Chapter 143 – The Alpha’s Prize
Ronan
Silvercrest loves pomp and ceremony.
They drape my long hall with blue banners and silver braid, move braziers until the light flatters their faces and pour wine like water.
My pack and I let it happen. We can eat on our feet and plan a war over a crate lid. If they want an extravaganza, they can have at it. Provided they don’t expect us to help.
I stand with Jace at my right and Mara at my left and try not to grind enamel when Kieran works the room. He shines. Angling his shoulders toward a speaker so they feel seen, pitching a laugh that sounds like it’s meant just for you. He’s all polish and invitation.
Eli leans against a pillar just behind my shoulder and smiles sweetly as he sips from a silver goblet. Sweetness means he’s definitely up to no good.
He’s dressed far simpler than the prince, in a black, sleeveless leather vest, paired with pants that look painted on. The wide cuff at his wrist is scuffed by knives. The contrast with his angelically beautiful face is devastating. Of course he knows that, we have mirrors.
Kieran clears his throat and conversations come to an abrupt end. He smiles like a bright, summer’s day.
“Blackthorn,” he says, “We’ve come to cement a friendship.” He’s careful with the word. He knows ‘alliance’ tastes like a leash to us.
“This little soiree tonight is a gesture of our respect and gratitude.” He lifts his goblet. “A toast, then. To your courage. To your valour. To your fighting prowess. And to the future.”
His gaze catches mine, then slides shamelessly to the only person here who actually matters to him. “And of course, to Eli Vale. The brightest star of them all.”
My wolf lunges so hard my fingers go numb.
Jace’s hand grabs my wrist. Mara’s shoulder presses firmly against mine. The bond between me and the man this foppish boy keeps trying to claim, hums like a beehive hidden under my skin.
Eli doesn’t look at me. He watches the room watch him. He takes the weight of it without blinking. Then he smiles. “To Blackthorn,” he says lazily, tipping his wine against the air. “And to the Alpha who taught me the difference between pretty promises and commitment.”
His eyes find Kieran’s, hold, and then he gives the room what it came for. “I already have everything I need in Blackthorn, including the only man I’ll ever love.”
The murmurs turn quicksilver, but I barely notice. Relief finds a seat in my ribs and a burden I’ve been denying evaporates. My hands curl into fists as I fight the emotion demanding to be let out. Eli’s mouth curves at the sight, because he knows exactly what he just did to me.
Kieran recovers, smiling like he wasn’t just flayed alive. “Then to Blackthorn,” he echoes, and drinks deeply. He doesn’t look away from Eli until he has to.
Mara turns her wrist just enough to skim her knuckles against my forearm. Jace exhales through his nose. Hazel’s grin is quick and delighted.
I hold myself in check until the hall relaxes. Then I step into Eli’s space and curl my hand around the back of his neck. Warm skin, quick pulse, that soft hum answering my touch with the eagerness of a hound called to heel.
“We’re leaving,” I tell Mara and Jace without looking at them, and they both hear the not-you in it.
Eli’s mouth curves wickedly. “You heard him, commander. I’m being kidnapped.”
Jace’s lips twitch. Mara says, “Make sure he’s still able to walk when you’re done,” and I say ‘no promises’ with my grin.
“Ronan,” Eli says lightly, the moment we exit out of a side door, because he can’t stop prodding even when he’s begging for what comes after.
“Which was your favorite part of my speech? I was very partial to the bit that made you all hot and bothered.”
I shove him against the shadowed wall so hard a lantern rattles on its hook. He laughs against my mouth and then he’s not laughing because I take his bottom lip between my teeth and worry it until he makes the noise only I get, the one that sounds like surrender trying to pretend it’s not.
I don’t give him the time to make it pretty. I drag him by the wrist through the frost to our cabin, kick the door shut with my boot, and put him on the table we eat at because I want our days stamped with this.
He scrabbles, thrilled, and I pin his hands above his head with one palm, the other dragging his belt loose with the speed of a man who’s been starving in a room full of bread.
“Boots off,” I growl, and he obeys without commentary, heel banging wood, socks friction-hissing. He tries to lift his hips for me and I press my forearm across them, my weight telling him that my body is law.
“Such a good speech,” I murmur into the soft place under his ear, letting my breath scald him because the words have to land in his blood.
“The prince thought he had the room, but you made them remember. You made me remember why I don’t need to kill him.”
“Do I get a reward?” he asks, eyes on my mouth like a thief on a lock.
“You get mercy,” I say, and his breath stutters because he knows my mercy is the kind that makes him cry tears of joy.
I take my time undressing him. His shirt opens and I lean down, scraping my teeth over his nipple until it hardens, then bite just enough to make him gasp. I chase the noise with my tongue. He arches, a line of heat under my hand. “Ronan-”
“No,” I say softly, the word a collar. “You don’t talk. You taught both packs who you belong to, now you show me you remember.”
His pupils blow wide. He sinks into the table like a man finding the angle of the slope he wants to roll down. “Yes, Alpha,” he breathes.
I turn him, drag him up on his knees until his chest lays against the scarred wood. My palms bracket his hips and my thumbs press into the hollows I marked last week. His back dips because I taught him to show me every inch of what’s mine when I ask.
The first spank cracks like a shot in the small room. He jerks, shock and lust layered, and a strangled sound bubbles out of him. “Count,” I tell him, and his voice comes rough.
“One.”
I settle into a rhythm, not a flurry, patient punctuation. My hand lands on the same sweet spot, heat building under my palm until he’s hissing through his teeth on five, whimpering at seven, shivering at ten.
“Ronan,” he pants, and then, hoarsely, “Eleven.” He’s worried the pack in the yard might hear. The worry rubs against his cock like a hand.
When his body trembles with the fine vibration that means he’s floating, I soothe him with my palm, slow and gentle. I drag my hand through the slick he’s dripping everywhere. He moans happily, but when his hips push up for more, I abandon him.
“On your knees,” I say, and pull him down off the table by his hair. He goes, boneless and eager. The floor is rough under his knees, but he doesn’t even notice. One hand frees my cock and his eyes go black around the edges.
“Open,” I order.
He opens and I feed him. He’s greedy, gods, he’s greedy, and I am cruel. I grip his hair and use his mouth for my own pleasure, knowing that’s what he loves most. I set a slow pace until he’s frantic, then speed up, lodging my crown right in the back until tears break. I hold him down until his throat convulses around me, then let him up to breathe, to cough, to laugh a little because he’s an animal that loves the hand that roughs him. Saliva strings from his lip to his chest, mess painting him where I want him painted.
“Eyes on me,” I tell him. He drags them up, pupils huge, worship in every line of his face. “That’s it. That’s my pretty one. You take me better than anyone. My jewel. My salvation. Swallow.”
He groans when the praise hits him like a tsunami. He’s rutting air now, desperate, his cock angry-red and leaking, but he doesn’t touch it. I don’t have to repeat the rule, his body knows it like it knows the pattern of my bite at his shoulder.
When I get close to the edge, I growl. “Hold still.” He tightens his throat around me in answer and I break on a ragged curse, spilling down his oesophagus. He swallows like he’s dying of thirst and keeps his hands laced behind his back, staying on his knees until my shaking eases.
I cup his jaw. “Good boy,” I commend him. His eyes flutter and he sways like I just pushed him off a cliff and then caught him by the collar.
I roughly drag him up by the back of his neck and haul him over to the bed. He stumbles on jittery legs, but follows greedily. Putting him face-down on the bed, I grab his hips, and pull his ass into the air. He lifts without thinking, presenting what belongs to me.
Slick is covering his hole, running down his thighs, pooling on the bed. I push one finger into him, then two, slow enough to make him curse and chase my hand. He’s tight, hot, grasping. He always is. It’s indecent how my name sounds in his mouth when his body is trying to climb my wrist.
I pull my hand away and he chokes on a sob, raw and wrecked. I drag my cock across the crease of him, the head nudging slick at his entrance, and he goes liquid, the kind of surrender that makes my wolf lie down and purr loudly. “Please.”
“No,” I say, and the quiver that hits his thighs is half despair, half worship. I press my body over his, grind hard between those wicked cheeks, rut like the animal he turns me into, and come again with a growl.