Page 6 of The Alpha's Honor

Madison smiled at Duke from across the table, her teeth a perfect shade of pearl white. Next to him his parents were discussing the mating ceremony with her parents.

“Next weekend will be fine,” her father, alpha of their pride, said. “We’ll hold the ceremony here. There are banquet rooms large enough for both prides.”

“It’s lovely here,” Duke’s mom said.

“It’s run by humans,” Madison’s mom said with a slight sneer, “but they are very accommodating.”

“Because they’re afraid of us, Mother,” Madison said with a chuckle.

It had taken all of two seconds for Duke to know that he’d been entirely right about Madison before he even met her. She was pro-lion and anti-everything else, from other big cat shifters all the way down to humans, who she and her pride seemed to view as despicable. He briefly wondered if she realized that the bar was usually half-full of humans on any given night. Whatever she had against humans she’d have to get over. Although becoming alpha was what drove this mating in the first place, he enjoyed the bar and wanted to continue to see it thrive. He didn’t need a lioness coming in and scaring the humans off. They were a core piece of his business. Especially the females who came in on Fridays for the free drinks, and kept the unmated males in the pride occupied.

Not that any of his males would ever mate a human. Cross-mating with a human just simply wasn’t done. Pride law demanded that they mate within their own kind and produced pure race children so that their lines would continue on, undiluted. Hybrids, the mix of either two different shifters or a shifter and human, were thought of as second-class citizens, lower even than the humans themselves in the eyes of many lions. He supposed it was possible that a lion or lioness could find a heart-match with a human, but he’d never heard of it happening.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he turned his attention back to Madison, who was texting while she was talking to him about the ceremony and the mating night.

“I’ll have my things sent over this week,” she said, not looking up from her phone. “I’ll require the exclusive use of the master bedroom and bathroom, and if there isn’t enough closet space, you’ll need to fix that.”

His eye ticked. The alphas’ home was the center of pride territory, a large three-story mansion with eight bedrooms and a beautiful yard that he’d spent many precious years as a cub enjoying. The master was on the third floor, and his parents had designed the home themselves. They were planning to switch homes with him, taking his three-bedroom house after he mated Madison.

He stifled the urge to grab her phone and squeeze it until it cracked. Reminding himself that this was exactly what he’d wanted – a business-mating – he forced himself to smile. Madison didn’t want romance; she wanted power. And they were not so different, since he wanted that as well. Now that he was faced with tying himself to a female who didn’t appear to have a compassionate bone in her body, he wondered if being alpha was worth it.

Could he grow to love her? Could she?

“Cubs?” her mother asked, her manicured fingertips rubbing lightly on a strand of pearls.

“Two,” Madison said, glancing up. “Unless they’re both females. Iwillbear you a son to carry on the alphaship.”

Duke nodded.

“I think that’s all the details,” Madison said, rising to her feet. He stood, and they met next to the table. “You’re very handsome. We’ll have beautiful cubs.”

She closed her eyes and pursed her lips, and Duke squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment and told his disgruntled lion to shut up. The ridiculous beast had been snarling at him ever since he’d met Madison.

This is business. Don’t you want to be alpha?

He pressed his lips to Madison’s, and she purred softly.

“If you’ll sign here,” Abbie said quietly behind him.

Breaking the kiss, that had all the passion of a root canal, he turned and looked down at the contract. This was his future, all laid out in black and white. He was vowing to mate Madison in a week, and nothing short of death would break the contract. A roar of fury in his mind nearly brought him to his knees. It was as if his cat was begging himnotto sign.

“I was born for this,” he murmured.

“Were you?” Abbie asked, her gaze searching.

“What?” Madison asked. “Sign it already. I have an appointment at the spa.”

He didn’t voice how unhappy his cat was, because Duke was the boss of their lives, not the beast. After he mated Madison, and she wore his marks and they’d sealed their mating by having sex, his cat would fall in line.

Scribbling his signature on the line, he handed the pen to Madison. She had an elegant signature, which didn’t surprise him.

“There,” she said, leaving the pen on the contract, and turning to face him, “Make sure there are white roses in the master bedroom for our mating night. They’re my favorite.”

She tipped her cheek toward him and he kissed it. “Of course. Until next Saturday.”

“You have my number. You can text me anytime.”

With a wave of her fingers, she walked out with her mother. Her father stopped and shook Duke’s hand, and was gone just as quickly. Abbie gathered the contract and left, leaving Duke with his parents.

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