Be nice, I implore silently as Nathan stares Xiao down across his desk. I sit beside him, close enough that I can feel how tense he is. It makes me want to give him a neck rub in sympathy. And sympathy for Nathan isn’t my default.“It’s not a common spell.” Xiao is in the middle of explaining “everything” as Nathan demanded. She’s remarkably cool under pressure; Nathan isn’t just the king of the pack, but he holds power over thralls, as well. But she delivers the facts like she’s teaching a class. “Thralls use it sometimes when the spark is going out of a relationship or, in more unscrupulous cases, to trick someone into a relationship with them.”“And you practice this magic on werewolves? Without our permission?” Nathan growls.“I’ve never heard of it before, but I’ve trained in defensive magic and combat, not love spells,” she replies.“Why didn’t you mention this to us before?” I wonder aloud. “Why haven’t any of the thralls mentioned it?”“I can only speak for myself, but I thoug
The pack has a private plane, a sleek, elegant jet that can whisk us to London within the hour. I barely have time to pack anything. Nathan suggests we leave immediately and just buy what we need when we arrive, but the thought of leaving without even a toothbrush makes me panic, so he relents, and we go back to Aconitum Hall so I can put together a bug-out bag.I don’t even have time to brief Hannah or Tara on the situation before we’re off to the airport.“So, tell me where I can sit on this plane that you haven’t fucked your mistress?” I say as we climb the airstairs.Coming up behind me, he makes a noise like he’s thinking really hard. “You might be able to swap seats with the flight attendant.”I resist the temptation to shove him down the stairs.“I’m joking,” he says as I reach the top and turn to glare at him. He drops a kiss on my forehead. “I promise.”I’m not sure I believe him.When we enter, he has to duck down. “I’ve never even been on this jet.”“Haven’t you been king f
The pack has a private plane, a sleek, elegant jet that can whisk us to London within the hour. I barely have time to pack anything. Nathan suggests we leave immediately and just buy what we need when we arrive, but the thought of leaving without even a toothbrush makes me panic, so he relents, and we go back to Aconitum Hall so I can put together a bug-out bag.I don’t even have time to brief Hannah or Tara on the situation before we’re off to the airport.“So, tell me where I can sit on this plane that you haven’t fucked your mistress?” I say as we climb the airstairs.Coming up behind me, he makes a noise like he’s thinking really hard. “You might be able to swap seats with the flight attendant.”I resist the temptation to shove him down the stairs.“I’m joking,” he says as I reach the top and turn to glare at him. He drops a kiss on my forehead. “I promise.”I’m not sure I believe him.When we enter, he has to duck down. “I’ve never even been on this jet.”“Haven’t you been king f
It’s surreal to be back in London. Though I’ve only been gone a few months, it seems like a totally foreign place to me, despite having been my home for five years.Of course, the area we’re in isn’t exactly where I used to hang out. I hadn’t exactly been working with 18th-century-palace money.“Is it this deserted down here all the time?” I ask as we turn down a practically empty street.Nathan looks up from his phone, which has been pinging like crazy ever since we landed. “Hmm?”“The area… seems kinda… dead.” Which is fitting because the buildings we pass look like mausoleums.“I’m not sure. I’ve never been to the royal residence. I know it’s fairly close to the human royal residence, though,” he says. “Where did you stay, while you were here?”“Not anywhere you’d be familiar with.” I leave it at that, because we pull up to the curb of a not super impressive-looking house. In fact, it’s a bit dingy, compared to the other facades on the street, but it’s nearly four times as wide as
My whole hand came off but sure, I guess I wasn’t seriously harmed. As Harriet leads us upstairs and to the king’s “apartments,” as she refers to them, the housekeeper gives us a brief rundown on the history of the place. I don’t recognize any of the names she rattles off, but if Nathan is king, then certainly they must have been related to him, somehow. And I definitely don’t know much about the various aesthetic periods of English history, so the differences between “Georgian” and “neo-classical” fly right over my head.When I can get a word in edge-wise, I ask her, “How long have you been the housekeeper here?”“I started working for His Majesty, King Archibald, in nineteen-fourteen,” she states with some pride. “No gap in employment since.”“Pardon me if I’m committing a faux pas by asking,” I begin cautiously, then remember I’m the fucking queen and I can ask anything I want. “But why are you a housekeeper, and not a thrall?”Nathan surprises me by answering for her. “The Greater
The moment the morning sky lightens, my brain stops sleeping.“Do you think my uncle did this to us?”“Jeez!” I press my hand to my chest to stop my heart from leaving my body. “What the fuck, Nathan!”“I couldn’t sleep.” He’s lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, barely blinking.“I almost peed the bed!” Speaking of which…I set my feet on the floor and head for the bathroom. When I come back, Nathan hasn’t changed position at all.“Are you having some kind of crisis?” I ask, sliding back in beside him.“My uncle didn’t trust thralls,” he murmurs. “Why would he turn to them to do anything against me?”“What if he didn’t mean it like a bad thing?” I suggest, with the caveat, “If he did it at all.”Nathan sighs deeply.I scoot up close and throw my arm over his chest. He still hasn’t gotten a haircut, and a curl falls into his eyes. I would move it aside, but I’m lying on my only hand. “Maybe it was an accident.”“I don’t think people accidentally put spells on other peopl
He takes a long, hissing inhale and pushes the duvet back. I grin up at him. “You’ll have to give me a hand here.”“I’m putting a perpetual moratorium on that joke,” he scolds me, but grips himself so I can keep my balance with my hand beside his hip. I dip my head down and give him a long, slow, swirl of my tongue. When I lift my head, his hand follows me up. When I take him back in, his hand drops down. We move together that way in a lazy rhythm, him stroking himself while I tease and suck. The veins in his cock throb against my tongue and his hips strain up; I know it’s time to stop.I sit back and push his hand away before he can finish himself off. I don’t think it would take more than a few strokes.“Settle down,” I say, pulling up my nightgown as I straddle his hips. “Try not to come the second you get inside me.”“How can you be so demeaning and sexy at the same time?” he huffs. “I’ll have you know I have incredible control.”But that seems debatable, judging from the way he m
Our arrival in London hasn’t gone unnoticed. I’m barely done with my oatmeal before my day is planned out for me. The biggest chunk of my time today will be taken up by a royal audience to receive members of the pack and introduce them to their new queen.I don’t have Hannah or Tara with me. Technically, Hannah’s job isn’t to be my stylist, but she does help me pick things out. And Tara knows all the flaws I’m self-conscious about, because they were put there by our mother. She’s never going to let me go out in something that makes my hips look big or my neck look short.Instead, I have a thrall who comes and tuts and frowns and tilts her head this way and that before finally giving up, I guess, and putting me in a mauve silk gown with an empire waist and a gauzy split overlay skirt. She gives me white elbow-length gloves that I have to politely explain will look goofy as heck on someone with no hand. In the end, she works a little magic with a curling iron so my hair falls in soft wa