AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When she leaned her head on his shoulder, he slid his arm around her waist, tugging her close and resting his head on hers. Then he sighed, a tired, defeated, and determined sound. “This needs to be over.”
* * *
Though she’d been thrilled to see him, Isla couldn’t help but wonder if Kai’s sudden presence would undermine her in Alpha Verena’s eyes. It may seem like Kai didn’t trust her, or Isla had called him for help since she thought she couldn’t handle this on her own.
Arm-in-arm, they strode through corridors decorated as a marriage of land and sea to the spacious dining room of Verena’s private wing of the Hall. Three staff members stood straight-backed, two with their hands on the double door’s curved wooden handles that had been capped with seashells.
They all bowed to Kai and Isla before the two tugged the entry wide, and the third stepped inside. “Your Majesty, Alpha Kai and Luna Isla of Deimos.”
He bowed deeply and stepped to the side. Isla sucked in a breath just before she and Kai broke through the threshold. The table had been packed, all but three of the fourteen seats taken. Ameera had gone ahead to breakfast after making the necessary calls while Kai and Isla had gotten ready.
She’d apparently done well to keep the secret, at least from everyone but Verena. The alpha was the only one who didn’t look like they’d been staring at a ghost. Jax, eventually, had been beaming, and Amalie choked on her tea, a glare sliding her aunt’s way, which the alpha ignored.
Isla had to school her cruel smile as her hold on Kai tightened.
“How delightful,” Verena trilled, rising to her feet, paying them their respects. Everyone else at the table followed suit. “When I heard about your arrival, Alpha, I thought I’d misheard.”
Kai grinned, nodding to them all, the perfect picture of handsomeness and regality. “It was such a gracious invitation.” He looked down to meet Isla’s gaze, and despite the act for his peer, the adoration in his eyes had been genuine. “And it’s hard to be away from this one for long.”
Isla had to keep herself from blushing.
Verena sighed, and Isla watched as she glanced at her consort. “You remember being newly mated, don’t you?”
“Goddess, Mom,” her heir grumbled, though he’d been well beyond age and was courting a mate of his own.
Theon beamed back at her, an easy, cocksure grin that told Isla all she needed to know about their dynamic. The fierce queen who couldn’t be tamed had found someone to accept her for who she was, where she was, and who couldn’t resist her charm.
Isla and Kai had their reserved seats beside each other, Kai to Verena’s left, across from Theon, then Isla and Ameera. Ameera faced one of her scions while Isla sat across from the heir and then beside him—
Amalie’s face had been tinted red, and Isla wasn’t sure if it had been Verena’s deception that had peeved her more, Isla’s presence, or the fact that Isla didn’t think Kai had glanced at her even once. The two of them had ended on good enough terms that Amalie had served as a representative of Mimas, meeting with Kai recently to speak about trade between their packs. But Kai had been livid when she’d told him about Amalie bringing her to the rebel’s meeting, once he got over the fact there had been one at all and all that they apparently knew and had been purporting to their members. Their words bled together truth and lie, fact and fiction.
Amalie would’ve known the danger it put Isla in if a greater spectacle had been made of her presence.
It was one reason he may have been happy for an early departure.
Isla hadn’t realized how famished she’d been until breakfast came out in droves. Carts carrying trays and trays of fruits, scrambled eggs, toast, meats, and even seafood were trolled out, the aromas arresting the air and sending her stomach gurgling.
“Someone’shungry,” Amalie muttered.
Isla paused her heaping of berries onto her plate, noticing just how much food she’d been piling in front of her. She likely needed a second just to space it out and not seem like such a glutton, but she wasstarving.Magic, like shifting, or even more so, had entirely depleted her.
“Don’t be abitch, Cousin,” Jax snipped, making his other relatives crackle with laughter. He bit into his toast.
Beside her, Isla felt Kai and Ameera tense, but she tapped them both to calm down. Her smile became sweeter than the fruit sitting on the table. “Iamhungry—and a bit tired,” she lamented. “I was woken and had a long morning.”
Because of a nightmare and some crucial planning, maybe, but Isla felt a wicked delight when she glanced at Kai with a certaincoyness.
A bleeding of lies and truth.
Amalie didn’t need to knowexactlyhow and why she’d been woken up and spent the morning in Kai’s arms. Her own poisoned mind could fill in the blanks to its own detriment.
Dimples appeared on Kai’s cheeks while he attempted to hold back too wide a grin, biting into his food.
A few moments later, when everyone else had slipped into eating or idle chatter, Isla felt Kai’s hand fall to her thigh beneath the table. She tried not to make her inhale of breath too obvious and willed her features into neutrality as his hand climbed higher,higher—then stopped, not quite where she’d want him most, but high enough to torture her. To give herjust an ideawhile being respectful to everyone else in the room.
He leaned over casually and whispered in her ear, soft enough that she knew only she could hear, “You would’ve been doomed if we could speak through the bond, just so you know.”
Oh, she could imagine the things he’d slip into her head.
