My Not Yet Mate

9

Chapter 9: Missing Lily

Lukas

Jo walked into his office without bothering to knock. He narrowed his eyes on her.

“Can you at least try to pretend like you know who’s in charge here?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I know who’s in charge here. I am,” she teased as she threw herself into the chair in front of his desk.

She slumped in it and he rolled his eyes.

“Glad to see Ethan has brought out your femininity, Jo.”

She snorted. “You should see us in bed. You’d really know who the woman was then.”

He stared at her, thinking about what she had just said, before shaking his head. He so did not want the image of Jo f**king Ethan doggy style in his head. Oh, Goddess.

“What the f**k you want, man? I’m working.”

She leaned over his desk and he tried to cover the papers he had been looking at. She snatched them off the desk and began to read them. He tried to grab them back, but she danced across the room out of his reach. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, knowing that in order to get them away from her, he would have to command her and he had only done that once, when it had come to Lily, that’s why they were such a strong team. They both trusted each other wholeheartedly and

without a doubt. She brought them back to him and held them out. He tried to take them, but she held onto them tight.

“You know Lukas, this isn’t forever. You take such good care of her already. I can’t even imagine anyone having the balls to come at her wrong when she becomes queen.”

With her sincere words, she let the papers go. He swallowed the lump in his throat and ran his fingers over Lily’s messy writing on the essay he had been reading. She had chosen to do her woman of rank assignment on Jo. He had been informed that Jo would be taking her out for an afternoon and his Beta had answered none of his questions when she had gotten home that night. Not one single f**king question. Not what they had talked about or even where she had taken Lily.

He had almost strangled her in frustration. He hated how everyone that was important to him had been around her, but he had to stay away. He had told the teacher that when the assignment was graded he wanted it, so she had sent it over. He had been reading it over and over again. He learned things about Jo that he had never known. He was happy that everyone had rallied around her, but the daily generic updates were driving him insane. He

cleared his throat.

“So, what do you want?”

“That whore has been here for 30 days, Luke. You said a day per picture. There were 12 pictures. When are you going to release her?”

“I’m not. She deserves this. She deserves more than this.”

“Luke, as king when you set a sentence, you should do your best to follow it. It doesn’t look good when you don’t.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “I know,” he growled. “But Goddess knows what else she did to Lily.”

“So, go ask. She can’t fight your aura. She will have to answer you.”

“Fine.” He got up and stomped to the door. He glared at her over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”

“That’s what he said.”

He threw his hands up in frustration. This woman and all her stupid jokes irritated him so much lately, but he knew he wouldn’t be making it without her. She walked silently beside him to the dungeons. The sounds of screams greeted their ears and he grinned evilly.

‘That’s right, scream bitch,‘ he thought to himself.

He missed Gideon, but this was better for them if he wasn’t constantly pushing Lukas to go steal Lily away from everything she knew. Lukas felt defeated and empty. It was starting to get to him. He didn’t know what else to do, except to punish everyone that had ever even had a bad thought

Chapter 9: Missing Lily

about his mate. They stopped outside of a cell where Andrea was shackled, bent over a table, fully nude. Her punishment for having nude photos of Lily had been to be used by his warriors. They had been having a lot of fun punishing her. Sometimes, they ran a train and even beat her while they tended to their needs. Currently, his gamma and four other men were in the cell with her. Lukas leaned against the wall and watched as they held her down. He let it go on for a few minutes before he spoke.

“Almost done, fellas?”

“Whenever you need us to be, King Lukas.”

“I will be back in five minutes. Make it count. Today she dies.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

He turned around to walk back to his office. Jo kept pace silently beside him. He picked up the manilla envelope that held the pictures of Lily. He couldn’t wait to burn them. Nobody should have seen her like that, not even him. They went back down to the cell and he chuckled when he saw the men had worked her over really well. She had black and purple bruises all over and she had blood pouring from her nose and mouth. Her right eye was swollen shut and she was laying in a puddle of vomit. Hmm, he hoped they enjoyed it. Jo opened the cell and they walked in.

He sat at the clean table in the corner while Jo dragged the sobbing woman over to it. Lukas calmly laid each and every picture of Lily out on the table in front of the woman. It was obvious that every picture had been taken in the gym locker rooms while she had been showering, unaware of what was going on. He clenched his jaw as the desire to choke the life out of her rose. He tapped the pictures.

“Why do you have these pictures of Lilianna?” She didn’t respond. He sat back in his chair. “You can tell me or I can make you. I’m really hoping you chose the latter.”

“My husband. He has a deformity kink. He gets off on females who have weird bodies,” she spat.

Gideon pushed forward and Lukas chuckled.

‘Good to know you’re paying attention buddy,’ Lukas told him.

“So, now you have brought my dragon to the surface. I hope you know that disrespect will not be tolerated, even without him. Lilianna is perfect and she is not deformed.”

“My husband seems to think otherwise. He is really attracted to her legs.”

“Why?”

“Her right leg is shorter than the left by almost three inches. That’s why it’s weak. Her mother tried to cut it off. She said it was better to have one leg than to be different in that way,” Andrea continued. “He would cum so-”

Gideon shifted Lukas hand and two of his talons went through her eyes. He sunk them all the way into her head until they exited the back of it. He pulled up and the whole top of her scalp lifted off, exposing the soft tissue of her brain inside. He gently removed her brain before flipping her over on the table. He put his hand through her breastbone and removed her heart. He set it beside the brain. Jo stood silently to the side, as he finished removing the rest of her organs, leaving the stomach and intestines alone. He got up to leave.

“Give those to the cooks. I want them raw for dinner. Clean up the body.”

He felt Gideon go back to sleep and he cursed. He needed to release some tension and he needed to do it now.

‘Cadence, come to my office. Immediately.‘

‘As you wish, Sire.‘

She was waiting for him outside of the door when he arrived. He clenched his jaw as he walked in. She followed behind him as he sat in his chair.

“Close the door and come here.” He waited for her to do what he said and to come over. “Get on your knees.”

She sank to her knees and he fisted his hand in her hair. He started to unzip his pants and stopped. He looked down at the woman knelt before him and his eyes slowly moved over her face. She had blue eyes and blonde hair just like Lily. She was beautiful and he knew that she could satisfy him, but she wasn’t Lily. He let her go and sat back. He turned his chair to face his desk.

“Get out!”

Chapter 9: Missing Lily

“Sire?”

“I SAID GET THE F**K OUT OF MY OFFICE, CADENCE!”

She scrambled to her feet and ran out of the room. Jo pushed the door open angrily, before slamming it closed. She stormed over to his desk and slapped him across the face. Her hand reared back again and he braced for the impact. At some point in her downward swing, she closed her fist and he was knocked backwards. He massaged his jaw as he glared at her.

“YOU F**KING IDIOT! WHAT DID YOU DO?”

“Nothing.

“THEN WHY IN THE HELL WAS THAT SLUT IN YOUR OFFICE?! YOU HAVE A F**KING MATE, LUKE!”

“I was going, too, but I couldn’t.” He picked his chair up and sat back down. “I miss her so much, Jo. This isn’t fair. All of you get to see her and get to know her. I didn’t get that chance before I took her home. Everything I know is secondhand. I want to talk to her. I want to be the one to hug her. I want to be the one to protect her, but I can’t.”

She sighed. “This isn’t going to be forever. When the time comes, you can tell her that you were the puppet master and we were just the means to accomplish everything.” She sat down on a chair. “You tell her that you paid for all of her food. That it was you that orchestrated the addressing of the school. You tell her that you love her and you tried so hard to do it from afar. You tell her that Gideon left you, because she wasn’t close. You tell her that every little thing was for her.”

“And what if she doesn’t want me, Jo? I’m not going to force her to be with me.”

“I wouldn’t think about that too much, Luke. The girl is enamored with you. There is no other way this plays out. Now, I have to go. Lily gets out of school in an hour. I will come check on you when I get back.”

“Alright. Be safe.” He sighed. “Give her a hug for me, Jo, and see how her day went.”

“Don’t I always?”

“Shut up!”

She held out the envelope of pictures to him. “Almost forgot when I was whooping your ass. Here ya go and also, I’ll be getting home late.”

“Where are you going?”

“To pick up that husband of hers and make sure I hunt down each and every picture of Lily.”

“Oh, f**k. I forgot.”

She rolled her eyes. “Men, I tell ya. That’s why I’m really the one in charge.”

“F**k you.”

She laughed as she walked out. Lukas reached down and got the box of her schoolwork he had taken. He needed this time without her to go faster. He couldn’t focus on anything and if it wasn’t for Jo, the Royal line would be failing, because of him. Before he met his sisters, he had been all business and rarely took any time for himself. When he met Lily, what little he thought he had been missing had been made clear was way more than he had thought. He ran his fingers over the self portrait she had done in school. She was really talented and he wanted to give her everything that would help her blossom with her art. It was very obvious that she was passionate about it. His suddenly ringing phone cut through his thoughts. He looked at the caller ID. Luis.

“Lily,” he whispered, panicked and snatched the phone up as he thought silently to himself, ‘Goddess, please, don’t let anything be wrong. My heart can’t take it.’