Read Online Return of the Assassin (All the King's Men) by Donya Lynne - Free Book Online

between the Vikings and the Spartans. The Octagon of death between the Romans and Saxons.
    Was this what Micah had gone through after losing Jackson? Or Katarina, for that matter? If so, he had a new respect for his old friend.
    Malek threw himself under the shower of water, which hadn't fully heated up. The cool flow spilled over him, matting his long, black hair to his face, neck, and shoulders as he leaned against the cold, tiled wall on outstretched arms and turned his head up into the falling water.
    He and Micah had been best friends once, a long time ago. In the Middle Ages, they had trained together and grown up side by side as warriors. They had been more like brothers than friends. No, their friendship ran much deeper than that. He and Micah were kindred souls, so close that their lives practically mirrored one another. What happened to one happened to the other. That was how it had always been between he and Micah. A testament they proved over and over, even when they both took mates at the same time. Micah had mated Katarina, and Malek had mated Carmen within months of one another. But the magic connection between them was also a curse. When Micah lost Kat, it had only been a matter of time before Carmen died, too. Malek had feared her time was coming and petitioned King Bain the First to allow him to change her. But that was before the laws regarding human mates had been changed to allow for such a contingency, and the king refused his request. Within days of receiving the king's reply, Carmen was gone.
    At least in Micah's case, Katarina had been a vampire. She'd had a chance of survival. Carmen had been human, which meant she'd had no chance. The stroke that took her life was an ailment she could have avoided had she been immortalized through his venom.
    If he had been allowed to turn Carmen, she might well still be with him today. Perhaps he should have done what Tristan had with Josie. She had been human, and he had broken the law to change her. And she wasn't even Tristan's bonded mate. Tristan had been punished, but look at him today. He still had Josie, and she was pregnant with his young.
    That could have been his life. He could have had that with Carmen. If only he hadn't been such a stickler for following the law, Carmen would still be alive today, and he never would have mated Gina, which meant he wouldn't be where he was right now. In hell.
    Malek sneered and ran his palm over his trimmed goatee as he recalled how many times he had been told how lucky he was that he wasn't a statistic for not dying after Carmen's death. Lucky? How could anyone call what he had gone through, as well as what he was going through now, lucky? If anything, he was cursed. To have to endure life without his mate was hell, even if he had avoided the worst by refusing to accept her death. But life has a way of catching up with you when you refuse to acknowledge it, and Malek's time had come.
    And it was Gina's fault. If she hadn't come tearing into his life, sniper rifle blazing, he wouldn't be in this fucked-up mess right now. She had shown up like a whirlwind of temptation, and Malek had immediately felt the connection between his soul and hers, just as he had when he met Carmen so long ago. He had been enthralled with her, unable to take his eyes off her or even leave her side while she had been held prisoner at AKM, but now he wished he had never met her.
    He gasped and bent forward, trying not to succumb to the calling—and to the suffering—he knew was destroying his nerves. He was without his mates—both of them. One he could no longer have, and another he refused to accept.
    Who was he kidding? He hungered for Gina in a way that traced back to the dawn of the vampire race. A male needed his mate as much as he needed blood, oxygen, and the darkness to survive. He was fucked. Either way he sliced it, he was way fucked. Not just a little, and not even a lot, but on a scale so large there wasn't a way to encompass its