Kylie looped her arm around mine as an attendant led us down the hall to our rooms. She pitched her voice low. “So... this whole challenge thing. What exactly does that mean for Marco?”

I swallowed hard. My pulse hadn’t stopped racing since the tiger shifter had swaggered out of the ballroom. I wished I had a better idea what the challenge had meant myself.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “The other guy wants the alpha position. I guess they fight it out. Tonight.” In, what, just a few hours? Marco couldn’t have been prepared for that.

Was this what being alpha had been like for him all along? Random challenges at every turn, not even being able to spend an hour back on his estate without some asshole confronting him? That would get old awfully quick. Suddenly I didn’t find it hard to believe he’d meant the comment he’d made about giving up the position.

Only he couldn’t do that and still be my mate. If he forfeited his position as alpha, my bond would shift to whoever was named in his place.

And the same if he lost this challenge.

“But he’ll be fine, right?” Kylie said. “I mean, he’s stayed on top this long.”

“Yeah,” I said. If only I felt totally confident of Marco’s victory. In the back of my mind, I kept seeing the tiger shifter standing over him, taller and broader. Size wasn’t everything—but it mattered a hell of a lot in a fight.

“Geez. I had no idea things would be this tense. I’m sorry if I made the situation any worse.”

“Hey.” I pulled Kylie around to face me as the attendant opened a door for her. “I’m glad you’re here. Any trouble Marco’s kin make is their fault, not yours. Thank you for coming. Just having you with me makes everything feel a little easier to handle.”

My best friend beamed at me and pulled me into another hug. “That’s why I’m here.”

I hugged her back, and then stepped away. “I do still want you staying safe, though. Can you just, like hole up in your guest room for a little while. I think I should talk to Marco.”

Kylie waved me off. “Of course, of course. Go tend to your ‘mate.’ I can already see I’ve got plenty of luxury in here to keep me occupied. But if you run into any handsome unoccupied shifters, feel free to send them my way too!”

I couldn’t help laughing, even though my stomach was still tight. “I’ll do that.”

Marco’s private rooms were just down the hall from mine. I knocked. “Marco?”

“Come in,” he called from the other side. When I stepped in, he was standing by the chaise lounge in the sitting room. He shot me an amused glance. “You don’t need to knock with me, princess. Consider these rooms as much yours as they are mine.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Are you okay?”

Marco shrugged with a careless air, but I knew him well enough now to notice the angry glint in his indigo eyes. “Challenges happen. They have before and will again. It isn’t how I would have hoped to spend my first evening here with you, but we’ll just have to make tomorrow night even better to make up for it.”

His grin looked a little tense too. I walked up to him. “It sounded like that Julius guy had been a pain in the ass before now.”

Marco nodded. “He likes to hear himself talk, especially if it’s to complain about how anyone else is doing things. Apparently he’s decided to graduate from talking.”

“Do you think he’s the one allied with the rogues?” I asked.

“It could be. A challenge, if he succeeded, would be a fairly direct way to disrupt the status quo. But he’s not going to succeed, so really it’s a very bad plan, if it is one.”

Julius had radiated aggressive disdain, but there was no way for me to tell whether that feeling was simply personal or whether he had a larger agenda. It didn’t really matter anyway. It didn’t change what I’d come here to do.

I touched Marco’s face, tracing my fingers along the line of his angular jaw. “I guess we could enjoy ourselves before tomorrow evening too.”

A different sort of light sparked in Marco’s eyes. He dipped his head close to mine. “What exactly did you have in mind, my Princess of Flames?”

I kissed him in answer. He hummed low in his throat and kissed me back, his hands rising to tangle in my hair. The graze of his fingers over my scalp left my whole body tingling in anticipation.

He tilted my head slightly to deepen the kiss. I pressed my mouth to his hungrily. The bond inside me thrummed with eagerness, urging me on.

Without breaking the kiss, I stepped backward through the doorway into the bedroom. Marco followed. His tongue teased into my mouth, and for one hot, heady moment it sparred with mine. Then I had to let go of him to hop up on the bed.

Marco prowled after me, nothing but longing in his gaze now. He bent over me on the bed and claimed my mouth again. His fingers brushed over my breasts with just enough pressure to pebble my nipples through my shirt and bra—but not half as much as I was dying for. I arched into his touch, and he chuckled breathlessly.

“All in good time,” he murmured on his way into another kiss.

No. The more time we took, the more opportunity he had to question my motivations.

I grasped his shirt and tugged it up. Marco let me peel it off, staying poised over me for a few seconds as I drank in his lean chest. I ran my hands over the planes of solid muscle, and his eyelids dipped.

“Princess,” he said in a hungry growl.

I pulled my shirt off too. Marco leaned in to kiss his way down the side of my neck and across my collarbone. I whimpered when he reached the boundary of my bra. To my relief, he made short work of that obstacle. With a quick gesture, he’d unhooked it and tossed it aside. Then he was slicking his tongue over one needy nipple.

I gasped at the rush of pleasure spreading through my chest. Yes, this was exactly what we both needed. One of my arms looped around Marco’s shoulders. The other crept down my body to undo the fly of my jeans. I caught Marco’s hand and guided it along the same path.

He groaned when his fingers reached the dampness on my panties. I shivered with longing, the ache between my legs only growing as he stroked me there.

“So determined,” Marco said in a low, amused voice. He paused, his hand going still. His eyes sought out mine. His expression had turned abruptly serious. “Princess, what are you doing?”

Shit. “Seducing you?” I said with all the coyness I could manage, fluttering my eyelashes at him. “Is that a problem?”

He withdrew his hand completely. I almost moaned at the loss of contact. He set it on the other side of my body and lifted himself so he was staring down at me.

“Why now?”

“Does it matter? I want you, you want me...” I teased my fingers down his bare chest to the waist of his jeans.

Marco closed his eyes for a second as if gathering his self-control. When he looked at me again, his gaze was stark. “Ren. Please. Why now?”

I couldn’t bear to lie to my mate, not when he asked me like that. I swallowed hard. “I do want you. But I also... Julius took a jab at you because our bond isn’t consummated yet. I thought if it was, maybe he’d back down.”

“Oh, princess.” Marco let his head drop until his nose almost grazed mine. “Do you really think I’ll lose to that sorry excuse for a tiger?”

“No,” I said, mostly honestly. The images that had haunted me since Julius had first spoken his challenge floated back into my head. All the ways I might find Marco after the battle, battered and bleeding. “I don’t want to see how badly he might hurt you while you’re winning. If I can save you from that...”

Marco sucked in a breath. “There was a time not long ago when I thought you might enjoy seeing me batted around some.”

My back stiffened. The idea that I’d wish that kind of pain on him wrenched at me so hard tears sprang into my eyes. “No,” I choked out. “I was angry at you, but I would never want—that’s the last thing I—”

Marco’s eyes had widened. He brushed his thumb over my lips, stopping my struggle for words. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was only a joke—a bad one, clearly. I... didn’t realize my wellbeing meant so much to you.”

“Of course it does, you idiot,” I muttered. “You’re my mate. You’re obviously upset about the challenge. I just thought, this is the one thing I can do that might help...”

“Serenity.” Marco lowered himself on his side next to me and tugged me against him. He kissed my forehead, his voice a little shaky. “You have no idea how much you’ve helped already, with everything you’d done so far. And I’m not upset about the challenge because I’m afraid of Julius. Confrontations like that—they just stir up memories I’d rather avoid.”

I nestled my head against his shoulder. “Like what?”

He hesitated for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter. “You’ve asked me before how I got this scar.” He touched the pale line that bisected his eyebrow. “I told you it was from a challenge. That particular challenge... came from a kin-member I’d considered a friend. One of my closest friends. We’d grown up together, played and trained together before I was even named next alpha-in-line. I’d have fought to the death for him.”

My throat had gone tight. Oh, God. “But instead you had to fight to the death against him.”

“Not to the death. Not in that moment. But I had to fight him, yes. I had to hear him tell me he didn’t believe I deserved to be alpha, that I didn’t deserve to even be kin, and then I had to beat him into submission.” Marco paused with a hissed inhale. “It was him or me, and in the end I chose me.”

“You did what you had to do.”

“Yes. But when there’s a challenge, the loser is banished. An alpha can’t have someone who tried to undermine our authority just hanging around. And Devon didn’t know what to do with himself once he was out on his own.”

“What happened?” I asked. I could already tell from the weight in Marco’s voice that it wasn’t good.

“He ended up tangling with a bunch of vampires. They were really not pleased about whatever he said or did to them.” Marco swallowed audibly. “When we found his body... it was obvious they’d tortured him for a while before they’d finished the job. So no, I didn’t kill him. But I did send him to his death. And the worst death I can imagine.”

I wrapped my arm around my mate, hugging him. “You didn’t have a choice. You couldn’t have known what would happen to him. It’s not as if you made him mess with those vampires.”

“I tell myself all that,” Marco said. “But I still feel like I’ve been punched in the gut every time I hear the words of a challenge.”

I drank in the smell of his skin, like spiced coffee. The stutter of his breath. The tension still wound through his muscles. He hadn’t wanted to tell me that story. He’d avoided it for weeks. But he had, finally, so that I’d understand.

“That’s why you were impatient to consummate,” I said. “Why it was so important to you to secure your position any way you could.”

“I shouldn’t have seen you that way,” Marco said quickly. “I didn’t want to think about you that way. But the thought was there. I let it get to me. You know how sorry I am for that.”

“But now—” I started, moving my body against his.

Marco groaned, but he gripped my thigh to hold me still. “Ren, tell me the truth. Would you be offering right now if Julius hadn’t challenged me?”

I wanted to say yes. The word caught in my throat. I couldn’t know exactly what I’d have done if the luncheon had played out differently... but I could make a reasonable guess.

“That’s what I thought,” Marco said at my hesitation.

“Marco...”

He cupped my face, gazing into my eyes. “Princess, it’s okay. The first time we go there, I want it to be only because you want it, not even slightly because circumstances are forcing your hand. I can beat Julius without breaking a sweat, and I can wait. It’s the least I can do.”

I choked up again, but for a completely different reason. The fact that he was saying no had dissolved the last of my doubts. I could have given myself over happily now, looming challenge or not.

But I’d already burned that bridge for the moment. I settled for kissing him, soft and sweet, as his hand stroked over the side of my face.

My body was still tingling with longing. Maybe Marco could feel that too. He drew back a couple of inches with a sly smile. “I would, however, be happy to enjoy you in another way.”

Before I had to ask what he meant, he was easing down my body. His fingers hooked the hem of my panties as he brushed his lips over my breasts and belly. I gasped when his mouth closed over the bundle of nerves at my core. Every part of my brain that had been cycling through worries short-circuited, and for a brief moment in time, I was made of nothing but bliss.