To Mate an Assassin: The Lost Alphars Series, Book 1 (5 page)

I found my mate.

Her body molded to his. She went on her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around his neck. Their groins collided and she moaned as she rubbed her lithe body against his. Kerrick tugged her head back, hand gripping her lustrous curls and growled, “Mine. You are mine.”

She stared back at him, eyes heavy lidded with lust. But he could see something shift in her mind, her expression was less panicked and more determined. She leaned back in and nipped his bottom lip, giving him more of the wanton creature she’d become in his arms.

“Say it,” he growled. “Say you’re mine. Say it.” He didn’t even know her name. The only thing he knew was that she was crazy and thought she was some sort of shifter bogeyman assassin. But he didn’t care. She was his delusional little psychopath and he was keeping her. “Say it.”

“Ssh, I’ll say it.” She leaned towards his left ear, nuzzling her lips and nose along his jaw line.

“Then say it.”

“I—”

“Yes?”

“I quit.”

“What?”

She slammed her knee into his groin and shoved him away from her. The pain was excruciating. “I resign from the position of Incendiary, not that you even knew what that was,” she said without any further explanation, the lithe and wanton woman vanishing into the ether, leaving this cold and emotionless being staring down at him. The woman that would be his mate turned to walk away but stopped when she reached the gate, looking back over her shoulder. “And I am not your mate. I am not your anything.” With that she dashed away from the compound and into the surrounding forest at a dead run.

Kerrick groaned and cupped his balls, pain radiating from his poor, abused groin. “Demon woman,” he muttered, shaking the pain off and rising to stand and watch her run. “I’m in love.”

“Kerrick!” Aaron shouted, running over to him with about a dozen soldiers on his tail. Kerrick didn’t even care how potentially embarrassing the situation could be, his soldiers seeing their leader brought to his knees by a stranger. It didn’t matter where mates were concerned. All embarrassment was well met and sometimes joyfully endured. He’d endure a lot worse for a mate to say she was his and he was hers.

“I always said I would be the one to find my mate, Aaron. But I was wrong,” Kerrick said, his Alphar power leaking into his voice as he prepared to run. “She found me.”

She may have gotten the drop on him, as the fading pain radiating in his groin could attest to, but the vicious woman was his mate, and he wouldn’t let her get very far.

As Irisi would say in one of her more darling moments, fucking-balls-shit-fuckety-fucktard-dickwad-shitfuckers. Mated? Mated to the Alphar? Of all the rank balls of shit fate had thrown her way, this one had to be the most malodorous. Mated to the Alphar of North America.

The Alphar with his wide shoulders and strong arms. He’d been wearing a simple blue Henley with gray slacks. He had been barefooted. His waist was tapered like a swimmer and under the clothes she could see the powerfully taut muscles that lined every inch of his masculine body.

Stop thinking about his muscles.

But she could not stop. Just as she could not stop running away from him, a force the strength of an erupting volcano urging her to get as far away from him as she could. An image of his body as he advanced on her across that lawn flashed in her mind. Oh, but Gods, that body. The power in his frame alone had beckoned to the Wolf within and urged her to lunge and rip his clothes off. She’d never responded to anyone so viscerally in all her life, her twenty-five years as a human included.

Within one instant of looking she had memorized his face, his beautifully untamed and wild face. He had deep black eyes with no ring of color around them, a sure mark of the Alphar. They were solid, reflective pools of obsidian that compelled her to want things she was told never to allow herself to want in the past.

She jumped over a fallen log as she continued her mad dash through the trees. Her mind tripped over the image of his slightly wavy hair, a shade of black akin to volcanic rock that hung down to just below his ears. The strands framed a solid jaw sprinkled with day-old stubble. Rugged but composed. Dangerous yet reassuring. Everything a leader of the most wild and sometimes untamed creatures in the world should be. Three minutes in his arms and she had memorized him.

The man was a walking furnace fueled by coals of molten sex. Cimby had wanted to rub her body all over his and bite that muscular neck until he lost all composure and began to sweat with need, just as she had been. Which was one of the many reasons confirming her need to run the hell away from him.

She was not made to love or have a family. She was especially not made to care for thousands of Weres, as she would have to do as the mate of an Alphar. She had been training to kill since she was a child, for fuck’s sake. That was not the type of person the Weres would want at their Alphar’s side.

A snap of a broken branch echoing in the distance reached her ears and she knew he was in pursuit. A mere kick to the groin, no matter how much strength she had put behind it, would not incapacitate an Alphar for long. She knew little of mated Weres, as mating was never a topic her trainers had deemed necessary to teach her. But she had observed enough from her outsider status to assume the males when mated were a tad possessive, their dominant natures rearing to the fore. And an Alphar? He would be the most possessive and dominant shifter of all. Cymbeline smiled, feeling her mouth tilt up into what she had been told was a crazy-faced grin, and pushed herself to run faster.

Was she enjoying this chase? Nah, she just needed a good hard run to get her blood pumping. That was all. Maybe she wouldn’t mind fighting him in hand-to-hand combat, not that she had any chance of winning against the Alphar, but it would still be an enlightening experience. She could almost feel him hot on her back, chasing her with that mad smile of his own he had given her when he told her to shut up. Hell, maybe he liked it rough. Her mind began to fill with naughty fantasies of her and the Alphar rolling around on the ground, fighting and kissing and worshipping one another all through the night. Oh yes, he would like her particular brand of rough.

Her legs were slowing, the fantasy dragging her down. What was happening to her? Her concentration was completely shot and she did not even know what direction she was running in anymore. She left her car about twenty-five miles north of the compound, almost to the California-Oregon border. She needed to stop and get her bearings. Something that was impossible as she could hear the pounding of feet behind her. Just one set of feet.

All of a sudden the forest ended and she sprang from the trees, landing on pavement, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car. Cymbeline ran along the highway, using the smooth concrete to gain traction and pick up speed. She knew where she was now. She was almost to the car, almost home free. She would figure out what the hell she was going to do with the searing need slamming against her heart afterwards.

There was a slight curve to the highway and a cliff side blocked her view of any oncoming traffic. She slowed her pace in case she would need to make a quick maneuver, and took the curve at a steady run. As the curve came upon a shaded area, a pale hand stretched out and dragged her back into the forest. She was thrown, at least thirty feet, before her back slammed into a tree and she dropped to the forest floor.

She ignored the pain and stood, bracing herself for another attack. A sharp sting lanced across the hand that had been grabbed, blood pooled in a slash across her palm. The pain was throbbing, radiating up her arm. She brought the wound to her nose to sniff. Poison.

“Fuck,” she cursed, her body feeling sluggish, her keen and well-trained senses fading.

“Let me see it,” he said. She’d sensed him approaching, even though his tread was silent as the grave, but hadn’t had the energy to keep running. The Alphar’s shadow appeared before her, not waiting for her compliance before gently taking her hand to examine the wound.

“Shut up. Kiss me. Say it. Let me see it.” She mimicked to his downturned face as he sniffed the cut. “Ever heard of asking?”

“Not when it comes to you, apparently.” He glanced up with a short smile before turning back to her hand.

Her body slumped against the tree, the poison taking hold of her limbs. The Alphar scooped her up into his arms as if she weighed nothing and began to run back towards The Mansion.

“No,” she slurred against his chest. Mmm, he smelled good. “Don’t want to go back.”

“You’ve got Vryk blood in your system.”

“Won’t kill me.” She thought she’d smelled Vryk on the creature that had flung her back into the forest. What the hell was a Vryk doing attacking her? She had never had an issue with any Vryks. In fact she had worked amicably with many in this area in the past.

“No, but it will leave you paralyzed and helpless for about a day.”

“Leave me.”

“You really are crazy if you want me to leave you—
my mate—
in the middle of a forest crawling with my enemies when paralyzed and vulnerable. Even if you weren’t my mate I wouldn’t do that.”

A horn honked as they reached the road. Cymbeline tried to lift her head and realized she was truly paralyzed when it just lolled with every step the bastard Alphar took. A large, black van was pulled over on the side of the road. A blonde woman in a crisp, navy-blue pants suit leaned against the van and was speaking on a phone as she waved them over.

“Leave me,” Cymbeline mumbled again as her vision turned hazy. He took a rough step and her head lulled towards his chest. She could scent the dark, intangible thing telling her she wanted to stay in his arms, that it was okay to give in to him. Ignoring the whispers, she fought like hell to stay awake. But try as she might to keep her eyes open and her senses keen, she knew she would pass out soon and did not want to be left in the tender care of this man, no matter how amazing he smelled. Seriously, was this natural?

Pissed off with her failing strength, she took out her anger on the closest victim. With the last of her ebbing energy she shot her hand up and smacked the Alphar’s forehead.

He stopped walking, staring down at her incredulously. “You used the last of your strength to slap me?”

She couldn’t speak anymore so she just glared, willing him to let her go with the power of her angry stare. Instead of reacting angrily or haughtily as she’d assumed a man of his status would, he shook his head and grinned, leaning in to place a small yet firm kiss on her forehead.

“Sleep. I swear no harm will come to you.”

Staring into his black eyes as she succumbed to darkness, she almost wanted to believe him. Almost.

Kerrick watched as the woman’s head lolled against his chest a final time and her eyes slumped shut. She was out like a light and would be for at least a day, depending on her tolerance to Vryk blood. While ingesting or absorbing Vryk blood into their bodies wouldn’t kill a shifter, it would render them paralyzed or weakened for a short period of time. To other preternatural species like Mages, Vryk blood could kill them. To the necromancers, it could enhance their speed and power. For humans, Vryk blood would either turn them into an addicted slave or into a Vryk themselves. That again, depended on the strength of the victim. Vryk blood was a powerful and dangerous substance, another reason he wanted to stay far away from a war with Mara’s clan.

As Kerrick reached the road Rhiannon slipped her phone back into her pants pocket, her curious gaze affixed on the woman in his arms. He really needed to learn her name so he could stop calling her “the woman”.

“Whatcha got there, Alphar?”

Kerrick growled, holding the woman tighter to his body for protection as Carter emerged from the van, long sleeves, sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat protected him from the harsh sunrays. Kerrick stretched his senses outward to search for any more threats. He’d been so consumed by his mate he’d simply assumed Rhi had been alone.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked Rhiannon in favor of ignoring Carter.

“Aaron texted saying I was needed back at The Mansion. I figured it had to be important for him to text me during my meeting so Carter agreed to drive me back. I caught your scent a few minutes ago.” Her eyes flickered down to the unconscious cargo and Rhi lowered her voice so Carter couldn’t hear. “You’re letting off some pretty hefty pheromones, Kerrick.”

“We need to get back. Now, so Lottie can look over her.”

Carter opened the passenger-side door for Kerrick so he could place the woman in the seat. The man was a nuisance but he spent enough time around dominant Weres to know when not to get in one’s way especially one as powerful as Kerrick. A nuisance, but a smart nuisance, one Rhi swore was an honorable man. Kerrick gently placed his mate in the passenger seat and strapped her in. He caressed her cheek briefly, enjoying the warm soft skin under his fingertips.

“Thanks for the lift, Carter,” Rhiannon said as she and Carter jumped in the backseat with Kerrick taking the wheel.

“No problem,
chica
.” Carter eyed the woman, his mouth turned down at the sides.

“Stop staring at her,” Kerrick growled as he started the van, ready to jump in the back and tear the Vryk’s throat out.

“What’d she do? Go after the wrong rogue or somethin’?”

“What?” Rhiannon asked, startled. “What do you mean?”

“Cymbeline Kendall, the Incendiary.” He nodded towards her slumped form, leaning forward with his hands in his pockets. There was a slight breeze filtering through the open windows and his bleached-blond locks shifted in the wind, lending to his usual carefree air. “Can’t forget that pretty face.”

Kerrick tried not to strangle the Vryk ambassador for the comment and instead focused on the more important issue at hand.

“You know this woman?” Kerrick asked. Carter had called her the Incendiary, as if it were a real thing.

“You know Incendiaries aren’t real,” Rhiannon said with a flick of Carter’s knee, her ease with the Vryk all too clear, interesting as they were supposed to be on opposing sides of a serious negotiation.