Alphas of Pandora, page 12
Castor sensed her gaze on him but he forced himself to keep his head turned away. Whatever emotion swirled within the dark pools of her eyes would be too much of a distraction for him.
“Explain what it is you want with me,” Castor asked, falling into the role of the imperious royal like he was donning a second skin. “Why would Legion, of all the Alphas in Pandora, have me rescued from the Forbidden Zone when my father’s own advisors have apparently called off the search?”
The mercenary leader glanced from Castor’s stern countenance to the bowed head of the girl beside him before returning his gaze to the prince’s face. “Legion stands accused of your murder. An accusation that is obviously unfounded.”
“Is it?” Castor raised a mocking eyebrow. “I have no idea who sabotaged my skycar. For all I know, Legion has sent you here to finish the job that he couldn’t.”
“With all due respect, your Grace, if we wanted you dead then your suspicions would not be enough to save you. Legion has gone to considerable expense to ensure your safe return to the city.”
Castor allowed the skeptical expression to remain on his face but there was little force behind it. The wheels were already turning in his head. “Does he know who is responsible for my crash?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
The mercenary leader cleared his throat, appearing uncomfortable. “I am under strict orders to reveal that information only with your agreement.”
“To testify on Legion’s behalf?”
“Exactly that.”
There was little Castor hated more than a public spectacle. The last thing he wanted to do was arrive in the middle of a crowd, half-naked and cradling a disoriented Omega in his arms that did not even speak the common language.
“I want something else in return,” Castor announced, no trace of a question in his voice. He would state his desires and they would be fulfilled. What more would a Prince expect? “I require safekeeping for this Omega and her anonymity assured, with no questions asked of her. Ensure she is safe and unmolested until I can return to claim her.”
“Done.”
If these mercenaries were curious about why the lost prince had been rescued with an unnamed Omega in his arms, they knew better than to ask.
A noticeable tremor moved over Aura’s form but her eyes remained downcast. Castor resisted the urge to hold her or offer any comfort. The sooner she became accustomed to doing without him, the better both of them would be.
But the mark made by her small teeth burned into his skin. Hot, like his flesh was aflame. Phantom hands wrapped around his heart, squeezing hard enough to rob him completely of breath. Even as he tried to ignore the force of her presence, he recognized that their chests rose and fell in perfect unison. He understood that if he were to search the fragile skin at the bend of her arm for the pulse of her heart, it would match the frantic rate of his own. Even in the smallest way, they remained perfectly in sync.
She needed to be as far away from him as possible, but he had nowhere to send her.
Castor forced his gaze away from the Omega. The mercenary leader watched them with a strange expression on his face, with more curiosity than Castor was willing to tolerate. The impotent rage burning inside of him was eager for another target, but an angry outburst would reveal too much.
“Stop staring at my cock and get me a fucking change of clothes.”
Fifteen
Nothing about this place made sense to Aura.
The forest had been jarring enough, but now they had left it behind for another jungle of metal spires that extended up into the sky further than the eye could discern.
Castor had left her after they were brought to a structure made of some strange stone. It was unlike anything she had seen before, more like a tomb than a residence.
But someone clearly lived here, or more likely many people given the size of the room they had left her in. It wasn’t as if she could ask questions. Castor had gone, and no one left with her spoke a language she could understand.
So she sat on a bed that was large enough to fit her entire family and waited. Thoughts of Auntie Nona and the twins immediately brought sparks of hot tears to her eyes. She had not thought about them in days and the guilt of it ate at her, as if she needed another source of pain.
The room had no windows so she could not even squint her eyes and stare up into the daylight sky, searching for the station that was likely a hundred thousand miles away and floating in the void of space. And the realization that they were so far out of reach made her heartache.
Her shoulder burned, another source of pain. Aura resisted the urge to look down at the injury. A sense of horror and disgust threatened at the edge of her awareness, but the numbness surrounding her was too thick for any emotion to penetrate.
Even now, she did not understand what had possessed her. Her teeth had sunk into Castor's flesh because the urge to bite him had overwhelmed any ability to resist it. She had wanted to mark him, to claim a small piece of him in a way that was primal. Beastly.
Aura wanted to believe that this was all just a terrible dream. But the longer that the nightmare continued without the reprieve of waking, the more she had to come to terms with the fact that the world had tilted permanently on its axis. Nothing would be the same again.
What had she done? What had she allowed him to do? When would this madness finally end?
Not for the first time, Aura considered running away. But that would be as useless an act here as it would have been when they were trapped in that terrible forest full of insane Alphas. She had no place to go and no conception of how to navigate this very unfamiliar place.
The door to the room had been left slightly ajar as the men out there clearly did not want to leave the impression she was locked inside. But they had not tried to communicate with her in any way. Perhaps they knew she did not speak the language or had received instructions from Castor not to speak with her.
A woman in a dark gray dress had come into the room and laid out a tray of food on the side table. But she had not attempted to speak to Aura either, bustling in and out with a single-minded focus as if there wasn’t even another person in the room.
Aura could not follow much of the conversation during their rescue, but the barbaric man dressed in furs who had been her savior in the forest was someone very different here. Someone important. The mercenaries had immediately deferred while he barked orders in his native speech.
And here was unlike any other place she had ever seen. The floor was made of polished stone, so shiny that she could almost see her own face reflected in the surface. Heavy fabric covered the walls decorated with golden thread stitched into complicated patterns of curls and spirals.
The vehicle that brought them had risen impossibly high in the sky, so far off of the ground that it had made Aura dizzy when she looked out the window. Castor had gripped her arm hard as they exited the small ship, propelling her forward so that she could not take in much of the view. Only impossibly blue sky and high walls extended off into the distance stood out to her as he had hurried her inside.
And Castor had left her in this room with no other words or reassurance. She could do little more than watch the shift of muscles in his back as he had strode away.
Aura rose from the bed and approached the tray of simple foods, fruits and bits of meat that were mostly recognizable. Her stomach churned at the thought of consuming anything.
The whirlwind of emotion swirling through her was more than Aura felt capable of comprehending. Perhaps it was the residual shock from their sudden rescue that had her feeling so discombobulated. Or more likely, it was that Castor had bitten off a chunk of her flesh and then left her alone in an unfamiliar place.
And even though she didn't understand it all, she knew that what they had done meant something significant.
While focusing on that slight pain was enough to distract her, something more left a deep unsettlement within her. She could almost convince herself that she felt Castor inside of her. Not like when they mated, but in a way that was more spiritually profound. It was as if a piece of her had been ripped away, and painfully.
But their actions had forced something new inside of her, unrecognizable and burrowing like a parasite into her very soul. Rage and frustration moved through her and she recognized that those emotions could not possibly be her own.
It was him. She could feel him in her mind and in her body like a demon presence taking her over. The thought of it was terrifying. Any more time spent in his presence and she might lose herself completely.
What choice did she really have but to try to get away?
Aura turned to the door at the same moment that it swung open with enough force to crash against the opposite wall. The shock of it trapped a silent scream in her throat as she stared at the sudden apparition that stood in the doorway. It was as if she had summoned him from the ether with her thoughts.
He was dressed differently than when he had left her. A dark jumpsuit hugged his muscled body as high boots wrapped around his lower legs almost up to the knee. He looked very similar to the mercenaries waiting just outside the door.
Castor glared down at her from a height that seemed even more impressive in this quiet and well-appointed room. She wondered if he had always been this way or if he had brought some savagery from the Forbidden Zone back with him.
Her heart pounded with both fear and terrible desire as her eyes rose to meet his.
He didn’t speak as long legs carried him the few paces that separated them. She flinched in automatic reaction when his hand rose but he stopped just short of touching her, close enough that she felt the heat radiating off of his skin.
His eyes were a storm over the ocean, pulling her in like a wave dragging her out to sea from the shore. Aura was caught and unable to tear herself away, despite every cell in her body desperate to flee. She had not felt this way since first crashing into him while fleeing the rabid Alphas in the Forbidden Zone.
He was as unrecognizable to her now as he had been then.
She didn’t want to go with him. But even as she refused to take the hand he held out to her, Aura could not tear her gaze away from the cobalt eyes that held her own or force her body into any deliberate motion. The urges to both flee and throw herself into his arms warred within her.
His gaze finally broke from hers and traced a path down from her face to linger on the bend of her neck. The furs still covered the raw wound on her shoulder but she sensed that his attention focused there, as if he could see straight through the covering.
The mark throbbed painfully in response and Aura swallowed a gasp.
When his chest rose on a deep inhale, she mimicked the movement without conscious intent. She sucked in a harsh gasp of air, realizing only then that she had been holding her breath.
For a moment, he seemed as unsure about how to proceed as she did. But the hesitation on his face disappeared as soon as she noticed it. Then his hands were on her skin as he gripped her by the arms and yanked her against him.
Lips crashed down on hers with enough force to bruise the fragile skin. Castor kissed her like he owned her very soul, controlling and dominating with every movement.
His touch was enough to chase away the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, but only momentarily. She understood that as soon as she was alone again, the terrible emotion would return.
But that didn’t stop her from returning the heated kiss, lips parting on a sigh as his tongue pushed inside of her mouth like it had every right to be there.
Anger was written into every line of his body and she understood that at least part of it was aimed at her. He blamed her for the link that had been forged between them
With a low growl, he pulled away and bent to take her roughly up in his arms. His hold was too tight, pressing hard into the skin with enough force to leave bruises. But when she shifted against him, his arms only tightened further until she let out a squeak of protest.
Without a word, he strode toward the door with her in his arms. They moved past the silent mercenaries that had gathered in the open room outside of the door, but those men did little more than step aside.
Bright sunlight assaulted her eyes as they exited the stone structure. A vehicle similar to the one that had brought them from the Forbidden Zone had landed not far away.
Aura worked up enough courage to ask him her most burning question.
“Where are we going?”
His voice was full of restrained violence. “Home.”
And without even asking, she knew that whatever he referred to as home would not be a place that she wanted to be.
Sixteen
Castor strode down the hallway, heels of his boots clicking against the marble floor. He shifted uncomfortably in the stuffy overcoat lined in velvet and covered in the bits of gold and heavy metal that was part of the royal dress for receiving visitors to the palace. Even though nearly a week had passed since his return from the Forbidden Zone, he still wasn’t used to being fully clothed. Part of him missed the freedom of dressing only in loose animal skin, or better yet, dressing in nothing at all.
With some effort, he had avoided devoting too much thought to the weeks he had spent trapped out there or what had occurred in that time.
The girl had marked him. That thought still sat uncomfortably in his mind. He had not yet been able to convince himself that it had been anything more than the fevered imagining of his altered mind.
Except the small imprint of her teeth was scarred into the skin of his chest. The mark was a permanent reminder of whatever existed between them, as if he was even capable of forgetting it.
But he had no choice now but to assume the mantle of royalty that had been his cage for the entirety of his life. The skills he had used to survive the savage dangers of the Forbidden Zone were nothing compared to the savvy required to navigate the political minefield he now found himself in. The girl was a distraction that he could ill-afford.
He wouldn’t touch her again.
The King had been nearly overthrown in the handful of weeks that Castor was gone. He had every reason to believe that there were still those conspiring to take control of the Crown. Although Castor considered himself well-loved by the common people of Pandora, he held no illusions that he had many allies among his father’s Council or within Central Command.
Although the traitorous Undersecretary, who had organized Castor’s disappearance and near death, had been executed for his crimes, he was one man amid what could be a vast conspiracy. Barnard had not been working alone and his conspirators could remain within the government, waiting for any sign of weakness to strike.
Even his own father, the rightful King of Pandora, was more of a liability than an asset. King Rolan had become doddering in his own age, caring for little that existed beyond his dinner plate and the Omegas of his harem that warmed his bed. He was more figurehead than ruler. So, it fell to his most capable son to keep their empire from crumbling under its own weight.
And all of that was complicated by the Omega from the stars that he had hidden in a room in the most unused portion of the palace. She would have to remain there until he could find a way to explain her presence to any but his most trusted servants.
Castor was running out of people he could trust.
Which was how he found himself taking a private audience with the last man on the planet that he would ever consider a potential ally.
Legion Astrophus sat at one end of the long conference table with a slightly smaller man standing behind him. Even thought they had never met, Castor knew the second man had to be Adrian, Legion’s right hand for years.
Adrian had a file as thick as Legion did in the security archives, but Castor tried to ignore his misgivings as he took his own seat at the head of the table. He had agreed to meet them alone because he never would have made it out of the Forbidden Zone without their help, but that didn’t mean he trusted either not to betray him at the first available opportunity.
“I am aware that I have you both to thank for my precipitous rescue from the Forbidden Zone,” Castor said, keeping his voice formal. “Your efforts cannot be officially acknowledged, of course, but understand that you have my gratitude.”
Legion raised a dark eyebrow, expression sardonic. “And what value do you place on your gratitude, Prince Castor?”
“Your lives, for one. Had my dramatic return been delayed much longer, I can’t imagine we would be here at all to exchange thanks.”
A brief smile touched Legion’s lips, as if he was unbothered by the reminder that he had been in the literal executioner’s chair when Castor had arrived to halt the proceedings. The machinations of Undersecretary Barnard had nearly cost them both their lives. “I hope you’re not implying that I organized your rescue solely for my own benefit. I’m saddened at the very idea. I have nothing but the utmost loyalty to the Crown and its rightful heir.”
Castor fought the urge to roll his eyes. Legion was among the most notorious cartel bosses in the city and had no problem flouting the law for personal gain. If leaving the Prince to rot had been in his best interest, then that’s precisely what Legion would have done.
But both of them played a game with no winners, only those whose pieces hadn’t yet been knocked off the table.
“And the Crown appreciates the loyalty of all citizens,” Castor replied, keeping his tone neutral. “Perhaps we should start with your purpose for requesting this audience. As I’m sure you know, there are several matters that require my attention.”
“Is one of those things the Omega recovered with you?”
A flash of anger briefly twisted his features. Castor knew that he placed himself in a weaker bargaining position with displays of emotion, but any threat to Aura was enough to challenge his already splintering hold on control. “She is none of your concern.”
