Olivia. Mate. Dane.
None of those words went together. None of it made sense. And yet, as Tanner watched from below, surrounded by a crowd of excited lightbearers, Sander Bennett performed the lightbearer mating ceremony and declared Olivia and Dane mated.
His Olivia.
But she wasn’t, not by lightbearer law. That couldn’t be right. She’d just mated with him!
He searched the balcony, but if she was still up there, she was standing toward the back, so that he could not see her from where he stood, almost directly below. But she must be up there, or else how could the king perform the ceremony?
Why had she not stopped it? Why had Dane not stopped it?
Dane? It didn’t make sense. Olivia had always insisted he was nothing more than a brother.
But as he thought about it, he realized it did make sense. The fact that Dane went to Vegas when he found out Olivia was missing. Several conversations he recalled overhearing, conversations that were intimate in the way of families—or lovers.
Had this been the plan all along? Was that why Olivia went to Vegas? A bachelorette party gone bad? One last opportunity to experience life, before she settled down to see to her duties as the only child of the king of the lightbearers? Tanner had expected that it would be his pup in her belly that might be king someday, not Dane’s. Dane wasn’t king material, and Tanner couldn’t imagine that his offspring would be either.
The crowd cheered and clapped, and Tanner realized the ceremony was over. Olivia was mated to another. To Dane.
It didn’t make sense.
The king turned away from the crowd and directed his attention to the back of the balcony. Tanner could not make out the conversation over the cheering, but it was obvious that Sander was having a very animated conversation with someone. Dane disappeared from view. All of those jealous feelings that Tanner assumed he didn’t have because it was Dane and Dane was hardly a threat suddenly flooded his system. He wasn’t a threat—yet he was.
He was the ultimate threat.
The glass balcony doors opened and closed and Tanner thought he caught a glimpse of Olivia stepping through them, followed by Dane, and it took everything he had not to shift into the form of a bird and fly up there to find out what the hell was going on. He needed to know. He needed to hear it from Olivia.
The king stepped up to the railing again and lifted both hands. There was a nervous smile on his face. Was he about to confide in his subjects that the coterie was broke?
Instead of that, he thanked his subjects for joining the party and for being a part of this special day. He informed them that his daughter and Dane were so excited about their sudden mating that they immediately decided to spend some time alone.
Tanner was twenty feet in the air before he realized he’d just shifted in the middle of a group of lightbearers. He didn’t care. He had to talk to Olivia.
* * * *
“Dane, leave me alone,” Olivia cried out when she finally ran out of breath and stopped running, only to realize he had been chasing her since she left the balcony after her father’s horrible, horrible stunt. She hadn’t even been able to tell him that his ceremony was null and void because she was already mated.
“Olivia, talk to me. We’ll figure this out.”
She abruptly stopped and whirled around. Dane nearly ran into her, not having expected her to stop so suddenly.
“There is nothing to figure out. I do not want to be mated to you. I want Tanner. I am already—”
“I know.”
She stopped talking and stared at him. He waved one hand in a vague fashion.
“If it wasn’t obvious by the way he glowed, it was certainly obvious by the way you look at one another, and by the way he is so possessive of you. Not to mention the fact that he healed you, using your magic, I might add.”
Olivia felt a great deal of her fury deflate as if she were a balloon. She slumped against the nearest wall. “If you can see it, why can my father not?”
“He sees what he wants to see. He always has.”
“I cannot be your mate, Dane.”
“I know. And I realize that I should be flattered to be mated to the princess, but to be honest, I do not wish to be mated to you, either.”
“We aren’t—” Before she could finish the sentence, a bird flew in through the nearest open window. It was a great black bird with furious-looking pale blue eyes. Olivia recognized it immediately.
Tanner shifted into the form of a human and did not even spare Olivia a glance before storming up to Dane and cold cocking him before he even comprehended what was happening. Dane collapsed into an unconscious heap.
“Tanner,” Olivia admonished, and she dropped to her knees and lifted Dane’s head into her lap.
“Don’t touch him,” Tanner growled. “You’re my mate.” He sounded like a vicious animal. A vicious, wounded animal.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Olivia said without taking her eyes off Dane’s face. “I have to heal him. Why did you punch him?”
“You’re my mate,” Tanner growled again.
“So you keep repeating. But that does not give you the right to punch him.”
She began pushing healing magic into Dane. He stirred slightly but did not wake. Before she could finish, she was forcibly pulled to her feet. She winced as Dane’s head fell from her lap and banged onto the wooden floor. She turned around and glared at Tanner.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
He tightened his grip on her arm. Magic flared around his hand.
“Did you know?” he asked.
She gave him a bewildered look. “Know what?”
“Your father just attempted to mate you with Dane,” he growled. His pale blue eyes glowed like lighthouse beacons.
“Actually, it was more than just an attempt,” Olivia admitted.
“Did you know?” he repeated.
She sighed and stopped struggling to get out of his grip. “Yes,” she admitted.
She watched as the pain flickered across his face, and she thought, I’ve hurt the only man I truly love.
“Tanner, I can explain—” she started, but he released his grip on her arm so suddenly that she stumbled and nearly fell.
“What is there to explain, Olivia? That you knew that you were due to be mated, so you took off to Vegas for one last trip? One last fling? What the fuck do you think we just did this afternoon? You think just because our mating ceremony is different, it doesn’t mean the same damn thing?”
“No, that isn’t it at all. I swear. I just—”
“You knew. You knew you were promised to Dane. Fucking Dane,” he spat, as if the name tasted vile on his lips.
“Hey,” Dane protested weakly from where he lay on the floor, feebly attempting to push himself into a seated position.
“Shut up,” Tanner snapped before lifting his eyes to glare at Olivia again. “You lied to me.”
“I did not,” Olivia protested. “I never said—” The man simply would not let her finish a sentence. It was not unlike speaking to her father.
“You never said a damn thing. You just let me fuck you. You just let me mate with you, in the way of the shifters. And then you just mated with someone else. You’re a fucking polygamist.”
“Tanner, please listen to me—”
“You can have her,” Tanner said with disgust. He waved a hand at Dane. Magic shimmered in the air and Dane winced. “But I wouldn’t trust her to be faithful if I was you.”
And then he was gone, shifted into the form of a bird again. He flapped his wings and soared toward the same window through which he’d entered a few minutes prior. Olivia made a strangled cry of protest and lifted her arms to try to stop him, but he twisted his body and dodged her outstretched arms and then he was gone, through the window and out of her life.
“Tanner,” she said on a sob, as she collapsed onto the floor next to Dane.
“What happened?” Dane mumbled as he lifted a hand and pressed it to his head. “Did someone hurt you?”
Olivia choked on another sob. “No. I hurt him.”