The Kings Mate

Chapter 9:



“Ryder.”

When I hear the voice I press myself closer into the hard warmth next to me. The warmth growls and wraps an arm around me, holding me in closer to his chest as a sheet is pulled up further around my neck.

Hang on.

Ryder?

When my eyes open I see that the warmth I’m asleep on is Ryder’s naked chest. He’s lying on his back and I’m more on his chest then the bed. When he tightens his arm around me again, I notice Maxon standing at the end of the bed his arms crossed over his chest as he glares down at Ryder.

When I bury my head down into his neck trying to hide from Maxon I feel a small pain shot through mine. As I let out a groan at the feeling Ryder’s other arm comes to wrap around me and he presses a small kiss to the top of my head.

“You were supposed to be in the councilmen meeting an hour ago.” Maxon continues from the end of the bed. “They are growing incredibly frustrated about it. You need to be present.”

“I’ve had other things more important to be present for.” I can feel the movement of Ryder’s chest when he speaks. “Tell them I’m unable to do it today and postpone it to tomorrow or you know my views on what they want to speak about, do it yourself and mindlink me if you need.”

I’m confused on what’s happening but I don’t disrupt their conversation. By the sigh Maxon gives I’m guessing that he’s going to do what Ryder says even if he doesn’t like it.

“Fine, I will give them your views and if they aren’t happy with it they can wait till tomorrow.” He finishes almost defeated.

When Ryder lets out a little chuckle at the tone of Maxon’s voice I glance I look up at him. He’s still stood at the end of the bed with his arms crossed but his stance has slackened.

“Thank you, Maxon.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Maxon scoffs his arms dropping. “Nice mark Lottie. I’m spending the day with Ellie after the meeting.”

He leaves the room after that and Ryder’s grip loosens but he doesn’t let go of me. My hand shots up to press it to the side of my neck at Maxon’s words and I flinch at the slight discomfort I feel from the fresh claim. The skin is slightly raised, yet to go down and to blend in closely with the colour of my skin.

He claimed me.

When I dart back out of his arms he allows me to but he keeps a hand around my wrist. He’s watching me carefully from where I’m sat on the opposite side of the bed. When I pull my hand back away from my neck I don’t know if I expect to see blood there or not but it’s clean, even the cut has disappeared, not even a faint scar left behind.

Ryder pushes himself up on the bed and slowly he wraps his hand around mine that has begun to shake. He’s warm. He’s always been warm but now there’s something different to his touch. It feels not as if his touch is warmer but it feels more powerful.

“Relax,” he whispers, meeting my eyes. “My wolf is connected to you now. He can use that connection to heal you and give you all the ability’s that I have. Your strength will match mine. You just have to stay calm, your emotions will be heightened as well, ok, relax.”

“You claimed me.” I breathe out sliding my hand back from his. “Why?”

I’m openly crying now, I’ve never felt so much pain from something he’s done before. He lied. For a week I allowed myself to fall for him, to feel something I had never felt anybody before and yesterday it all came crashing down when I realised that nothing could become of us, he had a mate out there and she would always be above me. He caused me so much pain for a lie. He allowed me to think there was someone else when really it was me the entire time.

“Lottie its ok, just relax please baby.” He whispers ignoring my question.

He tries to pull me back in closer to him but I slide away. I shouldn’t have. I slip from the edge of the bed but Ryder’s quick enough to catch me and slide me back up to sit on his lap.

“No, don’t touch me.” I yell at him trying to fight my way out of his arms.

He tightens an arm around my waist and lifts the other up to wrap around my shoulder and hold me to his chest. His breath is fanning over the back of my neck.

“Stop, I’ll explain, I just need you to relax.” When his fingers tickle over his claim, I breathe out sinking into his chest like he wants me to.

When he notices that I’ve calmed down, he lies back down and shifts me so I’m still on top of him but he can keep eye contact with me as well. It took no less than a second for me to calm down at his touch. I’m not sure how to react to it but I liked it.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, his fingers threading through my hair. “A royal werewolf has never been mated to a human and when I realised, I was scared. You were on the streets and the first thing I thought about is how you would react to the sudden change from what your life was before to what it’s going to turn into. I did notice how you felt and I was happy that you were falling for me without knowing about the bond. I should have told you, you were mine when I told you about mates.”

It still hurt.

“I know it hurt. It hurt to stay away from you.”

My eyebrows scrunch together and he gives me a cheeky smile. “Can you…”

‘Yes,’ when his voice echoes through my mind I smile. ‘It’s easy you just have to imagine yourself in my mind and you can hear my thoughts or you can talk to me like this as well.’

Sighing I try to get into his mind but I fail and he tightens his arm around my waist. “It might take a little while for you to get it, but for now I’ll stay out of yours.”

My fingers move up to glide over his temple. I know I should be angry at him for keeping this from me but with the way he’s reacting to my touch I can tell that the big furry thing inside of him was pushing him every day to tell me the truth. He knew and he had to hold all that information bottled up inside him.

I know what it feels like to keep all your emotions locked up tightly inside of you.

He’s watching my hand and I can feel the uneven rise and fall of his chest beneath mine.

I’m sorry.

He smiles at me again. “You have nothing to be sorry about Lottie. You have a right to be angry about what happened, just forgive me and we can take this slow.”

“I thought you said you were going to stay out of my mind.”

“I did, you were the one that just said you were sorry in my mind, you were in there for a while as well.” He smiles.

Biting my lip I slide back from his hold again. “Slow,” I repeat from his sentence before, slow sounds good.

“Slow a pace that you’re comfortable with. Werewolves usually claim their mates in a matter of hours and complete the mating process in a couple of days. I just want you to be comfortable with me and all this.”

“Mating process?” I question my eyebrow shotting up.

He winces a little and shifts uncomfortably. “Meet your mate, claim them and then you know,” he drifts off.

I’m confused by his words. I don’t know, I’ve never done a human relationship let alone have a mate.

Ryder sighs noticing that I don’t get what he means. “Mating, or as you’d better know, sex, making love.”

I freeze welcoming his hand when he takes mine and intertwines my fingers. “You’re seventeen, so as much as I want to and my wolf is forcing me to close that last gap between us, it won’t be happening before you’re of age and definitely not before you’re comfortable with it no matter how long it takes.”

Ryder left me alone in the room after that. I was nervous about the whole mating thing but his words relaxed me. He’s having a shower now, in his shower. He’s naked less than five meters away from me. There is a part of me that is forcing me to get closer to him and finish the process that he told me about.

I think that even I can feel that push to do it. Not the same as he does, I don’t have a wolf, but it’s strong, I can feel it tainting my thoughts that are telling me to wait and properly define the relationship for myself. I know what it is. I understand the mate bond and my connection to him, but I want to define the feelings that I had before it. I could feel that he wanted me to have that human connection to him that confuses the crap out of me. I know I love him.

He bought me out a set of clothes for the day before he got in the shower and told me that I know have full access to the closest. He hadn’t told me about it before to keep it hidden from me that this was his room. I had free reign on what I got to wear now but he had already given me a new pair of jeans and loose fitted floral singlet that seemed to float of my body. When he handed me the pile of clothes with a fresh pair of underwear on top, I blushed. He gave me a cute smile and lent down to press a kiss to my cheek.

“Hey,” Ryder says behind me his hand dropping to my lower back.

I’d moved to stand by the doors that looked over the gardens and the east wing of the castle. When I turn to look back at him the warmth returns to my stomach. He’s gorgeous in the tight fitted grey shirt and black jeans. His regular outfit when he’s with me.

“There’s breakfast being set up down in the courtyard,” he tells me his hand sliding to my hip when I moved to face him.

When he doesn’t move just giving me a questioning look I nod at him telling him that’s what I want to do. When he sees my movement he finally responds and his hands move to take the bottom of my shirt.

“May I?” he asks just as I begin to grow nervous over what he’s doing.

My hands drop over his sliding them up my stomach showing him the bandage that’s hiding the cut. The fact that he still asked do that makes me feel all that more comfortable with him. He sighs a little and slips his hands from beneath mine leaving them to hold my shirt as he begins to unwrap the bandage.

Usually Ellie is the one to check and care for it. I wasn’t exactly comfortable with Ryder looking at it before, I didn’t like seeing the pain that crossed his features when he saw it but now I can’t see myself letting anyone else doing it.

Looking down to where his hands dance delicately against my skin, I see that the wound has closed up enough that the stiches are loose. The cut is still a little darker and scabbed over a little but it’s closer to the beginning of a pink scar.

“It should heal completely by the end of the day but it might take a day or two to disappear completely. I’ll get Riley to come into the courtyard and take the stiches out before they get infected or anything.”

He drops his hand back down pulling my hands and shirt down with them leaving the bandage sitting it over the back of the lounge.

“I really like this shirt on you, you know?” he whispers stepping in closer to me.

The length of his body is pressed against mine. My hearts beating fast as he slides his fingers into the back pockets of my jeans, holding me in close to him.

“Slow,” I whisper, breathing against the skin of his chest revealed by the deep V-neck of his shirt.

Ryder sighs but he doesn’t pull back away from me. “Are you uncomfortable?” he asks his fingers flexing around my butt.

I’m not.

I’m far from being uncomfortable in his arms and having his hands on a place so intimate makes me happier than I’ve ever been before.

When I don’t answer him he begins to pull away from me coming to his own conclusion that he’s making me uncomfortable. My arms are quick to wrap around his neck holding him to me.

“Don’t let go.” He tightens his hands in my jean pockets. “I love you. I know I do. But I’m not ready to go that far. Whenever I close my eyes now, even blinking I see his face. Your touch stops it.”

“When I touch you,” he begins hesitantly. “Anywhere like how he did, or even kiss you, it doesn’t remind you of him does it?”

Shaking my head Ryder sighs lifting a hand up into my hair and the other wrapping around my waist, shifting from the comfortable place they found in my pockets. He presses a kiss against my temple his hands stroking through the thick strands of dark locks loosely hanging down my back.

“Riley has some therapy methods, I want her to try. It will stop all this for you.”

“I just want to talk to you.”

“I don’t know how to help you. I will be right beside you when you speak to her if you wish but please baby, I need to know that you’ll be ok without me around.”

Without him around?

“Careful of projecting your thoughts, if you do it too loudly your guards will here. Sometimes I have to leave to work with the packs and most of those times you will be put in danger being there.” He begins making me sad about the distance it will make between us. “And if by chance something were to happen to me, the guards, yours specifically know to protect you over me. I need to know that these memories are going to stop haunting you.”

He loosens his hold on me but I tighten mine around him, liking the comfortable feeling of his hold. His hands slide up over my hips sending those tingles that I know now are linked to the bond between us.

With all the confused feelings that I had towards Ryder and wondering whether he felt them back I was blind to the all the signals and facts that I knew were true that if I just picked them all up that little bit earlier I would have realised what I was to him and avoided all the shit I felt.

“Lottie,” he laughs his hands coming up around mine and gently pulling them from his neck. “You need to eat something.”

He has one of his hands wrapped tightly around mine and the other comes back to slide back over my hip and on to my stomach. Now I realise why he had such an insistent need to keep my weight up. I’ve seen how carefully Maxon watches Ellie when she’s in the same room as him. He’ll mostly be concentrated on whatever conversation he’s having with Ryder but if she so much as flexes a muscle his eyes are watching her ready to move at a moments notice to sweep her up in his arms.

When we finally get out of the suite and reach the door to the courtyard, the guard there doesn’t hesitate to let us in and he actually bends at his waist, bowing towards me, not Ryder. “You’re Majesty.”

Ryder’s hand tightens around mine and I take little notice of it. You’re Majesty. There’s a slight shake conquering my hands now even though I’ve been trying to trap them inside me. I can’t believe that it all went over my head.

Nausea is begging to rear its ugly head deep down in my stomach again. Ryder is pretty much dragging me out into the garden now. The table has been set up with the lavish food that I’ve grown accustomed to. Ryder’s hand lets go of mine and he wraps it around my shoulders and his other moving to my knees. He lifts me from the ground as he sits down on one of the chairs dropping me down onto his lap.

“Hey, Lottie, look at me.” His hands come up to run over my jaw, forcing me to look into his eyes.

“Queen,” my voice comes out shattered and I hope he doesn’t notice it. “I couldn’t even control my own life before you. Now I’m scarily dependent on you. How am I supposed to do that for others?”

“This is why I didn’t want you to know yet,” he whispers pulling me in tighter to his chest. “Because you’re human only the wolves that have met you will recognise you as there Queen. They have a link to you like all wolves have to me and only when I mate you will all other wolves have that connection to you.”

Shaking my head I try to sink that little bit further into his touch even though there isn’t any space left between us. I’m so close to him that I’m breathing his warm breathe.

“It’s a lot to take in.” I whisper into his chest.

“I know baby,” I smile at the use of the nickname but it still isn’t enough to calm my feelings. “My mum’s going to help you through it. It might be difficult to get used to. I mean I was angry about it for a couple of years. I have no control over my life but you don’t have to do this if you don’t want.”

“But I want you.” I slide my hand up around his neck and tease my fingers through his hair.

He leans his head into my touch and goes to say something back to me but Riley appears across the patio. Ryder sighs pulling back from my touch when he sees her but he continues with whatever he was about to say to me.

“You will always have me. Being the queen is just something that comes along with it, but if you want to know something. Everything that I go through everyday all disappears when I get to see you.” He presses a quick kiss to my lips.

He waves Riley over when I rest my head down his shoulder and he’s the one that lifts my shirt up so she can easily remove the stiches from over my ribcage. Her hands are cool, unlike all the other wolves’ warm ones. I leave the subject alone, liking the contrast of it against the warmth of Ryder’s chest against my back.

“There you go Lottie. That should heal up easily now but if you have any pain tell Ryder.” She tells me with a small nod of her head towards him. “Now about these memories, I’m guessing that it’s hard for you to tell Ryder let alone me or anyone else, but the best way to get them to stop is to get it all out. So if you ever see them or feel anything from it, just tell him even if it hurts and you’re scared of how he will react to it. He just wants you to be happy and comfortable, ok, he’ll help you anyway he can, you just have to let him.” Her voice turns to a tone that suggests that it was a private conversation and Ryder isn’t just behind me.

Ryder’s arms circle around me tighter as I nod at her. I’m glad that I don’t have to talk to her about anything but I still don’t think I’ll be able to handle the look on Ryder’s face when he has to hear about everything that’s happened to me through my life. I understand her words though and it brings tears to my eyes.

“Hey, it’s all right.” Ryder whispers shifting me around in his lap as he gently drops me down in the space next to him on the chair, “Eat something, your weight should come back to normal easier now.” His carrying words are effortless as they leave his mouth.

“Do you have to leave today?” I ask him leaning into his side, ignoring what he said.

He sighs and pulls the full plate in closer to us. “No, I’m spending the day with you. Come on, can you eat?”

My legs are still over his and when I don’t react to him he gives a tight squeeze of my thighs getting my attention. My head drops back onto his shoulder and I look up into his gorgeous hazel eyes, he smiles softly, pulling my hair over my shoulder and exposing his mark that’s partially hidden by his shoulder.

“You’re scared I can feel it.” He says his hand moving towards the table but I keep eye contact with him. “Relax.”

“You tell me to relax a lo– hey.”

He’s laughing at me and holds my hands back when I try to wipe away the whipped cream he swiped across the tip of my noise. I laugh gently his arms preventing me from moving as I stick my tongue out trying to get the cream off.

“Hey, what?” He’s watching me with a smile on his face as I struggle to get the cream from my nose. “I didn’t do anything but you seem to be struggling a little bit there.”

His voice is quiet his smile and laugh lost in the soft seductive tone of his voice. “I’ll get it.”

Whiskers of the little stubble on his jaw tickle as he licks up my nose. Goose bumps cover my arms at the sensation it gives my body but mainly the curdling warmth fluttering deeply in the pit of my stomach. A drop of the cream falls down onto my lips and he eyes it for a second before he slides a hand up into my hair holding me steady as he allows my body to relax in his arms as his lips come down against mine.

His kiss is soft, his hand cupped lightly around the back of my neck holding me in close to him. When he’s tongue pushes against my lips I gasp giving him the entry that he wants and the entry I need. His tongue runs along the side of mine and I can taste the whipped cream with even a hint of chocolate. I can even feel his smug smile against my lips and I give him one back, slipping my tongue to move against his.

“No,” I exhale as he tries to pull back from me but I lock my fingers in his hair, holding me to him.

I feel him smile grow against my lip as his fingers hook into my belt loops pulling me up further into his lap a hand moving up beneath my shirt to massage against my spine as I straddle his waist. When his hand moves over the clasp of my bra, I drop my head back with a deep exhale of breathe, noting even more of the feeling of having his crotch pressed this closely to mine.

When my lips part from his they come back down next to my neck, just below my jaw and I moan as he sucks at the skin, pulling the blood to the surface leaving a different mark against my skin. He continues to pepper kisses down my neck till his teeth graze over my mark and I actually pull at his hair pulling him away from the intense feelings he’s causing me.

“Ryder,” He hears me. I don’t know how with how breathless it was.

“I’m stopping,” his voice is as breathless as mine, he smiles up at me as he continues. “If I don’t stop now, I’m afraid I won’t.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I can’t.”

He sighs dropping his head back down into my neck and he brushes his nose over my mark. I hear him sniffing as I remember hearing that even if he was on the verge of shifting into his wolf and decimating an entire town with his anger, one breathe of my scent will calm him down. I can feel that he’s worked up probably as easily as he could feel how afraid I was.

Whatever is working him up so much is making me a little nervous. He even senses that and he pulls back to tell me that it’s ok and he’ll explain the last of everything later today, pressing a quick peck to my lips as he shifts me back down next to him. Handing me the plate of pancakes with chocolate chips and whipped cream that was disturbed only moments ago by his finger, over the top.

Even though I feel slightly awkward when he does I allow him to put the bits he cuts up into my mouth purely because I like the way he says oops with a devilish smile across his face when he gets more whipped cream somewhere on my face and he has to kiss it off.

***

We don’t leave the courtyard until after we’ve been served more decedent food for lunch. I’m so engrossed by the feeling of having Ryder this close to me as we slow pace around the bottom floor of the castle that I don’t take note that it’s now Charlie and Reynolds with us and every single time we pass a guard or a maid they bow. I do however realise that they say ‘you’re majesty’s’ every time they do so. Ryder squeezes my hand and looks down at me with a romantic smile, recognising that it makes me uncomfortable but I’m slowly getting used to it.

Snail speed seems to work for the both of us though. He’s not pushing me into this the way the women at Carlett pushed me to study and to make something of myself on a place where I had no idea who I was in the first place.

Here I can actually see myself becoming a Queen if I’m given the time I need to be comfortable with it because here I know who I am. What my life is and what I was always looking for.

Someone I can trust with all my heart. Here I have Ryder and he has me. Nothing that throws itself in our way will make me leave the life I’ve always looked for.

‘Can’t’, can’t what though? Just this morning he was telling me how much he wanted to go all that way with me and how much he wanted to complete that last bit of the bond with me. Yes I’m seventeen. Yes, I’m underage. Screw it. He loves me, I love him. It would take a lot to get him to leave me and me to leave him, so why not just do it now.

Where’s the point in waiting?

“Lottie,”

My eyes snap up to Ryder and I realise that he’s stopped me in front of two dark wood doors down a dark navy hallway. Reynolds and Charlie are at the end and I’m surprised that I was distracted by my thoughts that I couldn’t even add up what was happening.

“There is much more to why I won’t mate you than the fact your underage.” He pauses and looks towards the doors before turning back to me. “You reacted better to being Queen than I thought you would, but this,” he jerks his head towards the door again, “Will be a lot more to handle. I want to tell you everything now. Get it all out of the way so you only have to deal with it once.”

There’s a slight quiver of my jaw as I nod at him.

“Stay close. My hold calms you.” those words don’t make me feel any better but he doesn’t give me a chance to analyse them before he’s speaking again.

“The reason my guards attacked you in that alleyway was because your scent isn’t human.” I try to step back away from his words but he grabs my elbows holding me to him. “They should have stopped attacking you when they realised your scent wasn’t that of a werewolf or even a rebel.”

“I always fight against the rebels and it’s common that they will attack the town as much as they attack the castle. I’ve been described as been one of the most ruthless, sadistic, aggressive Kings we’ve ever had and it may not seem like that to you, Maxon, Reynolds and the others have been taking the piss out of me for how I react around you, but it’s because I care so deeply about my people that I was down there to protect them.”

When I look up I see that Maxon is standing at the double doors leading into the room and so is the man that pulled me back that first time I was nearly attacked by the rebels. Both of them are watching with uncertainty as Ryder struggles with his emotions over what he’s trying to tell me.

“You’re scent hit me the second I left the castle boundaries. I had no idea what it was, it was so mixed and different from any species I had no idea what was happening to me. I was being pulled towards you and before I knew it I had you in my sights and there were wolfs attacking you.”

A growl is thundering in his chest as he continues “I was seconds away from fucking killing them that it took me a while to notice that your scent was the scent wasn’t normal and in that one second I realised why I was the way I am the way I am and what was about to take place in my life with you by my side.”

He breathes for a couple of seconds trying to let everything he just said to me but I can’t make sense of any of it. He just said that I wasn’t even human. How I am supposed to react to that?

“You’re human.” He sighs, “Just not fully.”

I shake my head telling him that I don’t want to know whatever he’s about to tell me. He can keep it to himself.

“You need to see this Lottie.” I allow him to take my hand back in his as Maxon and the other man hold the doors open for us.


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