How To Rule ✅COMPLETE

The Mate Bond

Arion had never known fear till he saw his only child declare a rebel her mate. It seemed to be a proverbial kick to the nuts for all his bad deeds and its seems his punishment was catching up to him. As Arion looked at his daughter's face, watched how her eyes were fixed on the spymaster and only him, he knew he couldn't kill them though he wanted to so bad. The only other option was to set them free and one look at Rin he knew that is exaxtly what he had to do.

Everything was happening too fast for Tenen to process what was really going on. He was confused on his feelings on the matter; on one hand, he had just found his mate one he never thought he would ever do; and on the other she was his and his friends' enemies. How could he choose. Each choice seemed to hurt him one way or the other. The second choice was greatly influenced by the fact that she was Arion's phantom daughter who most thought was a myth. How could he accept anyone with an association much less blood ties to Arion the mad king.

Rin had imagined every scenario possible on the first meeting with her mate, how excited they would be to find each other but nothing came close to what she was feeling at the moment though, what she hadn't expected was to be pushed back and for him to cast aside their mating bond like an after-thought. It hurt. A lot.

Tenen did not know why he had just pushed his so called mate away instead of towards him. One look into her eyes and he instantly regretted it. He wanted to hold her but just as he was about to stand and walk towards her, Arion spoke.

'Release them. It seems your lives have been prolonged just a tiny bit all thanks to my daughter. Leave now before I change my mind.

Arion watched as each of them teleported back to their hideout no doubt. He tried tracking them but he hit a barrier each time. He almost smiled to himself, they were not fools as he had thought. The spymaster was the last to leave. He looked at Rin long and hard before he too disappeared and Arion was tempted to actually throw an arrow straight into his heart for daring to look at his daughter in such a way but if he did, Rin would hate him forever. He valued nothing above his daughter so he let it slide.

For now.

Immediately they arrived home, Tenen watched as Carinthia and Leah dragged Callum no doubt to the sick bay. He hoped his friend would be okay. No faery was ever the same if he lost his wings. He just hoped that would never happen. Callum was a fighter but there was a limit and this it might just be it. Tenen's thoughts did not stay long on Callum but slowly drifted back to his mate; he remembered her face, her scent, her smile and that's when he remembered he did not even know her name. This made him smile. How unusual, they did not even get a proper introduction yet he felt as though he had known her forever.

Rowan watched his friend smile at nothing and immediately knew he was thinking about his mate. Some things were predictable that way.

'Please don't go galavanting to the castle like a damn foolish knight just to see her.'

'Rowan , I have found my mate, not lost my mind.'

'They are one and the same if I remember correctly'

Tenen understood people's obsessions with being mated. He had never had that in his life, his friends helped but they were not the same. This was unconditional love programmed to last forever. He had always seeked it from his family who gave him nothing but pain as the scars on his body attested to; but now as he thought about it he knew he had been searching for the wrong thing. Was this exactly what he had been looking for?

Callum had been in pain since leaving the castle. He had barely been able to teleport from the castle and trying to hide his scent had drained all of his energy so much so that he was unable to heal himself. Lucky for him though the mage doctor they always kept around was able to restore his singed wings. He still remembered her words as she worked her magic.

'If you had been exposed just a little more to that fire wave your wings would have never recovered'

He shuddered to the thought of never flying again. Being grounded for the reminder of his life, a cripple in the eyes of his people and for the first time in his life he believed in luck. He would have even prayed to the unknown just to thank him but he was not foolish enough to believe such things existed. As he stood up getting ready to be discharged the alarms blared.

The intruder alarms.

Rowan made his way to the gates of their hideout. The alarm was going off, an intruder alert, had they finally been discovered. He was certain they had all gone to great lengths to conceal their scents when teleporting back making it hard for someone to actually track them so how had the intruder managed to bypass their precautionary steps. Was it the mad king? Come to squash their existence once and for all. Then he saw her and it all finally made sense.

Rin.

She must have followed Tenen using the mate pull to lead her exactly where he was. It wasn't her fault really; no one could resist the mate bond, not even her, a being of unknown power.

Every one of Rowan's guards seemed to have a weapon pointed at her, high on alert but she didn't notice or if she did she gave no indication that it bothered her. She looked too calm for having those many weapons pointed at her ready to end her life. Maybe they were useless and by the calmness in her stance Rowan was tempted to believe as such.

'Stop, don't attack'

To say the words shocked everyone was an understatement; much less that they came from the ever quiet, usually brooding spymaster, who rarely spoke much less shout. But everyone did lower their weapons; a command from the second-in-command was still a command.

Tenen didn't know how to react when he saw his mate at their hideout entrance as if waiting for an invitation to come in. what he did not expect was the pure raw anger coursing through his veins; but he suspected it had more to do with the many number of weapons pointed at her than her presence. He felt his ever control on his powers slipping and had not noticed when he had spoken. His words dripped with power and barely contained magic and even in battle no one had ever brought his powers so close to the surface before or as fast and he knew right then that what she was, was a mere liability. Too powerful that she even had control over his emotions though she was yet to know that.

'Hello mate and friends'