Page 47 of Barons of Decay (Royals of Forsyth University #10)

"Enough," I say, voice low but sharp. "If anyone checks her, it’ll be me."

“And why should I allow that? You could be covering for your men.”

“Because she’s your niece,” I snap. “And although the Royals are lax on many things, I’d think you'd like a little decorum.”

Hexley pauses. His expression is unreadable for a beat. Then, he gives a grunt and steps back.

I kneel beside her. Her eyes are wet now, lashes spiked with tears she hasn’t let fall. "I don’t understand. Did I do something wrong?"

"It’s customary,” I explain. “It'll be quick. Just... breathe."

I watch her chest rise and fall with a quick inhalation. My fingers touch her thighs, smooth and supple with a vitality I haven’t known in years. She flinches, her legs pressing together involuntarily.

"Spread them," I say, trying to make my voice softer than what this moment deserves.

She obeys, just barely. Her skin is so soft it makes me furious. A child. Not in age, no, but in experience. Groomed to be bred like livestock.

I use two fingers to push aside the soft hair thatched above her sex, noticing the slick pink just underneath. Without warning, I press two fingers inside.

She cries out, jerking under my hand. Her back arches. It's instinct, not desire. She trembles violently. God, she's tight. Not just inexperience, but untouched. Utterly. No one else has been here. There's no denying it.

“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

The urge to beat Hexley to a pulp flashes through my mind, but I’m consumed by other wicked thoughts.

My pulse hammers in my throat. Something hot and shameful stirs in my belly as I think about how hard she’ll fight the invasion when it comes.

How she’ll clench, wrapping that sweet pussy around my– fuck .

I shove it down. Pulling away roughly, cool air meets the slick heat still coating my fingers. I leave her there, breathing hard. I nod to Graves and he quickly steps in, handing her the panties and skirt.

Her lip trembles but she won’t meet my eye.

"She’s a virgin," I say, rising to my feet. "Satisfied?"

Hexley exhales like he’s just completed a trade deal. "Good. Then everything proceeds as planned."

Behind me, Graves helps her sit up. "Get her dressed," I tell Graves.

He nods, moving quietly to her side.

Hexley claps a hand on my shoulder as he turns to leave. "She’s your responsibility now, King. Don’t let her forget who gave her to you."

I doubt she will.

And neither will I.

“It’s time.”

I’m starting to think this day will never end.

Graves stands in the doorway of my bathroom, holding a clean, black linen shirt.

I’d just stepped out of the shower–a futile attempt to remove the stench of the evening spent with the Dean.

With a towel wrapped around my hips, I wipe the steam off the bathroom mirror, revealing my face, and scrape the blade of the razor along my jaw.

“We could skip this, you know,” I suggest. “No one would ever be the wiser.”

“You would know.” The sympathy on my oldest friend’s face tries to be kind, but I see the truth: pity. “It’s tonight. Everything is prepared.”

Ignoring him, I dip the razor into the water, rinsing off the blade.

Unfortunately, Graves still wants to talk. “The dinner was…”

“Exhausting? Disturbing? A prequel to a five person murder-suicide?” By the time dinner was over, I was one second from wrapping my hands around the other man’s throat and putting us all out of our misery.

In my life I’ve never met such a pretentious, tone-deaf buffoon.

And I knew Rufus Ashby. But our deal isn’t complete until after the wedding, so I need him alive.

For now at least. And there has been a purpose to this arrangement all along, that’s the one thing keeping me going.

I almost gave it up after watching him hover over his niece’s exposed body, his meaty fingers preparing to touch her. Whatever happened at the Manor is their business, but once the girl took the oath and survived the hunt, she didn’t just become the Baroness, she became mine .

With or without a wedding.

“Adeline says everything is ready for tomorrow,” Graves’ voice interrupts my thoughts, in a clear attempt to change the topic. “The flowers are ordered and the sacraments ironed. She’ll pick up Arianette’s dress in the morning, which, by the way, I’m told is exquisite.”

A flash of black tulle bunched on the floor, along with the feel of soft pink lips buried under the dark nest of curls, slams into me. The blade flinches, nicking my throat.

“Dammit,” I mutter, splashing water on the cut and making it sting.

“Careful.”

“For the record, Adeline thinks everything she touches is exquisite.” I roll my eyes at him in the mirror. “That includes you. Did she try to get in your pants again?”

“No,” he makes a face. “She seems to have finally accepted that she's not my type.”

“It is your fault, you know.” I laugh, thinking how a tryst twenty years ago, during a historic hurricane, is still the cause of poor Adeline’s heartbreak. “You fucked her.”

“Timothy!” Graves hisses, looking over his shoulder as if someone could hear me. “That was a mistake during a night of a million, even more unforgivable, mistakes.”

Yes, what happened to Liberty Sinclaire that night is a black mark even for the Royals.

Although, ironically, the result of such treachery resulted in Ashby’s eventual downfall.

Delicious revenge, the kind usually reserved for macabre fairy tales, but I learned a long time ago that anything is possible in Forsyth.

Finished shaving, I wipe my face and chest with a towel, soaking up any excess water.

The cut is small, a thin line, and it seems to have stopped bleeding.

I take the shirt from Graves’ outstretched hand and pull it on over my head, then drop the towel and slip on the matching pants, knowing they won’t stay on long.

Running my hand through my hair, I meet Graves at the bookcase. “It’s going to be okay.”

Here we go.

“I never said it wouldn’t be.”

“I like her,” he admits. “She’s quirky and strong-willed. Eccentric, yes. But she wants to do this.”

This. What a resounding vote for marriage.

“She’s a child,” I remind him, reaching for the book, The Hexalogion: A Study of Forbidden Rites, giving the spine a sharp tug. “Who has no fucking clue what ‘this’ entails.”

The tight sensation of her pussy told that story alone. I probably should have had either DK or Hunter pop that, and then lie to her Uncle. Whatever, and however, they prepared her, it’s not going to be enough.

The hidden door springs open, revealing a staircase that leads to the underground.

“Regardless, the wedding takes place tomorrow, and this is part of the process.” His smile is sad. “It doesn’t have to be terrible, you know.”

So says a man without the blood of his family on his hands, or come tomorrow, a virgin’s blood on his dick.

“Goodnight, Graves. I’ll see you on the other side.”

My friend closes the door, and I start down the narrow stairwell alone, aware that with each step I’m moving that much closer to reality–to my future.

Even before I’ve descended fully into the ritual chamber beneath the House of Night, my skin prickles with a heat that makes the shower pointless.

I’m sweating, nauseated by the cloying scent of incense filling the air–crushed dahlias.

It’s claustrophobic, intentionally.

Each step is part of the ritual. Each breath, a letting go. Above, the House of Night slumbers behind its fortress walls. But here, beneath the surface, something stirs.

The chamber has been prepared: low-lit by red and violet candles, the scent of melted wax thick in the air.

Shadows dance across the carved symbols on the walls–old language, older meaning.

The altar is obsidian, oval with smooth edges.

Around it: five women, kneeling in a half-circle like offerings. Faces painted, bodies slick with oil.

My stomach turns at the sight. Not from disgust, although I’ve done my best throughout the years to maintain my vows to my wife.

No, from the familiar weight of bitterness crawling up my throat.

Like so many things about being the King to these people, this isn't about want. It’s about tradition.

About loyalty to a set of rules older than logic and far crueler.

Lore says that before the Black Wedding, the King must be cleansed of his past. That his sins must be scattered among the veiled, his soul stripped bare, scrubbed down with oil and lust and ancient ceremony.

So here I am.

Participating. Pretending.

Wishing I could drown myself in booze and drugs until none of it matters.

The altar waits. Cold stone like a funeral slab. I glance at the circle of women, each chosen, each disguised, each representing what I’m meant to leave behind.

Lust. Betrayal. Grief. Power. Silence.

Named for the sins I’ve committed, the pieces of myself I want to leave in the past.

Amber would’ve laughed at this.

No, she would’ve watched from the shadows.

Lips pursed. That dangerous, quiet sort of disdain in her eyes.

I’d always seen the fire in her–the difference.

I felt it in her body when we made love.

In her words when we fought. I didn’t know about her demons, not really.

I loved her, and I thought that love was enough.

She gave me Remy. And then… well, then she lost her mind.

“Cleanse me,” I whisper, not as a plea, but an invocation.

Lust rises, and she rids me of my clothes, pulling off the shirt and pants.

With hands, with tongue, with heat and submission.

My sins rise like steam off skin when she strokes me, working my cock into a hard weapon.

The ritual demands I break apart and with their help come back together again.

Ironic. Breaking is what I do best when it comes to women, to family.

I’m weak to her touch, thrusting hard into her hand. Crumbling in the same way I broke the vow to my first wife. I close my eyes and see Amber’s back instead–her walking out the door, Remy screaming behind her.

Grief joins in, touching my spine, warm and deliberate. Her tits are firm against my back, her hips a cradle. I don’t turn to face her. She whispers a name against my neck–my name, only different. Timothy , the way Amber used to say it when she was drunk or angry or wet. “ Let go .”

I jerk away like her voice burns me.

The third– Betrayal –slides between my knees and licks the salt from my skin like she’s a penance.

I don't stop her. I don't move, feeling the warmth of her mouth engulf me, shuddering between her red, soft lips. Rage simmers under my ribs. Not at her. At all of it. At how this isn’t sex. It’s theater.

It’s legacy. It’s me selling myself piece by piece just to keep the Barons’ name in blood and bone.

She brings me to the edge, they all do, drawing out something in me I’d long kept buried. But Betrayal isn’t the one to tip me over, that belongs to her.

Power.

She sits on the edge of the altar and spreads her legs wide. She looks straight at me. Daring. Unafraid.

She is not Amber.

She is not Arianette either.

She is every choice I made that led me here.

And when I take her–lining my cock up to her wet, slippery entrance, it’s hard and brutal, without ceremony, her nails clawing at my back. It isn’t about dominance.

It’s about defeat .

The last, Silence , stands. She doesn't touch me. Doesn't speak. Just kneels beside me when it's over, when I’m sweating and stained and hollowed out. Her fingers find mine and interlace.

“Are you clean now?” she whispers.

I almost laugh. But there’s nothing funny in my chest.

“No,” I breathe. “But I’m ready.”

Because it doesn’t matter how I feel.

Tomorrow I marry a girl whose eyes are too wide, whose skin is too warm and soft, whose spirit is lost in a web of trauma. She should belong to my son. She deserves better than this ritual. Better than me.

But she’ll get a king.

And kings do what’s necessary.

Even if it threatens to tear my soul apart.