Scarlet Spiderweb
“You might as well drive a stake through my heart.”
“Who would be here to lecture me if I did that?”
“Your potential new queen if you win this challenge,” Ezra boomed, crushing the crystal tumbler of blood in his hand. He glanced down and tsked at the shards of glass protruding from his pale flesh.
“She will not be my queen.”
“Then why? Make me understand why you challenged Beta David for her!”
Luka sighed and massaged his temples. “I am growing weary of your blatant disrespect. If you want to be demoted and relieved of your lordship, then say so!” he barked.
Ezra dipped in an apologetic bow. “Forgive me, King Alesi. Lately, I’ve been edging towards insubordination, but respectfully, you have been making questionable decisions that will devastate Night Falls. I’m here to help you; however, I cannot aid you if you won’t help yourself.”
“I don’t require your assistance,” Luka argued as he paced a tight circle around the bed chamber.
He was frustrated—beyond frustrated. His emotions were in turmoil.
As much as it pained him to admit it, Ezra was right to question his careless behavior.
He’d thrown caution to the wind and challenged David on a whim for a huntress with a knack for getting under his skin.
Did he want her as his queen? No. But would he allow her to escape him so easily?
Also, no. Matilda was a dangerous woman, and not just physically.
She was intelligent—smart enough to know she had David under her spell as soon as her feet touched the ground and used him to her advantage.
She was a chess player—quick-witted and always thinking ahead.
Matilda was a threat in more ways than one.
It’s best to keep her close, he reasoned.
“You need my help more than you know. I am the one who is single-handedly keeping Prince Lykaon from attacking Night Falls and claiming everything we’ve built!”
“The humans have built,” Luka corrected.
A peal of laughter ripped from Ezra. “Oh! This is glorious. Siding with the humans already, are we?”
“I’m not siding. I’m being factual. Night Falls was not built by us. We conquered them and claimed an established civilization,” he explained.
Three firm knocks interrupted the warring men. Luka inhaled deeply, savoring Matilda’s scent as it drifted through the closed door. Ezra’s reaction was considerably less appreciative.
He stalked across the room and pulled open the door, finding Matilda standing in the corridor alone. Ezra leaned past her, searching the empty passageway for the attendant who should have been at her side. Finding no one, he turned his glare on her.
“What are you doing unaccompanied?” he snapped.
“Unaccompanied? Why would I need to be accompanied?” she asked in a sweet tone that was anything but innocent.
“To prevent you from escaping.”
Matilda chuckled, not from Ezra’s ridiculously accurate statement, but from the blood-drunk look on Luka’s face. Her blood was his opium—the most powerful weapon she had in her arsenal.
“Escape? Why would I do that?” she questioned, crossing the threshold. “I’m exactly where I want to be.” She turned to address Luka. “We should talk… alone.”
“Lord—”
“No need to dismiss me. The queen has spoken. I’ll take my leave. If you need me, I’ll be in my quarters writing a draft to amend Night Falls’s laws prohibiting hybrid vampire children,” he snarled before slamming the door behind him.
A few seconds of silence fell between the vampire king and huntress.
“He whines like a bawling babe,” Matilda said, referencing the petulant lord.
“An effective bawling babe,” Luka affirmed.
“Hm.”
He watched her as she toured his quarters—his nerves on end as her fingertips ran the length of the walls, nails tapping a whimsical melody on the stone. “How are you finding your accommodations?”
“Why do you care?”
“As Beta David’s future mate, I must ensure our esteemed guest is restful.”
“You will not be mated to the wolf. You should accept that now.”
“You are full of yourself, vampire.”
“You are counting your chickens before they hatch, huntress.”
She laughed. “‘Tis true. I do adore taking risks,” she agreed before standing in front of the window that offered a magnificent view of the forest. “You are standing too close,” she said, feeling him hover above her. “Beta David wouldn’t like that.”
“Fuck him.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I plan to.”
Without thinking, Luka grabbed a handful of Matilda’s curls and smashed her head into the panoramic window.
The glass splintered into a scarlet spider web of Matilda’s blood.
He released her immediately—astonished by his brutal reaction.
There was no excuse, but the huntress and her teasing were starting to get the better of him.
Matilda groaned and faced her attacker. “If… you wanted a taste… all you had to do was ask,” she said, blood cascading from her head wound.
“I must take my leave now. Clearly, my presence isn’t wanted.
” She pushed past the oddly silent vampire and determined to leave him a parting gift.
“King Alesi, my eyes may be deceiving me, or perhaps it’s the blood dripping into them, but I have reason to believe your bed is more comfortable than mine.
” She tsked. “I must test this theory before I voice my complaint.”
She crawled into his bed, rolling on the blanket, marking it with her scent.
Luka swallowed around the ball of lust in his throat when she crawled towards the headboard.
Her ass was prominently displayed in her black leather pants, and if he didn’t look away, he might be unable to hide the evidence in his pants of what she was doing to him.
“Huh. Your pillows appear fluffier than mine. That can’t be.”
“Stop!” he ordered when she rammed her face into the pillow, drenching it with her blood.
She didn’t stop. Instead, she repeated the process with his other pillow, smearing her delicious life force where he intended to lay his head that night.
He could no longer stay in the room. Her scent colonized every oxygenated molecule in the room, and it’d drive him mad.
“It appears I was wrong, King Alesi. My pillows are rightfully more comfortable than yours. I will be taking my leave now. I have to be fitted for my gown for tonight’s banquet.
Hopefully, you’ll have the strength to drag yourself from your chambers to join us all for a night of festivities,” she wished before leaving.
“Shit,” Luka whispered, observing the state of his room.
The wind and the scratching branches against the window caught his attention.
He was before it, once again, but it wasn’t the frozen treetops that enraptured him or the mountain range in the distance.
No, it was the bloody spider web that dried with each passing second.
His common sense and logical thinking had escaped the room with Matilda.
It had to. It was the only way to explain why his tongue connected to the frosted glass.
Sluggishly, he licked the blood trails, moaning as he went.
He closed his eyes and cherished his new drug and addiction.
Luka’s eyes snapped open when a rock hit the window. The curly-headed huntress waved at him from below with a smile that spanned her entire face.
“She makes me weak, and for that, she cannot live.”