Page 9

CHAPTER 9

NEED

MALPHAS

I t hits me that both demons are quiet. So am I. Sweat slicks my brow. Sombra is a fiery world, of ash and shadows. Our coolest days are ones that Shannon would never leave the apartment, preferring to park herself in front of the cold air vent—the AC—in our human home. It took her a while to get used to the dry yet oppressive heat in Sombra, but, to me, it’s my home. It doesn’t bother me.

So why am I feeling feverish?

And that’s not all. My cock aches. My sac is tight. I am in my demon form, but my skin almost itches. It’s sensitive without my shadows being out, and even my horns beg to be stroked. I lock my knees to keep them from going even weaker.

My tongue darts out, dabbing the corner of my suddenly dry mouth. I swipe my brow with the back of my hand.

Still, Glaine and Dagon are too distracted to sense my discomfort.

The soldier has shifted his body. Instead of facing Dagon and me, he’s moved so that he can watch the females, his green eyes drawn unblinkingly to the one with wild, gold-colored curls. Billie. She’s laughing as she pokes the braided female next to her. Sierra, Dagon’s mate

Like all Sombra demons, Dagon is possessive of his mate. Since he and Sierra created their own spawn during a recent gold moon, the hunter is even more so. And yet… Dagon isn’t watching his mate as closely as Glaine is.

Instead, he’s watching the sky .

I follow his stare and that’s when I notice what he’s staring at.

There is a second moon, an unusual one. Not as large as the one that appears every night in Sombra, but bigger still than the gold moon that only rises once every cycle. It’s hidden behind one of the dark ash clouds—a mixture of smoke and haze that the ash fields give off—but I see part of the outline peeking through.

I don’t know why it has caught his attention. Especially when, just as I think I’m the only male feeling this sudden need for his mate, Dagon rips his head away from the sky, hand going to his crotch as he grumbles softly under his breath.

“Dagon?” The bold way he palms his cock through his leathers distracts me for a moment from how much mine longs for Shannon. “Are you alright?”

“It’s the mate sickness,” he grates. “I thought that I would never have to feel it again once I completed the essence exchange with Sierra. We are bonded. She is going to have our spawn. There’s no reason the sickness should have returned.”

Is that what I’m feeling?

I think about how eager I am to lay Shannon down on our bedding and bury my face in her cunt until I’ve passed out, her taste the only thing on my lips.

Then I remember how ill she was after I initiated the essence exchange, but before we were bonded. Because I had Shannon’s essence—not my finest moment, I admit, since I basically took it from her as she had no idea she was even offering it—she was the one who the gods gave the mate sickness to. It was to urge her to recognize me as her one true mate. The only cure? An intimate touch that led to my mate allowing me to kiss her cunt for the first time.

I never experienced the mate sickness. I always knew that she was meant to be mine, so the gods granted it to Shannon instead.

But if Dagon has experienced it…

“Is that what this is?” I ask, not sure what’s worse: the sudden horror I feel, or the lust.

Shannon felt like this? Because of me? I should be cursed with a cockstand that will never deflate for ever making my mate suffer such wild, painful want .

Dagon nods. “Yes. I remember it well. It’s worse, though, because I can sense it creeping down my bond toward Sierra. If she doesn’t feel the need now, she will soon.”

And so will Shannon.

I tap my fang with my tongue. My mouth is getting drier. My knees buckle again as though they’re propelling me to go toward my mate.

I brace my feet in the ash. No. Shannon has never shied away from accepting me. However, she rarely gets to do ‘girl talk’ with Sierra and Hope. They don’t often visit Sombra—Hope and Sammael living in Earth, and Sierra and Dagon only coming to check in with the healer—and it would be very selfish of me to interrupt her because I want to mate her.

So I stay with Dagon and Glaine even if my eyes keep slipping over to where Shannon is leaning comfortably against the house, legs crossed, arms folded behind her head, hair spread out behind her similar to the way it falls against our pillow when I have her under me…

A rough swallow, a stifled moon, and then a short gasp as, out of the shadows further down the village square, Lucian and Damien come stalking back into Nuit.

Damien, the quiet, more intense twin, veers right for the females. He doesn’t stop until he reaches his fire-haired mate, Tandy. Scooping her up easily, settling her over his shoulder, her throaty laugh cuts through the sudden silence as he whisks her away.

Lucian, meanwhile, heads right for us.

His arrival finally catches Glaine’s attention. The guard’s head swivels while Dagon frowns.

Lucian points up. “For ages, all I’ve seen is red,” he intones. “And now so do we all.”

I follow his point. The ash clouds have slipped away, leaving the second moon fully on display.

Before, when I caught Dagon peering up at it, I couldn’t understand why. Now that I see the deep blood-red moon shining out of the sky, I’m in awe of it. It’s striking. Beautiful. Terrifying. My first instinct is to return to my home, grab my paints and my brushes, and come as close to capturing it as I can on canvas.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

“What is that?” Glaine demands. “That’s not the gold moon.”

It can’t be.

Lucian agrees. “It is the fabled red moon.” Fabled… “The last time I actually saw one, it was on the night that Queen Alana and King Yelios finalized their mate bond.”

So distracted by the unfamiliar mate sickness, I didn’t really understand what I was seeing until Lucian confirms it’s a red moon and mentions Sombra’s former rulers. I wasn’t wrong when I said that I’ve never seen anything like it. I haven’t, but that’s because the last time it shined down on Sombra, I didn’t exist yet.

The story of Queen Alana and her mate is a tragedy in Sombran lore. She was a beloved demoness queen—the strongest and goodest of us all—and the namesake for my Alana. She ruled Sombra for centuries before finding her one true mate: a young soldier named Yelios. She invited him to share her throne, then bonded to him, before she elevated him to head of her guard, allowing him to lead her campaign to ward off Sombra’s enemies.

King Yelios had one moon with Queen Alana—the red moon—before she was martyred in a skirmish when Cindralis tried to invade Sombra more than twenty-five hundred years ago. As our ruler, she insisted on joining the charge of soldiers, and though she pushed back the fire demons, her death was the one my people felt the hardest.

Of course, no one felt it harder than the king who blamed our enemies that he survived while his mate perished. For the next five centuries, he stood before the throne alone, waging wars with any demon realm who opened their portals to him and his soldiers. To make up for Queen Alana’s death, he made moves to colonize them, to bring them under his rule.

Until, two thousand years ago—and more than a millennium before I was born—when Haures rose up against Yelios, ousting him from the crystal throne, before disappearing the old king forever.

Stories say he walked into the shadows, choosing to end his existence so that he could finally be reunited with his beloved mate. No one has ever heard from or seen the imposing green-eyed soldier turned king since then, and I only think of Yelios now because Lucian mentioned him, and because of the red moon shining ominously over my head.

I understand the mate sickness now. When Sombra’s ruler takes their mate, the world celebrates with them. The red moon brings all mated pairs together, their mating a blessing that represents an eternity of well-wishes for our liege.

It’s a story. Like Lucian said, a fable.

But as I palm my erection again, I’m not so sure about that anymore.

Glaine glares up at the moon while Dagon regards it warily. “Why is out now?”

“I don’t know,” admits the doppelseer. “Haures is a bondmaster. For his own reasons, he’s held the red moon back after he bonded Susanna to him.”

“Because he’s kept her hidden,” suggests Glaine. “Very few Sombrans even know she exists.”

I do because of the name written in the Grimoire du Sombra , and because Susanna Benoit is Amy’s kin. Dagon was a hunter-turned-chosen guard for the duchess. Glaine, of course, is the head of Duke Haures’s guard.

And Lucian knows nearly everything .

His nod says that Glaine has a point. “Yes, but maybe this is his way of sharing his mate with the rest of Sombra.”

“His Grace will never do that,” cuts in Dagon. “He loves Susanna too much. He won’t even let her out of the garden if he has the choice. Until Sombra is safe… no. He wouldn’t willingly share her now.”

Maybe not, but there’s no denying the red moon is out, and I’m in desperate need of my mate.

Glaine doesn’t argue with Dagon. Instead, his gaze going back to Billie, he asks, “Is the red moon the same as the gold moon in other ways?”

Ah. I understand. My Shannon… she doesn’t want any other spawn. As she said, with Alana, she is ‘one and done’. If I fully mate her while the red moon is out, will she conceive?

“No,” says Lucian, to my relief—and to Glaine’s, too. He and his mate have chosen to be like Amy and Nox: no spawn for them for now. “It is all about the pleasure. Of enjoying your mate until the red moon sets come morning as we reinforce our bonds just as the duke and his mate must be.” His purple eyes flicker, and he glances over his shoulder in time to see Damien disappearing out of Nuit with Tandy. “Just like my twin and I shall enjoy ours.”

With one last nod, Lucian turns, striding after his brother and their mate.

Glaine doesn’t hesitate, either. His jaw set, he starts toward the females, his intent to break up the ‘girl talk’ obvious. Then again, Billie’s head turns, meeting the hunger in his expression as he strides over. She murmurs something to Sierra, then starts jogging toward her mate.

Dagon claps me on the shoulder. “Just a touch will help with the mate sickness,” he says, “but if the red moon insists we pleasure our females… isn’t that what an honorable male would do?”

He follows behind Glaine.

I forget all about my fellow demons as I search for my Shannon.

Our eyes meet.

Dull yet pretty, her bright blue gaze seems to gleam and glimmer in invitation as she rises from her lean. And I know—because I know my mate—that the red moon is affecting her. That, or she simply knows her male, and will always, always welcome him when he needs her.

And because I am her male, I will give her what she needs.

The females have scattered by the time I reach her. Glaine has taken Billie. Dagon has Sierra. Tandy has slipped out into the eve with her mates. Loki and Sammael haven’t returned yet, but Kennedy sidles back to her home, taking Hope with her.

And then there’s Shannon.

She raises the furry strips of pale hair over her lust-filled eyes.

Without any warning, I heft my mate up in my arms, tilting Shannon so that one hand cradles her back, the other tucked securely beneath her knees. Her squeal of delight jumps right to my cock.

And I know that, whatever happens tonight, it’ll be a night to remember.