Page 12 of Lifeblood

Another flash of Gareth and me kissing on the ground last night flashed through my mind. I’d certainly felt his power then.

My cheeks flushed with warmth. Surely, Lance didn’t mean… Did he?

Lance winked. “Maybe you get to choose between us instead. A friendly competition of sorts, perhaps.”

Tristan snorted. “Okay, sure.”

Gareth looked ready to burst again, but Mordred spoke, drawing the room’s attention to him once more. “We can’t go to war over this woman, lifeblood or not.”

“No,” Lance said, all drawn out. “So let’s have somefuninstead.” His eyes roamed over my body, very clearly undressing me with his gaze.

I sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm the warming parts of my body. The memories of Gareth. The thought of Lance’s hands on mine, his finger on my mouth. All of them—together.

Together.

Four mates. I could not wrap my mind around it.

Tension filled the room now, but it was completely different than it had been before.

Mordred stepped off the dais and walked toward me. “This night has already gone too long. We have decisions to make. You’ll await those decisions alone.Safe. And do not try to run.”

“Again,” Gareth added.

“I won’t.” At this point—at a lot of points tonight—I had no other choice.

Mordred snapped his fingers. The demonic soldiers collected me with rough hands on my arms and drew me out of the room.

It was only then, in the sudden absence of their presence, that I realized how breathless they made me. And for completely different reasons than the ones with which I had entered that throne room.

CHAPTER4

The guards moved me to yet another floor of the Shard. I wasn’t allowed a reprieve from the rope binding my wrists, but I supposed I should be grateful it wasn’t hard, metal cuffs. The rope did sort of clash with the silver gown I had on, though.

Not even one of the guards talked to me save to bark orders about where to move and how fast, which made for a tense stroll through the Shard. When they finally opened a door to a room that’d been converted into something resembling a hotel room, they pushed me inside and locked the door behind me, my hands still bound.

I chewed the inside of my lip and rushed right to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side of the room. A bathroom existed off the main space along the way, but I paid it and the ornateness inside no mind. No amount of posh décor, finery, or gowns would ever erase in my mind everything I knew to be true about these four demon kings.

They kidnapped women through the wife lottery. Ravaged them, no matter how consensually, and then they disappeared. Forever.

Even if they had reasons—and they certainly sounded as though they believed they did—it didn’t change the fact that those women were gone. Always gone.

Of course, I now knew more things to be true about them. They—all of them somehow—were my mates.

Without realizing I’d done so, I touched my fingertips to my lips as Lance had. He’d seemed to accept this all the easiest, or at least with a solution-based attitude. His skin had felt like pure magic, and where he’d touched still tingled with eddies of energy. And his magic—oh, his magic. It’d felt like sunlight and spring had healed my cut skin and shone light into me again. A light I hadn’t realized I was so sorely lacking.

But then flashes of Gareth’s anger and possession seared the memory apart. His dragon’s smoke and hard body. Gods, he was attractive. Theyallwere in their own way. And while I could maybe leave it at that with the rest of them, I could not, after meeting him twice now, deny the way my body wanted to be closer to Gareth’s. Even now. Even after all that posturing and fury.

We had unfinishedphysicalbusiness, and the mate bond clearly understood that. And while it called for me to attend to that sort of business with all four of the demon kings, it burned brightest for Gareth in this moment.

“Fucking hell, Ava,” I whispered as I tore my bound hands away from my face. I continued on toward the windows and found what I’d been expecting: They didn’t open. At all.

Obviously.

There was no point sending guards in if there was nowhere I could go. Which meant this was probably reinforced glass. And while these demon kings might have remembered what magic a lifeblood had, the guards certainly didn’t—or they didn’t seem to care, either.

Light magic. My light magic wasn’t getting through reinforced glass and—

I’m not running.

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