Page 25 of Savagely Mated (Shared Mates #1)

D arcy

I have never returned to the academy dripping with cum before, but there’s a first time for everything.

We go in the front gate. I’ve never gone in or out the front gate, at least not in years. It’s a big, fancy half-circle thing with an actual portcullis. I don’t know if it functions, but I bet it does.

There are two uniformed guards at the gate. They glance at me, but their eyes are drawn by Einar. They recognize him immediately, I have no idea how, but their change in demeanor goes from first string guard to excited fanboy. They practically giggle as Einar strides up to them with me in tow.

“I think I have something that belongs to you,” he says, pushing me forward like an offering.

They glance at me. “Are you the missing cadet? Darcy?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Better call the director,” one says to the other.

God. This is already getting so much more complicated than it needs to be. The director is a ridiculous person. She takes everything so freakishly seriously. I bet her and Einar are going to get on really well.

We wait a few minutes, the guards apologizing every sixty seconds or so until the director comes out.

She’s a busy woman, and she and I are sure to never cross paths, kind of a mutual agreement, I think.

She doesn’t want to deal with my shit, and I don’t want to suffer whatever punishment she’s going to feel compelled to hand out.

She’s about Einar’s age, has dark hair with graying streaks through it that I think make her look badass. She’s wearing a hunter green coat slash cloak combo with tall boots, and an unimpressed expression that really ties the whole thing together.

Madame Kier has been director of the academy for about ten years now. She got to the place when I was about eleven years old, so we’ve known each other a while. But she’s never known me when I wasn’t trouble.

She gives me a long-suffering look as she sees me. There’s a glint in her eye, like she wants to really go off on me, but Einar is standing right next to me, and she doesn’t want to look unhinged in front of him.

“Hello, Darcy,” she says. “We’ve been worried about you.”

She doesn’t ask me why I’m wearing Delivery 2 Go leathers, or why I’m holding my helmet in my hand. She just accepts that of course I’ve been doing something functionally insane, because she doesn’t really care. None of them do. My absence from this place is irrelevant. They weren’t looking for me.

“Sure,” I say. “Real worried, I bet.”

Einar smacks my ass, an act that shocks me and everybody else. I did not expect him to spank me at the academy. It doesn’t feel like the sort of place he should be allowed to do that sort of thing.

“What the fuck!”

“Well deserved, I think,” the director says. “Thank you, Mr. Bitten. I don’t know how you thought to bring her here, or how you found her…”

“He abducted me,” I say. Two can play at the bullshit that shouldn’t happen in front of others.

I feel Einar stiffen, and if I weren’t so intent on selling this little story, I’d laugh.

The director doesn’t buy it anyway.

“I am certain he did not, and you would do well to not accuse ranking members of the King’s Guard with such crimes. You don’t know what you’re saying, Darcy, that’s your problem. Do you really not know who Mr. Bitten is?”

I give a little delinquent shrug.

“Of course not. His portrait only hangs in the study hall, and you go there so rarely I am sure you have no…”

“That’s where I’ve seen you before!” I exclaim, turning to Einar.

Einar doesn’t say anything. He is playing the stern stranger to the hilt. Almost too well, actually. It’s kind of freaky.

“Mr. Bitten is one of our most distinguished alumni, and at one time was a valued member of the faculty,” she says, ostensibly lecturing me, but actually really just taking the opportunity to suck up to Einar.

If she had any idea the things this man had done to me, she’d be a lot less obsequious. Or maybe that wouldn’t matter.

“Please, Mr. Bitten,” she says. “Allow me to give you some tea at least for bringing her back. Darcy, you are restricted to quarters.”

“Tea would be nice, thank you,” Einar says.

The director practically falls over herself ushering him away. At this point, I could pretty much leave again if I want to—and I do want to, so I do.

Fuck Einar’s warnings. I don’t care if he fucks me. My pussy might be sore, but I like sex. He can’t do anything to me that I don’t really like.

I make a show of going into the building behind them, of course, but instead of going upstairs, I zip through the halls, out the rear, and eventually end up on the reedy bank—where I am snatched up by the scruff of my leathers by a familiar figure.

“Kirin!”

“Hello,” he says with a grin of triumph. The smile sits very attractively on his features.

“Don’t tell me Einar told you to stake the perimeter out,” I sigh. “That’s…”

“No,” Kirin says, letting me go. “He didn’t. I knew this would be the exit you’d most likely take, and I knew you’d take it sooner rather than later.”

“You know about this way out?”

“We all attended the academy too,” Kirin reminds me. “Some of us even taught there.”

“You mean Einar. The director is fawning over him as we speak.”

“Yes. Einar.”

“So you’re not going to make me go back in?”

“No.” Kirin shakes his head. “Einar’s got what he wanted out of that whole stunt anyway.”

“He has?”

“Yeah,” Kirin says, not elaborating. I don’t know what they’re up to. Well, I do. They want to kill the king, which is fucking insane.

“Is Rafe around?”

“Rafe doesn’t know I am here, and neither one of them know you are here,” Kirin says. “It’s just us.”

There’s something faintly menacing about that statement. The way he smiles after he says it, as if it is a triumph to get me all on my own.

“Oh, and uh, what’s… what are you… why…”

“Come with me,” he says, leading me away from the academy, down the river a bit until there’s a clearing in the reeds. I am surprised to see my Delivery 2 Go bike there, next to what I am guessing must be his.

“You brought my bike!”

“I did,” he says, tossing me my helmet, which he plucks out of the rushes. “Do you want to go to work, or do you want to do something fun?”

“Fun sounds like fun,” I grin. I guess Kirin doesn’t really like being bossed around by Einar any more than I do. I have the feeling that there’s a lot of politics in the group of three men who now all have some biological claim to me.

“What are we going to do?” I get on my bike.

He looks over at me, and flashes a young, handsome grin. “Whatever the hell we want.”

I don’t really want to go to work. I just didn’t want to do whatever Einar said.

These men are still strangers to me, and there’s no way I want to get into a more structured environment than the one I just came from.

I don’t care how alpha they are, or how scary they are, they’re not the goddamn bosses of me, and they never will be.

Kirin kicks his cycle into life and peels away, not waiting for me. I guess I’m going to have to chase him down if I want to see what he considers to be fun.

We head away from the academy, which makes sense. Not much point doing laps around the same place I’m trying to escape.

He heads through to the very heart of the city, where the buildings are so tall it feels like you can’t even imagine the top of them.

There are some buildings with over a hundred floors in them, blocks and blocks of the most bustling life you could imagine, hundreds of thousands of people milling about broad streets.

I rarely get this far into the city. It’s a far cry from the more refined academy and palace areas.

The lights are blazing bright here, even in the middle of the day.

I see a lot of standard enforcement officers around the place, wearing their black and blue uniforms, staring around with set jaws and narrowed eyes as if they’re waiting for someone, anyone to do crime.

Ironically, there is crime absolutely everywhere.

The police are mostly for display purposes, mean-mugging while the world around them crumbles.

Well, I say crumbles. It never actually falls down.

It just gets different, worse, better, awful, frightening, nicer, then terrible again.

Science class calls it entropy. Everything is always falling apart, and everybody is always freaking out about it.

Kirin pulls away from me, sending his bike careening through the thick traffic with little regard for safety. I follow him as we hit top speed in a built-up area like a couple of absolute fucking idiots. Why is being stupid so much fun?

Drones flash, and I know we’re being caught on film.

I don’t care. I’m fully encased in leather armor.

All they’ll get is a reckless driver on a D2G bike, and pretty much all D2G riders are reckless.

Kirin’s bike is almost certainly treated to keep the drones from being able to get a clear picture.

He’ll be a blur in the middle of a flurry of action.

There’s a vehicle transport truck with the ramp down, one of those ones that goes up all the way to the top story of the truck. Kirin hits the ramp and goes flying over the cab of the truck, over several moving cars, and somehow manages to not die when he lands on the road on the other side.

It’s stupid, show-off boy stuff. I see it all the time in the academy, and yet, somehow, I can’t help but be impressed. It takes real skill, strength, and bravery to pull off what he just did—plus a general disregard for life.

I catch up to him and the two of us head out of the city to the south. It’s nice to the south; it’s the warmer side of the city. There are vineyards and rolling hills and a general sense of peace once you get far enough out, which we make sure to do.