Page 27 of The Alpha King's Mate

I mirrored her action without a second thought.

“We might have a chance today,” Rev shouted to the others.“The King is distracted.”

Malakh growled, and I snapped out of my bonded trance. Going cold turkey was proving harder than I’d anticipated.

She is worth the wait, Malakh snapped at me.

I pulled my T-shirt off one-handed, tossed it onto the nearby bench, and glanced back at my mate one final time. I winked, and was rewarded with a smile before I turned to my men.

There was no room for distraction in a fight. But Rev was wrong—knowing my mate was watching would ensure mysuccess. I would show her that no one would ever harm her again, because I would stand in their path.

Others poured into the garden. Some to watch. Some to challenge.

The three of them spread out the way they’d been trained to. The way I’d trained them.

Talon rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. Jax spun the practice blade once and tossed it aside—so it would be fists, then. Rev simply smiled, circling left, always left, the way he had since he was seventeen and thought I hadn’t noticed.

“Three on one,” Rev called.“Hardly seems fair.”

“Agreed,” I said.“You should have brought more.”

Above us, faintly, through glass and two storeys of air: a snort. My mate’s opinion of my arrogance, delivered to the whole garden. Several of the watchers laughed. Talon used the moment—smart, he was always the smart one—and came in low and fast while my attention was split.

His fist grazed my ribs as I turned out of it. The crowd made a sound. He’d touched me. First contact in three years of sparring, and I felt the grin split my face because she saw the reason for it and I did not care.

Then Jax came from the right and Rev abandoned his circling and the garden narrowed into breath and impact.

I took Jax’s charge on my forearm and used his own weight to fold him over my hip and into the grass. Rev’s kick I caught against my palm—the slap of it rang off the compound walls—and I held his ankle a beat longer than necessary, just to watch his balance beg, before I released him into a sprawl.

Talon again, relentless, a combination at my head and body that would have dropped a lesser wolf. I gave ground. Let himspend himself. Slipped the fourth strike and put him down with an open palm to the chest that he’d feel through dinner.

They regrouped. Came again. Better this time—coordinated, patient, Rev feinting while Jax worked my flank, Talon hunting the opening. My blood sang. Dirt and sweat and the cold morning air burning clean in my lungs, my men laughing between assaults, the crowd calling wagers.

And through all of it, the window. I never looked. I didn’t need to. I could feel her attention on my back like sun.

Jax nearly had me—an arm around my throat, his full weight committed—and the garden held its breath.

A mistake, committing everything.

I dropped my chin, gripped his forearm, bent and threw. He landed beside Rev, who had wisely not gotten up yet. Talon looked at both of them, looked at me, and raised his hands in surrender.

“Yield,” he said.“Obviously.”

The watchers roared. Wagers changed hands. Somewhere in the noise, Rev groaned something about distracted kings and false advertising.

The fight was over. The show was not.

I let Malakh come.

The shift rolled through me like weather—bones singing, the world flooding in through a better nose, colour thinning as scent bloomed into a thousand voices. The crowd’s noise dropped to a hush. However long they served, whatever they’d seen, no wolf grew accustomed to the sight of him. Malakh shook out his black coat and stood to his full height, and the garden took one collective step back.

He ignored them all.

He turned from the sprawled warriors, from the crowd, from every wolf present who understood what they were seeing—and lifted his head to the window two storeys up.

She was still there. Nose to the glass. Eyes wide.

Malakh’s tail swept once, slow, through the dirt. The most feared creature on the continent, decorated in the dust of his victory, stood in the ruins of the sparring ring and looked at one small woman the way the faithful look at the moon.