Page 13 of Their Blood Queen

Glass shatters, and I realize I’ve destroyed the window in my suite overlooking the city. A powerful wind rushes into the room, sweeping my hair back from my face.

A roar rips from my throat as I’m cut off from the female who has decided to end her prayer. I’m taller now, fully extended in my eight-foot-nine frame.

“Cain!” Helia shouts in my face, startling me.

She’s somehow here, having traveled from Monster City to my suite.

She formed a portal.

She shouldn’t have done that. It’s a unique power that I had almost forgotten Helia even possessed. She’s one of the few powerful enough to have the ability in the first place, but it still severely drains her to use it.

It’s why we have trains.

It’s why we conserve resources and utilize reflections and mirrors.

“Helia, I’m sorry,” I say as I curl my fingers into fists. My claws dig into my skin, drawing dark blood.

My vision wavers as my beast clings to the mirror he found in that room.

He doesn’t want to leave her, but I know who she is now.

Because I created the blood contract that has made her desperate enough to pray to me for the first time.

And penning it might have been the biggest mistake of my life.

Because the blood on it is mine.

Binding me to its terms just as much as her.

“Who is Earl Rinhold?” Helia asks as she rests a hand on my shoulder. I’m slightly taller than her now.

It’s a miracle my teeth haven’t ripped into her throat to get her out of the way so I can scour the city for the female.

But I’m keeping a handle on my beast. He wasn’t supposed to come out, and he only slipped for a moment.

I pull him back in, inch by inch, while he’s distracted. Helia’s portal ripped open magic energies, giving me a wave to ride.

Thank you, I think at her, even though I know she can’t hear my words.

She doesn’t feed on prayers.

My monster doesn’t seem to notice as I slowly shrink in size.

And now he’s listening to the female with rapt attention as he slowly sinks into the back of my mind where Helia’s question rattles around like a bad omen.

“Who is Earl Rinhold?”

“A dead man,” I growl, even though I know I can’t kill him.

Not if this female whose prayers taste like peaches signs the contract.

It protects him for the duration of the courtship. And if she chooses to agree to the proposal after thirty days, the union will be permanently binding.

I can’t have her.

She’s not mine.

“Sign the fucking contract,” a male voice says, making my beast snarl with unfiltered rage.

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