Page 3 of Queen Takes Blood
:She’ll be all that we’ve dreamed of and more,:he said inside my head.
Sharing blood formed a deep bond that allowed us to also share our thoughts. A wave of paralyzing terror washed through me. He knew everything. All my fears. The sense of loss gnawing away at my heart. The desperation burning in my veins. The countless doubts.
I’d already wasted too much time hunting dead thralls that might have absolutely nothing to do with a queen. I might have already led us too far astray from the destined path that would take us to her.
He trusted me, and I’d failed us both.
Fisting his hand in my hair, he jerked my face up so he could glare down at me. “You haven’t failed. Ever. I don’t trust anyone like I trust you. No fucking queen will ever change that.”
But she would inevitably change us. Everything would change. Some good, wonderful, even. We would never be the same. The power of a goddess’s daughter would flow in our veins.
But if I lost him, did I really want a queen?
Yes. Which only made me feel like shit.
“I want to be Blood as badly as you, you know.” Despite the fierce grip of his fingers in my hair, his body remained loose and lax beneath me. He didn’t want to challenge the alpha into a bloody fight. Only a bloody fuck. “We were born to be Blood. We’ve trained our entire life to protect our future queen. You never mislead me in that regard.”
Then why did rage strangle me? I wanted to slam my fists against the flimsy walls until the entire hotel lay in shambles around us. Tear the furniture apart. Overturn the vehicles parked outside. Heave them like a child’s toy down the side of the mountain and roar as they exploded into fireballs. Fury crawled through my veins, a simmering, roiling storm that threatened to level everything in its path.
Including our hopes and dreams. He was right. We’d trained our entire life to serve our queen.
Yet I had to fight down the urge to throw all that away just to have him to myself.
“Hey,” he whispered, giving my hair a playful tug. “I can take it, big guy. You can’t break me.”
“Oh yeah?” I said gruffly, trying to be the fierce, hard alpha. When all I wanted to do was hug him fiercely and beg him to tell me that it would all work out for the best.
Some fucking alpha I am.
* * *
DAIRE
Everyone thoughtit was fucking great to be the alpha. The big boss in charge. The one who cracked heads together and somehow managed to remain stoic even when everything sucked balls.
Rik tried to pretend he was a stone-cold badass but I knew him better than anyone. Inside that rocky, stern exterior, he was fucking terrified.
Terrified of losing me. Terrified of having to go back to New York City and become the next torture project in the basement of Skye Tower. Terrified of never finding our own queen to love and treasure.
Terrified that wewouldfind her, only to discover that our hopes and dreams were nothing but lies. That would hurt more than anything.
We’d spent years lying entwined together and dreaming of our future queen. Building her up to impossible levels. The most powerful queen in North America wouldn’t be able to stand up to her, and the old queens that ruled us through the Triune would tremble with dread. Yet she would love us as much as we loved her and do anything to keep us safe by her side.
A fairytale for sure.
We knew all too well the dark, horrible stories of queens driven mad by their own power. Entire families and towns wiped out in jealousy or to consolidate their power bases. Let alone the awful things that tended to happen to her Blood when a queen was so casually cruel.
Blood were expendable. For every queen there were a thousand warriors just begging for the chance to become her Blood. The more we bled, the more powerful she became. It was nothing for a queen to go through dozens of Blood in her lifetime.
Used. Tossed aside, broken and empty. Yet somehow still smiling in death because we had served her well.
That fate was more my speed than Rik’s. I liked being used and abused. Him, not so much.
A mountain of a man, he moved with single-minded purpose, radiating the kind of intensity that alphas possessed without even thinking about it. I’d taken one look at him striding down a random hallway in Skye Tower, a foot taller than all the other wanna-be Blood, his eyes chips of dark ice, his hands as big as dinner plates, and I was lost.
I wanted him to break me over those magnificent thighs and crack me wide open.
And he did exactly that. Repeatedly.
