Page 65 of Their Blood Queen

Tonight, the Dream Realm sucked me into it along with Scarlett, and that wasn’t on purpose.

Shadows skitter across my skin, enticing me with soft touches as I retreat. My power seems different when Scarlett is in the room. Everything is more effortless, and there’s a pull to stay that makes it hard to fight.

Something about Scarlett Nightingale is endless and extraordinary.

She isn’t entirely human. She can’t be.

I watch her as she searches the room for me. Observing her is a luxury in which I indulge. I appreciate how her lacy black dress with red highlights accents her hips and her curves. Her lips are ruby red as if she has dipped them in blood. Her hair is a similar vibrant color, and it glitters with complementing jewels and silver chains.

Breathtaking.

The Dream Realm slowly sinks around me as I concentrate and force my beast back. He’s satisfied to watch Scarlett and bask in her beauty, so he doesn’t fight me.

Just as well, because I need a minute. My dick throbs from the memory of Scarlett pressed up against me. It would be preferable that all of my subjects didn’t remember me with a raging hard-on.

There’s enough dream essence that no one pays attention to me. I’m a passing memory. Dreams exist in various states. There’s such a state when one is awake that is just out of reach, and I settle into that space while I gain my bearings.

Scarlett has unduly unsettled me. I have no doubt about her silent power as I watch her slide into the crowd that resumes socializing and exchanging fake pleasantries. My nightmare fog made them forget the last few moments where I had blanketed the entire room in darkness.

Scarlett seems unaffected by the memory-alteration magic. Her wide eyes scan the room with a bright spark of fear, but there’s curiosity in them, too. I give her credit for not cowering in terror like most mortals would when in my unleashed presence.

That alone proves my theory. There’s something hidden and buried deep inside of this female. I’m eager to carve my way to the pit of my little peach and find it.

It’s clear she doesn’t know she is something other. It would take more than just genetic manipulation to create whatever it is she has inside her soul.

Something dark.

Something that has no end to it like the center of a black hole. I’m well versed in the workings of the universe, but never have I encountered a creature with the same pull as that celestial object.

What are you, little star?

A smile tugs at my lips as I ruminate over the nickname I had instinctually chosen for her.

She’s a star indeed, one that is ready to implode and show the world her true power.

I have a feeling that if that happens, it might destroy her and everything about her that calls to me.

If she survives, I suspect that I could tap into that power, should she become my mate.

I can’t do it alone, I grieve. I would kill her before she has a chance to shine.

Even if she survives the explosion of her awakening, the frenzy of my beast in the aftermath would ensure she didn’t live very long. He would be drugged on such power.

My true nature would shred her to pieces. Not intentionally, of course, but there’s something fragile about the mortal frame she wears. My beast would take over, and there’d be no holding him back.

I would need another compatible monster mate, or two, to even out the score. There are a few monsters quietly in attendance at the fête, likely by invitation, but none of them are even close to the kind of bond I require. Scarlett Nightingale is a Goddess inside a mortal frame, and if I broke her, it would mean an eternity of damnation for a monster like me.

Fuck.

“I see you decided to attend, Sire,” Bernard murmurs from my side.

It says something that I hadn’t sensed his approach. No matter how distracting my little star might be, no one is silent enough to sneak up on my Dream Eater.

I glance at the male wearing a sharp suit, fitting for the night’s festivities, if not a smidge of Monster City’s style rather than the Elite’s. He is a monster, though. I don’t pretend to keep up with Elite fashions, but I know Bernard cares little for them. He resembles a shadow in a room of peacocks.

I like that about him.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have come,” I admit, turning back to the crowd.

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