Heartless (Immortal Enemies 1)

So desperate for a teammate, you’ll enter the bear’s cage?

He paused behind her, and his warm breath brushed her nape. The most delicious shivers of all rippled over her.

“You are far more beautiful than she was. An object of desire few have the strength to resist.” He purred the words straight into her ear, wrapping his powerful arms around her waist, crowding into her. Tap. Tap. The tip of his metal claw kissed her belly again and again without cutting her clothes. “Tell me, girl. Do I make you apprehensive?”

The feel of him... “You do make me apprehensive,” she admitted, earning a start of surprise from him. Among other things.

Cookie hadn’t pressed against a hard, masculine form in so long. How she’d missed the warmth. The sense of closeness. The safety. For once, she didn’t feel oppressed by loneliness or impending doom.

Tap, tap, tap. “You alone have no reason to dread your time with me, female.” Tap, tap. “Not at the moment.”

What about later?

She decided to roll the dice. The truth will set you free. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I believe your Lulundria is...dead. I’m sorry,” she repeated. “My heart was defective, and I was dying. She didn’t need hers anymore, so doctors transplanted it inside me. After the surgery, I began to change. My hair. My eyes.” The vines.

The brutal warrior tensed. She braced for a shout of denial, or an accusation of dishonesty.

He appeared before her, and she yelped. How was he doing that?

“You hold Lulundria’s heart in your chest? She lives on in you?” He set two knuckles under her chin and tipped her head up to his, unveiling a stunning smile. He was temptation made flesh. “This is wonderful. This is wonderful indeed.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

KAYSAR HAD DETECTED no lies in the beauty’s confession, the truth hitting him with all the finesse of a cannonball. Lulundria had returned to Astaria. She’d come back as this living doll—this living Drendall—whose finely boned face both mesmerized and unsettled him.

One woman the same as any other? Hardly.

He could stare at this female forever and another day, and it wouldn’t be long enough. And her body... All that pale, radiant skin. The top of her head reached his shoulders. Barely. She was short but curved, wearing a pink tunic with text scribbled over the center. “Stay-at-Home Cat Mom.” On her legs was black material seemingly poured onto her skin. A mortal fashion?

He frowned as the unthinkable happened—he hardened without permission from his mind. But why would he do this? People responded to him; he did not respond to people.

Despite the unprecedented reaction, she aided his cause. The heart of a Frostline-by-marriage beat in this former mortal’s chest, ensuring Lulundria lived on. Ensuring her connection with Jareth and Hador lived on.

The princess wasn’t the first royal fae to extend her life this way, but there were few others who’d dared to venture down this particular path. A mind was a gateway to the heart, the battery for any glamara, and all were different, no two intellects the same. The longer this Chantel carried Lulundria’s heart, the more her thoughts and personality shaped it. For better or for worse.

Whether she realized it or not, she was unerringly immortal, incredibly powerful, and unarguably fae. Each of the five courts now recognized her as a royal Summerlander and Winterlander. Lulundria’s own parents would welcome her with open arms. Jareth, too. His marriage vows commanded it.

The prince had no choice but to accept this stranger as his wife—and the de Aoibheall babe soon to quicken in her belly.

A babe Kaysar would never know.

He...wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea, now that victory was so close. What belonged to Kaysar belonged to Kaysar. Always. Without exception. He didn’t share with anyone. Ever. He refused to share. And yet he planned to give this princess his seed? His child? An innocent babe, handed over to the Frostline prince? Placed within Hador’s reach?

Fury rose at the incongruity, ever at the ready, the need to kill someone, anyone, nigh irresistible. Instead, Kaysar stroked his claws over his forearm. The slight tickle reminded him of his maps. His sister. His safe harbor in any storm.

He centered and calmed, certain he could solve the conundrum tomorrow. Vengeance first, everything else second.

Today, fate wanted him to oversee the punishment of the Frostlines. Unlike the original Lulundria, this woman hadn’t spent her childhood hearing horror stories about the Unhinged One. What reason did she have to resist him?

No doubt her seduction would be laughably easy.

“Who are you to me?” she asked, an uneasy little thing. First she shifted from bare foot to bare foot. Then she smoothed pink and sable locks from her brow. Then she massaged the abrasions marring her wrists. “Who were you to Lulundria?”

Her accent was soft, liquid and wonderfully lazy, like the warm maple poured over his mother’s berry cakes. A delicacy he hadn’t considered in centuries. Now, his mouth watered.