Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Diamond Ballroom, Blood Kingdom
Daire
Eight years later…
On this Night of the Shades, I’m about to have my throat slit with the legendary dagger of the Shadow Vampire Queen, KalaKant, whom I killed. The druids would have called it the turning of the wheel.
But I call it fate’s bloody vicious joke.
I always thought that it would be the dragons who killed me.
My mistake.
I can’t see well through my blurred vision. I can feel the iron, however, burning my throat from the blade.
My muscles ache from being stretched across the silver altar with my arms and wings shackled down by chains.
My lips scream in agony from being gagged with an iron bit, which is searing them.
My pulse pounds in my ears.
My heart hammers in my chest.
My pheromones deepen, as if I know that this is my last chance to draw my Omega to me.
Except, that moment has passed.
I can sense Freya’s terror and distress through our bond. Yet bound like this, I can’t reach to caress over the snowflake bond mark on my wrist to reassure her.
She must know that this is where the Golden Prophecy comes true:
Golden fated mates, an Omega and her Alpha Kings, destined to bleed…
I warned her that prophecies are greater tricksters than fae are. You can’t trust them. They make you think they mean one thing, so that you try to outrun them. But then, they bite you in the arse.
I fell into the trap myself.
I believed that the prophecy meant Aurelius would bleed. But look, I’m the one who will pay with my blood.
On the other hand, I always knew that it would end with one of us bloody. At least this way, it won’t be my beautiful Omega.
I still struggle, arching off the altar, however, because if I am tonight’s blood sacrifice, then I won’t be a docile one.
I’ll bloody haunt these bastards if they tear me away from Freya before I find her a worthy pack.
I’m dying, I know that. I’m iron poisoned. As a soldier, I’ll fight to the last.
Yet the vampire mage who schemed and bound me to this altar, Heka, is slowly stripping away my masks to reveal my hidden identity.
My stomach squirms with guilt.
Why does my blood still sing for the Shadow Vampire King?
Am I as addicted to him as I meant to make him to me?
Lanlin will tear out my throat.
When Heka bares my neck, I wince.
I blink up at the willowy Alpha, who is startlingly different looking to the other Shadow Vampires in the Blood Court.
Heka is handsome but coldly clinical. It is like I am just one of his science experiments.
In his forties, he is dressed in a pure white floor-length kilt with an elaborate collar that is made up of diamond scarab beetles that Lanlin gifted to him.
“I offer the ultimate blood sacrifice for the Night of the Shades, as well as a wedding gift for tomorrow.” Heka presses the knife harder against my skin, and crimson blood beads. “Your greatest enemy: The Shadow Queen Slayer, your mother’s killer. King Daire.”
Gasps ripple through the Diamond Ballroom.
Beneath my silver mask, which is shaped like dove wings and is actually a trick from Maximinus to capture Lanlin, I’m blushing.
If I wasn’t tied down, I would take a bow before I’m executed.
Except, I know how much this revelation must be hurting Lanlin. He fears betrayal more than anything.
He has lost his family, and I bloody understand the devastation of that.
I was never the good guy here.
I was on a mission to seduce, trick, and capture Aurelius’ enemy to force his kingdom into submission.
Lanlin and Aurelius are both pack, despite the idiots not accepting it yet.
Once Freya fell in love…once we knew Lanlin was pack…we abandoned the mission and have been working to save the vampire.
But why would Lanlin believe that?
We intended to tell him the truth tomorrow on the Blood Moon.
Heka tugs harder on my hair, and I hiss as he drags on the diamonds that were woven into my curls carefully earlier by Lanlin, when he didn’t know my true identity and believed happily that this would be our first ball together as his King and Queen at his side, the night before our marriage.
When he believed that I was his Blood Lover, rather than the enemy king who killed his ma in battle.
My mind is racing.
I can’t even use my clever tongue to talk my way out of this.
I take a sharp breath, as Heka slices deeper into my neck, and warm blood trickles down my neck.
My breathing becomes erratic.
I close my eyes.
Shadow Devils, stand with me. Don’t let me fall today. If I do, then let me reunite with my ancestors.
I break off, breathing hard.
My parents’ spirits are safe either in my Rebirth Ring, waiting for me to free them, or they have flown to join the Shadow Gods.
They were good.
But I have too much blood on my hands to join them. I can never atone for my sins. I will burn with the Shadow Devils.
I hiss as the skin of my wrists, mouth, and throat are already burning on the iron.
Goodbye, my Spark.
I wish she could hear me.
Goodbye, my Aurelius.
Goodbye, my Bat King.
“Stop,” a deadly voice commands.
Lanlin.
My eyes snap open.
Heka’s hand jolts in shock, cutting deeper into my throat.
I gurgle, and blood gushes out of the wound.
To my shock, a wolf’s growl echoes through the ballroom, savage and desperate.
“Freya,” I yell, garbled through the gag. My heart leaps in my chest. My soulmate has shifted in battle to protect me, her Alpha. She’s my perfect untamed Omega. I would be celebrating this moment if it didn’t put her in danger. “Don’t, love.”
Freya’s deep, rumbling growl rises to a harsh, jagged cry like it’s being forced through bared fangs.
It’s followed by roars from the demonic lions, Shadow and Devil.
Heka cruelly twists my hair.
I hiss in pain.
I listen fiercely, unnerved by the sudden silence.
My heart races.
What’s going on?
What’s happening to my Spark?
Then there is a blur of woven fur, shadow, and blood.
Freya’s Shadow Wolf is glorious as she lunges at Heka.
She sinks her fangs into the vampire mage’s wrist.
Heka screams, dropping the dagger.
Shadows trail from Freya, caressing across my cheeks in comfort, even as she bowls Heka back from me.
I grin viciously around my gag.
My wild wolf.
“Mercy!” Heka howls.
I hope that she eats his beating heart from his chest.
“Enough, dearheart.” Lanlin’s shadows suddenly engulf the room until I am blinded by his darkness.
Panicked, I thrash in my chains, when I can no longer see or hear Freya or even Heka’s begging and weeping, as if I am lost in the Void.
Is Freya hurt?
What has Lanlin done to her?
“Peace.” With uncanny speed, Lanlin appears out of the fog, pressing down on my chest to still me.
White moths flutter around him like a ghostly moon.
“I have simply pinned our Omega in my shadows and surrounded us in the abyss. We need privacy, and I feel like the howling of my soul is already a dark abyss. You and I should have a talk, king to king.”
As he leans over me, his wine-red eyes glow with both fury and hurt behind his glittering gold and black bat half-mask.
Shadows wind around him like towering bat wings.
His long fangs have extended, as they did when I sparred with him.
I lost to him that night too, in so many bloody ways.
Why did I think of him as vulnerable?
The hair on the back of my neck rises.
He is the predator in this ballroom. And I’m tied down and helpless with my magic restrained by both the chains and the dragon bracelets around my wrists.
Since the Winter Court was burned to ash, and I trained and led my army of child soldiers, I dreamed that I would fall on the battlefield.
I expected that.
I didn’t fear it.
Being sacrificed by my enemy in front of my Omega to the Shadow Devils for my crimes, however, is so much bloody worse.
Is it what I deserve?
When Lanlin works at the gag with a grimace of disgust, I am surprised. He drags it away from my mouth.
I bite back a groan of agony, licking over my seared lips.
Lanlin hurls the gag to the floor.
I work my mouth, staring up at him.
Lanlin wanting privacy could either be very good or very bad.
At least Freya won’t need to watch me die. I have spent the last few months dreading that more than anything.
Lanlin surprises me by stroking down my face with his bare fingers.
He wore gloves for most of his life. Lanlin offering to touch first is rare.
Precious, normally.
I still, looking up at Lanlin with wide eyes. “Sin…”
Then his nails extend, and he rakes down my cheek, before anchoring his claws into my chin to hold me in place.
Suddenly, all I can see is a face of gnashing fangs.
“Do you believe this to be a rescue, Little Raven?” Lanlin snarls.
I wince.
Little Dove felt like a pet name, but Little Raven feels like a curse.
“Not now I don’t.” A weariness sweeps through me, which is bone deep. “Because as I keep reminding people, I’m not the damsel in need of rescuing.”
“You’re bound over a sacrificial altar. You look like the damsel.”
“Aye, but I’m not a virgin.”
“Blood sacrifices aren’t virgins in my kingdom. They’re criminals who offer to die on this night to atone for their sins. And by my heart, you are a criminal.”
“Are we comparing kill counts? We’re both assassins, but you’re better at your job than I am, aye? Also, a brilliant, terrifying army commander. What about your slaughter in Bael? I mean, if this is a contest, then I always want to win but, in this case—”
Lanlin slams his palm over my mouth with a snarl.
“Truth hurts,” I mumble.
He punches me in the gut.
I grunt.
I never know when to keep my mouth shut, even when I’m bound in chains in an enemy kingdom, apparently.
“You think that I don’t see the blood on my hands?
I chose you,” Lanlin whispers, harsh and pain filled, “over my people in White Lotus Village. Thousands died. I saved you — my enemy in disguise as my Blood Lover and my Omega bonded to the dragon who means to destroy me — rather than my own people. The tombs of my family and ancestors were reduced to rubble. They will never have peace now. Nor will I. And I will suffer eternally for that decision, which I took for you…a trickster.”
My heart shatters.
I can’t deny it.