Chapter 20
“Let me get the king,” Groth urged. “He can relieve the pain.”
Lured from his bed by the unquenchable thirst, the king had come here to do just that.
A born vampire could indeed ease their bonded’s cramping by tending to them. By consuming the blood marking them as fertile and making them orgasm. It tricked the body into believing the female was doing as it wished—mating.
Need tightened every bone. The need to help the queen and the need to pleasure her.
But the king never made it beyond the steel door to her tower.
He’d paced the hall before it, hands tearing through his hair, until the ghost had arrived. Then, the king had become a cat, and he’d slunk into the shadows with the intent to retreat to his own rooms.
Our rooms, he had told his wife little more than a rotting week ago.
Yet in the two dawns since they’d been wed, he’d crawled into bed alone and suffocated on her lingering scent.
An agonized groan caused the king’s spine to arch and his teeth to bare. Tail flicking, he paced again.
“Majesty, please.” The ghost sounded pained. For a long-dead man, he’d always been rather sensitive.
A growled, “No,” came from the queen.
“Regardless of whatever happened between you two, I’m sure His Majesty wouldn’t want you to suffer.”
But His Majesty did.
He wanted his wife to suffer—just as she was making him suffer. The sadistic urge fought against his vampiric instincts to soothe her pain and impregnate her. Clashed against the bond he’d so desperately wanted with her. A bond he’d foolishly believed she had come to want.
Now, he understood why she never had.
“If you even try to fetch him, I swear I’ll find the strength to chase and touch you so that you experience your death again.”
“Ethel, I—”
“Just leave me be, Groth.” Rasped, the queen said, “Please.”
Seconds later, the energy beyond the steel door thickened, and the cat darted down the hall ahead of the ghost.
But although he couldn’t bring himself to help her, the king quickly returned.
He sat against the steel door. As the queen eventually slept, he recalled every horrid word he’d said to her. When she woke whimpering and cursing, he forced himself to recall every horrid word he’d overheard about her.
Still, he didn’t leave.
He couldn’t fucking leave.
And over the next three moons, when the queen’s bleed returned, so did he. He sat against the door to her tower and hoped the sound of her suffering might ease some of his own.
It never did.