Chapter 4 #2
“How about we work on saving one of our Alphas at a time, aye?” Daire fumbles with the embroidered belt, which is inlaid with lapis lazuli.
He struggles to tie his kilt at the waist. “Aurelius swore that he’d burn his world down for us.
He broke me, but I trust him to break himself for you, our Omega.
I won’t be the reason another king falls.
I know the pain of losing my Crown. No matter the consequences, I can’t take Sin’s kingdom or his dignity. I’m sorry if that’s letting you down—”
“You could never do that.” I dive across the bed, gently taking the belt from Daire’s hand. I tie it for him. “I love our Bat. We promised to be his riders. He’s the reason I can shift. How could we hurt him?”
Daire runs his fingers through my hair, drawing my head to rest against his. “I knew that you’d understand.”
“Well, I am the Omega Queen in my own right. I never had a kingdom before. But now I know that I have one to take back, I understand how shitty it is of anyone to take it away.” I pull back from Daire. Then my eyes widen. “I didn’t notice that box last night.”
“What box?”
I blink. “You must be even more exhausted than I am. Didn’t you see it?”
Daire’s expression shutters. “Being a sacrifice takes it out of you. I was still the most stunning offering the Bloods have ever had.”
“More like the cockiest.”
“Of course, when will they have a feathered god in chains?”
“Never again,” I mutter, darkly.
Daire grins, tumbling off the bed with a flap of his wings.
He crouches in front of the wooden box that stands at the end of the bed, which is carved with scarab beetles.
He sniffs it like he’s a cat. “Hmm, incense. It smells like our Bat King.”
Happiness surges through me. “He left it for us. Open it.”
Lanlin is thinking of us even now.
Ever since we were sent to this white bedroom, banished from the royal nest (which hurts more than I thought it could), I half-expected Lanlin to appear in a fog of shadows. Then he would yell, cuss at us, or sink his fangs into my neck.
Anything would be better than this silence.
I stroke over the Ankh bond mark compulsively, desperate to feel connected to my Alpha.
I need to explain. I intended to tonight at the Blood Moon, but there is a saying in the Fang Kingdom that a secret kept too long will bite deeper than an enemy’s fangs.
In this case, they’ve bitten me in the ass.
Daire eagerly opens the incense-scented box’s lid.
“Our wedding breakfast.” Daire’s expression softens, as he lifts out a wooden tray and passes it to me. “Sin noticed. These are our favorites, love.”
I place the tray on the bed, studying the platters of figs, dates, grapes, piles of golden loaves, and sticky honey and bat cakes.
The cakes are a mess.
I’m sure that Lanlin has taken the time to make them himself.
Suddenly, my throat is tight with tears.
When he first made those cakes for me, it’d been Lanlin’s clumsy way of courting me.
How can he still gift me them, after finding out the truth about Daire and me?
How can I admit the rest of our schemes? That we came to his court to capture him?
“He cares.” I stroke over the scrap of papyrus, which is propped on the tray.
Lanlin has drawn the only hieroglyph that he knows I can so far read, the Ankh: my bond mark.
I smile, reaching for the slender blue lotus that he has placed in front of it, which looks like a blue star.
I slip it into my hair behind my ear on the other side to the pinion feather.
It feels like I now have something special from both my Alphas in my hair.
“He’s trying to show that he still loves us. ”
Daire gives me a dubious glance, although he eyes the lotus. “That flower means a lot to him. The blue lotus doesn’t just symbolize this palace; it also means rebirth like Sin explained on the journey. Brides wear them on their wedding day.”
Self-consciously, I trace over the petals.
Then I kiss over the Ankh bond mark in thanks.
To my surprise, I feel the soft, wary press of lips on it in response.
My shoulders slump in relief.
I kiss again, and this time, I feel a more confident kiss from Lanlin with a surge of cautious hope.
Will Lanlin forgive me?
“Is there anything else in there?” I ask.
Daire glances back at the box. Then his expression brightens.
He drags out the pair of bronze daggers, which Lanlin once gave to him as courting gifts, holding them up in dazed awe.
“He said that he isn’t a fae dazzled fool,” Daire says, quietly. “But he is. Why would he arm his enemy?”
“Maybe because he knows that you’re no longer his enemy.”
Daire doesn’t reply, staring into the box.
His gaze is dark and unreadable. “Our crowns are inside here. He gave back my crown. Why would he…?”
His voice is brittle, fragile.
Uncomfortable, I push the tray to the side, shuffling forward to reach my hand out to him. He never misses a chance to take my hand.
Like I expected, Daire scrambles onto the bed. He clasps my hand, holding it up to his chest, over his heart.
“We’ll get through the ceremony,” I promise. “Then when we’re alone with Lanlin, we can tell him…”
“What?” Daire snorts. “Heka has fucked everything up. I should never have believed Maximinus that Sin was easy to manipulate or that his court was filled with savages. I didn’t want to come here like this but still, I knew the risk and consequences if I was discovered.
I was prepared to pay any price as long as you survived… ”
“Fuck that. We will both survive.”
“Maybe this is the prophecy coming true.”
“I don’t accept that.”
Daire’s voice is as haunting as when he sings the songs from his long-lost Winter Court; my blood chills. “I’ve been outrunning death since one spring morning when my world was burned to ash, feathers, and bone.”
“Then keep running.” I drag him closer.
Our knees touch.
I’m breathing too fast, terrified of something that I don’t understand.
I feel like he is turning to shadows, slipping away in front of me. I can’t hold onto him.
I am trembling.
“I’m tired, love.” Daire’s wings curl around him, warm when his words only fill me with an icy cold.
“That’s why you have me.” I kiss him, desperately.
If I am kissing him, then he is still here with me.
He kisses me back, equally desperate.
He pushes me onto my back in the center of the bed. We are lost in a void of white. The drapes quiver like wings around us.
Daire’s eyes are wild. I am panting.
“I love you.” Daire strokes down my face like he is trying to memorize the outline of it.
I kiss him again.
Then he snatches the flower from behind my ear, teasing it down my skin. I am lost in its intoxicating scent. It feels like with each stroke of the lotus, Lanlin is also in bed with me.
Slowly, Daire raises my wrist, never breaking eye contact with me, and gently bites the Ankh mark. He leaves his teethmarks in it like he is both claiming me and our other Alpha at the same time.
I feel the jolt through the bond, as if Daire is fully waking up our vampire lover.
We have Lanlin’s attention now.
“Bad boy.” I grin at Daire.
“I am wicked.” Daire cages me. His wings are spread wide, and I am caught in his dark, feathered world. “We will marry this vampire king. But I will always be your fae soulmate. Your Alpha. God.”
Daire pulls up my dress, bunching it under my arms and leaving me both trapped and exposed.
I shiver, fucking turned on.
“Yes…” My mind is hazy with desire.
My limbs feel heavy, as I relax onto the bed. My mind is flying already.
Daire works the flower down my body, using the silky-smooth petals to circle my breasts in teasing strokes, before pulling it across my peaked nipples.
My eyelashes flutter at the sensation. I am panting.
Daire’s rumbling chuckle only makes me wetter, as he slinks down my body. He alternates kisses and caresses with the cool flower. I clutch the sheets, as sweat drips down my neck.
“Although you should worship your god,” Daire licks around my belly button, frustratingly close to where I want him to be, “as it’s our wedding morning, I will worship my Queen.”
My eyes widen with shocked pleasure, when he pushes my thighs wide apart and licks a stripe from the front to the back of my pussy.
I whine.
Daire chuckles again, and it vibrates through my core.
I try to push against his wicked mouth and ride his face, but he clutches onto my hip, holding me in place.
Daire reverentially parts the lips of my pussy, and I flush at the intense way that he studies me like I am the most gorgeous thing he has ever seen.
“The blue lotus flower also has a deep connection to beauty, sensuality, and pleasure.” He swipes the flower down my pussy; it feels like ribbons. I groan, heady with the sensation. “If a Blood offers a lotus to someone, it is as powerful as a love confession.”
He swirls the flower deeper into my pussy, and I keen.
Then he sucks on my clit, and my back bows.
Pleasure winds through me.
Breathing hard, I struggle to push my dress down and raise my wrist to my lips.
A love confession…?
Lanlin struggles to express his emotions. I have glimpsed how lonely and abandoned he has been in this court.
Has anyone before me shown Lanlin love?
Yet Lanlin has still tried his hardest to show both Daire and me love, like he is even now.
I kiss fervently over the Ankh bond mark, needing to share this moment with my Alpha, even if he’s not ready to allow us back into his nest.
To my surprise, I feel him kiss back just as fervently.
Then my pleasure amplifies, when I feel it mirrored through the bond.
“Our Alpha is touching himself,” I murmur in delight.
Daire’s eyes darken.
He raises his glistening lips from my clit. “Sin can feel how I’m touching you, love. He’s lying in his bed — the voyeur — imagining you and me together, while stroking his long cock. Can you see him?”
Like a never-ending circle of desire, I do imagine Lanlin, as his hand works his giant cock, up and down, while Daire sets back to worshiping my pussy with both the flower and his tongue.
“Alphas,” I moan.
Pleasure hits me like a wave.
I writhe in the sheets, clawing them.