That felt extremely intimate and uncomfortable, knowing he had already seen my body do this. That he may have even been watching between my legs as his scent kept me asleep. That he had been inside me while I was unconscious and seemed proud of his works….

  Hand to my sex, trying to hold what seemed to keep lazily leaking out of me, I shuddered at all of it. “How long will this take?”

  Reaching for me with a devilish grin, he offered, “Come back to bed and let me lick you clean.”

  “No.” I tacked on a quick, “Thank you,” in case his male logic was going to assume forcing me to endure more hours of tonguing might be helpful. I had enough of that in the dark and was ashamed to admit I begged him to let me sleep when dawn broke outside the windows.

  But he caught me anyway, chuckling as he drew my mortified self right where he wanted me.

  Rolling to his back, he brought me with him, hitching my thigh over his hip and opening my legs so more mess might ooze on his dancing member.

  And then he smiled at me, lascivious and unapologetic as I stared down at that thing stroking my flattening stomach as it squelched through spilling cream.

  Showing off his cock as if I should be impressed, he whispered, “Rub our juices into me, my Lorieyn. Let me show you this is only beautiful.”

  My hand was caught, his grip biting as he forced me to palm his shaft. Wrapping his larger hand over mine, my fingers encased a girth too thick to fully circle. Moving my forced grip up over his accordion segments, his cock luxuriated in my compulsory petting, the male all licentious sighs and rolling hips as he smirked.

  He felt so strange in my grip, hard but somehow velvet. Intimidating yet right there within reach of my claws. He thickened, pulsating, and I could feel the beats of his hearts under my touch.

  Education in male anatomy, it would seem, was my next obligatory lesson.

  Every part of that organ, he had a name for, urging me to trace my finger between the segments when he stretched, showing me all the ways in which he could wriggle in my grip. The more we stroked him together, the more that menacing, pointed tip leaked sweetness.

  I leaked on his root and his thighs. He leaked upon our joined hands.

  Our fluids mingled.

  Slippery and shiny, I found it was not at all unpleasant to touch.

  “You can taste me if you’d like,” he growled, chest thrumming a lazy, indulgent rhythm.

  “Suck his cock,” Miranda had said, as if it was my duty to hybrid kind.

  He was using my hand to stimulate his pleasure, but I was not suffering a mind-altering heat, and there were things to discuss. “She told me I would have to do this. That I could start wars by putting your dick in my mouth.”

  He stilled to an almost supernatural level. It was as if the entire room held its breath in the moments it took for him to narrow his eyes. “Just what did Miranda whisper to you?”

  “That I was expected to zealously suck the cock of the man responsible for keeping hybrid kind alive when a growing faction of humans wants us dead.”

  Releasing his grip on my hand, he grew angry and serious. “I brought her here to explain female matters, such as the expected release of fluids, not bend your ear to her personal politics. She was completely out of line.”

  Seeing him annoyed made me hitch a brow. “Is it true that I was in danger as a child, because you wanted me for your mate?”

  “Every hybrid female is in danger.” A guarded response.

  Negotiation had to happen now. I could show him that I would be willing to parlay in exchange for certain freedoms. “I don’t want to be locked in a room for ten years. I will put my mouth on you, if that’s what it takes for you to let me go outside.”

  Just like that, the pulsating organ cradled in my palm began to go flaccid. My hand was released as if my touch burned his skin.

  Rubbing his eyes, he swore under his breath. “Is that why you consented to be with me last night?”

  “Yes. I am trying to show you I can be confident. I won’t run. I’m not stupid enough to think I would get very far before the fever sets in. You have shown me that heat hurts, and I did not like being left alone. I am your mate, but I don’t want you to leave me locked in here.”

  Hurt was in his gaze. Disappointment in his response. “After our argument, I made an appointment to take you to visit your mother today and booked a dinner afterward so I might court you.”

  I didn’t want to be suspicious when he looked so disheartened, but he had done nothing to earn my trust. “But you don’t like my mother. You think humans should not be trusted.”

  “I love you. Seeing her will make you happy. I want to introduce you to a sense of normalcy, give you a chance to make friends or reconnect with academy sisters and their mates.” A sinister quality darkened his tone, his fingers reaching out to brush my jaw. “I would only lock you away if you gave me good reason to do so. And hear me now, Lorieyn. You never have to barter sexual favors with your mate. If I decided to lock you up, no amount of sucking my cock would urge me to open the door.”

  “I’m not trying to be problematic,” I murmured, because it felt as if I had made a very grave error.

  Letting out a sigh, he cupped my cheek. “I appreciate how brave you have been.”

  It felt like I was expected to apologize, but I was not sure exactly what for. “I don’t know how to cheat on this test.”

  He started to laugh, the tension ebbing. Reaching for my hair, he began to play with the length, his features going soft as he grew thoughtful. “The devious student has finally found she can no longer lie to get what she wants.”

  His words annoyed me. “I had good reason to do the things I did.”

  “So did I,” he purred.

  Another impasse.

  Glittering green eyes running all over my naked body, Cyderial said, “You look beautiful this morning.”

  Slimy and leaking? Hair tangled and skin sticky, I didn’t feel very pretty.

  Looking him over as he lounged under me as if I had pinned him to the mat, I found him intimidating. The muscles of his abdomen defined yet relaxed, pectoral muscles, broad shoulders, strong jaw, high cheekbones, vorec-green eyes.

  Blond.

  I had always noted his pale-blond hair.

  As his mate, if I were to be an acceptable one, was I supposed to touch it the way he was touching mine? I had fisted it more than once in a sexual frenzy, and he hadn’t seemed to mind. Had it been soft?

  I had been too focused on my own pleasure to notice.

  His lips were harsh, but when he used them on my body, they could be silken. But more often, he was rough with them.

  I think I preferred rough to soft.

  “What are you thinking?” he murmured, enjoying my obvious scrutiny.

  That my survival would require a massive shift in perspective. “You look different when you’re not scowling or glaring. Your smile, it makes me nervous.”

  Maybe I could touch him, just once. Show him I was confident and could earn freedoms he would not let me buy with sexual favors.

  Tentatively, I reached forward, unsure what I was doing.

  With bated breath, he waited.

  Slowly, I took him by the throat, the same way he had done to me back in his office. Talons dancing over a vital artery, I felt an unexpected growl in my chest, even as I leaned closer, mesmerized by what I could do with a flick of my fingers.

  I could rip his larynx right out, make a different kind of mess all over the bed.

  But no matter how much latent rage was festering deep inside me, I could not bring myself to break his skin.

  Minutely raising his chin to give me a clearer target, Cyderial bared his throat to his captive.

  To his mate.

  I drew in a deep breath, my hair falling around me, and I crouched over him.

  I could kiss him this way, my mouth hovering over his.

  The noise in my chest wavered between violence and another sound; there was no question he knew my thoughts were dark.

  But I was fighting to remember my choices that day might define my next ten years. Still, I growled, “I used to dream of painting my talons pink just to piss you off. Hiding in my room with prohibited magazines, sewing a dress from rags in the dark.” Anger glittering in my dark eyes, I hissed, “You destroyed my dress.”

  Obliterated it to shreds. For all I knew, it was still on his floor.

  Hovering over his lips, I added, “I want a new one that does not make me feel ashamed.”

  “Lorieyn.” Tucking my hair behind my ear, he cupped my cheek. Tender, he murmured, “This will get easier.”

  Would it? Perhaps. “Miranda spoke of you as if you were some kind of god to our people. I’ve seen it myself, the deference you received from instructors and watchers. It’s in your eyes. That is not the stare of a sane man.”

  Dragging his thumb over my lips, he said, “Everything I did was done out of love.”

  “Obsession and love are not the same thing. Even I know that.” What a strange conversation to have bare-breasted and straddling a naked man who could do far worse than deny me the fog. He could deny me any freedom at all.

  Abandoning his throat, I moved my touch over his collarbone, stroked his pectoral, and sought a hard abdomen—tracing his musculature as if learning his secrets, seeking weaknesses I could exploit.

  Under me was a body I could touch any way I chose—a man I had been intimate with in acts that would have been incomprehensible to me a week prior.

  A man my very wellbeing relied on now.

  “Miranda told me you are a general who fought in an arena for human amusement and hybrid clout. She told me you defeated thousands for your rank. What kind of nightmare life would I have known if you had taken me at twelve? Who would I have grown up to be? You waited… and went mad, forcing every recruit to suffer in recompense.” I went back to those eyes, those unhinged, unblinking green eyes. “You’ve done unspeakable things, Cyderial.”

  He sought my compassion. “There is so much you do not understand about the world.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Leaning back, having denied him a willing kiss, I shook my head. “Still, I would not have terrified children.”

  He caught my wrist, pulling me closer to steal the kiss I refused him. Once it was done, he breathed over my lips. “I needed you to be strong. We are on the brink of war with the humans. Is that what you would have me tell children? That they might never grow up at all? That human males traffic hybrid little girls? That human females will work to seduce unmated males for the novelty of hybrid cock? That they will turn on each other just as soon as they will turn on us? Even as my mate, you will be propositioned by overreaching men. They will want to know what color your slit is. Is it pink? Blue? Purple—that is quite rare. On the black market, you would fetch a high price. Some will try to mislead you, offer favors for our kind if you will let them have a quick fuck behind closed doors. Before we trained the females to kill more than just vorec, mates were often raped. Sometimes en masse before cheering crowds. So the strongest of us gave them something else to cheer for. Pageantry and violence. When new generations began to see us as heroes, arena fights were made illegal. Men in power afraid we might be seen as more than cannon fodder or exotic pets.”

  Defending myself against one man and his meat stick would not be a challenge on any level. Confused, I said, “But I am stronger than a human.”

  Cupping my cheek, he looked upon me with so much love. “But there are so many more of them, Lorieyn. They keep breeding as if they’d already forgotten how humanity ruined the planet they left behind. The city is at capacity, and provisions are rationed. It has made them desperate to blame anyone but themselves. Desperate humans are vicious. Such men attack in groups or will wait until you are weak with heat. If you were left suffering long enough, you might mindlessly beg any male at all to ease your pain. I’ve seen recordings of such things. I’ve seen broken bodies. I’ve seen little girls damaged beyond repair. I will not put the burden of these thoughts in the heads of children, not when I can mold little ones into dangerous soldiers trained to defend themselves. If the humans suspected what I was doing within the academy….”

  It was a slippery slope to make such a wide assumption about an entire species. I disagreed. “Humans are not all bad. Not one I have ever interacted with would give me the impression that—”

  Pressing his fingers to my lips, he interrupted, “I personally vetted each human in your cadre of farmers. I selected the location of your vigil, personally chose the hybrids to guard the walls at your back, and scheduled the days you would be allowed some fresh air. Often, I was even standing in the fog, watching over you. I was there the day the vorec broke your leg when you were seventeen. When it happened, I think I lost about a thousand years off my life.”

  I pulled his touch from my lips, scowling. “Allowed fresh air?”

  “Your face has always been an open book, every expression a delight.” He traced the shape of my scowl with a smirk. “When you’ve been insulted, you become especially fierce.”

  Irritated that he could get under my skin so easily, I hissed, “How would you feel to find out your whole life was one grand lie? That you grew up in a fishbowl so your tormentor might groom you to his unhinged standards? I’m not an exotic pet, Cyderial! Do you treat me any differently than the human men you spoke of? Sex, secrets, trickery, flattery—for what?”

  He said it simply. “So I can know the woman I love is safe.”

  His mania was too much, my agitated rejoinder keen. “And who keeps me safe from you?”

  Hand sliding behind my neck, he drew me near to breathe the words against my lips. “Anyone, hybrid or human, who tried to keep me from you would suffer a painful death at my hands. Every last human in this city would die screaming in the fog if that’s what it took.”

  Ice ran through my veins when I realized he meant every last word. “Is that what you’re planning to do to them?”

  Utterly sincere, he replied, “If I must.”

  Our conversation had taken a shadowy turn, and in the gloom lurked the whisper of some dark truth I hadn’t quite grasped. He was scaring me again. “My mother lives in the city. Her children and relations.”

  Flippant, he stole a daring kiss from my lips. “Then they better not try to take you from me. It is as simple as that.”

  I already knew him to be unmerciful toward those suffering through the rigors of the academy. For ten years, he had deceived and misled me, time and time again. General Cyderial, my bonded mate, was the master of misdirection, of distraction.

  And he did nothing in small measure.

  Already teasing my body to life with doting touches, as if to draw me away from the horror of my suspicions. Already working to unravel my thoughts, so I might smile at him and purr.

  Because I understood exactly what he vowed. I had already lived it.

  There was far more at stake here than heat, addiction, or even my own happiness.

  Selfish intentions or not, Miranda’s wisdom had been more valuable than female guidance. It was a dangerous warning. Every choice I made had power to contain the insatiable general—or to unleash him. Every mistake would have a consequence.

  So much as a single wrong glance or a troubled sigh might inspire my doting, possessive mate to overreact. That he might threaten the annihilation of an entire species if he had the inkling it would be best for me.

  Just as his monstrous love had upended the safety and sanity of my academy sisters and brothers for a decade.

  “You do not need to be frightened, my love.” Cupping my cheek, he thought to soothe the growing horror my traitorous expression revealed. “Trust me, remain obedient and permissive to all you must learn, and you will find peace in my care.”

  Straddling him, open and vulnerable, close enough to breathe his breath, I found I could not hide my growing sense of dread. “Promise me you will not harm the humans.”

  While his reawakened cock teased at my body and his hands drifted to my breasts, he claimed my mouth before whispering, “No.”

  His dreadful refusal forced me to acknowledge a stark, terrible truth. I was the only thing standing between every last soul in the city and a terrifying juggernaut. My duty from that moment forward would be to show my mate that humankind did not need to suffer as my academy sisters and brothers had suffered. After all, I had been created for a single purpose.

  And I intended to fulfill it.

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  BORN TO BE BOUND

  Alpha’s Claim, Book One

  She had made it this far... wide eyes peered through the narrow slit between wool cap and layer upon layer of dingy muffler wrapped around the lower half of her face. No one seemed to be paying much attention as she passed, ignoring the creature in the stinking, oversized coat when it hesitated at the bottom of broad stairs and looked up at Thólos Citadel. Clutching tighter to the bottle of pills in her pocket, madly gripping her lifeline, she took the first step.

  For two days, she had taken one of those priceless pills every four hours like clockwork. Walking into what had once been a restricted area, she should have been saturated in the medication, her metabolism and hormones deceived into complacency. A week's worth of food had been traded so she could make the climb up those steps without being torn to pieces.

  She was still mortally afraid.

  The roar of the monsters inside—the cheers and heckling as her people were stripped of their dignity, then stripped of their lives—turned her stomach, though the acid feeling may have been a side-effect of the drugs. Already sweating, grateful others had covered her in so many layers to hide what she was, Claire took the smallest of breaths, tried not to gag from the stink of rotting corpse that had seasoned her clothes, and walked into madness.