Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
He nodded. “Several of Umber’s crops failed this harvest. Winter will be lean for all unless we help each other.”
“How? Ditch and Thane’s hatred seems intractable. Unless…” She finished her second glass, looking lost in thought.
He smoothly refilled her, eager to hear her mind at work. “Unless what?” He was tempted to drink his own—he’d brought a bloody splendid bottle—but wouldn’t hasten his time with this female. As suspected, she wanted him in return. He perceived her skin warming as she relaxed and scented the sweetest beginnings of her arousal.
“We might get movement if either leader found a mate,” she said. “Ditch would negotiate with a queen more than she would with Thane. And it is an Accession. Fated pairs are appearing everywhere across the Skein. Why not Thane? He’s well overdue.”
Waaaay overdue. “Fifteen hundred years he’s waited.” Born a prince, raised as a future king, he believed he was due all good things. So to be denied the best thing for so long?
Infuriating. To that male, unbearable.
“Has he never encountered a hint of a mate?” Meera asked.
Lowell wasn’t a liar by nature, but he was loyal to the bone, so he hedged. “Once a Lykae finds his fated one, few things can prevent him from reaching her on the night of the full moon. So, nay, he’s never experienced that pull before.” But in weeks, he will.
For now the king paced his study, staring at the growing moon as he considered and rejected ideas to deal with his thorn-in-paw mate:
Propose another official meeting. Reave her like the Highlanders of old. Or the most impossible—relinquish her.
“Your mood has shifted,” Meera observed, her gaze assessing him.
“Kingdom cares. ’Tis naught, lass.” He had many. Aside from all his other duties, he would oversee the containment of two royal Lykae during this month’s full moon—one newly mated and one truly mad. The prospect was fraught with danger. For Thane and for any of his men. Once risen, a Lykae’s inner beast became a maelstrom of force and brutality. “I’ll think more on what concessions we might be able to offer, and you’ll find out about the food situation.”
“And we’ll hope matehood visits Thane this Accession.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Lowell lifted his glass, trying to lighten the air. “So tell me more about your studies…”
As the night grew later, talk and laughter replaced strategy. Meera’s wit cut through her prim mask. She was clever, funny, and far too captivating. He poured with a thief’s precision, always keeping her glass just full enough.
Underneath their banter, something even warmer, mysterious, crackled in the air. Like the hum before lightning, it prickled over his skin, flooding him with awareness.
The energy between them…gods, it bit.
She caught him watching her and smiled faintly. “Have you noticed that we keep—”
“—finishing each other’s sentences?”
She sighed, tipsy and amused. “Yes. And we like all the same foods. The same books. The same sights in the Skein. I’m just drunk enough to say that it feels like something pulses between us.” She traced a finger over the rim of her glass, slow and sensual.
He imagined that finger trailing down his chest, circling the head of his cock. His shaft, half hard for an hour now, thickened painfully.
“Am I wrong?” she asked softly.
“Nay, I feel it too.” Whatever flowed between them was a great deal more than the passion he’d shared with other lasses, more than chemistry. He wanted to explore it fully—in bed with her. He leaned closer, flashing the grin that had undone countless females. “Yet another thing we have in common.”
She stared at his lips, and her breaths shallowed.
“You ready for that kiss?” he murmured.
She blinked. “Uh, what kiss?”
“Our inevitable first one.” His tone was teasing, but his voice had gone hoarse. “I’ll say it plain: I want you. Have since the beginning.”
“Seduction for seduction’s sake.” She tilted her head, and her hair loosened to spill over her shoulder, filling him with its mesmerizing scent. “I’m not your mate or anything, right?”
He didn’t believe so, but the energy said otherwise. Over his lifetime, he’d noticed some Lykae impulses inside him were muted. His Instinct didn’t seem to be as loud, his wolvenness not as pronounced. Could his matehood be one of those times when his experience didn’t match up to those of other wolves?
Unfortunately, no.
Even he couldn’t have stayed away from her after their first meeting, not month after month on the nights of the full moon. “Nay, lass. Though I might wish that were different.”
“So every female before ‘the one’ is just practice?” she asked sharply. “A placeholder?” The idea seemed to pique her temper again.
“Some Lykae say that. I’m more pragmatic. I might never find this nameless, faceless female. I doona dwell on it.” Unlike Thane and seemingly every other Lykae, Lowell could take the prospect or leave it.
“You’re surprisingly blasé. Isn’t matehood sacred? The religion of the wolves? That’s what I was taught.”