Mated to the Alpha King (A Royal’s Tale Book 1)

Bryce was just about to reply when a ringtone sounded from his pant pocket, and he immediately reached for his phone. After grasping it and giving it a look, he turned to me with a soft smile, and I nodded, smiling back. It was probably important.

I stood there in the middle of the room as the sound of the door closing behind me echoed from the wall. I was looking nowhere in particular, but my mind seemed to be in overdrive; the feeling of appreciation wouldn’t leave. I seemed to be extremely thankful for how things had settled so far, how smoothly things had gone. God knows how bad it could have been—how bad I could have reacted had I not had prior suspicions and a love for Jacob Black, Professor Lupin, and Adam. But I was not going to tell Bryce that. Who knew what he would kill in his jealous frenzy.

My gaze drifted towards the open window, and I found myself walking towards it slowly. The day outside did seem like a damp one, the clouds hanging heavily in the air with their gray hues. I couldn’t help but smile; this was my perfect weather. If only it rained too. That would be great.

As if hearing my unvoiced wish, the sky started crying down on the world. The smell of the freshly wet soil floating around the air reached my nostrils, and I smiled as I closed my eyes and leaned against the edge of the window.

“Hey.” An arm slid around my waist as the warm whisper touched the skin of my neck.

I shuddered and now leaned against the familiar, solid chest.

“Hey,” I replied, smiling, as Bryce leaned closer and pressed his lips on the crook of my neck.

“So, where were we?”

I turned around with a wide grin displayed on my face. Well, this was a first. Bryce willingly offering to give me answers to my questions was unbelievable.

“I asked what the moon had to do with us,” I chirped, putting my arms around his neck and pulling his huge form down as I swung from it. His arms around my waist tightened as he leaned back in to kiss my chin.

“You’re adorable. I meant something else, but we can do this too,” he murmured against my neck.

“Great! Let’s begin then!” I announced, moving out of his embrace and placing myself nicely on the huge bed, my back against the dark mahogany headboard.

Bryce frowned as I moved out of his hold but quickly followed me, settling himself on the bed beside me.

I turned to him excitedly, and he groaned when he noticed the expectant look in my eyes but continued.

“Before I begin, you must understand some things, okay?” Bryce began, then turned to look at me.

I nodded in understanding, feeling slightly nervous about all this.

Bryce continued, “You might have noticed . . . seeing as you have seen both Matthew and me in our . . . beast forms, that we are different. There is a concrete science behind it. You see, there are . . . two types of wolves. Matthew happens to be a werewolf, whereas I’m a lycanthrope. Lycans and weres differ in the sense that we lycans are royal. We royals are stronger, in every sense, and being lycans allows us to stand like . . . humans, unlike werewolves. Understandable so far?”

Once again I nodded meekly. He was getting closer to the mate thing; I knew it. Why did I suddenly not want to hear it? Why was I suddenly so scared?

“Now, we all—both lycans and common wolves—are affected by the moon. Although we can change at will, our powers and strengths increase during the full moon. And . . . well . . . since the full moon affects us all, it also affects our— Fuck! It makes us want to mark our mates, okay? It’ll make me want to mate with you. And that’s bad because I fight every second to prevent myself from taking you. I’ll go crazy, Theia, almost obsessive, and if I don’t get you during the full moon this month, or any month, I will kill anything and everything that stands in my way.”

I sat gaping at the pissed-off Bryce as he glared at the dark silk bedcovers.

Well, shit . . . a tiny voice choked out, and I gulped nervously, fidgeting with the pillow in my hand.

“Say something,” Bryce demanded, sounding exhausted. He turned to take my hands, but I quickly retrieved them, then avoided his eyes as I moved away slightly. His eyes shot up to mine. I looked up, and my gaze faltered at the look of hurt in them.

“Bryce, I—” I almost moved back in to touch him, but before I could, Bryce was gone. All that was left of him was the lingering smell of his musky, mysteriously delicious-smelling cologne and the swift cold air that whipped across my face as he left.

“Way to go, Theia. You just hurt him!”

I closed my eyes and tried to shut down my guilty conscience. I had just fidgeted away from Bryce, my soul mate. The look in his eyes kept swimming around in my mind, and I sank down against the mattress, a frustrated groan leaving my lips.

“Trouble in paradise, deary?”

My head snapped towards a smiling Meryl standing at the door, her comforting eyes drawing me closer and into sharing my problems with her. I yielded.

Let it out . . . That’s it, Thi! Just let it flow . . .

“Yes,” I finally sobbed after looking at the off-white ceiling for some time. Meanwhile, Meryl had waited patiently for my reply as she settled herself in a comfortable spot on the edge of the bed.

Everything seemed so overwhelming, and it was all starting to catch up to me. I grimaced when a cold thin finger swept the tears off of my cheeks, and she leaned back as if waiting for me to deliver another outburst or two.

I didn’t.

Finally realizing I was not going to continue, she finally spoke, “Scared because everything just seems too overwhelming? And the anxiety of losing your virginity to Bryce seems scary? Terrified and guilty because you hurt Bryce a lot?”

I sobbed harder and nodded.

A comforting smile replaced itself where her lips had formed a thin line when Meryl entered the room, and once again, she wiped the tears off my face.

“Breathe, dove. We are just like you folks . . . just a little different; you have nothing to be worried about there. As for your virginity . . . you’re mated to the alpha king, dear; he must claim you . . . or someone else will, and that someone else wouldn’t truly love you—never as much as Bryce. Now moving on to the topic of hurting Bryce, I admit, he’s extremely hurt and embarrassed. But go talk to him, dear, because he needs you; he needs your acceptance, your love. By the night of the full moon, if you both don’t mate, he will give in to his beast. It will take him days to get back. He might even hurt himself. Think about it, Theia.”

I sighed as the solemn-looking Meryl moved out of the room after placing a ghost of a kiss on my forehead and a pat on my knee.

What am I going to do?

The sound of the drops of rain trickling down the window wafted around the room in a soothing manner, and I took a deep breath to calm myself before moving my gaze back onto the ceiling.

What am I going to do?

Almost instantly, another voice replied, Find him . . .

My breath hitched in my throat, and my eyes widened. I landed a palm on my forehead as the frightful gravity of things crossed my mind and stuck itself there. But I was eighteen, legally an adult; I was in love; Bryce was my soul mate; this was concrete; and we had to make love. What was I scared of?

The unknown—that was what.

I sighed and pressed my head further into the pillow, my eyes now shut tightly.

It was true, I was scared; I couldn’t deny that.

Another soft sigh escaped my lips, and I concentrated on the soothing sounds of the rain instead.

The calm never came; rather, another thought, which had been floating around my head, etched itself in my brain in big bold letters: Take a chance.

A light bulb lit up, and I shot up in bed, my tearstained, blotchy face stinging from the heat. I could almost feel a headache coming as I made my way out of the bedroom. I needed to find him.

Corridor after corridor, I tried to memorize the turns I was taking, this time determined not to end up lost. But I couldn’t find Bryce anywhere.

Finally, exhausted, I hunched, my hands grasping my knees as I tried to catch my breath after all the rushing and running. It was no good; I would never find him in this cursed castle.

I stopped panting when I heard a distant footfall, and after determining which direction it had come from, I made a mad dash towards freedom—and, hopefully, Bryce.

Dressed in a classic baby-blue, knee-length dress with slightly puffed-up sleeves, a sightly middle-aged woman appeared to be dusting what seemed like a row of portraits. I rushed forward to her, almost desperately.

“Excuse me!”

The lady’s head turned to me in surprise, but she smiled warmly when she got a better look at me. A small smile appeared on my lips. She could help me.

“Yes, dear?” she asked, her dusting finally paused, as she looked at me with warm concern.

“Have you seen Bryce? Please, can you lead me to him!”

The woman’s expression softened further until a sad tone seeped in. She shook her head. “I’m afraid Master Wilhem left, dear; jumped off the fourth floor balcony he did . . .” She stopped when she noticed my horrified expression and quickly corrected her words: “Oh, don’t worry, dear—Master does that a lot; he does! He will be back before nightfall. You are to stay the night?”

He left . . .

A thousand thoughts kept swarming around my head even as I shook it distractedly and, without asking for directions, turned around and started walking away, with no idea where I was headed.

He lef— “Ow!”

Gravity was winning. My butt was going to meet its fate. I was going to fall flat on my ass. I hadn’t even managed to see which wall I had collided with headfirst when a strong, warm pair of arms slid around me, quickly pulling me back into the same concrete, hard chest that had pushed my backside towards what could have been its gruesome demise. I frowned as the person still held me, his nose now buried in my free brown locks.

“I heard,” the man had spoken, loosening his grip on my waist, before he let his hands fall to his sides and moved away. I knew the voice immediately.

“Romanov,” I sang, giggling, remembering the name Meryl had called him by.

His eyebrows furrowed in irritation, his lips thinning until it looked like he had none. “Don’t call me that; it makes me sound old!”

I snorted, “It makes you sound sexy, you nutter.”

Roman had rolled his eyes and leaned forward to grab onto my hand before he turned and started moving forward across the hallway.

“I heard about what happened.”

I frowned. “Heard what?”

Roman continued leading me to a location I was still to find out about. “About the Lionel incident. If Bryce hadn’t broken his bones over and over again, I would have given him a piece of my mind too.”

I gasped. “He did what!”

Rome chuckled and stopped before turning to a door, opening it, and ushering me in.

“Don’t worry—we lycans and weres have speedy healing qualities. It took him four hours, at least, to fully recover, though; after all, he was a newly shifted wolf.”

I glanced at him, stopping my wide-eyed inspection of the library halfway through. “So, you’re a lycan, aren’t you? Like, you walk on two instead of four?”

Roman smiled, his brown eyes now shining golden. “That would be correct, love.”

I nodded, returning my attention to the millions of books that happened to sit cozily on millions of shelves, each shelf extending from the ceiling through two stories to the floor, stairs and ladders ready to aid one in finding the many worlds hidden within the worn old pages. My insides tingled as I looked around, and in a quick second, I determined that the library was my favorite part of the castle, no doubt.

Bryce . . .

My shoulders slumped suddenly as the thought of Bryce flashed across my mind. Where could he be?

***

“So weren’t you supposed to come next week?” I asked Roman, trying to break the tense silence that had settled around us, as I leaned against my bed’s headboard.

After convincing Roman to drive me over, as he barely had any jet lag, I finally told him everything that had happened earlier that day, and he told me how Bryce had returned to the castle, after I had slept, and beaten Lionel to the brink of death. I found that extremely wrong and managed to make a note to be extra nice to Lionel. The guy deserved it.

“Yes, I was, but the National Beta Meeting ended earlier than we expected, so here I am.” Roman motioned to himself happily as he shrank beside me.

Smiling, I was just about to pull a sass on him when I noticed a look of irritation pass his face, and he quickly got out of bed, turning to look at me almost apologetically. “I need to get to the castle, Thi—beta duties. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

I smiled and nodded, waddling over the bed on my knees towards Roman to give him a good hug, before yelling out a “Laters” as he ran and jumped out of the window in a graceful motion, as if it was no work at all.

Once Roman was gone, the silence of the room caught up to me, and I slumped back against the headboard. Explaining things to Rome had made them easier. I knew now what I wanted . . . It was easier to accept—to process. Bryce was the one, and the next time we met, I would apologize and tell him yes.

***

A frosty gust of wind broke through the curtains and hit my naked feet with full force, eliciting a shocked gasp from me as I shot up in bed.

Crap.

One of the first things I realized was that I had over-napped, and it was now turning dark. I hated complete darkness. So, as quickly as I could, I reached for the switch and turned the string lights on.

That was when I took notice of the presence that stood beside the window—still, tall, and in the shadows.

I gulped nervously and turned to the door, but before I could even contemplate an escape plan, the figure moved out of the shadows and into the light. His face pulled up with a blank expression, his eyes looking as if they were desperately trying to get the spark they usually had.

I frowned.

“Bryce?” I asked, getting out of bed and moving towards him.

He took a step forward, and my palm touched his chest—somewhat of an assurance that it was actually him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, slipping my arms around his waist, as I buried my face in his chest. I had heard a sigh before he lowered himself, and his arms wrapped around my waist. Picking me up in his arms, he moved towards the bed and placed me there.

I smiled at the same expressionless Bryce, who only leaned in to place a small kiss on my forehead before turning around and moving towards the window. I frowned.

“Bryce?”

He stopped, his arm on the open window’s frame. “You might want to go to sleep, Theia. I’m returning to the castle. I have some work to do. Good night.”

I could only stare at the empty space Bryce had just been occupying.

What the hell just happened?