Page 18 of Queen Takes Blood
“She’s using him to make herself, and him, and eventually us, indirectly, poisonous.”
The younger Blood shuddered. “Will she bite us too?”
I couldn’t abide his fears any longer. “Undoubtedly.”
The knight whirled toward me, a knife suddenly in his hand. A nice play, that. He must have blades tucked up beneath his sleeves in wrist sheaths. He swung at me smoothly. Razor-sharp steel flashed for my throat with enough force behind it to easily hack through my spine. Perhaps he was the infamous Executioner after all.
No matter. I leaned aside, letting his blade whisper past my throat unchecked. “Is that how you greet all her Blood?”
The younger Blood jumped to his feet, claws sprouting from his hands. “How the fuck did you get in?”
“I’m surprised it was so easy to approach her. But I suppose you are a bit… distracted at the moment.”
The knight stared at me, no doubt straining his senses to understand how I’d breached the queen’s meager protections without his notice. Not that he’d see much through my gift, especially if the queen didn’t bond me.
Meanwhile, his alpha died. The labored, wet sounds of his breathing slowed while his queen drained him to a shell. His heart struggled weakly. “Good. Welcome. Help. Them.”
An alpha worthy of respect. Keeping an eye on the feeding cobra, I neared the bed and dropped down beside him. The alpha offered his hand, so I clasped his fingers in mine, warrior to warrior. “I will help them and you in any way I can, alpha.”
Though my oath would be to the queen, not her alpha. I watched as she began transforming, scales rippling beneath her skin to reveal her true form. Her hair as black as her scales. Her curves as lush and sinuous as the cobra’s coils. Power rippled and swirled around her, eddies and riptide currents of which she didn’t seem to be aware. So fucking powerful. I’d not heard of a queen able to shift like this since… A cobra queen…
Cool, soft gray fog blanketed my mind.
The young Blood scrambled closer, jerked the alpha’s hand from mine, and hugged the alpha’s limp arm to his chest. “Shara, please. You have to save him. Shara!”
Blood dripping from her lips, she stretched as if waking from a dream. Dark, shining eyes sliced through me, a death knell that I could not avoid as easily as the knight’s lightning-fast strike.
Felled. Struck down. For a moment, my heart stuttered to a stop the same as her dead alpha. I had no defense against this queen. Not one.
“Shara!” The young Blood repeated.
She jerked her gaze away from me down to her alpha, releasing me from her deadly hold. My heart leaped into a frantic rhythm. Sweat beaded on my forehead and my fangs throbbed, startling me so badly that I couldn’t hold back a soft sound of distress. Luckily no one heard, or if they did, they spared me the shame of their notice.
Physical reactions in a queen’s presence had been beaten and drilled out of me long ago. I must be severely out of practice to allow such a crack in my reserves.
Desperate, I sought the peace and quiet of the mountains in my mind. The snow softly falling. My wolf’s soft fur, his mournful howl on the still night.
But it was too late.Hereyes stared back at me, even in my own mind. A burning darkness that seared me to ash.
She slashed her wrist and pressed her arm to the alpha’s mouth. Blood trickled from his cold lips and he didn’t respond, so she dripped blood over the brutal punctures in his stomach. Lightning crackled around her, enough power to light up all of San Francisco.
The alpha took a gasping breath and he lurched up to sink his fangs in her throat. She held him, stroking his back, crying while he fed.
More fucking tears.
I was not used to so much open, unreserved emotion. At all. But especially from a queen. No wonder my control over my own reactions had suffered.
Emotion was a weakness that others could exploit. A queen didn’t love. She didn’t feel. Or if she did, she only showed precious, trusted few such emotion in privacy. I had never been included in that company.
Yet this queen, Shara, openly wept before me, a stranger. She held her Blood close in her arms. He drank directly from her throat, nuzzling her bare, gleaming skin. It was so intimate and raw that I had to look away to compose myself.
I had never felt more like an intruder, in a place in which I certainly didn’t belong, yet simultaneously finding myself incapable of taking one step to withdraw.
“I’m so sorry. I thought it was a dream. I killed you. I can’t believe… I fucking killed you.”
Another shocking revelation that rocked me back on my heels. A queen never apologized for her actions. She needed. Her Blood provided whatever that need might be, even unto death. Bewildered, I glanced quickly at the knight, the next oldest in the room, only to be further shocked when he stepped closer and dropped to his knees beside me.
And fucking pressed his forehead to her bare thigh.
