The Lycan's Contract LUNA

Chapter 6: Mine

Aviana POV

“Mate?”

Patricia’s mouth fell open so wide I thought her tongue might roll out of it. Whatever composure she had before, all of it was gone now. She looked like someone had slapped her.

Aldric had gone a shade of white that looked almost ghostly in the torchlight. His knees were still in the dirt, but his whole body had stiffened.

I even took a shuddering breath at the word, my wolf, that had been weak and dormant since the rejection seemed to surface and strengthen at that very moment; she didn’t feel repulsed at another man calling her his mate.

Phillip was the first to recover.

“Your mate?” His voice cracked across the garden, sharp with jealousy that sent irritation down my spine.

“She is mine.” He took a step forward, ignoring the king entirely, his eyes fixed on me. “Aviana. Come here.”

Patricia’s head whipped toward him. Her frown was immediate and ugly, but she was still too deep in shock to find words, and for one short moment, I watched the two of them stand side by side, the perfect pregnant couple from the courtyard, breaking before my eyes.

I could feel their confusion, and it was nice.

The guards had not moved from their knees. I could feel the confusion rolling off them in waves, thick and sour. They didn’t know whether to rise.

Going against the Lycan King was unthinkable. But coming between mates was its own kind of death sentence.

Even with an ordinary wolf, stepping into the space between a male and the female he was claiming could get you torn to shreds by jealousy alone. With a Lycan, no one wanted to imagine it.

So they stayed down, eyes darting, waiting for someone else to decide.

The Lycan king did not look stressed. He looked, if anything, less interested than he had a moment ago, as though Phillip’s outburst were a fly he could not be bothered to swat.

He looked down at me instead.

“Aviana.” My name in his mouth was low and unhurried. “Do you mind being my mate?”

I looked at Phillip.

I made myself look at him properly, for what I knew would be the last time. The man whose scent I had begged the moon for. The man who had cleaned my wounds in the dark and let me believe his gentleness meant something.

His eyes were furious now, not heartbroken, not ashamed, furious, like I was a possession walking away from him, like the only thing wrong with this picture was that I had stopped being his to use.

I looked at Patricia, golden and trembling, and already thinking of how to turn this to her advantage.

Then I turned back to the silver-eyed stranger holding me off the ground, and I threw my arms around his neck.

“No,” I whispered against him. “Please. Take me away from here.”

Something passed through his chest where I was pressed against it, a single low breath, I heard clearly.

“I am sorry, Lycan King.” Aldric had found his voice again, and it came out stammering, climbing over itself.

“Please, you do not understand. She really is no good. She is a cursed wolf, a murderer, she killed our own father, she is not fit to stand before you, let alone to be your, your—”

He never finished the word.

The king shifted me in his arms, one hand coming up to the back of my head, and tilted my face gently to the side. I felt his breath on my throat. I had one confused second to wonder what he was doing.

Then he bared my neck to the entire courtyard and sank his teeth into the curve where my shoulder met it.

The world cracked open.

It was nothing like the bond Phillip had torn out of me. That had been a thread. This was a flood.

Heat poured down through the bite and spread out under my skin like sunlight through water, and arousal and shock hit my veins in the same instant, so tangled together I couldn’t tell where one ended.

My fingers clutched at his shoulders.

My back arched against my own will. A sound I had never made before climbed up my throat, and I bit it back, but I couldn’t stop my body from answering him, every nerve lighting up at once after weeks of feeling nothing at all.

And underneath it, the recognition. My wolf rose to meet him like she had been waiting her whole life for exactly this and simply hadn’t known his name yet.

I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t decide to do it. My instincts decided for me.

I turned my head and bit him back.

I felt his whole body go rigid against mine. His eyes widened, just barely, the first crack in that endless calm.

For one heartbeat, the unshakeable Lycan King looked genuinely caught off guard, his silver gaze flicking down to where my teeth pressed into his neck.

Then his arms tightened around me, holding me to him like he had no intention of ever letting go.

The mark settled between us, his on my throat, mine on his, witnessed by every single person in that garden.

There would be no undoing it. No public forsaking, no dissolving the bond in front of a crowd. What he had done could not be taken back, and he had done it where they all could see.

When he finally lifted his head, his mouth was red. He didn’t wipe it. He looked down at the kneeling figures of my brother and the man who had thrown me away.

“Do you have anything to say now?” He asked happily.

Silence. Aldric’s mouth moved, but nothing came out.

“Or would you let me leave in peace,” the king continued, “with my mate?”

No one answered.

Patricia was staring at my neck with naked horror, her hand frozen halfway to her own.

Phillip had gone the color of ash, his fists clenched so hard at his sides that I could see them shaking from where I hung in the king’s arms. Aldric’s head dropped slowly back toward the dirt.

Far across the grounds, the festival music played on, bright and oblivious.

The king turned without waiting for permission; he did not need it. He carried me toward the broken garden gate, past my kneeling brother, past the guards who pressed themselves lower into the earth as he passed, and not one of them dared to lift their eyes.

I pressed my face into his shoulder.