Unmarked: My Mate Refused, The Alpha King Didn't novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: His Terms

The King carries her to his rooms and lays out terms (no mark, no promise); his touch drops the fever, she kisses him first, and Jasper pounds on the door.

"You never had the chance to refuse me," I said.

"I didn't want the chance to refuse you," the King said. "I want the chance to carry you out of here."

Jasper stepped forward. "Majesty, she's my wife."

"Your wife is on a cot in my infirmary with a fever that kills in three nights," Thane Kinross said.

He didn't turn around.

"Where were you going to put her, Stanmore? In your carriage?"

"Our own healer-"

"Is two days' ride away."

He slid one arm under my knees and the other behind my back and lifted me off the cot.

The burn didn't climb the way it had been climbing all week.

It stalled.

Lavinia's mouth opened a little.

My father said, "Majesty, this is a family matter."

"It stopped being one when she fell on my floor," the King said.

He carried me through the east gallery with two guards behind us.

Every wolf we passed went quiet and stepped back.

I should have said something clever.

I held onto his collar and breathed.

His rooms were at the top of a stone stair, one long room with a hearth, a wide bed and a window that looked down on the river.

He set me in a chair by the fire, filled a cup from a jug, and put it in my hands.

"Water. Nothing in it."

I drank all of it.

"Why did you say that to me in there?" I asked.

"Because it's true."

"You were at my wedding. You left before the vows were done."

"I did."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the one I have tonight," he said. "Ask me again when you're not burning."

He pulled a stool close and sat across from me with his elbows on his knees.

"The doctor will have told you the cure."

"A mate's mark."

"And until then, a willing partner, one night at a time."

"I know what a night at a time means."

"Then hear my terms before you say yes or no."

He said them flatly.

"Till the burn is out, I'm yours. No mark, because the mark is a bite you ask for, and I won't have it taken in a fever. No promise, because you're in no state to take one from me. When it's done, you walk where you like. To Stanmore, to Cold Fen, out my gate."

"You don't even want to know what I think of that?"

"I do," he said. "That's why I said it out loud."

I laughed, and it came out ragged.

"You're the Alpha King. You could take whatever you wanted."

"I could take a great many things. Not you."

The fire popped, and something in my chest turned over.

"Why would you even-"

"Give me your wrist."

I held it out.

He wrapped his fingers around it, and the heat running up my arm dropped.

"There," he said quietly. "Is that me, or the doctor's tonic?"

"The doctor gave me nothing."

"Then it's me."

His thumb moved over the inside of my wrist, back and forth, and I felt it in places that had nothing to do with wrists.

He leaned closer, and his collar fell open.

Under his left collarbone, past the edge of a linen bandage, was a wound the size of my palm.

It was dark at the edges and red in the middle, and it hadn't scabbed.

"What did that?" I asked.

"Nothing that heals."

"A blade?"

"I wish it were a blade."

He shifted so the collar covered it, and his jaw tightened.

I should have asked again.

My skin was burning, and he was close, and I couldn't think past it.

"I need to know if the doctor was wrong about touch," I said. "Just my wrist doesn't count."

"It counts for plenty," he said, but his voice had dropped.

"Then I need to know about the rest."

Something moved in his eyes, amber going dark.

"Say it plain, Elsie."

"Kiss me."

He did.

His hand came up into my hair and tilted my head, and his mouth was hot and careful and then not careful at all.

I pulled him in by the coat.

The fever that had been chewing on me for eight months dropped to a low steady hum, and everything I felt rushed in to fill the space.

He kissed me until I was shaking, and then he kissed my throat.

A sound came out of me that I had never made for my husband.

His hand slid down my side and stopped at my hip, and I felt him holding himself still.

He wasn't cold, he was holding himself back with everything he had.

"Elsie," he said into my skin, and his voice was rough. "Tell me that's the fever."

"It's not."

I hadn't meant to say it.

His forehead dropped against mine.

Then fists struck the door below us, hard enough to shake the stair.

"Open this door!" Jasper shouted. "My wife is in there, and I demand her back!"

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