OBSESSION Read online

  OBSESSION

  DANI WYATT

  NIKOLAI ANDREW

  Copyright © 2022

  by Dani Wyatt & Nikolai Andrew

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places,

  events and incidents are either the products

  of the author’s imagination

  or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  Editing Nicci Haydon

  CONTENTS

  Stalkers welcome

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

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  About Dani

  About Nikolai

  Thank You to Every Reader

  Dedicated to love. That’s enough.

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  Now, let’s get on with the show…

  CHAPTER 1

  Anika

  “I doubt anyone is forcing my brother Maskim to go. Or wear something ridiculous like this dress.” I glared at it as though it was my sworn enemy even though it was blindingly beautiful. The venom I spewed about my attire barely distracted me from my thundering heart, calling him my brother instead of my...

  Maria shrugged. “You know your brother—”

  “Step brother,” I corrected her but I was honestly more correcting myself. The thoughts I had for him were unseemly enough. As the blood rushed to my face, I tried to channel it into anger and a childish tantrum. “If nobody is making him go, then they can’t make me either!”

  “Your mother insists—”

  “I don’t care what my mother says!” I shouted, throwing my arms wide. Maria frowned and I instantly felt guilty. She was my best friend, and right now I was treating her like just another servant. “Sorry, it’s not your fault.”

  She sighed. “I know you don’t like it, but you know how she is about these things. And if you’re not ready…”

  “You’re the one who’ll get it in the neck. I know, I know. What is this dreadful event about anyway?”

  Maria glanced at the door, then crossed the room to come closer, lowering her voice. She was at least six inches shorter than me, and plump in the kind of way my mother wished I could be. My mother made no secret of the fact she disapproved of my looks. She probably wished I had hair more like my maid’s as well, brown and elegant, pulled back in a neat braid down her back instead of wild, loose and as red as fox fur.

  My father’s hair.

  My real father, that is. The one who went off to war before I was born and never came back. The man who sounded a lot like me, from the stories I’d heard.

  Perhaps if he’d lived, I’d just be a foreign dignitary in this country, free to love whoever I want. Maksim would not be my brother by every law under the sun.

  Who knows, maybe he’d even like me, and not treat me like the dirt he just wiped off his boot.

  “Nobody seems to know,” Maria said. “Maybe some of the guards to the king and queen, but not anyone I have a chance of speaking with. All I’ve heard is that it’s a delegation from Nemenia, and I’m to make sure you look pretty when they arrive.”

  I laughed. “Pretty? What am I, five?”

  “Those are my instructions. From your mother. The queen.”

  “Nobody thinks I’m pretty, Maria. Nobody ever has and nobody ever will. Whatever this thing is, I’ll go if it makes my mother happy but I won’t wear this.”

  I stared at the dress in the mirror, all puffed sleeves and blue velvet, frills at the bust to draw attention to what exactly? No amount of padding and shaping was going to give me the kind of breasts the court thought womanly. My mother didn’t even buy me this dress. It came from one of my apparent suitors.

  Yuck, even the idea of being tied to a man made me shiver with disgust.

  Most men anyway. But there was no point thinking about him. My stepbrother. He hated me, and sometimes how I wished the feeling was mutual.

  But, it is not.

  “Well, you can’t wear breeches and a man’s shirt,” Maria said in frustration. “Pick something your mother will at least grudgingly accept. Please. Just think, Maksim might be there. If he is, you want to look—”

  “I don’t care,” I said, feigning disinterest. “If he’s there or not, I don’t care. He wouldn’t even notice if I was naked.”

  The very idea. Naked with him…

  I shivered.

  “I think he would notice that,” Maria said with a deep breath. “I think he’d notice a lot.”

  “I don’t. And I don’t care anyway.”

  “Then do it for me.”

  “Ugh, very well.” I tried to control my breathing, still stuck in the fantasy of being naked with him. What would I see in his eyes? “I’ll wear the gray one.”

  “The gray one? That…it’s like a fabric box!”

  “I’ll allow you to cinch it at the waist. But not too much.”

  “Oh good, aren’t I lucky?” Maria put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes. A dark shape flitted past the window behind her, drawing my eye, and a shiver raced through me.

  It was probably just a bird. A grouse or bustard, most likely. But it could have been Eyrie.

  My mom’s eagle always gave me the creeps. Something about the way he stared at me whenever I was around, almost disapprovingly, like he shared my mother’s opinion of the way I dressed and behaved.

  Or perhaps he guessed my unhealthy infatuation.

  Like Falroy, my fox, Eyrie was her animal companion, a special bond that went beyond owner and pet. Although my people weren’t able to talk with animals, exactly, some of us were able to communicate after a fashion, with a thought or a feeling, and there were those of us who formed a special lifelong bond with one animal in particular. For my mother, her eagle found her when she was fifteen. The story goes that Eyrie pecked out the eyes of a boy who was paying her the kind of attention she didn’t like. Falroy, my fox, on the other hand, was injured in the woods and I found and helped him. Those bonds marked me and my mother as outsiders in this magicless country, and should have made our familial bond stronger. But ever since we arrived in this place, all we’d done was grow further apart.

  Eyrie stayed in my mother’s suite in the castle, and was given the freedom to come and go thr
ough the open windows at will.

  Falroy was forced to remain outside and find shelter for himself.

  “The gray,” I said decisively, suddenly needing to be out of there. “Go fetch it.”

  Maria narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but I held my nerve. Sometimes, being the princess had its advantages. She would be forced to back down.

  Eventually.

  After a long, awkward silence, she finally huffed. “Fine. Wait here, your majesty.”

  I ignored the sarcasm in her voice and watched her go through the door to my parlor and from there to my dressing room. As soon as she was out of sight, I slipped out of the room, checked nobody was around, and ran, ignoring Maria’s annoyed shouts from behind as she tried to chase after me.

  She wouldn’t catch me, that much I knew. I was faster than any of the servants, and with more stamina. In fact, even with the dress restricting every movement I could probably give the guards themselves a run for their money if I had to. Outside in the courtyard, I concentrated hard, forcing my mind to calm, and silently called for my fox as I ran for the small gap in the wall he’d shown me just two weeks after our arrival in Estana.

  As soon as I heard the familiar chirrup of his voice, I felt the smile slide over my face.

  Back in my home country, they said that familiars and humans bonded based on personality more than anything else. I liked to think that my driving need for freedom brought me to Falroy that day in the woods, my need for freedom just like a wild fox running over the countryside. Though what that said about my mother and Eyrie, I’m not sure.

  Falroy led the way through the tiny gap and I wriggled through behind, soon finding ourselves on the other side of the wall, and from there heading quickly through the city streets and into the forest.

  CHAPTER 2

  Maksim

  The head jailer could barely meet my eyes as he told me it was the prisoner’s last request, mumbling something about bad luck if we don’t honor our obligations to the condemned. Thatcher, one of my chief advisers, coughed out a laugh as the silence stretched.

  “Well you’d better read the letter then,” I grunted, pushing aside more important paperwork.

  The truth was, I hated executions. I found them distasteful. But if this bandit who’d been condemned for a week thought some last-minute plea would save him from his fate, he was mistaken.

  “Yes, sir. Actually it’s more of a note than a letter—” The jailer made a squeak in the back of his throat as he met my eyes. Fumbling in his pocket, he drew out a scrap of paper that looked like it had been used to wrap cheese, unfolding it and gulping back dryness as he started to read haltingly, his literacy skills severely lacking. “For the ear of, um, P…rin…ce… Prince Maksim, the one true king of Estana,” he began, and I frowned. This again? “It has been my honor and pleasure to serve you, as my father served your father before us. I’m not afraid to die for my beliefs. All I ask is that you consider one final plea: find Raul, your father’s last master of arms. He was young when he was driven away, and he lives still. He will welcome you. There was a time when Estanian royals were trained to the highest standards. You will need those skills to retake the throne. When I am hanged on the morrow, it will be with a glad heart if I know that this kingdom will be restored.”

  “Who is this man?” I asked when he folded the paper back up again, before he could flee from my sight.

  “He wouldn’t give us his name, sir.”

  “Was he tortured?” Thatcher asked, picking dirt from under his fingernails.

  “No, sir, but—”

  “Well then, that’s your answer. The jail has become more like a free inn lately. Three meals a day, a comfortable place to sleep. It’s a wonder they aren’t lining up outside the city walls, trying to persuade us they’ve committed some crime or other.”

  I glared at Thatcher. It was on my orders that torture was ended five years ago.

  “He doesn’t write like a bandit,” I said to the jailer. “There’s nothing else you can tell us?”

  He shook his head and I sighed.

  The reference to the one true king was nothing more than a conspiracy theory, a rumor that my uncle, the king, killed my father to take his place. It was completely untrue, I knew that for a fact. Did these people not think I’d spoken to every retainer who was around at the time? My father’s death by drowning was tragic, my uncle’s distress at the loss of his brother was genuine. The throne went to him legitimately, and even if it hadn’t I had no interest in it.

  My position as trusted administrator and future heir held more power than the title of king.

  “Delay his execution,” I said, and Thatcher’s jaw nearly hit the floor.

  “That’s not a good—”

  “Do it,” I told the jailer, cutting Thatcher off. I never liked the weasely man, and I had more authority than him. “The sentence isn’t being commuted. This isn’t a pardon. The execution will still go ahead, I simply want to speak with him myself, that’s all. I want to find out where these people are holed up and break up their little band of brothers once and for all. I would come and speak to him today but the king and queen have insisted that I attend some stuffy banquet or other with a delegation from Nemenia, so it will have to wait. Set that up please.”

  Thatcher glared at me. “Bad idea. Any prisoner who wants to make trouble will know they can just send a message to you. You’ll be inundated. We already have a problem with highwaymen attacking travelers on the roads every other day. Do you really want to encourage them?”

  “You can go now,” I told the jailer, treating Thatcher with the contempt I always felt towards him. “What’s next on the agenda?”

  As the jailer went out through the door, a guard rushed inside past him. The man was young, maybe in his mid-twenties, and I only half recognized him. Andrew? Alfred? Something with an A. I made a point to know all the guards by name as quickly as possible, my style of leadership being more hands-on than most of the others in the court, but this one hadn’t been here long enough.

  “Sir.” He stood to attention, addressing me and ignoring Thatcher. I liked the man already.

  “At ease, soldier. Tell me your name.”

  “Aidan, sir. It’s about your sister.”

  For a moment, I forgot myself. My cock, which I was usually able to forget entirely, started to engorge at the mere mention of Anika. She wasn’t my sister by any relationship of blood. I was adopted by my uncle after my father’s death and Anika was the child of her mother’s first marriage before she became my uncle’s wife. Still, from the moment I saw her, Anika obliterated all other concerns. I knew that I’d burn down the kingdom to grab a fistful of that fiery hair and force her to her knees in front of me.

  That very fact made her dangerous. And put her in danger. Both of which had my fingers twisting into fists.

  “What’s that fucking nuisance done now?” I asked, feigning disgust. Nobody could know how I truly felt about her. Any fucker who had designs on my position would see her as a legitimate target, and I couldn’t allow that. “Can’t her mother deal with her?”

  Aidan shook his head, and my heart thundered.

  Get on with it, man, I thought. Tell me what she needs and I’ll get it for her.

  “She’s escaped the castle, sir.”

  Thatcher sniffed a laugh, and part of me wanted to grab him and throw him out the window. A little morning defenestration to calm my nerves.

  I growled, channeling my anger into looking frustrated. “Meeting over. I’ll find her myself, and when I do there’ll be hell to pay.”

  I just hope I can keep myself under control this time.

  CHAPTER 3

  Maksim

  I dismounted deep in the forest, about a hundred yards from the abandoned stables where I knew Anika always tacked up when she wanted to hunt on her own. They had once been the stables to a royal palace that stood here in the forest, but that was many centuries ago. Nothing now remained of that old palace except this r
uined building, a place with a reputation for being haunted that kept away those who might otherwise try to steal the stones to make piggeries and cow-sheds.

  Tying my horse to a nearby beech tree, I spotted a pair of small, curious eyes in the thicket between me and the old stables. I couldn’t help the grin spreading on my face. Anika’s pet fox, Falroy, followed her everywhere, and I’d grown fond of him myself. After all, he watched out for what mattered most to me. He’d gotten plenty used to seeing me, too, so that he didn’t even run when he found me watching. But he was still her fox, and I knew that bribes helped me keep cover. I didn’t fully understand how the communication between them worked, but for all I knew it was only the treats that kept him from giving away my secrets. From my pocket, I took a piece of dried meat and tossed it to him. He chased it down with a flick of his tail and a rustle of leaves.

  Keeping my footsteps soft and steady on the low carpet of ferns, I went around the back of the stables, where a crumbled wall let me get inside without Anika knowing.

  I could just barely hear her whispering to her mare, a gift from me, and one I partly regretted since the horse was swift and light-footed, making her fucking difficult to track.