Page 69 of Queen Takes King
G inclined his head. “Ido.”
I waited, brow arched. “Well? Aren’t you going to tellme?”
“Xin and I are both older than Rik. Arguably stronger in some ways, though not in brute strength. But he’s stillalpha.”
“But you didn’t want to challenge Rik.Hewill.”
Guillaume gave one of his rare grins. “I can’t help that I’m smarter than heis.”
I rolled my eyes. “What’s that supposed tomean?”
“Go back to sleep,” Rik whispered against my ear, tucking my back against his chest. “You need your rest so you can start building thenest.”
Excitement surged through me, followed quickly by uneasiness. I didn’t quite know what this nest thing involved. But I wanted to try. I wanted my own place. “How am I supposed to sleep if I’m worried aboutyou?”
He bit my ear gently. “All will be well. Ipromise.”
And yeah, his promise was enough. I closed my eyes and sank back into dreamless rest, wrapped in my Bloods’arms.
Leviathan
Walking in weak winter sunshine, breathing fresh, crisp air, feeling the frozen earth beneath my feet, the promise of snowflakes on my face. So fuckingpriceless.
I’d forgotten the simple pleasures of beingalive.
I wanted to hate her. I hated myself for savoring her blood and allowing her to bondme.
It would have been easier to die. I should have rejected her blood and allowed her to leave me there on the mountain that had been my prison for so long. I could have died with my rage burning bright. I could have died hating her, righteous in my belief that she was the same as all the other queens who’d tried to freeme.
Only Shara Isador was not like otherqueens.
She’d freed me where all others had failed. And yeah, I fucking hated her for it, or at least tried to stoke my rage against her. I didn’t want to belong to her. I didn’t want to needher.
But the fucking honest truth… Now I needed her more than anything I’d ever needed in my entire miserableexistence.
Hope hurt. After endless millennia of despair, I dared hope again, and that glimmer of sunlight blinded and hurt with itsbrightness.
I dared to walk this earth again as a man. Not abeast.
Leviathan still crawled in my mind, twisting and snarling and raging at the gleaming moonlight bond she had looped around his neck. She’d freed me, the man, but imprisoned the beast with her magic. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t shift. She’d locked the vicious dragon inside me with her blood. Where other Blood gained a beast when their queen’s blood, I found myself looking back in themirror.
A man. Lines around my eyes and mouth, a hint of gray at my temples, betraying my age and the trials I had endured. Fresh scars on my throat, a testament to how near death I had been, even me, surely one of the oldest Aima still walking this earth. I had forgotten what I looked like without scales and claws. I was taller than I remembered. Bigger. Though perhaps that was the queen’s blood working its magic on me, because all her Blood were big and powerful. Especially thealpha.
I would have to deal with him, sooner thanlater.
Because I hungered. I burned with thirst, a weakness I despised. I wanted nothing more than her blood. Her power. And fuck, yes, her body. My queen. Mine. Atlast.
I would have to go to her. Bend knee. Offer throat. Submit. While every muscle in my body screamed indenial.
Leviathan, king of the depths, was no beggar. He did not ask. He took. He killed. Heraged.
Except I was not Leviathan now. I couldn’t even manage one claw without myqueen.
And oh, it galled. The loss of my beast stuck like a femur in my throat, even though that beast was what had kept me imprisoned for so long. I had everything I could possibly want: a new life, power,hope.
A newqueen.
Which choked most ofall.
