Page 59 of Queen Takes Blood
Focus, damn it! Failure isn’t an option. You’re fucking alpha of House Isador. Fucking act like it.
“Esetta Isador sends you a prize, Your Majesty. An alpha male for you to do with as you please.”
Her eyes widened. “You want me to believe that the Isador queen sent meheralpha? Why?”
I ground my teeth together, letting her see my anguish. My rage. The beast hovering inside, threatening to demolish everything I held dear. “She has no further use for me, Your Majesty. She dismissed me.”
“You still carry Isador blood.”
Always. She’ll always be a part of me, no matter what happens.“I do. But I’m no longer…” I gulped. Growled. Sucked in a noisy breath of rage. “Hers.”
Her eyes gleamed like burnished gold coins. “I already have an alpha and my Furies. Male Blood—especially alphas—don’t fare well in my court.”
“So I hear,” I panted. “Yet here I am.”
She tapped her nails for several long moments, watching me through narrowed eyes. I couldn’t help but quiver and shake with every breath. Fighting every instinct I possessed to blaze into battle. Fight. Rend. Tear. Never surrender. Never kneel here and give myself to another queen. A queen I didn’t love. Would never love. I didn’t even—
My gryphon fell silent. Dead silent. No more talons and screams of fury. Its wings folded up tight. Beak forever closed.
Shrinking. Withering away to nothing.
Cold dread choked me.No. She’s not dead. This can’t be happening. It’s too soon!
I fell forward, bracing on my hands and knees. Trying to hold on to the tenuous bond in my head. Cradling the now tiny creature in mental palms, shielding its flame from the bitter blizzard of despair.
In my head, I saw Esetta again. Sitting on the chaise, her face buried in her hands. Her shorn hair lay in piles around her. Weeping, her back heaving with the force of her sobs. My beloved queen. She never cried.
I tried to reach her. Hold her. She must have felt me brush against her bond for she looked up, her eyes red and swollen, her mouth twisted open with her distress, gigantic fangs flashing as if even now, she hungered. Her hair was chopped shorter than Vega’s and in awkward, uneven clumps. Still the most beautiful woman who’d ever existed in this world.
The piles of hair began to disintegrate into fragile wisps of smoke, blowing away like dried up leaves. Dissolving into thin air. The choker of her hair around my throat loosened. Fell away. Gone. Her face wavered, her hands reaching toward me, even as her fingers began to fragment into dust and sand. Blowing away, lost on the winds of time. Her mouth opened. Her lips forming my name.Lew.
:Es—:I strained toward her so hard I felt something tear inside me. I didn’t fucking care. Her face blurred. Her eyes dimmed. The spark blown out like a candle.:E—:
I couldn’t say her name. It was gone. Her face wiped away, even in my memory. I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t hear her. Feel her. Anywhere.
“No!” I bellowed and thrashed, heaving desperately against the weight on my back. Something pinned me against the floor.
“Hold him! Grab his fucking legs.”
More weight. I arched my back so hard I bucked someone off. Punching. Biting. I still had fangs. I still had big fucking hands and long fucking legs to punch and kick. A hard head good for bashing. Though I ended up slamming my own head over and over again on the floor. Trying to crack my skull open. Desperate to follow her.Even unto death. Forever. You promised!
Lost in insanity. Or maybe I managed to knock myself out for a moment. Slowly, I came back into my battered body. My brain had splintered into a thousand pieces, slivers of glass that stabbed and sliced every time I tried to remember.My queen. Isador. Her name… Why can’t I fucking remember?
“What the fuck happened?” That was Vega’s voice. Close to my head. Skye’s alpha. I could remember her. But my queen…
An avalanche of broken glass shifted inside me, making my entire body twitch like a live wire jolted me with a million bolts.
“Whose Blood is he?” Keisha fucking Skye asked.
I bared my fangs and shredded my lip with rage.I can remember her fucking name but not my queen’s.
“He said Isador.”
“That’s very interesting,” Keisha said slowly, drawing each word out. “A former Blood from a dead court.”
Dying inside.She’s not dead. My queen. She can’t be.
Gingerly, I felt around inside my mind, trying to find her bond. I remembered touching her Blood bond before. Gliding like a deep velvet river, sinuous curves winding through my every thought. Now, only emptiness stretched inside me. Hallways littered with broken glass and sand blowing into a deserted, abandoned house.
