Page 36 of To Bleed A Kingdom

Amara and I share another smirk and I reach for Tristan, wrapping my arms around the back of his neck and dragging him down for a loud smack of a kiss on his marked cheek. “You know you love us.”

Chapter 7

Darius

Surrounded by gray slate in a minimally adorned room, I ignore the clash of steel on steel from the outdoor training grounds below where I sit behind the desk in my private office in the tower of the Guards Base. Griffin and Kace stand silently beside me, their thoughts as turbulent as my own as I glare at the iron knob attached to the lone wooden door, willing it to move with my thoughts alone.

Frustration mounting with every moment that passes without a knock to my door, I roll my neck in a futile effort to release the tightening in my neck, my mind wandering to the events of the night prior.

After Griffin voiced his suspicions of Lena and her companions last night, I spent the entirety of the walk back to the palace castigating myself for my blindness. By the time I finally arrived in my chambers, I fell into bed exhausted, but my mind refused to succumb to its body's needs. Thoughts fixated on the mysterious woman to the point of obsession, I replayed every detail of our encounter. Every smile, every change of tone, every finger twitch, in an attempt to catalog and decipher the words she said, and most importantly, the ones she did not.

Thoughts swirling with question after question, I tossed and turned throughout the night. When I eventually did manage to sleep, she plagued that realm as well. With dreams filled with silky black hair, tan smooth skin, and brilliant amethyst eyes, my suspicions fell to the wayside as I envisioned every filthy way I'd feed this irrational craving for a woman I know nothing about. By the time dawn's light began to flood my chambers, I felt as if I had just shut my eyes. Stumbling from bed with a sluggish mind and bloodshot eyes, I proceeded to dress with a stiff cock that refused to soften despite my relentless ministrations. With how poorly the day began, I should have foreseen its downhill trajectory.

Griffin, Kace, and I arranged to meet first thing this morning to question the guards who had assaulted our mysterious visitors. Even though Lena and her friends fed us nothing but half-truths, we all agreed their recounting of the incident was too sincere to have been faked. In this matter, her intentions for Seboia are inconsequential. No one, whether friend or foe, deserves to be touched without their permission. But my determination to weed out the culprits has been thwarted at every turn. Each guard we've interviewed so far not only strongly denied the accusations, but had no recollection of any outsiders entering the city. Normally in this type of situation I would believe the words of my guards and backtrack to the accuser, but Trip – who doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body – specifically said a guard asked him to escort them from the entrance. I could assume the guards forgot, but Lena isn’t someone you could simply forget. After much thought, the only plausible explanation I can come up with is that my guards are lying.

Hence my irritation at having to wait over an hour for one of the last remaining guards to grace us with his presence.

A double knock at the door interrupts my turbulent thoughts. “Enter.”

At the turn of the knob, a large, brown haired and brown-eyedshifter fae enters the room.“Captain,” he says in greeting, then nods to both Griffin and Kace. “Commanders.”

“Sit, Ajax,” I command.

The boy, only a few years past manhood, pauses at my clipped tone before calmly shutting the door and seating himself in the chair before my desk. “What did you need to see me about, Sir?”

“When you were on duty yesterday, do you recall a group of foreigners entering the city? Their group consisted of three humans and an immortal shifter. They are…” I pause to peer up at the ceiling, searching for the words to best describe the strange party. “They may have seemed a bit odd. Especially the two women.”

He chuckles. “I remember them.”

Having no patience left to give, I get straight to the point. “Were the women touched inappropriately?”

His eyes drop to my chest, throat bobbing on a swallow as he speaks in a hushed tone. “Yes, Sir.”

Clenching my jaw, I ask through gritted teeth, “Did you touch them inappropriately?”

His head whips up. “No!”

“Did you attempt to stop the others from violating them?”

“No.”

“Did you plan to report this behavior?”

“No.”

I stiffen. “Why the fuck not?”

He shrugs, his brow pinched. “They handled them just fine on their own.”

Wrong answer.

Palms glittering orange, I summon a strand of fire. The flamed thread winds between my fingers as I flatten my palms on the desk and stand. It untwines, slithers down the back of my hand, then races across the desk towards Ajax. Rising up until it's only an inch from his face, the flame curls into itself and sputters a hiss. A viper preparing to strike.

Ajax warily arches back into his chair, his copper jewels flickering as his gaze hones in on the flamed serpent.

“Your duty as a guard is to protect. Even in the event your skills are unnecessary,” I growl. “Yet you did nothing as your fellow guards attempted to molest,” my lip curls in a sneer, “unarmed women, and you had no plans to report it.” Bending my arms, I lower my head to his. “What kind of guard does that make you? What kind of male?” I allow the insult to fester before adding, “You may not have participated in the act, but you’re just as guilty as the guards who did.”

He shows no reaction, his brown eyes bouncing between my furious ones. Searching for what, I don't know, but I don’t give a shit either.

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