*Maddy*
I’m not sure what else there is to say between us right now. Everything seems to have been set into motion already–our marriage, his departure to war, the fact I’m being left here to act like a Luna when only weeks ago I was scrubbing floors.
Any residual feelings from our intimate moment in the astronomy tower had vanished during the tense family meeting in the sitting room after dinner. The tension in the family is thick, and I feel like I’m in the middle of it.
I follow Isaac to his office through the surprisingly quiet house. There are so many people here tucked in the bedrooms and suites, but it feels like we're totally and utterly alone.
As he closes his office door behind me, and motions for me to sit on the red leather sofa in front of his desk, I fight the urge to immediately ask the questions burning little holes in my mind. He leans against his desk and crosses his arms over his chest, looking withdrawn and exhausted.
“I’m sorry to have dragged you into all of this,” he says after a moment of silence that was only broken by a fire crackling in the hearth across the room.
“If it wasn’t me sitting on this couch, it would have been someone else,” I reply curtly, smoothing my hands over my thighs as I think about the long line of women who were in the running for this very position and situation. I get a little jealous thinking about them–something I hadn’t expected to feel.
He frowns at me, those deep blue eyes shining with unreadable feelings while a muscle in his jaw ticks. I’ve only known him for a little while, but I’ve noticed when he’s particularly annoyed and is actively biting down on his words, his jaw goes tight.
I tell myself I should stop picking up these little nuances. It’s not like we’ll ever be like Isla and Maddox, who can read each other's thoughts by way of a quick glance.
“You’re upset,” he says, unfurling his arms and resting his hands on the desk, his arm muscles tight.
“Your mother doesn’t like me,” I admit, shifting uncomfortably on the couch. “She hates this.”
“She hates that we’re facing a war and I’m in charge, not my father. My mother sees me as the little boy I once was. She always has.” He glances at the hearth before meeting my eyes again. “She’s afraid.”
“Are you?”
He considers this question for a long while, his eyes leaving mine to focus on a piece of paper lying on top of a stack of books on his desk. “I’m not. I don’t think this will come to fighting. I just need an audience with their king, and if he’s willing to meet with me, I believe we can come to a diplomatic agreement between our two territories.”
I know nothing about the history of this part of the world. I know it is old, the cradle of our kind, but Celestoria is so far removed from this kingdom that their histories and teachings were never taught in any of my classes in school.
“What does he want?” I ask quietly. “What started this?”
Isaac looks back down at me, searching my face. I almost feel like he’s trying to gauge whether or not he can trust me, and honestly, the fact that he even has to think about it is like a knife in my heart.
Eventually, he must decide that he can trust me. At least to a degree. “Shortly after I was born, my father returned something called the Diamond of Faith to a temple across the river in Moorn. I know you’ve never been there, to Moorn, but when this is all over–” a heavy pause cuts through his words, “--I’ll take you. There’s a lot I want to show you, Maddy.” He pushes off the desk and sits down beside me on the couch in an entirely casual manner. His arms are stretched over the back of the sofa, and his head hangs back, totally at rest.
“The Diamond was supposed to restore peace to the kingdom. It was my father’s duty as the Alpha to restore the diamond to its rightful resting place, and he did. Peace reigned here for over twenty years, but there was a ripple effect….” He continues with the story, about a short-lived war on Maatua when he was only a toddler. That the placement of the diamond allowed what he says is a darker, more primal magic to creep back into the kingdom, something our kind had access to in the days before packs gathered into kingdoms, and Alpha Kings ruled.
“When I was three years old, a woman came here. She said she was from Eastonia and died at my parents’ feet in the throne room. It was my father’s Beta, Elijah, who sounded the first alarm about war on the horizon.”
“What is Eastonia?”
“A very old, very secretive kingdom from a place long lost to time,” he breathes, meeting my eyes for the first time in several minutes. “It’s located past the mountain range we long thought was impassable. All we have is lore and myth to go on.”
I feel like a child being read a bedtime story about kings, queens, and witches as he tells me everything he knows about Eastonia. Dark power reigns there, and their early rulers were pushed from the kingdom and forced to flee over the mountains, facing certain death.
“They’re not like us,” he says, tapping his fingers on the back of the couch just behind my head. “King Kane is not like me.”
“What do you mean?” My forehead crinkles as I study his face.
Slowly, he says, “I met him the other night.”
“What?” I sit up, turning to face him.
“Yeah, he was in my office leaning on my desk.”
He must be mistaken. He has to be. He just told me all he needed to end this war was an audience with the King of Eastonia. So how could he have had one?
“I don’t know how he got here. I thought it was just a fever dream at first, that I’d imagined everything.” He shakes his head, running his fingers through his hair. “I might have, I guess, imagined it.”
“You don’t get enough sleep,” I say.
A tight smile touches his lips as he nods. “You’re right, I don’t.”
“Did you tell your parents?”
“No.” He shifts his weight, our thighs touching as he sprawls out even further on the couch. Perked on the end like I am, he’s taking up the entire space, and seems to only be coming closer to me each time he moves. I doubt he even realizes it. “I will, if it’s necessary.”
“Eastonia… they have powers. But so does your mother, and so do you–”
“Not like them,” he cuts in firmly. “Whatever their warriors can do, we can’t. They just appear, and disappear. So did he, in my dream. If that’s what it was.”
Something dark coils in my chest, and my mind flashes to the canvas in Ella’s studio. Could it be the same man?
Surely not.
I shake the thought away.
“What’s on your mind?” he asks, noticing the far off look in my eyes.
“Too much,” I reply, settling back against the cushions, which only brings us closer. At least we can talk. At least, despite everything, we can sit here and comfortably converse with each other. “Your mom said… she said she didn’t want this for either of us. She asked if I was adopted, too. Do you know why she would ask that?”
“No, I don’t.”
“She doesn’t approve of any of this, and I feel like–I’m not the Luna this kingdom needs, Isaac. What if war does happen? How I am supposed to lead a kingdom–”
“You won’t be alone.”
“But I will be. You’re leaving. Cassian’s leaving. Hell, Ella might run off and fight, for that matter, and I’ll be here, with your mother, the golden queen who is far more capable of ruling than I’ll ever be, and she doesn’t want me here–”
“She wants me to be happy, and you being here, sitting on this couch, and talking to me without any expectations of me, anything to gain, that makes me happy.”
His voice is tinged with something heavy, like those words have been weighing down his heart for a long time. I look at him, seeing him clearly as if for the first time.
Lonely, tired, desperate. Like me, he’s lived a life for others. Unlike me, he’s had a loving, close-knit family that cares for him deeply, yet he still isolates himself, driven by the primal desire to protect and serve the kingdom he’s been born to rule.
It wasn’t something I expected to do. I’m not sure I’d even been thinking about doing it. But suddenly, I’m on his lap, and my lips are pressed against his, and his leather and parchment scent is overwhelming me and driving me mad with desire.
Shocked into stillness, his body goes rigid for a split second.
It’s enough of a pause for me to pull away, horrified I’ve been so stupid, my cheeks flaming crimson and burning painfully.
But then his hands are on my cheeks, and he pulls back into the kiss. His mouth tilts over mine, his fingers tangling in my hair as I melt into his touch and wrap my arms around his neck.
The room is spinning on its axis. My heart thunders so fast, I quickly lose my breath. I part my lips, deepening the kiss, closing my eyes and allowing myself to truly feel for the first time. Right now, at this moment, there is no impending war. There isn’t the crushing weight of becoming a Luna to a kingdom that's not my own. There's nothing but me, him, and the blessing that I saw him lock the door behind us when we’d come into his office.
I should pull away. I put some distance between us–and leave. I should go back to my room and lock the door and curl into bed, alone.
This is supposed to be just business.
Whatever this is, it’s a far cry from what our agreement had been in the beginning.
“We’re not mates,” I say against his lips when he breaks from the kiss.
Nose to nose with me draped over his body, he runs his hand down my back, bunching the fabric of my sweater. “I can’t feel the mate bond.”
“I don’t have a wolf,” I add.
“This is as close as we’re going to get, then.”
He crushes his lips to mine again, and suddenly I’m on my back with him on top of me on the couch. He pulls away long enough to take off his shirt, his skin gleaming bronze in the light of the fire, and starts to take off my sweater, but I stop him.
“Wait, I’ve–I’ve never done this.” In fact, no one has ever seen me naked before, as far as I know. Except those maids when I was being held prisoner, and that’s not the same. A sudden rush of self-consciousness sweeps through me, threatening to overwhelm the blissful blankness in my mind. “I don’t know what to do.”
I have an idea of what to do based on my stepmother’s threats of selling me to a brothel, but that is the gist of my education in the matter. Isaac looks down at me, panting, his lips parted as he searches my face.
“I don’t want to stop,” I continue, finding it hard to swallow. I rest my hands on his chest, feeling his heart beating against my palms. His muscles are rock hard, his chest smooth and glistening in the firelight. “I just–”
He kisses me so gently I feel tears begin to well at the corners of my eyes. I close them, a tight feeling constricting my throat.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispers, pulling away and tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear. “We don’t have to do this.”
But we did have to do this. If not now, then soon. Part of the agreement is for me to give him an heir.
Did I want fiery passion, or a cold coupling in a dark room with the weight of a kingdom’s worth of expectations crushing any sense of desire?
I whisper his name against his lips, letting my hands drift down over his chiseled chest and stomach.
“Make me yours, my king.”