44. Dryston
Chapter 44
Dryston
D ryston buttoned the sleeves on his blouse and stared at the door that adjoined his room with Onora. Mandel was escorting her to the moon rite, which meant she would be going to the same one as him. They were carefully selected so no colony members were in the same room and things were rotated so demons had a chance to meet others they wouldn’t normally. Bringing in clans from the outskirts.
He’d told her it was an orgy, but it didn’t have to be. It just often descended into that in some of the outer rooms of the temple. Many demons came, drank, and talked to other demons and then left. If you found your mate or someone you wanted to be with you could leave and take care of your business privately.
The adage of finding a mate there was what was outdated. It rarely resulted in that. Perhaps it did a long time ago, when it was just a way to get the far-reaching clans together but now it was just a chance to mingle with others, potentially find a lover before you met your mate, and maybe have a wild night or two with a few others. Dryston did usually go, but that was partially because he hadn’t ever found his mate and people hassled him to keep trying, and with his busy schedule it was a good way for him to meet others.
But he knew who his mate was now. And she was going with someone else.
He didn’t know what to do. How to explain the bond to her? She clearly didn’t feel it or she would be as insane as he felt right now. Instead, she was happily going to go to an orgy.
When they had barely touched each other for over a week. He’d been pleasuring himself every night to stave off the edge of the mating frenzy, to help in any way he could from pressuring her before he could talk to her about it.
Kaemon had told him to just tell her. But things were too tenuous. Last night, when she’d said she was going to participate in demon culture was the first hint he had that she was amenable to the idea of staying. Would him telling her about the mating bond drive her further away?
He had no clue and he couldn’t chance it. He couldn’t chance losing her. If she left, he couldn’t follow. He had a realm to run. A realm that relied on him.
He would have to accept being forever separated from his mate.
He could skin Kalen alive. He knew she was his mate, but he was still taunting her, trying to convince him that it was something else, that the bond was wrong.
But Dryston knew that wasn’t true. Every time he looked at her, the faintest brush of her hand against him, gods, even her absence, sang of the bond.
He paced his room, listening for the sound of her leaving, but it didn’t come. Had she left earlier? Either way, maybe it did no good to linger and twist himself in knots. He had to make an appearance, drink an ungodly amount of wine to try and cope with the raging storm inside of him, and then leave. Let her do what she was going to do and be fine with it. Even if it didn’t involve him.
As he stepped out the door, she did too, and they both stopped, staring, startled.
Fuck.
She was gorgeous.
And wearing barely anything. The dress had a low deep V that rested at her navel, her round breasts perfectly displayed, her back bare, the dress starting again right below the dimples above her ass. Those dimples he’d traced with his hand the last time they’d been together and she’d fallen asleep before him.
Those dimples that he imagined every night when he took matters into his own hand.
When his eyes finally snapped back to her face, hers were tracing over him, traveling from his cut chest that was on display up to his wings, dipping to his horns and down to his eyes. His cock stirred, and he drew in a breath to calm his racing blood. He wanted to pin her against the wall, take her into his room, bend her over, and fuck her right then.
“Where’s Lily?” she asked, her voice cold, her face disinterested.
“She’s meeting me there,” he replied, his gaze snagging on her peaked nipples showing through the fabric of the dress. He rubbed his jaw, trying to focus on what she was saying. What was she saying?
“Oh. Mandel is picking me up just down the hall.”
That bastard. He lived across the city. He would have had to pass by the very place they were now headed in order to come pick her up.
“What a gentleman,” he growled.
She pursed her lips and he internally cursed himself.
“Mandel is waiting on me, I’m sure,” she said hastily, stepping forward.
He grabbed her wrist, stepping up close to her, inhaling her scent as she looked up at him tentatively.
“I’ll walk with you.” He looped her arm in his and she raised a brow, but didn’t protest. They walked down the hall in silence, but Dryston barely noticed. His every thought was spent trying to combat his instincts to touch her, kiss her, pull her into his arms.
They caught up with Mandel at a split in the pathway and he looked between them, a playful, knowing smirk lighting his face.
“I’m glad to see you got my date here in one piece,” he said, walking up and removing Onora’s arm, twining it with his. “Thanks, Drys.”
Dryston rubbed his jaw and gave a mirthless laugh. “Of course.”
Onora gave him a look over her shoulder as if she were going to say something, but instead she turned and walked with Mandel down the hall. He followed them, listening as Mandel chatted her up, making her chuckle here and there, and Dryston could think of a hundred different ways to give Mandel a painful death.
The moon was already high overhead when they stepped above ground, the black, shimmering lava rocks glinting in the light. Grooves in the rock made paths up to a black temple that rose high in the sky, with jagged spires and tracery windows of stained glass.
They waded through the crowds of people to the temple, walking into its cool atrium. Light filtered in through windows on the ceiling and spires, casting light in symmetrical lines that showed a pattern swirling to the center. Mandel led them to the right, to one of the first doors that led down a set of stairs, into another cave room, filtering light in.
Tables were set up with food and drink and leaf, music playing from a magical recording, and people milled about, talking.
Dryston broke from the two, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to calm his mind, and heading straight to the drinks. He poured a full glass of wine and gulped it down, pouring another.
“You’re starting the party early,” a sultry female voice said, and he turned to see Lily coming toward him.
He and Lily had been partners for the moon rite more than enough times, and he’d tried to let it stay at that. But she had always still pursued him, and he’d been told she was convinced they were mates and he would realize it at one point. He’d stopped sleeping with her then but it didn’t stop her advances, and he was barely in the mood to wave her off.
He glanced at Onora to see Mandel’s hand had slipped to her lower back and he was introducing her to another male.
Rage coiled around him, a fury that he feared he wouldn’t be able to fully contain. It had been a terrible idea coming here. Obviously, Onora was not new to this idea, but the thought of her coming undone with two others while he was absent ...
He turned back to Lily, who looked from Onora back to him.
“Drys, I know you’re going through a lot, so if you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to be,” she said.
The wine was hitting his senses like a sledgehammer, and maybe that was better. Part of him cared a bit less about what he was seeing. He stepped forward and put a lock of hair behind her ear. If Onora was going to forget about him, maybe he should try to forget about her.
Lily blushed but stepped back. “I’m not interested in just fucking, Drys. You know that. And I can see that you really want to be with her.” She jerked her head toward Onora, hurt lining every feature of her face. “So maybe go tell her that.”
Dryston felt like he’d been slapped, and Lily poured herself a glass of wine, then walked off. Dryston stared as Mandel’s hand made lazy circles on her back, slipping up on her rib cage and he gripped the glass so tight that it broke.
Yes, this had been a truly terrible idea.