My King (Two Prince's Book 1) (7 page)

Ian

I shouldn’t have kissed her. Goddamn, I knew I shouldn’t have kissed her. It is too soon. I couldn’t stop myself, though. I needed her to know I will keep her safe. I needed her to see the softer side of me after what I did to Collette. It hadn’t escaped my notice that she did not like the way I man-handled the Vampire. She wasn’t accustomed to the ways of my people. She didn’t understand that under no circumstances whatsoever was it acceptable to speak to someone of royal blood that way. Ever.

Collette knew this, and she’d done it anyway. Apparently unconcerned with the consequences at the time. Fucking Vampires.

I needed to find a quiet moment to explain the ways of my people to Shayne so she knew there would never come a time where I would treat her the way I had treated the Vampire. She was my mate. That made her sacred and precious to me, someone I would never harm, nor would I ever allow harm to befall. She would forever be my number one concern, above all else.

Somehow I needed to find a way to relay this to her. And I needed to do it without fucking the whole thing up again. I’d certainly done a bang up job so far.

I had been waiting my whole life for her. And now that I have decided not to be a spectator in her life it is getting harder and harder not to touch her every chance I get. But for her, I was stopping myself. Mostly. At least I’m trying to. For her, it is too soon, I can feel it every time she freezes when I get close enough to touch her.

My mate was untouched, a virgin. I could tell. Only a virgin would have her reaction to a chaste kiss on the lips. I find myself grinning at the thought. Shayne being a virgin pleases me to no end.

I knew the moment I laid eyes on her that she was my mate. I could feel my body being pulled to her by some unseen force. I could feel it deep in my bones, the need to be with her, claim her, mate with her.

Call it magic, if you will.

My animal, having been dormant for so long, came to life with a vengeance once we got a whiff of Shayne. It is a constant struggle in my mind just to keep myself from shifting since I’ve found her. He wants out to claim our mate. He wages a war in my mind day and night. It’s not in our nature to deny our animal and even though it is something I had mastered years ago it’s been a constant struggle since the moment I saw her.

I am always on edge.

For now my beast is silent, somewhat mollified - happy to just be in close proximity to her without hiding from her. That’s not to say he, like myself, isn’t waiting for the perfect opportunity to rip her clothes off and fuck her senseless. However, that option is not open to us. So we’ve got to be patient. And calm. Yeah, calm was good. And we had to try not to scare the shit out of her anymore or she’d never willingly get naked with us.

When we get to the car I let Riley drive and force Collette to sit up in the front with him. I rarely allow Riley to drive, but this is the second time in as many days. I can tell he is extremely amused by this but I do not care. Pathetic as it is, I do not want to be that far away from her.

I open her door for her and climb in right behind her, forcing her to move over or be crushed by me. As soon as she is seated and buckled up I reach over, placing my hand on top of the one she has resting on her lap. She gives a little start, looking at me with wide eyes.

I lace my fingers through hers and squeeze.

What I do not do is let go.

I don’t want to.

More importantly, I feel like I can’t.

I know she’s uncomfortable with the intimate contact I’m forcing on her but this is as slow as I can take it.

I grabbed her hand hours ago, and still, I’m holding on tight, fingers laced through hers, hoping like hell I never have to let go.

She’d relaxed enough to fall asleep. Something I am noticing about Shayne is if she’s in a car for any amount of time she falls asleep after about an hour. Every time.

Her head’s resting against the window looking fucking uncomfortable. Even though it damn near kills me to do it, I leave her as she is. She has had enough of my physical advances for one day. Which was a damn shame if you ask me. It’s driving me nuts because I desperately want to move her head to my shoulder, or, better yet, my lap. I’ve gotta leave her be, though.

We are headed north. What would, under normal circumstance, be an eighteen hour drive will probably take us twice as long to make. Steering clear of highways and the main roads, we’re taking the least traveled path. This is precautionary, to make sure no one was following Collette.

Collette. Fucking Collette.

I don’t know what to make of her showing up out of the blue like she did. I certainly don’t know what to make of any of the shit she spewed out her mouth. And, most importantly, I sure as hell do not trust her.

Maybe I’m wrong to not trust her. Then again, maybe I’m not.

Either way, trust is earned and even though I once trusted her, I no longer trusted any of the people from my past. I can’t afford to.

She would have to earn it. If she’s genuine that will be a cake walk for her. If she isn’t, well, she’ll soon find herself dead. Simple as that.

My brother is right, though. I’m finding myself saying that a lot lately which pisses me off but there’s nothing for it. We
were
headed her way. And we
did
need to find out what had transpired in our absence. Her showing up solidified our plans.

I was pulled from my thoughts when my brother murmured, “Feel that?”

I hadn’t.

I had been too absorbed in the thoughts running full speed through my head.

Closing my eyes, I open my mind and reach out with my magic.

I can feel everything within a few miles radius.

What an extraordinary feeling, to finally be able to use my magic. To let it flow freely from my body and not bottled up, under lock and key.

Immediately my beast stirs to life inside me, intrigued by the use of my magic. After a moment he is up, alert and at the ready. Just in case he is needed.

God, I hope he isn’t needed. I did not need to freak Shayne out anymore then I already had. And her getting an eye full of my furry ass would most certainly freak her out.

I could sense them.

About a mile and a half behind us.

Four total.

Three are shifters.

One is something… else. Something… other.

Tracker, I would assume.

Nasty things, trackers are. Empty vessels. A once living, breathing and feeling human being. Now, nothing but a rotting corpse.

Probably a recently acquired one. You had to get a body while it was still fresh, just a few days after the humans’ death. And there could be no serious damage done to the body in order for it to be useful. Then they were only useful for a month max before they had to be disposed of.

It took very dark magic to bring a tracker to life, so to speak. Dark magic was against the law to practice. Or, ten years ago it had been. Dark magic the likes only an old Vampire could wield.

Of course. A fucking Vampire. Who else?

How convenient.

“Brother,” Riley says, somewhat loudly, definitely sounding like he is running out of patience with my silence.

“Four,” I whisper, not wanting to wake up Shayne.

I say nothing else out loud to cut Collette out of the conversation. Instead, I speak to my brother in my mind.

Three shifters. The other one I believe to be a tracker. ‘Bout a mile and a half behind us.

A tracker?

I believe so, yes.

Collette?

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t entirely trust the Vampire.

Let us hope not, brother.

I really hope not. I desperately want to be wrong about her.

Out loud Riley asks, “What’s the plan?”

“For now we keep driving.” I order.

“Is that wise?” Collette asks, like Riley, she does it in a not so quiet voice.

Jesus, what the fuck is the matter with these two? Are they trying to wake up my mate?

“Just shut the fuck up, Collette,” I snap at her. Too late, I realize I had not bothered to lower my voice either. Son of a bitch.

Five seconds later when I hear a thick, sleep laden voice call out, “What’s going on?” from beside me I want to kick myself in the ass for snapping at Collette.

I was beginning to hate the Vampire my father had greatly cherished for so many years, even if she wasn’t to blame this time.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” I lie, “you should go back to sleep.” That parts not a lie. She should definitely go back to sleep. And hopefully continue to sleep through any further unpleasantness that should happen to fall upon us.

“Then why are you swearing at Collette?” she quietly asks me.

“Because she pisses me off,” I reply, “and there doesn’t need to be anything wrong for her to piss me off, she just does.”

“That’s stupid.”

Maybe.

Probably.

Definitely.

But I’m not going to tell her that. No fucking way.

“Go back to sleep, baby.” I gently order her.

She’s quiet for a moment, then replies, sounding rather uppity for someone who just woke up, “You know, I don’t think I’m all that tired anymore.”

Yeah.

Figures.

My mate was stubborn, head strong and never did what she was told.

I fucking love it.

Shayne

Something was going on, something serious. Something they were keeping from me. I could tell. Only a fool wouldn’t be able to realize something big was going on, wouldn’t be able to feel the tension radiating off of my three companions.

Riley looks anxious and keeps glancing into the rearview mirror every couple of minutes. When this happens his eyes look out the back window then dart between Ian and me, then back to the road, then back to the mirror.

Collette sits stiff and unmoving in her seat. She doesn’t look around. She doesn’t speak. Hell, I don’t even think she breathes. Do Vampires breathe? I would have to remember to ask Ian that later. Anyways, she just sits there, stiff and silent.

And Ian…

Well, it’s his behavior that gives it all away for me.

He doesn’t look anxious nor is he sneaking covert glances behind us. He isn’t sitting stiff and unmoving in his seat. As a matter of fact, he’s pulled me close to his side, tucking me into him, arm draped over my shoulders and he’s gently rubbing my arm up and down with his hand in a gesture that I think is meant to soothe me. I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about this whole mate business, but I did know for certain that his constant touching of my person made me slightly uncomfortable. Mostly because I was unused to physical contact of any kind. Anna May and I had been friends for three years and she learned right off the bat that I wasn’t a touchy feely kind of person, she respected it and gave me the personal space I needed.

Ian, it would seem, wasn’t about to give me any kind of personal space.

It wasn’t only his actions that gave him away, telling me something was wrong. It was also the look on his face. Jaw clenched tightly, steely determination filled his eyes. Clearly, he was downright pissed about something.

It was kind of scary.

He
was kind of scary.

If it wasn’t for his arm around me and the soothing gesture of his hand on my arm I might have felt compelled to shrink away from him in fear.

That’s how scary the look he wore on his face was.

Again, I want to ask what’s wrong, but I think, at this juncture, it might be wisest to keep my mouth shut.

So that’s exactly what I do… for the time being.

*****

What feels like hours later, but in actuality is probably only half an hour tops, Riley’s tense voice cuts into the silent SUV shattering the illusion of calm. “Should be a town coming up soon.”

Were we stopping somewhere? I hoped so. It would be nice to get out of this godforsaken vehicle. We had been driving all night. When we left the motel room it was around eight pm and now it is almost dawn and I think I’m the only one who has slept in that time.

Do Vampires sleep?

Wait, when did I actually start believing in this whole Vampire thing?
Did
I believe it? Shockingly, I think I did. I think I might have believed from the start, when that thing stuck his fangs in my neck. I shuddered at the thought. That was very much real. I lift my hand and run my fingers gently across my neck where there should have been scabs at the least, but there’s nothing there. Nothing. I bet if I looked in the mirror I wouldn’t even see the pink fading lines of a scar.

Perhaps this is why we were stopping. Collette
is
a Vampire and dawn is fast approaching.

Could Vampires be out in the daylight? Or, did they sleep all day? Did they burn to ash in the sunlight?

I had so many questions.

Ian hasn’t really told me anything about Vampires. To be fair, he hasn’t really shared all that much with me about shifters either. The knowledge I do have comes from fictional characters in books and movies. And they (mostly) can’t be out in the daylight. They lock themselves up in a dark, dank basement in a coffin… or whatever.

I desperately want to ask these questions but I’m not sure if the timing is right for it. Ian seemed open (mostly) to my questions and willing (mostly) to answer them. Things were so tense in the SUV that I knew now wasn’t the appropriate time to ask but… I was curious.

Oh fuck it.

Things are tense, yes, but they are trying to hide it from me so I’m going to pretend like I don’t notice and ask whatever I want until someone tells me to shut up.

I clear my throat, which comes out sounding weirdly loud in the silent SUV, and tentatively ask, “Does Collette need a place to bunker down in for the daylight hours, so you know, she doesn’t burst into a ball of flame or something?”

Collette spins her torso around in her seat so she is facing me. She also has a look on her face that says she thinks I’m a bit touched in the head, and not in a good way.

“Why would I need a place to… bunker down, as you say, for the daylight hours?” she sharply asks me.

Hmmm… perhaps she is the one not right in the head. I mean, really? She’s a freaking Vampire. Even if she can be out in the sun she has to at least know why I would ask something like that. It’s not like she’s sporting a tan or anything. She's so pasty she looks like a freaking ghost. Besides, did she miss the ball of flame part?

I mean, hello… she’s a freaking Vampire.

For the first time since she showed up at our motel room I take the time to study Collette’s features.

She is not someone I would ever refer to as beautiful.

Or pretty.

More like homely.

Her face is gaunt, her eyes look sunken in, and her cheekbones stick out stark in her face. Her hair is a dull, lifeless looking brown that she has pulled back into a french braid. There are dark, purplish bruises underneath her eyes. And she’s thin, like, starving herself for years, waif like thin.

Hmm… maybe she is uglier than she’s homely.

That thought isn’t nice but it is definitely true.

“Baby,” Ian whispers in my ear, causing me to shiver, “what are you thinkin’?”

What was I thinking?

At that moment I was thinking he had a great voice and it sounds even better when it went deep and quiet, whispering words like baby in my ear.

I don’t share that thought out loud. I’d probably never share that thought aloud with anyone ever.

“She’s a Vampire,” I pointedly whisper back.

“So?” Collette fires back, sounding, for some unknown reason, pissed off.

Cautiously, so as not to further piss her off, I ask, “Don’t Vampires have to stay out of the sun?”

“Why would I have to avoid the sunlight?”

“Uhh… because you’re a Vampire?”

“Yes,” she quickly, and it must be noted very sarcastically, replies, “we’ve established that.”

“Doesn’t a Vampire’s body catch fire and then burn to ash in the sun?”

“Of course not,” she snaps at me, “that’s utterly absurd.”

I didn’t think it was absurd at all.

I was learning that Collette had a personality to match her face - ugly.

I was also learning I very much did not like her.

I mean… What a bitch.

I’m thinking about maybe sharing with her that I think her ugly personality matches her even uglier face when a thought floats through my mind.

A thought that is very much not my own.

I know it’s not my own because it’s Collette’s.

I know it is Collette’s because it is whispered in my mind in Collette’s voice.

This has happened to me often enough since I was a little girl. I can’t control it. I can’t turn it off. And I always, but always, keep it to myself. I have learned from a young age that people thought you were crazy when you answered their unspoken questions, or knew something you shouldn’t about them, something nobody else knew. My aunt had thought I was evil and had a demon living inside of me. She had a priest come to our home once and try to get it out of me. That horrible experience will probably haunt me until the day I die.

So, you see, I have learned the hard way to keep my mouth shut about the thoughts I hear in my head when they do not belong to me.

But this time I did not want to keep it to myself. I didn’t really know him but I knew Ian would believe me no matter what I told him. No matter how crazy or outlandish, I knew it in my bones he would listen to me, believe me.

Just what we need, an ignorant Queen. An outsider child with no knowledge of our people whatsoever. She will destroy him.

Yeah.

I wanted to share that with Ian. And Riley. Badly.

“I’m not,” I harshly blurt out.

“Not what?” Ian asks me, sounding confused.

“Ignorant,” I bite out.

“No one said that you were,” he says, looking at me even more confused than ever.

“Out loud, no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You heard me,” Collette accuses me, not asking like she thinks I’m crazy, no, it comes out of her mouth as an accusation.

Now, why didn’t that seem weird to her? It made no sense. But then again, she really wasn’t in a position to think of me as weird when she was a freaking Vampire.

Sounding confused, Riley asks, “Heard what?”

I want to tell them. Ian had shared their secrets with me.

Maybe I could share mine with him? Maybe, hopefully, he wouldn’t react how my aunt had. Maybe he wouldn’t think I was evil and had some demon like creature living inside of me. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t think I was completely and utterly bat shit crazy. Sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder myself if I was crazy or not.

I want that, all of that.

And I want it badly.

I desperately want to tell him and have him still look at me like he has been these past few days. Like I was, no
am
, someone special. Someone he thinks is beautiful. Someone that he, for some bizarre reason, cares about.

Fear keeps me from speaking. It grips ahold of my insides and squeezes so tightly it’s hard for me to breathe.

The thought of him looking at me in disgust is something I cannot handle.

In the short time I have been with them I’ve become fond of the brothers and they have grown to mean something to me. Which is an even scarier thought than them knowing my secrets.

The fear of rejection is so strong it’s damn near crippling.

The only person I have ever cared about, even remotely, is Anna May. She knows nothing of my past and I certainly never shared my secrets with her.

If I couldn’t share with her after years of friendship why am I then considering telling someone I have only known for a few days? And I don’t even really know them. What I did know should have sent me running for the hills. It would have any sane person. But, oh no, not me. Me, I was becoming ridiculously attached to them.

Anna May.

This is only the second time she has even crossed my mind since leaving our apartment.

Our apartment that apparently was so dangerous Riley and Ian had to whisk me away from there in the middle of the night. Our apartment where I had been attacked by a freaking
Vampire
.

I hadn’t demanded to see her so I could tell her to stay away because it wasn’t safe. I didn’t tell her where I was going (even though I hadn’t known that myself at the time, and still don’t) so she wouldn’t worry about me.

I didn’t even say goodbye. I let Riley do whatever it was that he had done to her and promptly pushed her from my thoughts.

And then I left.

Left her behind to whatever fate had in store for her without even a backwards glance.

And now…

Now, I’m sure I will never ever see her again.

That thought has my stomach rolling and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Which is probably what prompts me to blurt out, “I’m a horrible person.”

Ian leans his head close to mine and whispers, “What’s going on in that head of yours that would ever make you think something so stupid?”

“I’m thinking about Anna May,” I whisper back, “I just left her there.”

“Shayne, no.” Riley says, “I sent her away from there. She’s fine. It’s you who’s not safe there. She would be the horrible person if she expected you to stick around just to say goodbye or some shit while your life is in danger.”

“What if something happens to her because of me?” I ask him, no longer whispering. “Because of the two of you?”

Ignorant and whiney.

I hear float through my mind.

“Fuck off, Vampire,” I spit out, my voice laced with venom, something I’m unaccustomed to feeling.

“If you dislike my thoughts so much then perhaps you should stay out of my head, you whiney little brat,” she spits right back without bothering to turn around and look at me this time.

“Collette,” Riley whispers her name warningly, sounding as though he’s in shock and completely appalled by her words.

Ian, however, does not sound like he is shocked. No. he sounds enraged when he barks out, “pull over.” His voice practically vibrates with emotion.