Page 60

Asher’s POV

Almost 5 years later

I used to have two goals in life: become a King and kill the Rogue Alpha Prince. Somehow, I failed at both and ended up his Queen instead.

I started to think that Moon Goddess paired us without any other motives than for us to kill the Rogue King that day, when I discovered we’d be a family of five.

Cain never changed his ways. He loves me in some fucked-up way, and somehow, every rogue loves him… He changed me, though. I no longer see our world as black and white as I used to.

But I’m pretty much the same woman I was all these years ago. The one who throws a book at annoying idiots and challenges the King of Rogues in the spur of the moment while being unable to shift due to pregnancy… Okay, that wasn’t my greatest moment, but I did win that fight, so we’re cool.

Colton’s brother never spilled his motives, and we’ve never discovered how Unwanted grew in enough power to make so many problems. But that’s life I guess, you can’t have everything beautifully wrapped up with your whole life ahead of you.

Just as I thought, I’ve never gotten a fairytale happily-ever-after with a Prince Charming.

But I’ve had lots of sex, fights, and sex-after-the-fights with a King of Darkness .

I’m not complaining about having three mini carbon copies of him running around the house he built for us, either. They are the cutest little things I’ve ever met.

But I still can’t believe I am a mom. Of three kids! How!? Somehow, I became a fun but cold parent—while Cain is a stern but warm; and I would lose all fucking bets on it five years ago.

I look into the tall mirror in our master bedroom, getting ready for the long day of various duties in the castle, when Cain enters with a deep frustrated sigh—raking his hand through his shoulder-length black hair.

“I can’t get over the fact you bought swords for a bunch of savage four-year-olds,” he throws three mini swords on our bed. He must have just confiscated them.

I chuckle at him. “I can’t believe the Rogue King has a problem with his sons having mini swords just like daddy. And they are wooden !”

“You say it like you were never hit with a wooden toy, in the head. Or toes. Or face.”

I was. Too many times to count.

He stands behind me, pressing lightly on the back of my body, and locks our eyes in the mirror. He is gorgeous, and I’m so glad he never cut his hair short again. It’s pushed behind his ears right now, brushing his broad shoulders.

I figured he’s not completely bad pretty early on, but to learn it’s okay to love him unapologetically, not despite the bad but with all of his gray areas… It took me a while.

I feel one of his hands moving my long strawberry-blonde hair to the side and the other sliding over my soft stomach, tenderly. I’ve been lean and slim again for a few years already, but my tummy never flattened back after I was that impressively huge ball with the three tiniest babies inside.

I tilt my head slightly to the left so he can burrow his head there in the nape of my neck, smelling me. I know he will do it. He always does it when we stand like this.

And sure, he does lean in and kiss my marking spot, baring his own in the mirror.

It’s one of the rare occasions for me to look at the silver mark I left on his neck that night he came to me after we killed the previous King.

Maybe it was early pregnancy hormones, but it was the first time anyone had ever made me so moved and affected by what he said.

After a lifetime with you. All four of you.

After he said that, showing me how quickly and with no doubts he accepted what happened, we had this hot—passionate sex, and I couldn’t believe somehow I was his, and he was mine… He was mine, and I bit him hard, getting my sweet revenge.

“How do you like what I prepared for our anniversary breakfast?” Cain asks me in a husky voice, bringing me back to reality.

“Hm?”

“I just cut lemons for your tea. Can you smell them?” he asks, grabbing my jaw to give me a chaste kiss.

Just as he never stopped cutting tongues because I didn’t like someone’s laughter, he never stopped teasing me about having a mate somewhere else. Thankfully, oblivious to the fact that it was him, he kept harassing me with lemons every chance he got.

“Yeah, mhm,” I lie as always because I should be able to catch that scent. But for the life of me, I can never tell if there are some lemons in the house or if it is just his intoxicating true-mate smell. “I can’t wait. I can’t believe it’s been five years since we met. And had a wedding.”

Five years with him and somehow no matter how annoyed and tired we are, we still actually like each other. Moon Goddess knew what she was doing after all… I just wish I wouldn’t have to hide this fact from him.

“I ordered more so you could bake those mini lemon pies of yours, I like so much,” he says before three little devils run with squeals into our room in their color-coded PJs .

They all run around us, screaming, jumping, running, and climbing on my legs.

“Mommy!” Yells Milo, in white, the only one I got to name.

Cain agreed to that name so quickly, that over four years later, I’m still avoiding the history section at the castle library and bookshelves at the Meeting Hall—too scared to discover which of the ruthless Rogue Kings held that name before him.

“Can we go to the packhouse already?” Asks Blade, in gray.

“Please! Please!” Adds Demon, in black.

No matter how many times Cain or the boys will call it a packhouse, for me, it will always be the castle.

“Go change your clothes, we will go after breakfast. As always.”

They run out and Cain sighs again, wrapping my waist a little tighter. “When do they finally start school?”

“In two years? Don’t look at me like that. You were the one who insisted we don’t need early education in our Kingdom with all the other help we offer, and the fact that mini-wolves benefit more from spending time with their parents or some other crap. Your words,” I roll my eyes.

“That was before I had three of them at once,” he mumbles and kisses my neck again, “I’ll be downstairs; don’t make me wait too long.”

I smile at him and nod. I love this life we made for ourselves, no matter how chaotic it can be sometimes.

When I go downstairs, my smile falters immediately.

“Do you still smell the lemons?” Cain sits at the kitchen table, observing me with a devilish smirk.

And there are absolutely no lemons anywhere near him. Or in the house. Or probably in the whole Kingdom.

Fuck .

He knows .

Run! I swear on God of Night, this stupid wolf in me will get me killed someday.

My eyes go to the tiny black bodysuit framed and hung on the wall to my husband’s left, and my throat squeezes at the thought of leaving it behind.

As if I had any chance to run away from him.

I became too relaxed and confident with my lies about our true mate bond with the way he never changed, giving me this false hope of never getting the sacred ability, and now I’m fucking dead. He’ll kill me. Children or not, as a marked true mate, I’m still his biggest weakness in all of our enemies' eyes.

And there is no shortage of those for the Rogues like us.

My biggest enemy, though, is sitting right in front of me.

I try to think of some excuse, but despite trying to prepare for this exact moment for the last five years, my brain is in a scramble that no amount of adrenaline can fix.

“Cain, I…”

“Shhh, relax, my Queen,” he pulls my stiffened body into a tight embrace in the same passive-aggressive manner he used to scrub my body clean every evening, and it does everything but relax me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my throat still painfully squeezed in stress and traitorous tears coming to my eyes.

I don’t want to think about leaving the three most perfect babies behind without a mother—or the fact that I don’t feel like a good enough parent to even try to use it as a plea for my life.

He looks deep into my eyes, putting his palm on my chest where my heart is.

“I have felt you are my true Goddess-given mate for almost five years now.”

I look at him in shock, and he takes that opportunity to plant a searing kiss on my lips. He takes full advantage when I part them, and I’m lost in it for a passionate moment—overwhelmed by the Goddess-given true mate bond flowing between us. When he takes his lips off mine, he starts tracing his tongue lower, over my jaw, neck, and to the mark he recklessly gave me.

He can feel I’m his true mate.

“Wait, what?” I ask, feeling so numb from the shock I’m not sure what’s going on.

“I realized you are my true mate when you were lying in that hospital bed, wolf dormant and dying. You are lucky I did because you would have died without your true mate constantly with you back then, and we both know that. But I think I started feeling something before that.” He brushes his nose on my neck, caging me between his legs with his arms around my shoulders. “You smell like avocado, you know that?”

“What?” I repeat, looking at him with wide eyes.

He cups my cheeks and plants another kiss that is so familiar but so different, too. It’s… It’s him with all these overwhelming emotions, letting me feel what he feels. What he has felt all along!

“You can ask our Beta or Gamma or the pack doctor… I alpha-commanded them a few years ago to keep quiet until our fifth wedding anniversary,” he murmurs against my lips.

Shit, I forgot to let Beta know my brother is coming here today.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask when he finally lets me breathe.

I can’t believe how many times I laid down on my side with his sleeping breath on my shoulder, being unable to fall asleep myself while finally letting my fear come through the only time he wouldn’t feel it through the mate bond.

“We were all worried you would try to escape thinking I’d kill you, so I decided to give you proof first. A few years of proof. I love you, Ash, so much—and I hope by now you know I would never kill you, if I haven’t yet.”

I want to protest but he shuts my mouth with another kiss.

“You have been my weakness long before I started feeling the mate bond, anyway.”

“Now you’ll lie that I make you strong or some shit I know you don’t believe,” I look sideways, hurt.

“Those three little devils you gave me?” he asks, “They make me strong. You don’t.”

I look back into his navy-blue eyes for the first time, letting myself feel hope he truly means it.

“Really?”

He nods, opens his mouth, and hesitates for the first time ever. I put my hand on his shoulder, trying to give him whatever support he needs, as always.

He nods again, looks at my golden mark, and finally confesses with something vulnerable in his eyes. “I know I can live without you, but I don’t want to, and it’s my biggest fear.”

“You made me lie about having sex with another man for five years, you dick.”

“It was fun,” he winks.

“I hate you,” I say with a stupid smile I can’t stop from happening.

“I hate you even more, Little Wolf,” he looks up at me with a knowing smirk and all the love in the world.

After all these years of lying and worrying about my own life, the relief is so overwhelming that I don’t even know anything except that I love that scheming, ruthless man in front of me so much!

“You are perfect for me—even more than I am perfect for you,” he continues, moving my face to him by grabbing my chin in his warm, strong hand.

“Cocky as always,” I murmur and kiss him back, my body—finally—slowly relaxing after all these years in fear. “Did you have to torture me… Oh, my God, you are such a dick!”

“But somehow, I’m exactly who you want.”

“Arrogant dick,” my words are muffled by his mouth again .

I slip my hands under his shirt with a moan, and that’s when the screaming bunch of Cain’s copies swarm around us, now wearing matching black sets—and I can’t tell who is who for the life of me.

Perfect timing, as always.

“They can just eat yogurts, right?” Cain asks me with a wink, and before I can even process it, I’m being pulled to the pantry with some steamingly hot intentions—while our three oblivious Rogue Princes are being instructed to make their own breakfast.

“I don’t want to touch wet things,” Milo, I think, says, standing in front of the raindrops-covered gate, when we are finally ready to go to the packhouse almost an hour later.

“We’ll see in ten years,” Cain shoots back, opening it for him.

It takes me a second to realize he means sex…

“Oh my Goddess, Cain!” I swat him on the shoulder.

“What?” he asks with a shrug and his signature sexy smirk, before pulling me for another kiss.

THE END