Page 17 of Stormbinder King (Stormbinder Pack #1)

O ne day turned into the next.

The stifling heat of the summer turned into the cool snap of fall, and then the chill blanket of winter as I existed in this frozen purgatory.

Winter was gray and bleak, the forest looking skeletal and fearsome with the heavy wet leaves all gone, the drifting snow doing nothing to soften my hopelessness.

I clawed through each day, despair and impotent rage punctuated by my desperate need for Jack.

Whether I delayed it or put it off, the end result was the same: whimpering weak submission to Jack, desperate primal need for his cock.

Sometimes he took me fast and hard and sometimes he made me crawl to him, in front of the whole Pack, so everyone could see how I was driven by my desire for him.

He was all cleverness and wit and lazy affection again, only a glint in his eye now and again showing how much he enjoyed the pain he was causing his brother.

He took other women openly now, in front of me at the dinner table sometimes, as I choked my food down under Aurelia’s triumphant eyes and the wet sound of Jack’s cock in another woman’s cunt echoed in my ears.

How had Jack faked a fated mate bond?

The answer must lie in my protective tattoo somehow, but it was another problem I didn’t know how to solve.

Then one day when the winter seemed old and stubborn, like the bone-deep chill would never leave, Jack and Symeon’s uncle Solomon arrived on my front doorstep.

“Come with me,” he said.

“Why?” I asked dully. “To do what?”

“Get up,” he said, raising one of his shaggy brows to me.

I don’t know why I obeyed.

All I wanted was to die, to sit here in this dark corner of the room and rot until I sunk into the ground and became part of the deep underbelly of the forest.

But I followed him all the way to the clearing outside town where the Pack had held the Midsummer Festival, and he handed me a little dagger.

It was shorter than the ones I’d seen other shifters carry, not that they ever needed one in their shifted states, but very beautiful, with a carved wooden handle.

“Don’t touch the blade, you little fool,” Solomon said. “It’s sharp. Now hold the handle and straighten your back.”

But there was no venom in his tone, and I obeyed.

We worked for over an hour together on the very basics of using it, and he came back the next day to get me.

Then Solomon and I were working together almost every day as he taught me the basics of short dagger and knife fighting.

It was better than doing nothing and knowing nothing.

He was a taciturn man, but he was patient.

I wasn’t very good, but I didn’t stop.

One week passed. Then the next. And then Solomon didn’t have to come get me anymore.

I would be there waiting for him. Knife and dagger work, then a long staff.

And then one day it was almost warm and I was doing my exercises as Solomon worked on fashioning a lightweight enough bow for me to practice archery.

I felt almost relaxed and happy, the brisk wind whipping my skirt around my body.

I felt stronger too, my feet faster.

“Do you think I’m good enough to do border patrol?” I asked.

Solomon snorted. “I don’t think they’d ever let you go to the border. But this way you’re not such a helpless creature.”

“I’ll take it,” I laughed.

It felt strange to laugh, like my mouth and throat were old and rusty with disuse, but once I did I felt something crack inside me, and I smiled again.

Running hands through my dark thick hair, I shook it out in the thin sunshine and wielded my dagger again.

“Look at you, Andromeda,” I heard a warm, honeyed voice from behind me. “I didn’t know you were getting to be such a little warrior.”

I ignored him, tensing my muscles in the way Solomon had taught me, and thrusting my dagger into the air.

Jack chuckled again, and came up behind me, wrapping hands around my waist and dragging me flush against his body.

I ignored the way his words crawled across my skin, burrowing into my flesh with tiny prickles of lust.

“Don’t be pissed. Spar with me.”

“No,” I said.

He flipped me around and reached down to put a thick protective tip on his dagger.

“Look, I’ll make it fair. I’ll be tipped and you won’t.”

I shook my head again. I couldn’t risk truly angering Jack, but suppressed impotent rage sizzled through my veins.

“Don’t worry about hurting me!” Jack insisted. “Act like this is a real fight.”

“If you do gut him, girl,” said Solomon, twisting the rawhide of the bow with strong, gnarled fingers. “He deserves to die.”

“Go spar with one of the other w-women you fuck,” I said.

Jack grinned at me. His shirt was open at the neck so I could see the long strong lines of his throat and chest.

“That’s a bluff, my darling. I know you can’t get enough of me.”

He gestured at me to attack him.

Cocky motherfucker

When he lowered his tipped dagger, I plunged mine toward his gut.

He blocked me easily, but I tried to move quickly like Solomon had taught me, slashing at Jack’s thighs with a low quick slice.

Jack was caught off guard, but he was an exceptionally good fighter, and with incredible speed he whipped his dagger around to block my attack again.

He grinned at his me, wiggling his tongue so I saw the flick of his piercing.

My stomach churned to feel my body’s response to him, the sick-sweet sensation of my nipples hardening, rosy tips getting diamond-hard at his voice.

I wanted him and I hated it.

How had I ever thought I was in love with him?

“Now you’re getting better!” Jack said approvingly.

“I hate you!” I burst out, my chest heaving with emotion.

His smile was as bright and fae as ever.

“No, you don’t. You can’t wait for me to come to you at night.”

“I wish you’d go away again after,” I retorted. “Go sleep with someone else.”

I was surprised to see a line appear between his eyes, the gleaming grin wiped off his face.

“Don’t be obstinate, Andromeda. I sleep with you .”

I feinted left but went right, his blade catching mine only an inch or two from his ribcage.

“I’m saying you don’t have to,” I retorted, feeling my heart pound as he continued to look at me. “I don’t care. Fuck me and leave. Go to Aurelia’s bed.”

I was getting tired, but I struck again, and Jack didn’t move quite fast enough, the sharp blade slicing through the sleeve of his shirt and raising a thin line of blood on his bicep.

“You shouldn’t fight without tips,” the King’s voice rumbled into the clearing. “It is too dangerous.”

“ My dagger is tipped, of course,” Jack shot at him.

“I forbid it,” Symeon said, stepping in between the two of us.

Jack’s eyes flashed and I saw an angry red flush on his cheeks. “Get your dagger out then,” he said sharply. “Or I have a spare for you.”

“I’ll use my own,” said Symeon shortly. “I don’t think I’d trust a weapon that came from you. Are we both tipping or not?”

“Tipped, of course,” Jack snarled, directing a look of loathing at his brother.

He hopped out onto the nearby stream, which was still frozen solid.

The ice would make for a difficult fighting surface, but benefit how light Jack was on his feet.

“Can’t win without cheating, can you?” said Symeon, but he hopped down from the bank to land on the frozen ice too.

“Can you be surprised,” snarled Jack, “That I’d want to get some of my own back?”

“No,” agreed Symeon. “Ever since we were boys you’ve been bitterly jealous of me. All because I was born before you.”

“And you are furious,” Jack said. “That I get your fated mate every night. Your one true love. You don’t know half the things I do to her. The way I fill any of her holes any goddamn way I please and she’s always begging for more.”

Symeon’s eyes snapped towards his brother. “Get your damn dagger up.”

Jack raised his tipped dagger and they met.

I watched them spar on the slick ice, Jack’s whip-like lean strength and the broad, heavy steps of the King.

Jack was quick, agile, and strong.

Symeon was not as fast, but he was massive, each movement powerful, forcing Jack to pivot away to blunt the force of each blow.

After a clash of weapons, the two brothers circled each other, looking for any opening. Any weakness.

My tattoo felt unusually warm, and I put my fingers uneasily on my shoulder, feeling it pulse angrily underneath them.

This cursed binding. This ever-permanent reminder that I was Jack’s depraved wanton.

Jack saw his brother’s eyes flick over to me and his lips split in a savage grin.

“Your fated mate,” he said, his white teeth smeared with blood. “And she desires me . Me, brother. Not you.”

“Your protective spell keeps me from claiming her,” Symeon spat.

“It tortures you, doesn’t it? That she hungers for this cock.”

Symeon winced, the words rasping across his skin like a claw ripping his flesh.

Jack’s eyes sharpened as he pressed his attack.

“What’s the matter?” the prince asked with a wicked smile. “Why should me saying those words make you wince?”

Symeon ignored him, and counterattacked, bringing his dagger up with a mighty blow.

But Jack was very quick, so quick.

How could I ever outthink him?

He parried the attack, dancing away lithely.

Symeon set his jaw to the fight, although I could tell by his expression that to hear about my binding was an agony to him.

Would he actually try to claim me as his mate if it wasn’t for the protective spell?

What a frightening thought.

The rage boiled inside me, churning my gut with a volatile mix of anger and wild despair.

Solomon stood beside me, his gnarled face expressionless.

“You’ve been stuttering less,” he said to me as we watched the two brothers trade blows. “But you are worth listening to no matter how you speak.”

For a moment it seemed like a completely random statement.

Then it lit up something inside me, like a little spark growing bigger.

“Thank you.”

It seemed inadequate, but it was all I could say.

Tears almost prickled at the corners of my eyes, but I had cried so much in the last few months. I was wrung out of tears.

I felt something like a pull in my belly. There was a pressure there, low and wrong, building up and running through my veins like wicked blood.

It was a pulling towards something, although I hardly knew what, the anger so fierce that my skin felt like it buzzed, something bursting and clawing out of me like a monster.

We heard a low crackling and popping sound that grew louder.

Jack whirled around, his eyes growing wider as he realized what he was seeing.

“The ice!” he yelled. “Run!”

I saw the splintered network of cracks right before the ice seemed to erupt, shattering with a terrific booming crash.

Jack leaped safely for the bank, but Symeon wasn’t as fast, the ice collapsing underneath him, and only his uncle’s firm grip kept him from being buried under the chunks of swirling ice.

Had I done that?

I didn’t see how it was possible.

But I had felt a . . .pull toward something.

But how could I have done that? The ice must have been a foot thick. . .