Page 61 of Renegade Kings

“Why the fuck have you been such a raging dick all my life?” I roared into my brain. At least now I could give this fucker a piece of my mind.

“You try being stuck in the back of your mind and never being free, never being who you were supposed to be. What the fuck would you do about that?”

I could hear the pain in his voice, and I actually felt bad. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Stuck in the shadows, with no way to tell anyone what I wanted.

“I’m sorry.” I gulped down the water before sitting the glass back on the tray. “Is this why I feel different? Why I feel more… controlled?”

I didn’t want to suggest that I had more control over him, given what he’d been through, but it was a valid question.

“Mate makes me calmer. Make us both who we were always supposed to be.”

“And gives us magic,” I thought.

The bear all but shrugged in my mind and I knew it was pointless trying to get information out of him. He knew as much about this as I did. He was the one that had been stuck inside me, after all.

Maybe this is what shifters were always supposed to be? Maybe we were always supposed to have magic?

And then a horrifying thought came to me.

“Is every shifter back in the human realm stuck like you were?”

He grumbled and then slunk away into the back of my mind, and I knew he was sulking. What he was sulking about, I had no idea.

I felt like I needed to do something, but the inability to know what that was had me frozen. I couldn’t do anything for the shifters back home. I couldn’t even do anything to help my sleuth. They’d moved on, and I had no idea where they were. Besides, until we had the situation here under control, we wouldn’t be returning to the human realm, and even then we might never return.

But there was no time to think about what we were going to do at the end of this whole. The elusive end that we didn’t even know if we’d make it to.

As I paced the sitting room, trying to figure out the answers to impossible questions, a noise came from the bathroom, followed by someone softly swearing.

It would seem a certain errant mate was finally home.

And with her came a need that I had absolutely no intention of suppressing.

I strode to the bathroom door, flinging it open so hard that it slammed into the wall with a bang. Alyssa spun on the spot with a guilty look on her face. She knew she’d been caught in the act, and her mouth opened as if she’d try to explain, except no words came out.

She barely had time to make a squeak before I was on her, pushing her against the bathroom wall as I plundered her lips.

Her arms went to wrap around my neck, but I captured her wrists, pinning them above her head as the bear swept back into my mind. His need to dominate, to prove himself, came roaring to the surface, and I was done trying to hold him back.

“You’ve got some explaining to do, minx,” I growled, the bear pushing through in the rumble of my voice. “Do you enjoy making us worry?”

Alyssa looked at me as lust filled her gaze. Her hips rocked as she sought some kind of friction, only to find herself denied.

“I… I had to find out…”

I kissed her again, punishing her with my lips even though I’d been trying to persuade the others to give her their leniency.

The bear had other ideas. If his mate couldn’t see that he was strong and capable, then he was going to prove it to her.

I definitely liked the way he was thinking.

Releasing her wrists, my hands wrapped around Alyssa’s waist as I picked her up and threw her over one shoulder. As she tried to escape me, my hand crashed down on her ass and instead of her outrage sending her into a fury, she melted against me.

I gripped her hip with one hand, a fascinating idea filling my mind as I slowly kneaded the cheek I was about to punish.

“Do you like that, minx?” I asked as I strode from the bathroom, giving her no time to answer as I hauled her off my shoulder and threw her down on the bed. I crawled onto the mattress, hovering over her body as I licked my lips at the sight of her. “Do you like knowing that I’m going to punish you for making me worry?”

She bit her lip, slowly nodding her head as she did. I could see how her pupils were blown wide with lust. She wanted this as much as I did. I’d never thought she’d want to be dominated, but now that the bear was at the forefront of my mind like he’d never been before, it was all I could think about. Holding her soft body beneath me as she took my punishing thrusts. Showing her she didn’t have to always be in charge.