Chapter 1: Little Queen
Something is up. Major. Wrong.
I sense it even before I’ve fully clawed my way up from sleep; noticed it in Jaxon Hale’s body language even before he says my name.
“Rowan, get dressed. There’s a meeting, and I need you to attend.”
I rub the grit from my eyes as the fog lifts; glance at the clock on my nightstand. Glowing red numbers tell me it’s only eleven pm—so I’ve gotten a couple hours’ sleep—but I know better than to argue.
Tossing back the covers, I creep out of bed and pull on a pair of jeans, throw on a sweatshirt over my nightshirt. Stockinged feet ease into a pair of fleece-lined boots. With a former day job as a cop in Crystal Falls’ police department, I’m used to being pulled from a night’s sleep at a moment’s notice—either through dispatch or something going on with the Storm Devils Motorcycle Club.
Being queen to its president sure has its moments.
I move to the bedroom door and follow Jaxon through the dorms to the main section of the building, where meetings were usually held. I pause In the chapel’s doorway, the sense I’d had earlier that something was wrong returning threefold.
Instead of the full club there’s only the vice president—Reaper—and a couple of prospects.
“What’s going on, Jaxon?” I turn to my husband, askance—and don’t like the look in his eyes.
“These two want to challenge me for you.” Jaxon’s expression is unreadable as he adds after a heavy moment: “I’ve decided to let them.”
I can only stare, my mind whirling. “What?” I choke out. Being queen means I have the respect of the other women within or affiliated with the club. As Jaxon’s wife, his main old lady, I’m off limits to full-patched members and prospects. Jaxon shouldn’t be allowing this; he should be severely disciplining the two prospects for moving in on me, his woman. “Are you insane?!” I hiss, turning on him and shoving my hands on his broad chest. “I am yours, Jaxon, or have you forgotten?” The raven tattoo on my hip proves it, lets everyone in the outlaw biker world know I’m already taken.
“Rowan.” I hate that Jaxon sounds so reasonable as his fingers encircle my wrists and slide my palms down his chest. “I’m not going to simply hand you over to them. If they really want to challenge me for you, they need to work for it. And you will need a chance to fight for yourself.”
Anger flares. I briefly think about bringing my knee up and just as quickly dismiss the idea. My training means I could easily break Jaxon’s hold on me if I want, but at the moment I want the close proximity. Want him to remember that he is mine just as much as I belong to him. That nobody else is supposed to look at me the wrong way, much less challenge Jaxon for me like I’m a scrap of meat to be fought over.
“Oh, so long as you give me a chance to fight, that’s all right, then,” I snap, my tone dripping venomous sarcasm.
Jaxon’s expression softens for just a moment—a flicker only. If I hadn’t been so close to him and didn’t know him so well, I wouldn’t have noticed the change. “Enough.” His voice rings with authority, the same tone he uses when commanding obedience of the club—or me in our bedroom, when he takes me and makes me scream. He is my dominant, and I feel myself slipping back into the headspace where I’m his submissive.
I avert my gaze, rub my cheek against his chest like a cat. There’s an underlying motive for why Jaxon is allowing this. As queen, I am his, off-limits, and anyone else who tried challenging him ended up—
I still, look up at him, slowly move my hands down Jaxon’s chest to the V of his hips and curl my fingers into the belt loops of his jeans. “So that’s it,” I murmur, keeping my voice low enough for only Jaxon to hear. “You’re hoping they’ll kill each other fighting over me. If one survives, you’ll kill him anyway.” I lift one leg up around his thigh, move one hand to press against the front of his jeans. Smirk when his cock jerks in response, bulge growing. “You owe me, Jaxon. Just for this, no sex for you tonight.”
“Rowan.” His eyes flash; my name comes out in a growl.
I pull away, leaving him wanting me, and focus my attention on Reaper, ignoring the two prospects. “Where are we going for this bullshit challenge?”
Reaper exchanges a glance with Jaxon before answering, “The forest.”
I look over my shoulder at Jaxon, slowly exhale. “Fine, then. Let’s get this over with.”
Crystal Falls, Washington, had its roots as a logging town way back when. Considering this part of the state was riddled with national parks and the Cascade Mountain range, we don’t have to ride far to end up in the surrounding forest. I dismount from where I’m riding double behind Jaxon. The two prospects pull up behind him but don’t dismount, settling into a semi-relaxed position. Reaper is back a ways, watching.
I step a few paces away before turning to face Jaxon. “How is this going to work?”
“You’ll get a five-minute head start,” Jaxon answers. “Then those two will try to track you down. Whoever catches you first will claim you.”
Though I know Jaxon won’t let anything serious happen to me, my mouth still goes dry as the reality begins to sink in. I’m about to be chased through the forest, hunted down like prey.
Turning, I take a few steps toward the path that leads into the trees and stop when Jaxon grabs my wrist. Turning back around, I stare up into his eyes. “What?” I hiss, rising fear battling annoyance.
His gaze holds mine intently. “You know exactly where your place is here, Rowan.” His voice is pitched low, a firm warning for my ears alone. “It won’t be good if you forget who your lord and master is.”
Annoyance briefly wins out. “Go to hell,” I snarl. I am his queen, his old lady, his submissive in the bedroom—eventually, when there was relative peacetime with the club, maybe the mother of his child—but I’ll be damned if I let Jaxon treat me as anything less than his equal. His partner. Right now, knowing—suspecting—Jaxon plans on never actually handing me over to the prospects is little comfort.
Breaking free of his hold on my wrist, I stride toward the hiking path, break into a jog, and then a run, veering off the path as soon as the trees and darkness hide me from view.
I have a five-minute head start.
Calling on all the woodcraft I know to keep my trail as hidden as possible, moving as lightly as I can, I push deeper into the wilderness.
In a two-story house on the outskirts of Crystal Falls, its sole occupant had yet to retire for the night. Not that he really needed sleep, per se, but it was a retained habit.
Daemon Wolf was stretched out on the sofa with a warm fireplace going, a blanket thrown over his long legs, reading the latest novel in a series about a team of psychic FBI agents. He had just finished his current chapter when fear—not his own—flooded his mind, along with flashing images of the woods at night.
Grimacing, frowning, he snapped the book shut and set it on the coffee table, lurched into a sitting position.
This wasn’t normal for him. He wasn’t psychic in the usual sense, and he sure as hell wasn’t one of the guardian angels for light-magic blood witches—who did have a psychic link to their charges. Though he had a sensing ability (like all of his kind), it was primarily limited to identifying other supernatural beings and full-fledged Guardians of Light. Not to mention the human women destined to become on of the angelic guides that he was assigned to seduce.
“Scheiße,“ he muttered, resting his elbows on his knees and rubbing his temples with his fingertips. Tamping down the wave of fear, he tried to use his sensing ability to trace it back to the source.
Hazel-brown eyes widened, then narrowed a second later.
Rowan. His friend—no, more than that, if he was honest with himself.
She was in trouble.
Throwing the blanket back, Daemon glanced down at his current attire before rising. His loungewear certainly wouldn’t do for a rescue, not on an autumn night.
And there was no way he wasn’t going to help Rowan. Mislaid beacon of goodness she might be, he had not been assigned to her by his superiors in the netherworld of supernatural evil. Still, she was his—and right then Daemon did not care if the rules of outlaw motorcycle club culture meant she belonged to Jaxon Hale.
So after a quick change of clothes upstairs—black fleece-lined jeans, black long-sleeved shirt, long black coat, and his favorite boots—Daemon again concentrated on Rowan, pictured her, and let the change overtake him.
Molecule by molecule, his body dissolved into a stream of ash—and then vanished.
Legs aching and lungs burning for air, I force myself to slow when I reach the relative shelter of a large tree. I’m not going to rest very long, but I need to get my bearings and listen for any sign of my pursuers.
Thirty seconds, then a minute. Hopefully, the two prospects will find each other before they reach me. Slightly calmer now that I’ve had a chance to rest, I strain my ears for any signs they’re close.
I think I hear cursing, nowhere near my current position—distant, maybe a couple miles out, northeast—and a grim smile crosses my lips. The club prospects are big, heavy, built more like rugby or American football players. I’m smaller, faster, lighter on my feet. More than that, I know how to move through the woods undetected.
It’s time to move on. Calling up a mental map of the area, I set off on a path that will take me further away from the prospects and near a small clearing. Jogging at first, and then slowly picking up speed.
I’ve just reached the edge of the trees that opened up into the clearing when something suddenly appears before me. Too late to stop, I crash and we go down in a tangle of limbs.
Then I get a good look at who I’ve literally run into.
“Daemon?” His name wheezes out of my lungs. Suddenly aware that he’s flat on his back and I’m straddling him, I start to rise off him—and then stop. “The hell are you doing here? How did you—?”
“Later,” he interrupts, cutting off my questions. “For now, let’s say I had an overwhelming feeling you’re in danger. What’s going on, Rowan?”
He doesn’t seem all that bothered by the fact I’m straddling him, nor really have any inclination to move or have me get off him. Though his explanation doesn’t quite make sense, I’m willing to let it slide—for now—so I can answer his question.
“Two idiot prospects decided they could challenge Jaxon for me. He decided to let them, came up with this. I run, they try to chase me down. Whoever catches me first can ‘claim’ me.”
Daemon’s hazel-brown eyes—nearly black in the moonlight—narrow. “I thought that being Jaxon’s old lady meant you were off-limits to other club members and prospects.”
“It does. Normally. I don’t think he actually has any intention of turning me over. That he’s planning on killing them regardless to set an example, or hoping they’ll kill each other before getting to me.”
Laying on top of him, the more I talk, the more I feel myself calming down. More, I can hear my heartbeat and Daemon’s—if I listen closely, it almost seems as though my heart is trying to match the rhythm of his.
Slowly, I allow my gaze to drift over Daemon’s body and finally take in his appearance. His shirt, jeans, duster and boots—all in black—are not the clothes of a man who had decided to go for a nighttime stroll in the woods.
Then there was the way he had seemingly materialized out of nowhere...
He’s been my best friend for almost a year now, but I can’t shake the sudden feeling that I don’t really know him at all.
And yet, from the moment I first saw him, heard his rich baritone voice with its soft German accent, I had been drawn to him in a way I hadn’t with anyone else, not even Jaxon. Soul deep. I know you.
“That sounds more like Jaxon,” Daemon grumbles.
The sound of footsteps crash through the brush. I scrabble to my feet, press my back against the nearest tree. Daemon shoots up, whirls in the direction of the sound, long black duster flaring out behind him. He stands protectively in front of me as the two prospects enter the clearing.
They briefly eye each other, then Daemon, and clearly decide he is the larger threat. One moves forward while the other begins circling around.
Heart in my throat, I bite back a scream of warning—he doesn’t need any distractions—and instead dig my fingers into the bark of the tree so hard that it hurts. Running would only draw their attention onto me, and right now that is the last thing I want.
Daemon draws himself up to his full height of just over six feet, staring down the two bikers. His body language is quietly confident. Arrogant, even. And then . . . flames, fireballs appear in both his hands, held out from his sides at an angle.
The stray, half-hysterical thought crosses my mind that he looks like a gothic raven-haired version of the Hellblazer.
One of the prospects—I think his name is Viper—immediately pauses and warily steps back, eyeing the flames in Daemon’s hands. “The hell?”
The other prospect that had been slowly circling around—Ice—gives Viper a withering look. “You’re not scared of this guy, are you?”
My pulse hammering in my throat, I can only watch in horror as the three men face off.
