Page 24 of Queen Takes Checkmate
“Already done, Your Majesty,” Winston said as Rik carried me down the hallway. “The car is waiting downstairs, and Magnum assured me a suite will be ready for your new sibling as well.”
I yawned and almost cracked my jaw. “Out of curiosity, how many bedrooms does my mother’s house have?”
“Ten, though several of the rooms are configured to accommodate many more people. I’m sure you could find a bed for at least thirty people.”
“So many? Did she ever use them for siblings, or were they for her Blood?”
“You’re very like your mother in that regard, Your Majesty. They—”
A crash had us all whirling around. Rik crushed me to his chest. Daire and Itztli both crouched, hackles rising.
Only to see my dragon glaring with disgust as he tried to slide down the hallway without damaging anything else.
Daire made a coughing rattle that was evidently the warcat’s laughter.:Yo, dickhead, I don’t think the engineers designed this building for dragons. Why the fuck don’t you shift before you bring the roof down on our heads?:
:I can’t shift, asswipe, until I’ve digested some of the Skye sibs. My belly already hurts. It’ll probably explode if I try to shift to human form.:
I tried to imagine proud, arrogant Mehen strutting down the hall with a massive food-baby stomach, and I burst into laughter. It was a macabre thing to laugh about—because those werepeoplein his belly—but it was still funny as hell. My eyes started to water, which only made me laugh harder. If I’d been standing up, I probably would have sunk to the floor as tension flowed out of me.
It’d been such a dangerous, nerve-wracking trip. I’d almost lost Rik. We all could have died. A little laughter was the perfect medicine. Even if Mehen destroyed the whole building.
“He already tore a hole in the roof,” Guillaume reminded me, sending me into another peal of laughter.
“I hate this fucking building anyway,” I gasped out. “Tear it all down. I don’t give a fuck one way or the other.”
Chuckling, Llewellyn raised a hand, waiting for my amusement to quiet. “There’s no need to destroy the whole building. As you saw earlier, the gryphon is also a large winged beast with a bloodthirsty appetite, though not as immense as our dragon friend. There’s an easy path back to the roof that he demolished here, and I can show him where the roof access is at the Isador house. The entire top floor is open and spacious for exactly this reason.”
:But I don’t want to be separated from you, even by so much as a single story of your house,:Mehen growled in my head.
“Then you shouldn’t have eaten so much,” Rik said, making me giggle again.
Mehen glared at him, which only made me laugh harder.
Llewellyn stepped closer and leaned down to lightly press his forehead to mine. “By your leave, Your Majesty, I’ll accompany the dragon and stay with him at least until he can shift.”
I cupped Llewellyn’s cheek. “No.” His eyes widened, but he didn’t object. None of them would refuse an order from me. Though I didn’t keep him in suspense long. “Go with him now and show him the roof access. But someone else can stay with him tonight. I want you to come to me as soon as you’re both safely back. I need to be sure you’re healed and well-fed, along with Ezra and Rik.”
“Then you’re going to need to feed deeply yourself,” Rik said, his tone as close to an order as he dared get with his queen.
My fangs ached with anticipation.
“I’ll babysit the dragon on first watch.” Guillaume said, not even flinching when the dragon snapped his jaws a hair’s breadth away from his ear. “Then when someone’s recovered enough to walk, come relieve me.”
Llewellyn’s eyes started to swirl with flecks again. “You feed so deeply that your Blood can’t walk afterward?”
Daire started purring. Loudly.:Among other things. Our queen’s hungers are ravenous.:
My cheeks heated, and I shrugged sheepishly. “I’ll try to take it easy on you.”
Llewellyn threw his head back and roared with laughter. Now it was my turn to glare a bit, though I was more embarrassed than angry. This man could have been my father, if my mother had been able to conceive with her alpha. I still couldn’t quite get my mind wrapped around that aspect of our relationship and all that entailed. I might chicken out in the end and not take him to my bed.
His laughter stilled immediately, and he met my gaze, his eyes burning almost completely red gold. “You misunderstand me, my queen. I beg you to take me, anyway you wish, and the last thing on my mind is worry that you might use me too hard or take me too far. That would be impossible. I laugh only because I am so happy and blessed to have such a queen. After so many years in House Skye, I thought I’d never be able to laugh again. Let alone love.”
I softened the glare, and now the moisture in my eyes was for an entirely different reason than uncontrollable laughter. “Then let’s make sure you laugh and love as much as possible.”
“Long live our queen,” my Blood said in unison.
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