Page 4 of Lifeblood

“Ava, no!” Maria shouted.

I glanced at her over my shoulder. “I’d do anything for you and your family. And I should’ve done this decades ago. Please just go, be safe.”

Fresh tears fell down my best friend’s eyes. Her mother and sister joined her, and as they embraced, I felt a shallow slice across my palm. I hissed as pain seared hot and my silver blood spilled.

It was done. No more hiding.

“Holy shit,” one of the guards exclaimed.

I swallowed hard and turned back to them. “I told you. Now take me in her place. In all their places.”

“Ava!” Maria protested, but her mother held her back.

“Stay safe,” I said to her as I kept holding the guard’s gaze. Daring him to move. To still take Maria instead.

He wouldn’t.

Hecouldn’t.

The demon kings needed the blood of a lifeblood to maintain their immortality. And as far as I knew, the last time they’d had the blood of my kind had been nearly two hundred years ago. When I’d been a kid. When all the lifebloods had been killed by the very same demon kings and their four Demon Courts.

The taller guard touched his earpiece and whispered something I couldn’t quite make out. The guards around him seemed to all be privy to the conversation because despite the shock on their faces, they nodded in agreement and then stiffened. All in unison.

Who were they listening to? The kings themselves, maybe?

A flash of them licking their lips, ready to drink my silver blood, seared my mind. I blinked it away, willing my mind—and my anxieties—to stay in the moment.

The taller guard withdrew a bandage from his tactical vest and held it out to me. “You’ll come with us. Wrap your hand.” Then, to Maria, “You can go. All of the women can.”

I took it and did so but pulsed some healing magic into my hand first. Just last night, my silver blood had dotted a park path on the other side of London during my rendezvous with the King of the Brimstone Court. Now more had been spilt here.

Neither I nor the guards could afford for more silver blood to be wasted.

As soon as my hand was healed and bandaged to cover the dried silver blood, the guards swarmed me, binding me with ropes.

It was only then, as I was being hauled away from my best friend and her family, that I realized the crowd around us had gone silent. That they’d all watched the entire exchange.

That many had seen my silver blood.

If any of them knew what a lifeblood was,everythingwas about to change.

CHAPTER2

The demonic soldiers, though they appeared human like the demon kings, hauled me away without regard for how many were watching this unprecedented event unfold. Plenty of women had volunteered in place of fellow loved ones. But what I’d done, revealing myself as a lifeblood, showing the entire world I was still alive, was something that hadn’t ever occurred.

So I couldn’t say I blamed the guards for hurrying me off stage, least of all so aggressively. I’d avoided this very moment for two hundred years, and now this dereliction of duty—or at the very least, the pain I could’ve saved hundreds of women—was on display for all to see. This show was meant to be for the demon kings and them alone.

Shame and guilt washed over me, mingling with anger and a raw need for vengeance that maybe I either didn’t deserve or simply hadn’t been mine to begin with. I didn’twantto spend the rest of my life, however short that may prove to be, at the hands of these four demon kings, being bled for my immortality-giving silver blood. Or to become a pleasure toy of theirs, like it was rumored the other women had become. I was more than sure a few would’ve fallen to the demon king’s attractiveness, to their position and power, and became more and more willing over time.

But not me. I’dneverbecome willing.

Or maybe I was trying to convince myself of this. Just last night I’d run into the demonic King of the Court of Brimstone. It’d been a thieving job gone wrong. I’d been toldadiplomat from the Court of Brimstone would be leaving their room unattended for a few hours. But the third-party intel had neglected to mention that that diplomat had actually beentheking.

And, apparently, my mate. Partially, at least. Our meeting had been brief but full, revealing a hallow-feeling mate bond between us that’d pulled us together. I could still feel the brush of his lips on mine, the warmth of his breath on my ear.

The feel of his beard tickling my cheeks.

And the full weight of him pressing me into the ground, holding me hostage.

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