Page 146 of On Wings of Blood

CHAPTER 32 - BLAKE

I’d been coming to The Drained Rose long enough to know that most of the time you just had to look away. Madame Illustrawantedyou to look away. Sometimes her girls– and boys–had rough customers, and it usually wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle. Hell, some of them liked it that way.

Most of Madame’s workers enjoyed what they did. The low level coercion that we highbloods had spun over the blightborn in Veilmar and the rest of Sangratha made mortals more pliable to suggestion. But they still had a measure of free will. If one wanted to feed, one needed the blightborn to be willing–or one had to overpower them or use thrallweave. Something which most highbloods had no qualms about.

In any case, I was used to hearing the sounds of rough feeding and even rougher sex.

But this was different. The sounds were different.

And then I’d heard Pendragon scream.

Now I took in the scene, my heart pounding.

Pendragon, her cloak ripped off, her hair wild, cascading down her back.

Her dress was torn. It was fuckingtorn. I saw red.

The highblood brute had hardly noticed me. He still had his hands all over her. Clawing, pawing at her, his intentions sickeningly clear.

“Get your own girl, my friend,” the highblood called back over his shoulder. “I've found myself a new girl and she's mine.”

Mine.

Mine.

Mine.

The word echoed in my head and fire erupted in my veins.

“I’m not your fucking friend.”

I launched myself at him, moving faster than I ever had in my life.

One moment, the highblood was latched onto Pendragon like a leech. The next I had ripped him away, my hand twisting into the man’s collar as I hurled him against the wall with all my strength.

He was older than me. Probably stronger.

But not now. Not tonight.

Mine, he had said. Mine.

The sickening sound of bones cracking echoed through the room. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

The blood pounded in my ears as the man crumpled to the floor, dazed but still alive.

That simply wouldn't do.

Mine, he had said. Mine.

She wasn’t his. She was mine. Fuckingmine.

I didn’t know why I knew it with such certainty then but I did. The word pounded through my blood. It spread through my bones.Mine.

Medra Pendragon was mine. And I was prepared to die before I let any harm come to her.

She was mine before we’d even met. Even when she hadn’t known it yet. She was mine and I was hers.

It didn’t matter if she believed it. If she accepted it. It didn’t matter if she hated me. I’d believe it enough for both of us. She was mine and she always would be.

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