Page 11

A screech ripped through the silent night, tearing through my dreams. I jolted awake into utter darkness. My breath caught in my chest. I pulled the cloak that had become my blanket tighter around my shoulders. It smelled less and less like the Lords of Dusk and Dawn, but when I closed my eyes and breathed in, the lingering traces of spice and smoke still clung to it.

Whatever was out there in the darkness, whatever hellbeast, wasn’t the real threat. We had traveled alongside that for days.

I couldn’t see any of the vampires. Couldn’t see much of anything beyond the twinkle of stars above. Vampires didn’t need warmth or light, so they didn’t bother with fires. A dozen warriors could stand at the end of my wagon, staring right back into my unseeing eyes, and I wouldn’t know.

I didn’t think anyone was there. I couldn’t hear breathing or footsteps, but they could hide that. Still, I didn’t sense anything. Maybe it was instinct, the same one that sent a prickle across my skin whenever someone watched me.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood.

Like that .

I swallowed, my heart kicking into a pounding rhythm. I clenched my fists. I would not panic. Hysteria was never the right answer when a predator watched. That only excited them. I had no interest in seeing the Lord of Dusk and Dawn’s black-eyed gazes again.

Light flared before me, a small rune of shadows that ruptured the air before bursting into flame. Two sets of eyes caught the glow. Luc stood at the end of my wagon, the runelight hovering above his raised hand. Behind him, Jules lounged with his back against a log, watching.

Both their gazes fixed on me, silver and gold irises reduced to thin rings around blackened pupils.

“Good morning, Miss Halloran,” Luc drawled. “Sleep well?”

Thankfully, fear had locked my muscles too tight to shudder at his dulcet tones. “Well enough. Good morning.” Shit. Wrong order. It was too early to form a sentence. “Is it morning? Seems a bit dark for a morning.”

Luc’s lip twitched at my babbling. I think. His smirks were hard enough to catch in daylight, much less in the dark. “The sun will rise in less than an hour. This is close enough to count.”

“Will we be—” I swallowed and tried to wet my lips, but my mouth was too dry. “Are we leaving?”

“Soon.” Luc’s gaze dropped to my bobbing throat. He didn’t glance back up. His eyes had been black before because of the low light, but now a different sort of hunger stared back at me.

Jules propped one elbow on the log. “Join us for breakfast.”

Every part of me tensed, equal parts fear and anticipation. I swallowed again. Stars, I needed some water. “For breakfast or for breakfast?”

“The first,” Luc said, extending a hand. “Unfortunately.”

My stomach flipped. Unfortunately . Fuck, what an answer.

I steeled my spine, ran a hand over my messy braid, and shuffled to the end of the wagon. Luc stepped back as I swung my legs over the edge and fixed my skirts. I could easily hop down to the ground. I wasn’t short, except to a vampire. But the Lord of Dusk’s hand was there. I hadn’t turned it down before and it seemed rude to start now, even knowing he wanted to eat me.

I placed my hand in his and hopped down. I flinched when I hit the dirt, the ache in my thighs from hours on a hellsteed. Luc’s thumb traced lightly across my skin. Soothe . All the pain waking in my body faded back into slumber.

“Thank you,” I murmured, heat creeping into my cheeks.

He only nodded in reply. Without releasing me, we walked toward his soulbound, the runelight floating close beside us.

When we reached the two logs, Luc looped a finger through the rune and tossed it down. It slammed into a pit in the dirt near Jules’s boots and burst into a roaring fire. The lords’ eyes flared again, and beyond them, the bright flames caught a dozen others. The glowing disappeared as soon as the fire settled.

I had known we weren’t alone, but now it was impossible to forget.

Jules patted the log beside him. “Sit.”

Luc released my hand and sank onto the log across from Jules, stretching his legs out. I sat. What else was there to do? Jules looped an arm over the log, resting it behind me. His warmth radiated against my hips, close enough to touch.

Luc pulled a canteen from the saddlebag beside him and passed it over, alongside a hardtack biscuit. A crumb-covered cloth sat in a crumpled ball beside Jules. Blood only replenished a vampire’s magic, so they needed ordinary food to survive, too. In The Soulborne Queen , the Beast King’s vampires had nightly feasts filled with dishes I had never heard of and couldn’t imagine, the flavors exploding on Karra’s tongue. Nothing I’d eaten so far compared.

I bit into the hard biscuit. “I thought you’d have better food than us.”

“There’s only so much you can prepare on horseback,” Luc said.

“You could stop to cook something better.”

Jules snorted. “We’d never get anywhere at that pace.”

Gold flashed in the dark. A moment later, Tristan appeared, the silver-eyed woman with black hair and brown skin at his side. His soulbond, Estrella. Jules had told me they were heartmates, the closest of soulbonds. Maybe that was why they rarely exchanged words or glances, yet moved in perfect step as if thoughts and actions were one. Azaras and Karra hadn’t moved like that, but their bond was still fresh in my book, not centuries carved into stone.

Both soulbound warriors bore an insignia with the Impire’s star. While the lords wore no visible mark of status, the four vampires stood apart. It wasn’t something they did, exactly. It was in the way the other vampires watched them—or rather, didn’t, eyes always averted, always respectful.

My pondering cut off when another shape resolved at Tristan’s side. A pretty Maboni woman with long black hair. One of the blood thralls. I didn’t know her name, but I knew her face.

Fuck.

I wasn’t about to feed a vampire. But apparently I was about to watch. Heat rushed to my cheeks. I didn’t know if it was terror, embarrassment… or some darker curiosity I refused to name.

The real breakfast had arrived.

“Imperator.” Tristan bowed deeply, fist pressed to his chest. Without another word, he and his soulbond melted back into the dark, their task complete.

Before I recovered from my shock, the blood thrall hurried to Luc and kneeled at his feet.

Nausea swirled in my gut. I tucked the biscuit into my pocket, no longer hungry. The thralls chosen to feed the warriors had been terrified on that first day aboard the ship. Now they almost seemed disappointed when they weren’t selected.

The textbooks the Azarasians provided us hadn’t lied then. Vampire venom was addictive.

And I’d have that poison in my veins any day now.

Luc’s gaze flicked to Jules. “Are you hungry?”

“I ate yesterday.”

Luc hummed, then turned his attention to me. His silver eyes held mine for a second before dropping to my pulse. My heartbeat stuttered. He gave a small shake, rolling his massive shoulders back. Then he looked down at the thrall all but squirming at his feet.

“Agony or ecstasy?”

A shudder rippled through me. I had read those words but never heard them aloud. The vampires in The Soulborne Queen had asked it of their thralls, giving them the choice between the agony of a dry bite and the orgasmic pleasure of their venom.

“Ecstasy, my lord,” she blurted, almost before he’d finished speaking.

I tried not to curl my lip. She didn’t deserve my judgment. If I were lucky, I’d never hear a sermon about the sin of lust again, and that tiny voice within me would wither away. “You actually let your thralls choose?”

“It doesn’t harm us either way,” Luc said, his gaze fixed on the thrall. She tilted toward him, mesmerized by his presence the same way I was every time we interacted. Her shoulders relaxed, tension melting from her limbs.

Jules dropped his head against the log, glancing up at me. “It’s only our prey that doesn’t have a good time during a dry bite.”

Fergus’s scream of unimaginable agony echoed in my ears. The evisceration hadn’t helped, but his cry had changed the second Jules sunk his fangs in and swallowed down a gulp of blood.

How terrible was the bite of agony if it hurt more than being sliced open?

I repressed my shudder. If I were lucky, I’d never know.

Luc tapped his knee, snapping me out of my thoughts. The woman scrambled up, hiked her skirt, and perched her bare ass on Luc’s clothed leg. Maboni women wore thigh-length drawers. Always. But vampire venom had a way of unraveling modesty.

My eyes widened, but I didn’t make a noise. If you didn’t count my heart pounding, a drumming beat to both vampires’ ears. The thrall’s gaze flickered to mine, something wild in it. Shame crossed her face, but not enough to climb off Luc’s lap.

I should have looked away.

But then Luc cupped her jaw, fingers curling beneath her chin. He tilted her head back, exposing the long, vulnerable line of her throat.

She jerked in his lap, her gasp audible. Or had I gasped? I couldn’t tell. My flush spread from my cheeks, down into my chest, past my breasts and stomach, and settled between my legs.

Jules inhaled deeply. “You’re enjoying this as much as I am, aren’t you?”

I stiffened. My thighs pressed together. Shit. I needed psychological help. I shouldn’t have been this intrigued. But I always had been by vampires. If their venom numbed the pain of the bite, could it dull the pain of my illness? Could I finally feel pleasure instead of cramping agony?

Or would even venom fail to dull the ache?

Jules didn’t wait for my answer. Not even an immortal had that kind of time. “Want me to narrate?”

I blinked at him. “Narrate… what?”

Jules’s smile widened. Luc snorted.

Narrate what ?

Before I asked again—or Jules let loose another quip—shadows flashed in Luc’s mouth. They twisted, solidified, and latched onto the tips of his canines.

In a blink, the shadows stretched into hard, black-tipped fangs .

My skin pebbled. A chill stopped my heart. I drank in every detail. I hadn’t seen Jules’s fangs when he tore out Fergus’s throat, and what I’d imagined before the harvest hadn’t been quite right. They were longer. Sharper. The ends tapered into wicked, needle-thin points.

Then Luc plunged them into the thrall’s neck.

She screamed… but not in pain. She had chosen ecstasy, and Luc delivered. Bloodlust hit her fast and hard. She immediately plunged a hand between her legs, craving friction.

Luc released her throat, his fingers trailing downward. But not to touch. One hand wrenched her legs apart, the other unlacing his trousers.

My mouth went dry.

“Bloodlust is nearly impossible to resist.” I jerked as Jules’s whisper ghosted against my ear. He had slithered onto the log beside me while I was too distracted to notice. “For the prey, certainly, but also for the predator. Look at Luc’s cock again, lovely.”

I couldn’t stop myself. My eyes had already dropped, following Luc’s hands. The woman ground herself back against something large and thick and… pierced with silver studs? I hadn’t noticed those earlier, but the Lord of Dusk hadn’t gotten hard during our swim. With every gulp of her blood, Luc’s cock stiffened more.

When those black eyes opened and met mine, there was a wildness to them that wasn’t there a moment ago.

The hunger of a vampire for blood and sex.

When the blood thrall next flung herself back, Luc lifted her hips and impaled her on his cock.

I gasped. Heat flared in my core. My entire body tightened at the sight before me.

“Luc plunged into a soft, warm cunt, wishing it belonged to the woman sitting across from him,” Jules said.

A shiver wracked through my body. Oh, stars, why did the bastard choose to narrate this ?

His fangs embedded in her neck, Luc started bouncing the thrall up and down his length. She gripped his knees for leverage and let out a shameless moan. The wild abandon of the venom had taken all her sense, making her just as desperate as the Lord of Dusk.

But his black-eyed gaze didn’t leave me.

“Luc lapped his tongue against her pulse again, devouring that delicious blood. Her cunt clenched on his thick cock as he spiraled higher. Lost to the pleasure of the bite.”

My cunt clenched, sadly around nothing. I tried to settle my breathing, but it was too hot in my cheeks, in my chest, under my skin. Luc wasn’t fucking me.

I wished he was.

I wished he wasn’t.

And the lords saw all of it, drinking in my every expression. There were four of us around the fire, but to the vampires, it might as well have been three. Through the turmoil of my clashing emotions, I could almost hear my stepmother’s judgment, her voice whispering, Wicked, sinful girl.

“Luc pulled her off his length,” Jules continued as his soulbound’s glistening cock flashed in the firelight, the hint of a silver stud twinkling, “before thrusting her back down.”

The thrall suddenly thrashed. Her body arched as she screamed. She sounded like she was dying. She looked like she was dying. And in that moment, bliss-drunk and shaking, I wasn’t sure she’d care if she did.

Jules arched one brow at the display. “And she came instantly. Good for you, Luc.”

The thrall shuddered, but Luc just fucked her harder and faster. The muscles in his arm flexed, the same arms that had lifted me easily onto a hellsteed. He moved her like she weighed nothing, the thrall slack in his arms, utterly trapped.

Perfectly trapped.

“Luc chased his own pleasure as warm heat squeezed around him,” Jules murmured. “Not the cunt he wanted, but he couldn’t have that one, not yet.”

“Yet?” I asked, the word breathless.

Jules chuckled, a soft brush against the side of my face. “Yet.”

I swallowed audibly. The Lord of Dusk followed the movement of my throat. He hadn’t torn his gaze away from me once.

I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him.

“His hands tightened on her hips, his entire body tensing as he tipped into—”

With a quick swipe of his tongue over the puncture wound, Luc pulled back and groaned, a deep rumble like distant thunder. The sound had Jules and me gasping together. The Lord of Dusk’s head dropped, eyes slipping shut. Even without them, I remained in his trance. The frown line between his brow smoothed as his lips parted.

Luc orgasmed .

The beauty of it stole my breath—and set my aching cunt on fire. I had read a great many things, but never about watching others fuck and enjoying it. Maybe my stepmother was right. I was an odd child and a stranger woman. There was something wrong with me. The other unbitten Maboni prayed to the godstars, begging not to be next.

I prayed to the godstars that I wasn’t soaking through my drawers and staining the back of my gown.

“And as he came,” Jules said, the word for my ears alone, “he imagined her in his arms.”

My harsh breaths fought with the thrall’s for dominance. The tip of Jules’s nose brushed the rim of my ear, eliciting a full body shudder from me. I bit down on the inside of my mouth to stop any embarrassing noises from escaping me. Both lords knew their depravity intrigued me. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of making me moan with a single, light touch.

Jules grinned anyway. “We’re going to have so much fun together, Nessa. I can already tell.”

I summoned a glare for Jules, but it just made him chuckle as he leaned back on the log.

“Be nice, Julien.” Luc lifted the thrall off him and lowered her to the ground. She melted into a mewling, blissed-out heap at his feet. His fingers traced a quick pattern. Clean . Once the sweat and sheen faded, he readjusted his leathers nonchalantly. Like he hadn’t just fucked someone in front of me.

To him, it was akin to eating breakfast. Literally.

“We wouldn’t want to scare our volunteer so close to Montaurère,” Luc said, barely sparing the thrall a glance. He flicked his fingers, a cold dismissal. She swayed, head bowed, and stumbled from the fire’s glow into the dark. Forgotten in a second.

“You didn’t frighten me.” I wished they had. I should be afraid. I was in the harvest, a volunteer for some unknown cause. My fate might have been slightly better than the thrall’s, but it would end writhing on a vampire’s fangs.

My situation hadn’t changed. But in the last two days, my fear had ebbed. Not disappeared. Never that. I didn’t think it ever would. But Luc and Jules spoke to me like companions on a journey through the Azarasian countryside.

Not like captors and captive.

Luc’s lips curved slightly. “Not yet.”

Not yet. I flinched. Jules had said those only moments ago, but in a wildly different context. Both were reminders of the truth. This one was far grimmer.

“Not yet,” I whispered, almost in agreement. Maybe acknowledgement? The lords didn’t hide what they were. They didn’t hide that they were luring me in, easing me into false security.

There was no reason for me to hide that I knew. I had nowhere else to go. I wouldn’t last a night in the wilds without them.

“Well, that was a depressing end to breakfast.” Jules hopped to his feet. “What happened to not frightening the—?”

His words cut off. His gaze snapped toward the trees. Luc was beside him instantly, hand settling on the handle of his axe. Since we met, he hadn’t reached for it once unless it was taking it off.

Until now.

That couldn’t be good.

A high-pitched wail ripped through the air. A sorrowful, terrible sound no mortal creature could make. It was echoed by another. Then another. All the voices were distinct and yet so eerily the same.

My insides flipped. The hairs on my arm rose. Some instinct screamed at me to flee.

Right. Fucking. Now.