Tempted by My Evil Lycan Stepbrother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Claim
Leander throws Teagan's suitcase in the lake, then claims her as his mate in front of the whole Lycan Court to stop her mother's wedding; Teagan calls his bluff on the dais, and on the terrace their joined hands light silver.
My mother was marrying the Lycan King, and the first thing his son ever did to me was throw my suitcase in the lake.
I watched him do it from the end of the dock.
I had driven up from Tacoma straight off a twenty-four-hour shift.
I was still in my navy uniform, with a stranger's blood dried on one knee.
The driver had left my suitcase at the top of the dock.
Now a tall man in a black tuxedo had it by the handle.
Four friends in tuxedos were filming him on their phones.
"Prince Leander Marchmont," one of them said, like a sportscaster. "Going for distance."
He swung it twice and let go.
It hit the water flat and floated for a second.
Then it started to sink.
"Hey!" I said.
He turned around.
Black hair. Silver-gray eyes. The face the gossip sites put on their front page every other week.
He looked at my boots, my county patch and my hair falling out of its knot.
"You must be the vet's daughter," he said. "The help comes in round the back."
His friends laughed.
I didn't answer him.
I unlaced my boots, set them on the dock, and walked down the boat ramp into the lake.
It was September in the Cascades. The cold went through my shins.
I waded in up to my waist and caught the suitcase by its strap before it went under.
I dragged it back up the ramp, dripping, and stopped in front of him.
"My dress for tonight was in here," I said. "If it's ruined, you're buying the next one. In person. From my mother."
He smiled.
"Get used to the water, Paramedic. I'm going to make this whole place feel like the bottom of that lake."
The Presentation started at eight.
My dress was a wet lump in a bathtub upstairs, so I went in my uniform.
The Moon Hall was a round stone room with a glass roof open to the sky.
Two hundred lycans in silk and black tie stood in a ring around a stone dais.
Press cameras lined the gallery above them.
When I walked in, a woman near the door sniffed the air and laughed.
My mother stood on the dais in dark green velvet, tugging at the neckline.
Godfrey Marchmont, the King, stood beside her, huge and gray-bearded, holding her hand.
Eighteen months ago he'd been a wolf with a broken leg on her steel table in Enumclaw.
She set the leg at midnight.
In the morning there was a naked man on her table asking for coffee.
She'd told me that story fifty times, and she always laughed at the coffee part.
She wasn't laughing tonight. She looked terrified.
A lanky guy in a tuxedo a size too small slid in next to me.
"You're Teagan. I'm Rupert, the other one's brother. Sorry about the lake."
"Is he always like that?"
"Yes. But usually not to strangers."
A woman in silver silk struck a white staff on the floor three times.
The Hall went silent.
"Aunt Sybil," Rupert whispered. "Speaker of the Moon Court. Don't let her smell you being scared."
"I'm not scared."
"Great. Keep doing that."
Sybil raised the staff. A moonstone glowed in its head.
"The King presents his bride, Rosalyn Mackey of Enumclaw. A human."
She said the word the way a doctor says a diagnosis.
"If any of royal blood has a claim against this marriage, let him speak it now, under the moon."
Rupert had told me about this part. Nobody ever spoke.
Leander stepped out of the ring.
"I have a claim."
The King's face went still.
Leander turned and pointed across the whole room, straight at me.
"The bride's daughter. She's my mate. I felt it on the dock this afternoon."
For one second nobody breathed.
Then the Hall laughed.
Not all of it. Enough.
"The human in the ambulance costume?" someone said.
"He'll claim the caterer next."
The cameras in the gallery swung toward me.
Sybil didn't laugh. She tapped the staff once.
"A prince's claim stops any wedding in his house until the moon reads it. The Rite is held at the full moon. Until then, there is no wedding."
My mother let go of the King's hand.
Her chin shook once, the way it did at my dad's funeral when she thought I wasn't looking.
Leander watched it shake.
He was smiling.
That was what did it.
I walked across the ring.
My socks squelched on the stone with every step.
Lake water ran out of my cargo pants and puddled behind me.
Nobody stopped me.
I climbed the two steps of the dais and stood in front of him.
"You met me four hours ago," I said, loud enough for the gallery. "You threw my suitcase in a lake while your friends filmed it. That's your mate?"
"The moon doesn't care about your luggage."
"Good. Then let it read us."
I turned to the Speaker.
"I want the Rite. And when your moon says no, he gets on his knees in this hall and apologizes to my mother. In front of every one of you."
The room went quiet in a different way.
Sybil studied me. Her eyes were so pale they were almost white.
"Agreed," she said. "The tenth of October."
Leander's jaw flexed.
"Fine," he said.
After, the whole Court spilled out onto the stone terrace over the lake.
My mother had gone upstairs. The King had gone after her.
I found Leander alone at the terrace wall with a whiskey and his tie pulled open.
"You're coming with me," I said. "You're going to look her in the face and tell her it was a lie."
"No."
I grabbed his hand to pull him off the wall.
His skin was hot.
Light came out between our fingers.
Silver, bright as a camera flash, spilling over both our wrists.
It lit his face from below.
He stared down at our hands, and the smile was gone.
"That's not possible," he said.
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