Chapter 73

Kairos… an hour earlier…

The party in his house was in full swing by the time Kairos came down from his room. He’d slicked his hair off his head as he got out of the shower that day. He was cuffing his sleeves as he finally hit the first floor. Most of the party was dancing at that moment, a few of the patrons standing by the bar.

Kairos worked his way through the crowd, making sure to nod at anyone who greeted him. He had a reputation to maintain. Especially after the nasty business with Jeckell a few months ago. The school was up his ass and his father was further up his ass with comments of “good behavior” and “appropriate interactions.” He and his friends were on guard to keep any debaucherous behavior out of his house.

As he reached the bar, Thorne stepped up to clasp him on the shoulder. “Brother,” he roared over the pounding music.

“Is everything good?” Kairos yelled back.

Thorne nodded once but Kairos could tell something was off in the way his jaw ticked. He leaned back in to speak into Kairos’s ear.

“You hear about who made their way to campus today?”

Kairos pulled back to shake his head. Thorne’s eyes went wide before he dove back in to speak in Kairos’s ear.

“Amara Luna,” Thorne said. “My sister. The Princess.”

Kairos’s face twisted into a smug frown.

He’d heard stories of the adopted Luna Princess. How she was tall, thin, beautiful in the way as hawk was. He’d also heard stories of how she’d seduced male Alphas to be at her beck and call then would turn around and seduce someone else. She played men like one would play a harp, plucking at the strings until it made the sound she wanted.

Kairos had no desire to be a part of it.

His own love life had been increasingly stale since his third year had started. Furthermore, there was that weird pit in his stomach he had for Zora Smith. She’d almost destroyed him, snapped his leg into fourteen pieces and made him miss two full days of training. And yet, he wondered what it’d be like to be hers. To wrap her in his arms and keep her locked in his possession. Away from Maximus, away from Thorne, away from—

“Mate, you listening?” Thorne jolted Kairos from his inner mind. Kairos blinked twice then looked off to where Thorne was pointing. Thorne leaned back into to speak to his friend. “She’s been eye-fucking you for the last five minutes!”

Unluckily for Kairos, the Luna Princess was seated across the room. She was perched in one of the few luxurious chairs they had in his house, right ankle crossed over her knee. Her plump lips were wrapped around the straw of her drink. Thorne was right; she was totally eye-fucking him.

Then, she surprised Kairos even more by shifting her legs so that her teeny tiny skirt rid up her thighs. She placed her right foot on the ground slowly, making sure Kairos got a full eye of the underwear she wasn’t wearing, before recrossing her left ankle over her right knee.

Kairos simply raised an eyebrow before turning and looking back at Thorne. He leaned into his friend’s ear.

“That’s what you rejected your fated mate for?”

Thorne jerked back with a scowl. He glared down Kairos for another second before sauntering off into the party. Kairos yanked a beer out of the hands of a first year Alpha. He slugged half of it back then snarled at the first-year, who ran off, before finishing the rest of it. He slammed the empty can against a wall, flattening it with ease before chucking it into the house.

He sulked off into the main room where a plethora of Alphas were dancing. A few Betas lingered in the room as well. One in particular caught his eye. Loren Moonbeam was swaying like a tree in wind across the room from him. He leaned back against the wall and watched her. She was so unlike her sister, Petyr’s mate, that it shocked him. He wondered how two people so different could be related.

He was still musing that thought with a smirk when a shock of red hair entered the room and his entire stomach dropped to his toes. Zora Smith was at his party. Again.

He instantly sneered. Was she an idiot? Did she not remember what happened the last time she was in his house? He got even angrier as he noticed the tall man looming behind her in the doorway.

Fucking Maximus. The traitorous cunt.

His eyes were glued to Zora as she worked her way through the crowd to meet with the younger Moonbeam. They both had drinks in their hands – ones Kairos knew he wasn’t serving. Still, the sight of the three of them made him sick.

He turned and almost ran over the woman standing behind him. He was about to apologies when a hand of long pointed nails curled around his shoulder. “Kairos,” Amara, his fucking betrothed to be, purred.

“Not now, Amara,” he snapped. “I’m not in the mood.”

She had the audacity to pout. “Not even for your Princess?”

Kairos froze. He gently pried Amara’s hand from his shoulder and dropped it at her side. She was close enough that he could touch their noses as he looked down on her. Her lipstick was slightly smeered, eyes wide and dark.

“What do you want?” he said, evenly.

She hummed and wounder her arms back up around his neck, leaning into him. “What do you think I want, Alpha,”

The way she addressed him made all of the hair on his arms stand up. His stomach churned. He was entirely unaroused by her performance. He was about to tell her to fuck off when her chin turned into the crook between his shoulder and neck. She flicked her tongue out and licked a wet, mushy stripe up the side of his neck. She reeked of rum.

“I’ll let you fuck me any way you want, Alpha,” she moaned into the curl of his ear. “Raw, if you want.”

Kairos had enough. He shoved her back. She stumbled as the shock and force of his actions hit her. Her facial expression was anything but happy.

“You’re delusional if you think I want someone else’s sloppy seconds,” Kairos snapped.

Amara sneered at him. “I am the Princess. I am your future wife—”

“Nothing about you is in my future,” Kairos snapped. “Consider the deal off.”

He turned on his heel and disappeared into the back of the house on that note. Amara was left screeching in anger behind him.

Kairos slunk off to the backyard, yanking his carton of human cigarettes out as he went. He shoved one in his mouth, flicked a flame between his fingers with magik and lit the thing. He sucked in enough smoke to make his head swim before he exhaled it all.

His father was going to kill him.

Kairos had explicitly been told that his marriage to the Luna Princess was a big deal to his father. The Luna Family was not only the ruling pack, but they were a pack of great power. There were rumors that powers unbeknownst to the common alpha could be unlocked if he married a Luna. High Alpha Moonraiser made it clear to his son that those powers were to be his. Whether Kairos liked it or not.

And Kairos had just told Amara the deal was off.

He sucked in another breath of smoke and stared into the sky. Why couldn’t he have just let her fuck him? He could’ve laid there and dreamt of someone else and made his father happy. But he didn’t.

Because it wasn’t right, he argued with himself. He inhaled more smoke. The fuck was even right anymore? He spent most of his time thinking of the weak, red-haired disaster than anything else. Her very prescience at the party had sent him into a tailspin. What was it about her that made him so angry?

He sucked the last of the cigarette and threw the butt out into the bushes. He tried to fish around for another one and came up empty. He cursed loudly, chucking the empty carton into the night before turning and storming back into his house.

He body-check a second year coming down the stairs as he made his way to him room. He was about to push his door in when it opened itself, surprising him as the person he wanted to see least was leaving.

“It’ll be fascinating to see what Kairos does with you in round two,” the heir to the throne said as she moved to leave his room.

“What I do with who?” Kairos barked. Amara looked like a kid caught in a candy jar. Her eyes blew wide as she realized who she was standing in front of.

Kairos looked around her. Sitting on his bed, shirtless, was some other Alpha he’d seen in passing. Slumped on the floor, was none other than Zora Smith. Maximus was curled around her protectively. The younger Moonbeam was also there, gnawing on her lip anxiously.

His eyes darted back to Maximus and Zora. The anger in him burst through his lips and he was yelling before he even had time to process what had happened.

“And what the fuck are you doing in my room?”