Hekate’s Bride

Three years ago:

I clocked eighteen today. Everyone’s dancing. I am too, and Goddess knows I have never been this drunk in my life.

“Astrid, careful,” Thorne says, hands circling my waist when I keel over, nearly falling into my huge birthday cake.

I giggle, though nothing is particularly funny.

I lean into him and lick his neck that is slick with sweat from dancing so hard. He groans and I giggle at the sound of it.

“I’ll take you to your room,” Thorne mutters, grip around me tightening.

“Don’t wanna…” My voice trails off into an unintelligible slur and I inch out of his arms when I see another untouched glass of alcohol in the hands of a passing woman. “Give that here,” I tell her.

Thorne swivels, muttering an apology to the woman and he throws me over his shoulder, taking the stairwell that leads to my room.

It is safe to do so. Father and mother have retired to their chambers and the people left in the hall are too drunk to notice Thorne Nightshade kidnapping their princess.

I laugh, slapping his hard ass as he takes the steps carefully.

“Stop doing that, princess.”

“No,” I squeal and squeeze it hard. “It is nice to touch.”

I like to call Thorne conflicted. He wants one thing but asks for the opposite. I know for sure that if my hands wonder below the front of his torso, I will find him hard.

“I want you, Thorne. Why won’t you share my bed?” I ask, suddenly feeling solemn.

“I love you. I do not merely wish to share your bed.”

He says that everytime and it gets tiring hearing those words over and over again. They are not the words I want to hear right now.

What I want right now is him. In my bed. On me. In me. I have waited too long and he has taunted me for too long.

He stops before my room and fumbles with my lock for a bit before pushing it open.

My breath whooshes out my lungs when he drops me on the bed. I roll over, kicking off my shoes and pulling my hair out of tight bun it has been braided into. “Thorne,” I call out, when I hear his footsteps approach the door.

Ever the decent man. Thorne would rather flee from me than remain in my presence if it means touching me, even if it is so obvious he wants me.

“Princess.”

I begin to pull at the lacing of my bodice and he turns away, refusing to look at me. “What if we do not turn out to be mates?”

“You have doubts?”

I pause and push myself off the mattress. My vision blurs slightly and my steps are a tad uncoordinated as I saunter over to where he stands by the door. “Doubts, truths, who cares? You’re already here. Stay with me, Thorne. Don’t run from me again.”

He freezes when my fingers delve into his hair and thread in its wavy softness.

“Astrid,” he whispers, gripping my shoulders. I cannot tell if he wants to push me away or pull me closer.

I do not wait to find out. I kiss him. Sorta.

But in the moment that our lips touch, my door opens.

Not the door to my room. The door to my bathroom opens a little too loudly for comfort.

Startled, I pull back from Thorne and squint at the figure by my bathroom door.

“Rune? What the hell are you doing in my room?!”

My favourite purple hair towel is in his hand and he wipes his hair with it. “Why, you’re late, Red,” he purrs and only then do I realize he isn’t in his matching tux anymore. He is naked, save for my other towel wrapped around his waist.

What in the three realms…

Thorne shifts uncomfortably behind me. “I’ll… ah… excuse you two.”

I spin swiftly and latch onto his sleeve. “Thorne, wait. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I didn’t ask him to–”

Thorne’s grey eyes are raw and vulnerable. “It’s fine, Princess Astrid. You owe me nothing. You do not need to explain yourself to me.”

Shit. He doesn’t believe me. Why doesn’t he believe me? Everyone knows I hate Rune and would rather die than share sexual relations with him.

“Thorne, please. He’s doing this on purpose because I sabotaged him last year–”

Thorne isn’t listening. He brushes me off and advances out the door, and when I cross the threshold, I can’t find him on either sides of the hallway.

I turn on the bastard, idiot prince and my now-wet hair towel smacks me in the face with a snide comment, “Do all your things smell like jasmine? It is utterly disgusting.”

I snatch the towel from my face and storm over to where Rune stands, picking through my closet. “You!”

Grabbing his arm, I pull him back and shut my closet. “What the fuck was that? Why are you in my room? Why were you in my bathroom! And why in the world are you in my bloody towel!”

He merely reaches around me and pulls my closet door open again. “You told me to meet you here. Like you do the rest of your men.”

I slam my hands into his chest, pushing him back. “Don’t you play with me. Why did you do that? Because I ruined your stupid thing with the head cook? You’re so immature! I saved you from getting pummeled by her mate!”

“Saved me? You threw a jar of honey on my pants and set bees loose on me!”

“You don’t get to complain! You put a squirrel’s carcass in my dresser last year!”

“You poisoned me!”

“And that too was your fault. You don’t get to ruin my relationships because I was trying to save you from your poor taste in women and–”

Rune rears back like I have stabbed him with a sword. “My poor taste in women?”

He leans in, staring deeply in my eyes as he adds in a low, deadly whisper, “And who would you peg as the right choice for me, Red?”

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I hate when he calls me that.

I want to tell him that but his fingers suddenly cup my cheek, pushing my head back so I can look at him. My body jerks from the contact and when I start to move back, I collide with the closet door.

Shit.

My heart slams into my ribcage as pure, feline excitement courses through me. Perhaps it is the alcohol, but my wolf is stirring, purring with excitement.

“You?”

His warm breath that reeks of alcohol tickles my nostrils and somehow, something so little has me trembling with need under his fingertips.

I shouldn’t have drank so much. I think he’s drunk to. This isn’t right. This should not be happening.

“Hands off, Rune,” I say, but there is little protest in my voice as I get swept by a warm rising ocean.

His dark eyes drop from my eyes to my lips and a sharp sound escapes him. There, in his eyes, I see a crack. The cold, ruthless demeanor of his cracks and the things I glimpse between those cracks has me melting into his touch.

“This shouldn’t–”

Rune’s lips slam into mine, knocking the air out of me. My world shatters. I shatter. My knees buckle and I fall.

I fall into him.

My back slams into the door of my closet, hard enough to rip the oak door, but I barely feel it. Not as a fervent, urgent need I have never known with any man fills me to the brim.

His insistent lips part my mouth, filling me with violent tremors as his tongue slides over the roof of my mouth. He presses me harder against the wall and his free hand cups my ass, pulling me against him.

I hate him. I absolutely hate him.

But I moan for him, like I never have for anyone else.

My claws jut in and out at my loss of control, ripping into his back and shoulder as I grip him tightly.

My fingers find his hair, pulling hard at its silky strands and Rune moans into my mouth, tongue fighting fiercely against mine in a battle I do not wish to lose.

My free hand slides down his perfectly cut body and I find him hard against me. A gasp escapes me at the sheer size of him.

I’m playing with fire, I think as I push my towel aside, irritated at the obstruction.

Rune growls low in his throat when my fingers graze his tip.

He rips the front of my bodice in half, tearing the corset as well in one clean movement and my breasts pop out.

He doesn’t stop kissing me to look at them. His hands palm them, feeling them out like he wishes to commit them to memory and it is driving me insane.

I palm his tip, stroking his tongue softly as I do.

Rune bucks and growls, “Stop… doing that, Astrid.”

But I don’t listen. Not until he bunches up the skirts of my gown and strokes my heat with his fingers.

The first stroke has me screaming into his mouth and rocking my hips back and forth, in tandem with his skilled fingers.

I’m falling apart quicker than I ever have, and I do not wish to fall alone.

I jerk my fingers around him harder and faster, matching his movements as his fingers begin to pump inside me.

And when my world completely breaks and I am a mess of moans and cum, Rune growls loud enough to rattle the castle, “No.”

Then I feel it, hot against my thighs and down my fingers. He jerks violently before ripping my hand from his member and turning from me quickly, groaning and cussing.

I stand there with my gown in shred, blinking as I try to comprehend what I have done. What we have done.

I pick the shreds of my gown, covering the upper half of it all the while I tremble with pure terror and panic and it blankets me with weakness.

Rune turns and his eyes are filled with disdain and unmistakable disgust. At himself or at me, I am not quite sure, but it hurts. It fucking hurts in my chest.

“What did we–”

Rune lunges forward and cups either sides of my cheeks, forcing me to look in his eyes and deeper into his dark pupils that are widening. “You will forget what happened tonight. After I leave, you will go to bed and wake up with no memory of what transpired between us. You tore your gown while trying to take it off because you were drunk.”

I feel him, his command in my head, my soul. I feel it slipping past the corners of my mind, trying to change and tweak what already is. I fight it, but it is like running into an impenetrable wall.

I feel myself sinking and sinking.

And just like that, it’s gone.

Not the memories. The pressure of Rune’s command.

I blink and stagger forward in a daze.

Rune seems to believe his compulsion worked because he leans in and whispers another. “Sleep.”

And I do.