A hundred years ago, this kind of thing would have been a different affair. The Pegasus virgin was usually unwilling, stolen, kidnapped, or sold by her father only because she had Creer blood in her, and he could charge a substantial amount for her.

A female Creer virgin had the carrier DNA that perfectly complemented the rulers of the Pegasus dynasty. Their child, girl or boy, born from her, was considered a lucky charm.

A hundred years ago, the Pegasus men would invite fellow members of the secret societies to a grand dinner where they would show off their virgin. The girl, because she was always unwilling, would be tied to a post, naked and admired as the revered virgin, while their guests sat down to a feast. When everyone left, and only the monks remained, the rulers of the Pegasus dynasty would flog her until the skin on her back was marked with an x, and their brand would be seared into her skin where the lines of the x met.

Things were more civilized now. She was there willingly. She understood what was going to happen to her. They had given her the courtesy of choice, although there was no one in existence who would defy their demands. Aston grinned to himself. He supposed that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. She was under the illusion of consent. It didn’t matter to them one way or the other.

Except she didn’t seem to like them very much, and they made that deduction without being able to see her eyes. Were it not for the mask, the glare aimed at them would be enough to incinerate them and all that while she was fighting the body from reacting to the tea she would have been given.

It was clear she was honoring her family by being here, more so her father, Jonathan Creer.

The poor man wanted nothing more than to reclaim the Creer name, and the only way he could do that was if they requested his daughter relinquish her innocence to them.

Although, the request was just polite phrasing for a demand. If Creer refused to give them his daughter, they would just take her from him. They still had enough of their ancestors’ barbaric tendencies running through their veins.

But for someone as beautiful as Winter, they had to wonder how Creer had managed to keep her a virgin. Did he lock her up and throw away the key? Of course, they still had to prove she was entirely untouched the old-fashioned way.

Aston couldn’t help but wonder if she despised them because they’d taken her life. The instant she’d been born, her path was set for her, which made her defiance even more appealing since she was doing all this for her family only.

If she’d had her own way, she would probably either gladly tell them to go and fuck themselves, or she wouldn’t have been there at all, dressed like a virgin siren. She was doing this for her father.

Family duty. Family obligation.

So were they.

Still, that didn’t take away from the fact that they’d never seen a female more beautiful in all their lives. There was an unconventional loveliness about her that stirred them.

Black, silky hair that hung down to her waist.

Her mouth was so soft that every breath she took whispered off the seam of luscious cushions and made them want to know what their cocks would feel like enveloped in those lush pink clouds she called her lips.

Every sumptuous curve of her body, the bleating pulse at her throat, and the rise and fall of her breasts were elements about her they couldn’t seem to ignore or harden themselves against.

She was not what they expected. But again, they hadn’t thought of the sacrificial virgin as anything more than a body whose innocence they would taint before they flooded her with their cum.

She was always just the girl they were going to fuck until she was pregnant. She didn’t matter beyond that.

As the rulers of the Pegasus Dynasty, it was their right and their privilege to spread her virgin folds and fill her cunt with their seed. The child born from her would be theirs to raise. And she would be forgotten in their minds.

Discarded.

Winter Creer was a vessel to them for nothing more than a ritual that was more than a few centuries old.

The Pegasus Dynasty was a family whose traditions spanned hundreds of years. Taking a virgin was meant to give them good luck. The blood of her innocence was said to be powerful enough to satiate the gods.

They were those gods.

And since she could only bleed for them once, it would be the child that she birthed that would make them eternal. Their DNA would live on forever.

His, Konnor’s, and Houston’s.

This was the only ritual they paid attention to and vowed to execute exactly as it was written in the scrolls.

They might have been momentarily affected by her, but she was only a tiny little pebble in a sea of boulders they had to move. They understood it, and the look that passed between them now said as much.

But something else passed between them in that gaze. A reckoning. It was the start of the grand plan, and it came with a moment of peace amongst them.

After a lifetime of training and induction, brutal initiations, and endurance testing, they would finally get what they deserved.