Jericho

I’d chosen duty all my life and I had never betrayed it.

It was a known fact that my loyalty was to the Queen. I was her hand when she meeted out punishments. I was her sword when she needed someone dead. I was her pistol when she needed it quiet.

I should’ve been her sixth mate. If I had accepted it, I would have been by her feet tonight, curled around her thighs and eating right out of her hands.

And perhaps, seven years ago, I wouldn’t have minded it. I might have even liked it, if the black thing that was my soul ever learned to feel something.

We all had our secrets. My brothers didn’t ask for mine and I didn’t ask theirs.

And it was for that same reason no one really knew how long I’d dreaming about her.

Soren may have claimed her first, but it felt like I had known her for longer.

Seven years ago, the Queen had been suspecting a rebellion from the Exiles. Her most loyal confidant had turned up dead, with a silver dagger sticking out her eye. She wanted me to find who had done it and leave behind a message that echoed throughout the hills of Costa Ridge.

She had also wanted me to spy on her little nephew and find out why he kept meeting with the Exiled rebels.

The latter was the more important mission. "Get close to him, Ivanov," she had said, running her fingers along my face. "He’s an impressionable fool. Shouldn’t be that hard to earn his trust."

I had seen the Crown Prince around for a long time before that. He was a charmer, never took a single thing in his life seriously. It didn’t help that my first memory of Soren was one when he had been so drunk, he kissed Quinlan and then punched him because he thought he’d been a girl, even if it’d been clear as day that Quinn didn’t have tits.

Well, in his defense, young Quinlan had been prettier than most women. He still was.

In all, I did think Soren was a complete fool, and so gaining his trust and spying on him should’ve been easy.

So, I trailed him when he snuck out of the castle, all the way to Costa Ridge. I had always been efficient. Most people never knew I was behind them until they were dead.

But somehow, he knew.

The truth was I hadn’t been tailing him. He had let me. He knew I was there all along, and when he crossed the borders into Costa Ridge, Soren had turned with a scowl and said, "Come on. Isn’t it a little boring watching my behind all night? I’m well aware I have a nicely shaped ass, but this is getting fucking creepy."

He was only fifteen.

I had walked out of the dark and he didn’t cast me a second glance before pointing ahead at the mansion built into the caves. "I’m going in there to steal something."

My eyes narrowed. "What?"

He grinned. "Mercer’s in there with some blonde. We’re going to steal his clothes."

I had gotten the confirmation I needed in that moment that his skull was, indeed, empty.

But of course, I had to get close to him, so I followed him to go steal Mercer’s fucking underwear. But the problem was that, it didn’t take long for me to realize he had been lying.

He sent me right into Kisten Hunt’s lair, and I had nearly died trying to get out of there, because it was a trap and Soren had set down the entire mansion full of Exiles on me, while he went on his way.

When I made it out of there, I was bleeding in eight different places, my left hand and foot was smashed in, and my nails had been torn out.

And I found Soren waiting for me by the borders. He looked like he had been dozing off against the tree.

I liked to think the only reason I didn’t kill him in that moment was because the Queen wouldn’t have liked it.

But it was more than that. It was his eyes when they cracked open, and he said, "You’re strong." He leaned so close into my personal space—because it was typical of Soren not to respect people’s spaces—that I caught a whiff of his disgustingly pleasant scent. Soren smelled like a woman should. He also looked like one. And then, he said, "I want you."

When I blinked, he laughed softly. "Not like that, Ivanov. Be my fourth. You’ve been alone for long enough. She may treat you like a dog, yanking on your leash, but I will never ask those things of you. I will be your family. Your friend. Your brother." He extended his fingers to me. "Be mine."

I had always been alone.

That was the first time I lied to my Queen, and eight months later, I would find the face of the girl haunting my dreams on a screaming child whose father Soren had owed a favour.

And when we laid eyes on her, we all knew what she was to us.

We also knew she was off-limits. The collective reason was that we were engaged to Tessa, but each of us had different reasons why.

I had taken her out of the rebel’s hands and her fingers had curled around mine as she cried for her father. A surge of emotion struck me. Fury soaked in despair overwhelming all reason. Suddenly there’s a violent need to protect, to take her far away from there and—and do what?

I’d never held anything so fragile and pure in my life. I didn’t deserve it. My hands were too dirty to touch her. I was unclean and if I kept holding her, I would taint her.

I had never feared a single thing in my life, but I dropped Maisie Adams out of fear.

And Soren caught her.

Now, as we presented her to court, I watched Soren’s back. I wondered if my sense of loyalty that now belonged to him was skewed because one of us was going to take her virginity, and the three of them don’t know it yet, but it was going to be me.