Page 39 of Queen Takes Rook
I finally took pity on Ezra and released Rik so I could jam my fangs into my bear’s forearm. He bellowed and jerked against me. “Sweet fucking goddess, finally.”
He felt like a hot flood inside me, wave after wave of his release filling me. For the first time having sex with one, or many, of my Blood, I felt rather sticky when we all tumbled down onto the mattress.
Panting in a sweaty pile with my Blood, I closed my eyes. This. I had to remember moments like this. No matter how badly the fight against Keisha Skye or Marne Ceresa went. No matter how soon I had to strike Ra down and risk the cost of Coatlicue’s red serpent of death. This love made everything worth it.
I could only wish that if one of us had to die, that I could go with him to whatever afterlife Isis had planned for us.
“Never,” Rik murmured against my ear, tugging me up on his chest. “You must live. You must continue Isis’s line. Think of your surviving Blood, my queen. Think of how they would suffer if you walked away to the afterlife and left them suffering without you.”
“I know,” I whispered, my heart cracking into a thousand pieces. No, actually, it was only a few pieces. Nine for my Blood. Gina, Winston, and Frank. Mayte. And Xochitl. Fourteen.
My family.
The curtains at the window billowed out, even though the windows were shut and there was no breeze. As if a ghost lingered near the glass, always keeping watch over me.
It had to be my mother, Esetta Isador, her name forbidden to anyone still living. She’d often left me signs that she was with me. If she watched over me, then I also had to count Typhon, father of monsters, the god who sired me. Selena, my aunt who raised me as her own outside a nest, alone and powerless, with her human lover, Alan Dalton. They all four died so I might live. Eighteen pieces of my shattered heart.
All so I could be here. Wrapped in sweaty muscle and fuzzy chest hair and listening to my purring warcat.
“May we join you, my queen?” Nevarre asked.
I smiled at the rest of my Blood, who waited at the door for permission to join me. “Please. As many of you as will fit.”
They all moved at once, jamming together in a knot of eager, belligerent men. Each wanted to be the first to reach me, in the hopes that maybe I’d take him next.
Mehen finally broke free of the pack and leaped for the bed. Only he had the extremely bad fortune of landing on the crack between the two large mattresses.
Since we were in the middle of the room…
Nothing held the two mattresses together.
He slipped down into the crevice spreading between the mattresses. With a yell, he scrambled and flailed, grabbing at the bedding, but instead, he seized a handful of Daire’s hair, and pulled him down on top of him.
“Get the fuck off me,” Mehen growled.
Daire was laughing so hard that he couldn’t breathe. “I can’t. The bed ate us.”
It took Itztli and Tlacel both to haul Daire up out of the tangle of bedding between the mattresses. Mehen crawled out from the space with as much dignity as possible. While the other Blood shoved the two halves back together again, he watched, arms crossed, nose in the air.
“Leviathan, king of the depths, is not eaten by beds. No. He destroys beds. He breaks them into kindling.”
“No, that was me,” Rik said, laughing. “The first time I shifted into a rock troll. We should keep track of how many beds we destroy in our efforts to please our queen.”
My Blood crowded close while Rik pulled me up onto his chest, very carefully avoiding the crack so the bed couldn’t eat us, too.
Mehen stood defiant and arrogant at the edge of the bed.
My lips quirked, and I held my hand out to him.
He lunged for me, snatched me up against him, and tried to roll me beneath him.
Though my alpha refused to let go of me. Not that Mehen minded fucking me on top of my alpha.
Not at all.
16
Shara
