Page 24 of Renegade Kings

Dean hummed in agreement. “So the question really is, can we trust Rhidian?”

I wanted to say no. But really, what had he done to prove to us that we couldn’t? Rhidian helped back at the cave. He took that woman and her children to safety when we called for help. He didn’t even ask for anything in return. Clearly, he and Alyssa had enough history that she didn’t even question his involvement. From the sounds of it, he wasn’t one to fit into court politics, and if anything, that just made him more like us than anything else. Politics were never any of our strong points. We were soldiers. None of us had even excelled at negotiations training.

“What do you think about Tank being her king?” It hadn’t bothered me at the time. It made sense. He’d been by her side for so long, of course, it would be him.

“It doesn’t matter. We all know she’s ours. Titles mean nothing.” Dean sounded so sure, so convinced, that I wished I could walk through life with an ounce of the confidence he possessed.

“Are you going to mate with her?”

Dean looked up from the roll of bandages he’d been tightly winding back together in his hands, making sure all the edges lined up so it looked almost unused. I couldn’t work out the look on his face, though. Maybe it was the phrasing. Mate—it was a word that had meant nothing to us in the life before Alyssa. Now it felt like it echoed through my body in time with every heartbeat.

“Of course.” Then, like an afterthought, he added. “She’s mine.”

The corner of my lips ticked up in a smile at the surety in his voice. “You’re going to have to share her, you know?”

I saw the way he slightly bared his teeth before turning back to the material in his hands like he was the picture of control.

“How do you do that?” I asked, truly interested. Even if only because I knew it wouldn’t be long before I needed the help. Mostly, though, we hadn’t talked about the changes we’d been through and I wanted to know how he felt about them.

“Do what?” he asked gruffly, even though I knew he understood. It was his way of deflecting. If I let it slide, he’d know it wasn’t important to me. But if I pushed, he’d tell me absolutely everything. It was how we worked. How we waded through the day to day bullshit.

“How do you hold back the wolf when he’s screaming to be released?”

His eyes came back to mine as he placed the discarded bandages on the table beside him and then turned slightly in his seat so he could give me his full attention. He was moving so much easier, and now that I was thinking about it, his colour was nearly back to normal as well.

“He knows we need to work together if we’re going to protect her. She’s the only reason. Alyssa is his mate and I… I think she’s mine as well. It’s strange. I can feel his emotions and they’re mine, but they’re not. I can’t feel the edges of us anymore. It’s less like he’s the extra thing sitting at the side of my mind and more like we’re the same.”

It sounded terrifying. And yet… it sounded like a dream I’d spent my entire life fighting for. That missing part of yourself that people constantly searched for.

“Doesn’t it scare you that you’re going to lose yourself?”

“No. He is me. I can’t lose myself to that. You must feel it. You feel that place he sits inside you that felt like a void for so long. All that’s happening is that the jagged edges are finally smoothing out.”

My eyes ached at the thought, at the relief that I wasn’t the only one. Because that hole inside me had felt like one day it would consume me whole. The longer we’d spent in the army, the wider it had stretched. Fighting for a cause that hadn’t been our own, being nothing but a weapon picked up and wielded by a general who long lost sight of our country’s needs, had started to break us all. Even when we were too blind to see it happening. The fighting, the killing, was grinding us down into nothing.

“I wish Damon could feel this.” We hadn’t really spoken of him since fleeing the Winter Palace. There were no plans to save him anymore, and I didn’t know how I felt about that.

“He will.” The certainty in Dean’s voice had my attention, but more than that, it sparked that flame of hope. “We’ll get him out, Maddox. We just need to separate him from Arik. Once we have his body back, we’ll work on rescuing his mind.”

I nodded. It sounded so simple, but I knew it would be anything but. We had no idea how to do that, let alone if it was even possible. This world was too unfamiliar to us, but maybe that was a good thing. We didn’t know its limitations yet and what better way to break boundaries than to be completely unaware they existed in the first place?

Damon was coming home. I wouldn’t stop until I made it happen.

Chapter 11

Alyssa

Waking up in a bed with Ryder and Tank should have filled me with comfort and contentment. Instead, all I could think about was why Dean and Maddox had left. When did I become so reliant on them? I used to be happy to be alone. Alone in the shell I’d created for myself. But the more time I spent with these men, the more I relied on them. And it was more than that, because it was now almost impossible to think of my life without them in it.

It was the mating bond. I knew it was. This was supposed to happen to a fae when they came across someone who was supposed to share their fate. Yet, our culture had changed to where we were discouraged to forge soul bonds between each other. The widow was the bedtime story we told all our children about the danger of relying too heavily on another. But the bond I shared with Tank had to be the cause of the Spring Palace accepting him as my king, which raised a question—had my parents been soul-bonded? And if so, why would they never have told me that?

My head was filled with questions as I blindly wandered into the sitting area, finding Dean and Maddox quietly talking to each other. I was about to turn back around and leave, thinking they’d left to be alone and I wasn’t welcome there.

As soon as I turned, Dean’s arms wrapped around my waist and I found myself being pulled down into his lap.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he murmured into my neck, running his nose along the length as he inhaled my scent. It had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, and I had to stop myself from tipping my head to the side, inviting him to place his mark wherever he saw fit.

Damn, the wolf had done nothing but make this man sexier!