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He was still oblivious to my presence, deeply engaged in conversation with the winged faerie at his side.

The beast in my lower belly roared, twisting and flinching as hazy thoughts began to intrude upon my mind.

I was less than five feet away from him, and he hadn’t noticed me. Hadn’t scented me. Hadn’t felt me the way I could feel him.

High Mother spare me, I even felt Wren’s presence. But the High King was ignorant to my own—his mate?

Wren was still watching me as the girl climbed him like he was a tree.

A tree she put her mouth on andsucked.

I looked down, studying the way my feet were positioned on the ground. Putting all of my energy and focus on the left one, I willed it to move. I had to leave, had to get out of there.

He moaned.

The sound intertwined itself with every cell in my being, shaking me to my very core.

My head shot up, eyes racing to find his face again.

The girl had buried her head against Wren’s neck, nibbling on the erogenous zone beneath his ear where his jugular vein protruded. His head was tilted back, eyes hooded and mouth open as another soul-destroying moan of pleasure rumbled out of him and punched me in the stomach.

Heat flooded me. In my core, down through my chest, across my face. Even my bones felt hot.

The sound was everything. The dawn of time, the end of the world, and every moment in between.

It was rough and deep and guttural. I could have sworn my ears pricked the way the High Fae’s did, aching to hear him again.

His hands fell limply to his sides, palms facing the roof, and though his eyes became unclear and unsteady as the molten gold flashed like fireworks, he tried his best to hold my stare as the girl began to grind against his lap, moving up and down on a part of his body I couldn’t see, her mouth still fixed around his neck as she sucked, and—

Blood.

There was blood on his chest.

Chapter forty-two

Vampyr

The sight of Wren’sblood spilling down his chest slapped me back to reality, and my muscles loosened up enough to pry my thighs apart from where they were pressed together. I almost fell over, but a hand caught my wrist.

“Vampyr,” Morgoya whispered in my ear.

Blood-sucking creatures that could only be killed by a wooden stake, depending on the version of mythology being read. I was familiar enough with the different records to understand that Wren was not in danger; he was enjoying the experience of being fed from—and most likely fucked at the same time—and the simmering heat started to blaze through my veins again.

The High Lady began to guide me across the room, back the way I’d come.

I fumbled for my voice, furiously tearing through memories to bring up the name of my mate. “Lucais—”

“He’ll be preoccupied tonight,” she murmured, linking her elbow with mine for support as my steps became clumsy and leaden over the slick floor. “They both will. This is probably not the best event to have you sitting in his lap.”

With Morgoya leading the way, we slipped through the crowd twice as fast as I did by myself, and she steered me towards a couch opposite the dais on the other side of the room. I sank into it, feeling my muscles tense against the soft pillows as if they’d been longing for something else.

“Preoccupied with what?” I dared to ask.

The High Lady adjusted the transparent lace skirts of her black gown before she sat down in a nearby armchair, and I could’ve sworn her eyes darkened with chagrin as she glanced towards the High King. “Business, I suppose,” she muttered. “For the record,” she went on, turning her steely gaze on me, “I told them that this was a terrible idea.”

“Didn’t you arrange it?” I questioned, but as soon as the words were out, I realised that I’d misunderstood her meaning. “Oh. The…girls.”

There were, in fact, multiple of them. I assumed they were all Vampyrs, based on their colourless skin and shadowy hair, and the way they pawed at Wren’s body like seductive predators while two drank from either side of his neck, and the third licked his chest and stomach clean from the spill.