Page 205 of A Bond in Blood

“This is not what I was expecting when I came to a funeral.” She approached Olen, stroking his fur gently.

The fur on his back rippled at her touch and his sorrowful eyes stared at me.

“Olen?” I asked.

Titania’s head snapped to the creature then back to me and she grinned. “My Gods, she does not know.”

“Know what?” I jerked in Bjorn’s hold, but he held firm.

Titania stroked Olen again and the beast snarled.

“Do not bite, king,” she purred. “You areminenow.”

King?

Her guards clambered into the room, two of them holding the bird in their hands. I bit back my amusement that they struggled with such a small animal. Until they threw the bird, and I cried out at its broken wing when it landed at my feet.

“You monsters!” I yelled.

“We are not the monsters,” Titania laughed. “These two are the monsters.”

I didn’t understand who the second person she referred to was until the bird before me was shifting. Its bones transformed from wings and a body covered in feathers to elongating limbs.

I stepped back when the naked man stood before me with one arm dangling from the break Titania’s guards had caused.

His dark skin was one I knew too intimately.

His uninked skin.

Olen.

“This isn’t possible!” I shouted, staring at Olen in beast-form beside Titania.

The queen laughed again, slapping the beast on the back. “You are an expert in manipulation, Ulrich. I will give you that.”

“Brenna,” Olen’s voice before me was a warning. “Stay quiet.”

“No!” I refused

Bjorn released me, retreating away as I stepped around Olen and moved to the beast. I was almost beside him when Titania’s guards shoved me away, pressing their swords into my side. I pushed them away, trying to get to the beast. Its eyes were wide with me just an arm’s length from it, but the guard’s gripped me before I could touch that fur I’d grown to love.

“Let me tell you a story,” the queen began. Her guards continued to push me away from the beast staring at me with sorrow in its eyes.

“Millennia ago, abeastof shadows appeared in our world. Followed by a court of monsters. Creatures we had never seen before.” She stroked the black fur.

“He was terrifying and amazing. A being I had never encountered in my long life. And his inked skin—”

My stomach dropped.

“Gods did I want it.”

She gripped the fur on the beast’s neck. “He came with a group of them. Monsters and a few who could shift into anything they wanted.” She pointed to Olen.

“I was a lonely wife. He was a lonely man. Confiding in me that he had left a kingdom in ruin. In death, betrayal, and bloodshed. Only bringing those he could save. Allowing his own world to fall into the hands of a tyrant.”

The beast’s eyes dropped in shame.

“I fell for him so quickly, Brenna. Gods did I fall. He was the new breath of air that I needed. But when I confessed that love?” Her gaze turned hateful. “He refused. He refused me. He refused my plan to turn my terrifying lover into our world’s new king. Mocking me in every sense of the word.”

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