wasn’t trying to hold myself back because of my grand passion for
Ci.”
“Hey,” Cian said, tossing his big body on the bed.
“Though I do love him passionately,” Meg allowed.
“That’s better,” Cian said, patting the mattress beside him. “Stop
worrying about Beck, lover. He’s nervous because he knows my half
of our soul is so much prettier than his.”
“I remember our teen years, brother,” Beck snorted. “I’m sure our
poor wife was assaulted by the sheer number of your sexual
encounters.”
“It was an education,” Meg allowed with a grin.
“I was a curious lad,” Cian admitted.
“You were a pervert,” Beck shot back, but Cian’s mocking had
done its job. Beck seemed more relaxed.
Cian sat up on the bed. He crossed his legs. Beck took the
opposite position. They were near-perfect twins, and she was going to
be in the middle. She started to climb onto the bed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Beck’s eyebrows arched in
arrogant surprise.
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“What Cian told me to do,” Meg replied. “He said I had to sit in
the middle with my legs around your waist, since you’re the one I’m
bonding with. I’ll be in the circle, touching you both so it flows from
you to me to him.”
Cian had explained how the formation of a permanent bridge
between the three would work. She would fully bond with Beck, and
then Cian would open the connection between them. Once both
brothers were connected to Meg, they would be able to tap into each
other. She was the intersection that connected their roads.
“All that’s fine, wife, but I wanted to know what you’re doing
wearing clothes when we’re alone in our bedroom.”
Meg contained her smile. He wasn’t hiding from his nature
anymore. He’d made that plain this evening. Beck was true to his
word. He’d kept her close to him all night, kissing her, touching her
whenever it suited him to do so.
When one of the village men had requested a dance with his
queen, Beck had sent him such a dark look Meg was surprised the
poor man hadn’t peed himself. Meg had been forced to content herself
with dancing with Beck and Cian.
“You two are still dressed,” Meg pointed out, knowing it wouldn’t
do her any good.
“That can change,” Cian offered helpfully.
Beck just stared and sent his will outward.
Meg shook her head and pulled her clothes off. He would want
her naked as often as possible. It was his nature. He liked her
vulnerability and softness. He wanted her naked and draped across his
lap. She was glad all her time with Cian had gotten her comfortable
with her body.
“That’s better,” Beck commented as Meg climbed onto the bed
without a stitch of clothes.
Cian’s hands “slipped” and teased her soft pink parts as she settled
onto Beck’s lap.
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“Damn it, Ci,” Beck admonished his twin. “This is a serious
ceremony.”
“I’m completely serious about fucking our wife again,” Cian
replied.
Beck pulled Meg into his lap, and Cian leaned close, completely
encircling her. “I swear, brother, I have no idea how they consider
you to be the intellectual half of us. Your brain is constantly full of
sex.”
“I am also calculating the approximate amount of rainfall we’ll
need in order to bring in the spinach crop within the month. If we
don’t get it, I have diagrams in my head for an even better irrigation
system,” Cian explained helpfully. “Another part of me is giving
careful consideration to the argument I got into with Flanna about the
monarchial system of government and its impact on the peasant class.
I am thinking about the fluctuations in the vampire stock market when
they realize we’ve bonded. Sue and Dante are going to make a killing.
But mostly, it’s just sex.”
“Are you sure you want to experience what it’s like to be him?”
Meg asked with a smile. “It’s crowded in that head of his.”
“I’ll take my chances, wife,” Beck replied and kissed her hard
before resting his forehead to hers. “Is tù mo ghrà.”
Meg held his head in her hands and gave him back his words.
“You are my love.”
She pressed her forehead against his, thankful for the strength
Cian was lending her. He held her shoulders and let her feel his
devotion. Meg opened her mind and, in a second, became Beckett
Finn.
Such rage. The emotion flooded her like it had the first moment
they had connected. It was different this time because he wasn’t
pushing it through her. There was no madness to this. This was just a
part of Beck. Meg heard Cian groan behind her and knew that he’d
formed his connection. Cian pushed nothing outward, but helped her
to take in what Beck needed to give her.
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Need, she thought as she fell into Beck’s mind, he needed so
much. He was a lonely child. He missed his brother. They had spent
every second connected from the moment they were conceived until
they turned five years old. That was when his father decided it was
time for the warrior to learn to be a king. He discounted the
importance of Cian’s input. In their father’s mind, the warrior was all
that mattered. Cian was an afterthought. Beck often wished he could
trade places with his brother.
Meg was suddenly staring out a palace window. In the
background, there were men droning on about something or other.
They usually complained about taxes or crop yield. Beck’s seven-
year-old self didn’t care. He gazed out the window and watched Cian
running after their cousin, Dante. He caught the young vampire and
screamed something about him being “it.” Beck wanted to run and
play, but his father had explained that he was different. He was better.
He could best his brother at running and fighting. He could best
anyone at those things. He trained only with the greatest warriors. His
physical skills were not things to play with.
But Beck wanted to play.
Beck was only twelve the first time he killed a man. It was the
first time someone tried to assassinate him. He could still remember
the feel of the bright sun of his face as he followed after his father.
There was an Unseelie ambassador in town, and it had almost caused
a riot in the square. His father was trying to normalize relations with
the Unseelie, but there was a faction of sidhe who would never accept
it. They hated the Unseelie tribe. Many had lost relatives in the wars.
Beck shadowed his father through town. His father was arrogant
and sure of his peoples’ love for him. He only brought one guard with
them. His name was Geary, and he’d been the one to teach Beck how
to play cards. Geary had been sympathetic to Beck, sometimes
slipping him a candied fig. He had two sons of his own, after all.
The arrow hit the guard
squarely in the chest, knocking him back
and off his feet. He was dead before he hit the ground. Meg felt the
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245
anger that suffused young Beck’s being. His father tried to pull him to
safety, but Beck had pulled his sword and opened his senses for the
first time. It had been instinctive. His eye followed the logical track of the arrow. He rolled out of the way of the next one to come after him.
Meg felt a charge of excitement as he shot to his feet and pursued the
assassin. She heard his father’s anxious cries.
She felt the blood on his hands when he caught the assassin. He’d
ignored the man’s cries for mercy. Beck’s beast was loose, and he had
no mercy. The large man had taken something Beck valued. He’d
taken from Beck, and he would never do so again.
It was the first time Beck realized his father was afraid of him.
Meg groaned as the scene in his head changed. Sex, she sighed.
This was Beck’s outlet.
A woman named Sorcha, one of his mother’s ladies, had taken it
on herself to teach him. She gave him permission to do what he
wanted, and Beck had taken her at her word. He’d dominated her.
He’d owned and possessed her. He fucked her when and where he
wanted, and she obeyed. It took the edge off his rage knowing
looked at him with fear sometimes. Sorcha had begged him to fuck
her. She cuddled in his arms afterward. That time was sweet, too. He
enjoyed taking care of her after.
Meg felt the pain of his father hitting him with the flat of his
sword. He’d done it in front of fifty of his strongest soldiers. He’d
humiliated his son for his perversity.
Beck had sworn to never give in to those urges again.
Then all was blood and carnage.
She smelled the smoke and felt Beck’s heart pumping with rage as
he realized his father was dead. There was a tiny part of him that
reveled in the old man’s death. He was king now. He was in his
rightful place. No one would tell him what to do or how to act again.
If they did, he would take care of it. He would be king not by right of
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ascension, but because he could kill anyone who questioned his place.
Torin had given him this gift.
Meg felt his disgust at the thought. He was torn by his own nature.
His father had abused and humiliated him, but Beck had loved him
anyway.
The sword Beck held as he surveyed the decimation of Torin’s
guard was the sword of the rightful King of the Seelie. He had used it
to kill a hundred of Torin’s advance guard. He’d sliced through them
with an easy efficiency. His body hummed with anticipation of more.
He enjoyed it. He liked the blood and the feel of his sword penetrating
flesh. He loved the dance of battle.
Through the smoke he saw Torin. He was surrounded by guards.
It was easy to kill them, too. More were coming. Beck could hear
them. They were making their way through the chaos toward their
leader. It wouldn’t matter. Beck circled his uncle. Torin would be
dead as they walked into the great hall, and then they would join their
brethren.
Torin wasn’t willing to go down easy. He held his sword, and his
eyes were no longer arrogant. “Even now, my soldiers are hunting
your brother. They will cut him down where he stands.”
Beck’s blood was up. “It will not kill me.”
Torin looked disturbed by that statement. “It will, eventually. He
is your brother.”
Beck smiled. He knew it was a ghastly thing. Beck nodded to the
throne where his father’s body lay, still and cooling. “There lies your
brother. Perhaps we are more alike than you think, Uncle.”
Torin, who had always been a pale imitation of his younger
brother, twisted his unhandsome face into a mask of jealousy. “The
crown should have been mine. My father always favored Seamus. It
should have been mine.”
Beck pointed to his father’s crown. It lay on the palace floor,
covered in his father’s blood. “There it is, Torin. Take it if you can.”
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Torin looked between his nephew and the bloody crown he had
slain his kin for.
Then Meg felt it. She felt Cian cry out in Beck’s brain. She felt his
panic and anguish. Cian reached out for the only person he had left,
and Beck felt the call in his soul.
It went against everything in Beck Finn’s nature. His instincts
cried out to kill the pretender. Beck’s prey stood before him, quaking
in his boots. There was no question about the outcome of this fight,
even as Torin’s backup stormed through the doors. He could kill them
all.
And lose Cian.
Deep in his heart, Beck knew that he wouldn’t care once Cian was
dead. It would free him in some ways. He could be the predator he’d
always known himself to be. He could kill and kill and kill until
someone was strong enough to take him out.
But Cian wasn’t dead. He was alive, and he waited for his brother
to save him.
Beck could avenge his father. He could save his kingdom and all
of its people, or he could save the only person in the world to ever
trust him, the person who carried all the good parts of his soul.
“I will return one day, Torin,” Beck promised. “I will return, and I
The years sped by, each more desperate. Beck was alone. He was
alone even as he took lovers. He was alone even as he and his brother
tried to build a life. He was alone until he walked into a marketplace
and found his heart waiting for him.
Meg sobbed as she came out of the bond. She threw her arms
around Beck’s neck and clutched him. “I love you. I love you so
much.” She looked into his deep gray eyes. They were still filled with
uncertainty. “I would have no other.”
* * * *
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Beck squeezed her tight. “I hope you mean that because you
won’t have another. You’re mine, and I won’t ever let you go.”
He pulled her hair back and took her mouth savagely. He needed
to imprint himself on her. She’d been so open. He couldn’t have
imagined how good it would feel to truly bond with her. She had seen
all of his bad parts, everything he loathed about his own nature, and
she accepted him with a whole heart. He knew she had seen the very
things he had been scared of her seeing, but instead of rejecting him,
she told him she loved him.
“I love you, Megan,” he rasped against her ear. He pulled her tight
against his chest. He loved the warmth of her skin. He loved the trust
she placed in him. It eased his soul. He looked behind her. Cian had
gone pale. He sat back against the headboard. Meg might have
accepted him wholeheartedly, but Cian seemed to be having trouble.
“Ci? Whatever you want to say to me, just say it. It isn’t anything I
haven’t thought about myself.”
Meg looked back towa
rd Cian and reached her hand out to bring
him into the circle. Beck worried that he would refuse, but after a
moment’s hesitation he threaded his fingers through Meg’s.
“You didn’t kill him because you had to save me,” Cian said
quietly. “He was right there. It wouldn’t have taken long.”
“If I had taken even a moment, the secondary front would have
been on me,” Beck tried to explain. He knew Cian would be upset that
he’d let their parents’ and sister’s killer live when he could have slain
him. “I would have been too late. It was selfish.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Meg disagreed.
“By saving Cian, I saved myself,” Beck replied simply.
“No, brother,” Cian said, emotion thick in his voice. “I don’t
believe it. I was there, just as Meg was. You didn’t want to lose all
that was me. You value the person I am. Goddess, Beck, I never knew
how bloody hard it is to be you.”
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“You valued Ci over your father, revenge, and your own nature,”
Meg explained. “Don’t expect us to turn away from you for making
that choice.”
“I always trusted you, Beck,” Cian vowed. He pushed his chest
against their wife’s back. “Nothing I felt tonight changes that. It just
makes me proud to be your brother.” He grew very serious. “You
don’t want to go back, do you?”
Beck swallowed once, and then again. Of all the things it was hard
to admit, this was the hardest. “I don’t want to be king. I never wanted
to be king, not really. I want to be your brother and Meg’s husband
and father to our children, but I’m not sure that’s possible. There’s a
whole plane out there that will pressure me to go back and fulfill my
destiny.”
“Then we’ll have to make our own destiny, won’t we, brother?”
Cian returned. “Whatever comes, the three of us are in it together.”
“We’ll be beside you, no matter what,” Meg vowed. Her eyes
were solemn and filled with promise.
“Yes, whatever happens, Meg will make cookies for the
occasion,” Cian swore with a long laugh.
It broke the tension, and Beck breathed for the first time in a long
time. He took a long breath and found himself happy to be Beckett
Finn.
“I’ll have to try one tomorrow, wife,” he said. He knew there was