The Honorable Beta (The Kingdom of Pacchia 3)

By Lia Cooper

Love...Duty...Honor...
With the court on the edge of chaos, Sir Elsa Riven and the Honorable Winston Dupuis find themselves caught between lust and duty as they chaperone King Aubrey and Lord Riven's continuing courtship. What began as a release of sexual tension soon consumes the alpha and beta.

But social mores are against them. A relationship of any legality is impossible, and the two must decide what is worth fighting for and what is worth letting ago as winter settles over the Kingdom of Pacchia.

Contains A/B/O dynamics, including a relationship between a male beta (human biological cis male) and a female alpha (externally appears female but reproductively male).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lia Cooper
• Release date: Mar 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311230485

Lia Cooper

Lia Cooper is a twentysomething native of the Pacific Northwest, a voracious reader and an enthusiastic writer. She wrote her first short story when she was seven. THE DUALITY PARADIGM is her first published full length novel.She enjoys binge watching shows on Netflix, all-but-living in her local coffee shop, and drinking americanos. Lia cheers for the Chicago Blackhawks, rereads Pride & Prejudice every year, and is still bitterly disappointed over the cancellation of Stargate Atlantis (shhh).The complete BLOOD & BONE Trilogy now available!

Book preview

THE HONORABLE BETA

The Kingdom of Pacchia Book 3

Lia Cooper

DISCLAIMER This work contains language and sexual content that may not be suitable for readers under 18. This work contains EXPLICIT SEXUAL  MALE/MALE CONTENT. Not your cup of tea? Don’t read it. Otherwise, please enjoy.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE HONORABLE BETA. Copyright © 2015 by K C Rumsey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission.

Cooper, Lia (2015-12-11). THE HONORABLE BETA, THE KINGDOM OF PACCHIA BOOK THREE. The Spec Press. Second Edition.

All rights reserved.

Other Works by Lia Cooper

Blood & Bone Series

The Duality Paradigm (Book One)

The Convergence Theory (Book Two)

The Symbiotic Law (Book Three)

A Sanguin Solution (Book Four coming in 2016!)

Lachlan Graham, Occult Investigations

Book One Coming Soon!

The Kingdom of Pacchia Series

The Omega Prince (Book One)

All the King’s Men (Book Two)

The Honorable Beta (Book Three)

The Line of Allora (Book Four) Coming May 2016

Stand Alone Titles

Ava, Sublime (Contemporary Menage M/M/F Literary Short)

The Source & the Wire (M/M Soulbonding Contemporary Magical Realism)

Cold Press (Palouse County #1 M/M Contemporary Holiday Novella)

Complete Works can be found on Lia’s Website:

http://liacooperwrites.wordpress.com/books/

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CHAPTER ONE

Ashes

She had scarcely been able to make herself fall asleep, too excited by the prospect of presents and the birthday breakfast that awaited her on the morrow.

Cook always fixed all of her favorites for her birthday dinner; so she knew that there would be sweet, flat cakes—so thin you could almost see through them—filled with fruit and cream, and round cut pieces of pork fried until they curled up at the edges and tasted crispy between her teeth, and perhaps even a cup of hot cider because she was turning nine, which seemed to the young Elsa Riven, to be very old indeed.

Quite close to ten if nothing else, and a part of Elsa thought very highly of the age ten.

So, perhaps mother would allow her a cup of hot cider at her ninth birthday breakfast if it were watered down, since she was now much closer to if not quite at ten years of age. That seemed an acceptable compromise.

She had desired, had begged—though not cried—to be allowed to stay up all night. Had offered to sit a spell on the watch with the other young men and women who had to sit at guard duty, so long as it meant she did not have to go to bed and sleep.

But of course neither of her parents could be persuaded to her point of view, and off to bed with her governess she had been sent, the lady taking extra pains that evening to brush Elsa’s blonde curls until they gleamed and bounced around her face before wrapping them up in rag ribbons so that she would have less work taming them for her birthday breakfast.

And into bed the lady had tucked her, offering to tell her a story even though Elsa had declined the offer, stating that she was quite old enough now to go to bed without stories. She was not a baby any longer. She would be nine on the morrow, very nearly ten. And that was important.

So her governess had blown out her candles and cracked her window to let in a cool breeze, just the way little Elsa Riven preferred it, and left her to sleep. And though the girl had struggled against it, inevitably, her young eyes had dipped closed and her head had sagged against her pillow so that before too long she was carried off into fuzzy dreams about little piglets running around Farmer Eiron’s barnyard.

Except in the dream, the scene shifted, so that when she looked up towards the barn, she was dismayed to see it on fire and—

Someone grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from her bed with a shout. Elsa screamed and struggled against those strange, harsh hands until she woke up enough to recognize the pale face of her older brother: Dierik.

He was not her oldest brother, she had Albert and Ernulf who were both older than Dierik, and then of course she had her older sister Lena who was older than both Dierik and Ernulf, which meant that Dierik was the closest to her in age, though he had always seemed much older than Elsa herself—very quiet and stern and prone to disappearing into the woods to hunt.

But, seeing as they were technically the closet in age, their bedrooms both connected to the little room that had served as both schoolroom and and playroom for all of the Riven children.

All of that did not explain why Dierik had come and woken her up by dragging her from her bed—unless, perhaps she had slept later than she meant to and he had been sent to retrieve her for her birthday breakfast!

Elsa screamed when she saw the smoke choking the air and her brother clapped his hand over her mouth. Her eyes stung as he pulled her across the floor, and she found herself clinging to his nightshirt, feeling much younger than nine—almost ten!—years old, tears dampening her face.

She did not come back to herself until much later, damp and dirty, covered in soot, and holding onto Dierik’s hand hard enough that the bones in her fingers ached, watching the servants fight the flames engulfing their manor house with buckets as the the sky began to lighten from black to blue across the wide, barren flats.

CHAPTER TWO

Hounds & Horses

After a quick bite of dinner in the communal hall, Sir Elsa Riven had attempted to retire to the suite of bedrooms assigned to herself and her brother, only to be arrested by the noises issuing from Dierik’s room. Spinning on her heal, she retreated first to the end of the hall where she stood for some minutes, rather dumbfounded but not particularly surprised—feeling pleased, if she were perfectly honest—and considered her options.

She ended up in the stables, where at least it was warm and there was no one present who would ask her unwanted questions or expect her to make small talk. Elsa considered herself an amiable young alpha, far more so than her brother, but still she had not had a great opportunity to develop the skill of shmoozing everyone who crossed her path with inane small talk as some of the competitors in the Tri-fête had.

Elsa preferred to rely on a little talk, full of substance, and a frank earnestness of character to make her friends.

She settled herself on a bale of hay outside the series of stalls assigned to the Rivens’ horses. This included her three mounts, as well as Dierik’s charger, and her squire’s light horse, as well as a few others that had been used to carry their little amount of luggage from House Riven all the way here, to the Castle Lyle in the far south of Pacchia.

She gave a brief thought to warning her squire away from the rooms but it was late and she had already given the lad the next few days off, and anyway, he had been sleeping with the guardsmen in the station house six nights out of seven since their arrival. It was unlikely that he would report to them at this hour. And if he did, she would hope that Allen had enough common sense not to enter if his knock received no answer. Or at the very least, to recognize the sound of a good fucking and make himself scarce.

Oh.

A familiar voice made Elsa look up to see the Honorable Winston Dupuis haloed by the overhead lanterns, his hair burning like a red flame around his face.

I did not expect anyone this late except the stable boys.

She waved her hand at the empty aisle. Close enough, I suspect. And felt a curl of shame at the clipped tone of her reply.

Winston’s mouth pressed into a narrow line and his brows pulled over his brown eyes.

Elsa hated the tension that had sprung up between them in the past few days. A weed planted by a silly comment that she hadn’t given much thought about, but which the beta had taken question his ability as a rider, merely as a fighter. He did not have the combat training that she herself did, nor the experience on the battlefield possessed by her brother. Winston’s had been a life cultivated at court, and while there may be no better rider in all of Pacchia, she had not seen enough—or any—of his swordsmanship, and she had not been able to stomach the thought of losing a man she considered a friend due to recklessness, sending him on a mission for which he was ill-equipped.

Whatever her intentions, however well meant, they had not been kindly received by the Hon. Winston and he seemed intent on taking everything she