a few seconds. “Done.”

“And you never guessed you are a part Lycan?” I ask skeptically, because being able to mind-link a dozen people at once with such ease is not normal, even for an Alpha King.

“Well, my father has the same Lycan blood, and with his abilities to compare, I guess I never thought there was anything extraordinary with me?”

I look up into his dark-framed navy-blue eyes. “Okay, makes sense.”

It starts raining, first just a drizzle so I don’t hide my face, but then it pours suddenly so heavily, I squeak, scrunching my nose.

There is a hint of a smile on his face before he leans in for a possessive kiss, that feels too good to refuse just on principal. Fuck principals. I rake my hand into his hair, which is still shaved on the sides but much longer on top than when we first met.

“And what’s your name?” I innocently ask the alpha-blooded officer who won a fight with me the day before at the training pit.

“Lucius,” he answers mindlessly, while double-checking some report he made for his Alpha.

I lock my eyes on Cain, who’s at his desk, slowly sipping on wolfsbane-infused bourbon, before I address everyone in a playful tone.

“Lucius? Why do you all have evil names?”

“It’s not evil,” Lucius immediately swallows a hatch.

“Said no Potterhead ever,” I shoot back, gaining some snickers from the ones familiar with the series, the biggest from Cain, surprisingly, and I look around the packed room, “It is evil. Okay, let’s see… Which one of you is called Marcus?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with Marcus?” One of the officers, who is clearly named Marcus, shouts, and others chuckle.

“Oh, I know—Azai?”

“Here.”

This one winks at me. He knows he’s evil.

“Hmm. Kade with a K. Ooh, no. Kaden?”

Officer Rein points at the grumpy guy on his left.

“Hey now, it’s not evil! ”

“Yeah, but I guessed it, so it is.” While scanning the room, now full of relaxed, smiling faces, I lock eyes with Cain’s gamma. “Hm, only Atlas doesn’t sound evil.”

Cain laughs at me, almost choking on his brown alcohol. “You know Atlas is named after my grandfather, Atlas The Third, right? Also known as the Bold King?” he asks me with a knowing smirk.

Rogue King the Bold, the one that kidnapped and later killed my grandmother Edith, before returning her tortured remains to us.

I stare at him blankly while my brain is rendering, until I can shake the cold feeling off and go back to marinating officers before the feast.

“Ok, that only proves my point. Evil names.” Everyone laughs. “And let's not forget about the one most evil of them all… Lucifer! Beta, you can come in.”

Beta Lucifer opens the office doors with a bang and drags inside a now-conscious, Unwanted teenage boy.

“Have fun, guys,” I say, leaving the room with a wink.

By the look on their faces, when the true rogue scent must have filled their noses, they all know they screwed up and their executioner is the Rogue Alpha Prince.