ANA
Ana glared at Ryden as though she was seeing him for the first time.
Every word that came out of his mouth infuriated her to such a degree, she wished she had learned some kind of combat training so she could show him just how docile she felt right now. Ryden wasn’t bothered about correcting what was happening in the kingdom immediately; he only cared about power, and he wanted it by any means necessary, even if it meant deceiving her into marriage and trading their children.
She thought back to all the times they had spoken—it had been a minimal amount of times during their long engagement—and there had never been an urgency or thrill or desire between them. He was simply the man who she was to marry, and she’d been excited about the prospect of marrying, to have what her parents had, but she’d never been excited about him. How could the pairing process have failed?
Or maybe it didn’t. He implied that her parents had purposely raised her to be this way, but he didn’t make clear if they were complicit. She had to know. “Did my parents know about your plans?”
Ryden smiled. “Of course not. I’m sure they suspected something, but I doubt they were too concerned about it. They were too busy concealing their own deceptions.”
Ana narrowed her eyes at him.
“So which is it?” Ryden asked. “You marry me willingly or we have a forced marriage?”
“I will never do anything with you willingly,” Ana spat.
Ryden chuckled. “I’m sure if you ended up wet and willing for the outlaw, there is plenty you’d be willing to do for me. I guess we shall see.” He turned to the king's guard at the door. “Arrest her.”
Ana firmed her stance and prepared to fight. Ryden hadn’t even confirmed whether or not he had Maddoc, but it was unlikely he did. He would have already boasted about it and probably announced it to Allandis. That meant Maddoc was still out there. And he would be coming for her.
Just as a guard reached her, the door banged open, and Maddoc strode in with Raine, Griff, and two other highcloaks. Ana’s relief was so immense her knees weakened.
“You will never have her,” Maddoc bellowed, his sword drawn.
“It is you who touched what is mine,” Ryden shouted. “You are too late in your attempt to claim her.”
Maddoc readied his stance, but Ana noticed his injured arm was limp. “You never even had a claim in the first place.”
The guards, Ryden, and the highcloaks charged at each other, roaring, yelling above the clashing swords, whipping of arrows, and exchanging of blows. Since they were all experienced fighters, all of them moved quickly; jabbing, turning, thrusting, pivoting with precision and deliberation. The king's guard nearest Ana grabbed her and pulled her back to the wall, pinning her wrists together.
“Release me,” Ana demanded. “I am the rightful heir to the throne. You work for the crown, not any one man.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said. “But the regent king has givin me an order, and I cannot disobey.”
“Did you hear anything that we just discussed,” Ana said, incredulously. “I know you all hear everything. You must know what is going on in the kingdom—what he is letting happen.”
“Yes, we do hear everything,” the knight said bitterly. “But we are sworn to the crown never to repeat a word of it.”
Ana twisted her body to look at him. “You are loyal to the crown? To my father?”
The man nodded. “I have been in service to the crown for fifteen years, Your Majesty.”
“Do you think the kingdom will improve with Ryden on the throne?”
The knight was silent for a long moment. “I do not have a choice in the proceedings regarding the throne,” he said finally. “I only serve it. We are trained to accept this and not take action simply because of our personal wishes.”
Ana eyed Maddoc. “That may be so, but Maddoc is my fated mate. And if you are still touching me when he comes over here, he will run you through with his sword. And you would have died for this king.” She glanced at him. “For restraining the rightful king’s daughter.”
The guard thought for a moment and then released her, taking a few steps back.
Maddoc and Ryden parried, but it was clear that Ryden was more agile, given Maddoc’s shoulder injury. Once she’d dispatched of a couple of guards, Raine joined Maddoc, both fighting Ryden, and the speed they moved at was unbelievable. At some point, Ryden realized that Maddoc was injured, and he landed a blow on his shoulder joint.
Maddoc bellowed, drawing back at the same time Ana yelled out for him. Maddoc saw her and started to inch around the room to get to her.
But Raine did not stop. Ryden narrowed all his attention on her and as they fought, both of them intensified the battle. The size difference between them was almost comical, but where Ryden relied on brute force, Raine used skill and agility. Each fighter was incredible to watch.
Maddoc dispatched of the rest of the knights as he made his way around the room, careful not to get in the crossfire. Ana kept her eye on Raine, marveling at how strong she was, how fierce she was… This was not what they taught Omegas at the palace. And suddenly her mind made the connection. Ana blinked. If Raine was an Omega, why wasn’t she part of the royal assembly?
Suddenly, Raine’s sword was knocked from her hand. She immediately grabbed Ryden’s outstretched wrist and knocked his sword out with her knee. Ryden grabbed her and they grappled, falling to the floor and rolling before stopping with Ryden on top, pinning Raine down.
“No!” Ana cried.
But as she watched, Ryden lowered down, looking at Raine more closely. “You are a girl,” he exclaimed as he panted, almost in disgust.
“I am a woman,” Raine growled back.
Ryden grabbed the neck of her tunic, looking down her top. “A little woman.” He stared at her. “Who are you?”
Raine did not answer, struggling underneath him to be freed. He grabbed her neck to keep her still, and then, much to Ana’s shock, lowered and ran his nose up her neck, scenting her.
Maddoc reached Ana and grabbed her, lifting her into his arms. She hugged him fiercely, relief flooding her body, and she pressed kisses all over his mouth. He pushed her against the wall and kissed her properly, dominating her mouth like he always did. Ana moaned as she savored his taste, every hair on her body standing up as she inhaled his familiar scent. Damn, she had missed him.
“I thought you’d been captured,” she said breathlessly, when he released her.
“That is not an excuse to leave home and put yourself in danger,” Maddoc growled, his hands roaming her body. “Did any one touch you?”
“No.” She twisted to look back at Ryden and Raine on the ground, still watching each other, tense with animosity and curiosity. “Ryden,” she called out. “Let her go.”
Ryden straightened, dragging his head away from Raine’s, even as he kept her pinned down. “Who is she?”
“None of your fucking business,” Maddoc bellowed. “How many women do you need?”
“How many do you need,” Ryden thundered. “I assume you’re claiming that one,” he pointed at Ana. “Why do you have this one? Who is this? She is clearly an Omega. Is it herbs that have interfered with her scent or is she damaged?”
Ana’s breath left her. How could he tell Raine was an Omega?
Maddoc groaned under his breath and Raine suddenly spurred into action, kicking and punching as hard as she could to get him off her.
“Just let us leave, Ryden,” Ana said. “Let us all leave.”
Ryan looked back down at Raine and then slowly got up, dragging her with him.
Griff and the other men had left the room, so it was just the four of them and the knight remaining.
Ana turned to the king's guard, who’d released her. “In times when a regent king is disputed, a separate guard can be formed to protect the needs of the crown. I need fifteen king's guard who will listen to me and take orders from me as priority over the regent king, in the name of the integrity of the crown. Would you be one, and can you find fourteen more?”
The knight glanced at Ryden and nodded.
“Good, please bring them here,” she said.
“Clever,” Ryden said. “But they need to pledge to a representative of the crown.”
“Let Raine go,” Maddoc warned.
Ryden made a face. “Raine?” He glanced at Raine. “What kind of name is that?”
Raine scowled at him and tried to pull away again from his grip.
“Are you planning to declare yourself queen and marry him,” Ryden asked Ana, pointing at Maddoc. “Because that would be a mistake.”
“The king lives,” Ana said. “I don’t need to declare myself anything. You will not marry me and that means you will not really be king unless he dies. And even then, there are many Alphas who will want the throne and they are more experienced than you. What makes you special?”
Ryden scowled. “We have already been betrothed for years,” he said. “If you default by not marrying me, then Redcrest is owed a debt by the crown, and all I would need to do is collect on it is to use your own crown’s guard.”
That was true.
At that exact moment, guards entered the room.
“Your job is to protect the crown at all costs. King Orick is the rightful king. He must be guarded constantly and is never to be left without a member of this guard by his side. Anyone who tries to harm him dies immediately. I order this as heir to the throne, Ana of Allandis; however, you are required to pledge an oath to be a representative of the crown.” She glanced at Ryden, who looked upon her smugly. “The king did not rule alone. He was part of an Alpha and Omega couple, one of the most powerful ruling couples that are recognized by this kingdom. So you will pledge your oath to the only remaining official representative of the crown, Queen Atara.”
The guards nodded. “We will pledge immediately.”
“That will not last,” Ryden snarled as they left the room. “I am the regent king. They have to listen to me!”
“You can be acting king, Ryden,” Ana said, realizing she had no interest in the throne. Once the new guard was in place, she didn’t have to worry about the crown. The weight of years of training and protocol and expectations was suddenly lifted, and she felt weary. “I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to rule this corrupt kingdom. If you want it, you can have it. But you will not take it illegally or unjustly. Father is still king, and when he fully recovers he will decide how things will move forward.”
For the first time, Ryden was quiet.
“If you do well between now and then, you will have the ruling experience no other person has had,” Ana added. “It is your best chance at gaining and keeping the throne honestly.”
“I will agree to this if you let me have her,” Ryden said, gesturing to Raine.
“I am not for sale,” Raine shot at him.
“What house are you from?” he said. “Where have you been all this time? You are too pretty to be living rough like an outlaw.”
She glared at him, not saying a word, while Maddoc growled. “She will not be your whore, Ryden.”
“I don’t need whores,” he shot back. “We need another Omega in the royal assembly.”
“What for?” Ana said.
“Leverage.”
When Ana shook her head, he scowled. “Then I will do everything I can to kill you, your father, your mother, and eliminate anyone else who gets in my way. Do you think I won’t succeed with at least one of them? I haven’t been making efforts for years, taking painstaking steps to reach this stage, only for you to get in the way. So make your decision.”
Ana opened her mouth, but Raine held up a hand. “It’s all right, Ana.” She turned to Ryden. “I will join the new guard. I will be here every single day protecting the king. I will answer any questions I choose to answer, I will not join the royal assembly. But as soon as the king recovers, my duty is over.”
“No, Raine,” Maddoc said.
Raine gave him a look. “We are almost there, Maddoc. Our home exists, your mate is with us, and we got everyone out. But it will never end if we don’t make a compromise. You and Ana will never be safe at home if he is here plotting and scheming against you both.”
Maddoc was silent for a long moment. “You know what is coming.”
Raine nodded. “And if I am here, the king has a better chance of surviving.”
Ana glanced between them, unsure what they were talking about. “Raine, I appreciate you making this offer, but you don’t have to do this. You deserve to be home, too, like the rest of us.”
Raine smiled at her. “I can’t sit and twiddle my thumbs, remember?” she said, grinning. “This is just temporary and then I will come home.”
Ryden turned her to face him, and she yanked herself away hissing. “You will not manhandle me!”
Ryden’s thunderous face held as he glared at her, and he dragged her toward him. Ana was about to push out of Maddoc’s arms to go to them, but Ryden suddenly chuckled and let her go.
“It will certainly not be boring having you here,” he muttered. He picked up his sword, looked at Ana and Maddoc. “What do you mean something is coming?”
Maddoc and Raine exchanged a look.
“At least two other kingdoms will join forces and invade Allandis within the season,” Maddoc said.
Ana snapped her head to him, her face going cold. “What?”
Ryden stared at him. “Two other kingdoms? Two?”
“Why would they do that?” Ana asked.
Ryden expression darkened. He raised his sword and pointed at Maddoc. “You did this,” he thundered. “You organized it!”
“I cannot control two different kingdoms; tell them to combine resources, leadership, and then conduct an invasion,” Maddoc said firmly. “They are doing it because the houses have strayed into their lands with their abuses.”
Ryden did not respond—he seemed speechless.
“How do you know this?” Ana asked.
“I told you. I monitor anyone and anything that does not belong here,” Maddoc said. “The other kingdoms have been watching us for a long time.”
Ana nodded, recalling the men who had ambushed her father. “The men with the different insignia.”
Ryden found his tongue. “When?” His voice was hoarse. “When is this happening?”
Maddoc shrugged.
“What are the kingdoms called?” A growly edge entered his tone.
Maddoc shrugged again.
Ryden gripped his sword, his mouth tightening. “Fuck!” Shooting Maddoc a look of murderous fury, he left the room.
Ana finally relaxed in Maddoc’s arms, her body trembling with the sudden release of tension.
“I’m going to introduce myself to the new guard,” Raine said. “One of them will have to pull back.” She smiled at them both. “I’ll see you before you leave.”
Ana nodded at her, as did Maddoc. “Thank you, Raine.”
As Raine exited, Maddoc pushed Ana up against the wall, reaching under her skirt.
“Maddoc!”
“I wanted to be inside you from the moment I came in this room,” he growled, ripping off her panties.
Ana already knew that. She’d been able to smell it in his scent. She hummed with delight as he widened her legs, batting away her skirt so he could claw her ass as he pressed into her. There was a desperation for both of them to connect in the purest way they knew how. “Someone might come in,” she whispered.
“Good,” he murmured. “Then they will see you are mine.”
As he filled her up, stretching her wide, she tucked her head into his neck, breathing in his scent. “I missed you so much. You said you were coming to the kingdom.”
“I was,” Maddoc groaned. “I just needed to get everyone out. I promised them they would have a new home. They helped me and suffered for me.”
His cock sunk into her so deep and stretched her so brutally wide, Ana could barely breath. “I understand,” she whispered.
Maddoc pulled her head from his neck to look at her. “Do you?”
Ana searched his eyes. “You are not the man they say you are. I understand that. You care very much about the commoners, and that is something we share. But there is much you still haven’t told me. I don’t understand why.”
Maddoc held her eyes. “Because it has no bearing on who we are together. This feeling between us, Ana. It should be what leads us.”
“But it is the lies and the secrets that made me ignore it for so long,” Ana whispered. “I couldn’t understand it, and I rejected it. I don’t want anything else withheld between us. If I had known the pairing process doesn’t work—”
“It does work.”
“It cannot,” Ana insisted. “It paired me with Ryden.”
Maddoc growled, flicking his hips, and Ana’s body jerked, the strange pain of being filled so deep shooting to a peak. “Do not talk about him when I’m inside you.”
Ana leaned forward, eager to comfort him, her nose nestled in his neck, and he rumbled in satisfaction.
He pushed in even deeper and slowly withdrew to the tip only to slam in again. Ana’s toes curled as he fucked her slow, steady, and hard as if savoring every inch of her. She licked his neck, sucking on it as he grunted, loving the sweaty taste of him.
Maddoc sped up slowly, each thrust sweeter, and wetter, and sharper than the last, until Ana was humping her hips for more, tortured by his rhythm. Her orgasm built in crashing waves, layer upon layer of feral, sinful, and violent devastation, assembling perfectly only to break and shatter her while she screamed and convulsed. He was still fucking her when she went limp, all muscles exhausted except the ones clinging to him between her legs, unrelenting in their greedy need for more.
His tongue was in her mouth when she came, making her swallow his gruff barks and growls, connecting another opening that he dominated completely. He slammed his knot in hard, and Ana yelped, but the primal contentment of his knot in her while his cock jerked inside filling her, spread quickly.
Maddoc carried her over to the throne, and sat on it, wrapping his thick arms around her as she lay on his chest, sleepy and exhausted.
“I was born into House Sterling,” Maddoc said.
Ana jerked awake. She didn’t move, just opened her eyes and listened.
“I was a promising member of the royal assembly and always took my duties at court seriously. I wanted to be a knight but my father was a scholar. He thought I could be much more—a man who used brain and brawn to reach heights others struggle to get to. So while I started my combat training, he pushed me to study and examine and research everything. I read a lot. I wrote reports and investigative research, and aimed to learn as much as I could.
When I was thirteen, my father told me he had uncovered a series of bribes and exchanges that unfairly advantaged Redcrest to keep hold of the throne.”
Ana lifted her head. “What do you mean?”
“There are five houses. Those five and the crown make up the royal assembly. But the crown is a separate entity—it has no specific association with any house.”
“Yes,” Ana agreed.
“The king and queen can come from any of the royal houses, and when they take the position, they lose their family name, and become wards of ‘The Crown.’ So, if someone from Thorneshaw becomes king, he can no longer have allegiance to the Thorneshaw families and he can no longer use the name.”
Ana nodded, resting her head back down.
"The problem is, one cannot just turn off the feelings for their family members or family friends. It is always the case that whoever rules will slightly favor whichever house they came from. There were measures in place to stop this from becoming a serious hindrance to the system, but ultimately there’s always a slight favoritism. One way the favoritism issue is dealt with is nominating Alpha and Omega couples to rule the kingdom. By doing so, a house is more likely to have a ruling couple on the throne if an Omega was born into one of the families."
Ana nodded. That was how she understood how things worked.
"For the longest time, Sterling and Redcrest both had a lot of ruling couples on the throne, which is why they are the wealthiest houses. But at some point, Redcrest began to cheat. My father found evidence that they went to great lengths to acquire Omegas—to guarantee the couple on the throne would continue to favor them. The longer this went on, the more biased the favoring became.
“When I was thirteen, my father found evidence. It included , including the recent story about your great-grandmother and he was preparing to inform the other houses so it could be corrected. Before he could share what he had learned, he was killed by Redcrest knights. I saw them with my own eyes.
“I tried to save Father’s research, so I could expose them and have them pay for what they did, but they took it a step further. They killed my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, everyone. They eliminated the entire family so Sterling lost a complete family. And then they blamed me for it."
Ana's breathing slowed to a standstill, her heart beating in her chest. That was horrific. "And the other Sterling families believed them?"
Maddoc nodded. "I had none of the evidence. My father was the one who put everything together. So I became their monster from that day. But it was on that day, I was matched with you."
"Me?" Ana said lifting her head.
Maddoc nodded, his eyes holding hers. "I hadn’t met you yet, but earlier that day the scholars told me that we were fated. I hadn't even seen you yet, you were really young, but they matched us very early, which means that we are incredibly compatible."
"But why didn’t I know about it?"
"When my family was killed, I was painted as a villain, and all documents and reports, anything with my name was erased, including our matching. I was already a criminal avoiding the law and couldn’t earn a living doing something useful and simple, but I quickly discovered how cruel the houses were being to commoners. They formally enslave commoners through taxes, Allandis Law, and duties while they enjoy the fine life and conceal what goes on. They make the rules so that they can break them but nobody else can. I soon found that I was the only one who could retaliate. I no longer had anyone they could harm and I had no livelihood.
“I will admit, I was as brutal as I could be in my retaliation, and the more I tried to help people, the more brutal I became. It was necessary to try to find a permanent safe place.
“When I heard about your wedding announcement, I remembered that we were matched, and I couldn’t understand how you could be matched again. I’d left you alone because I told myself I didn’t need you. It wasn’t worth bringing somebody else into my world, and especially not someone aligned so deeply with Redcrest. But I thought I would at least see what you were like."
Maddoc paused, and when Ana glanced up, he was looking down at her, his beard twitching. "I fell in love with you the day I saw you. I knew I had to have you. So I started to look into you, and research who you were, and I was disappointed to find that you didn't have a voice. You were a mild-mannered ornament for the crown, but didn't seem to have your own opinions, even in court. I began to wonder if we'd really been matched correctly. But I knew by then I was going to take you anyway, because I couldn't let anyone else have you. You weren’t ready for me, so I planned and waited for five years. By the time I got into the room with you, I had convinced myself that there was nothing behind the vacant shell that they had made you into—that they had ruined my gorgeous mate. But then, you insulted me, you slapped me, you refused me. And I saw you. It was the moment I knew everything had been worth it and anything coming would be worth it.”
He lowered and kissed her, and Ana blinked away tears from her eyes. "I know I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me,” she mumbled. “But I wish I’d known.”
“If we had had our three nights, you would have.”
Ana squinted her eyes at him. “How? What was so important about the three nights?”
Maddoc gently lifted her off his lap, and she winced as his cock slipped from her sore folds. “You will find out.”