Chapter 7 #2
Lanlin doesn’t deny it.
Instead, his expression becomes fragile.
“Ruin and the Void Cult live in these pyramids. They are mysterious and don’t admit outsiders.
I fear what they do in the dark cells beneath the pyramids more than the priestesses in the Scarlet Temples, who worship death and pleasure, training assassins and courtesans.
I at least understood that. Ruin stole my twin from me.
He hid Laz away in these pyramids, until he went missing.
” He glances at Daire. “You have hidden secrets from me, but I hide ones from you.”
Daire’s eyes darken. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve always known that.”
Lanlin glances away. “Except, I haven’t willingly hidden them. I am under a Blood Oath.”
Daire’s gaze sharpens. “Then that changes things. I won’t blame you for something that you can’t control. You’re trapped. But think like a fae. What can you tell us? Look for a loophole.”
Suddenly, I whimper. My heat is hitting me in waves.
Being this close to a nest, my Omega instincts are screaming at me to dive into its softness and become closer to my Alpha.
Daire slips his arm around me, and I nuzzle against his neck. When his wings wrap around me, I moan at the sensation of both his wings and shadows stroking me.
“I can tell you,” Lanlin’s voice sounds far away, “that the Blood Moon is coming soon. Our myth is that the first Bloods were created out of shadows in the Void, born on the Blood Moon. The moon will slowly turn red after I have fed on blood from both of you because your blood will bleed into the moon. It will magically bind us, and while it does, I will weaken.”
“Aye, I know that part.”
“Do you know that in the past the Void Cult kept fae beneath these pyramids? They were obsessed with the taste of their blood…the idea that they truly were the original gods.”
“We are,” Daire grits out.
“Then my god,” Lanlin smirks around his elongated fangs, “get into this nest and start pleasuring our Queen.”
“I thought that you’d never ask.” Daire scoops me up, and I let out a delighted purr.
Daire throws me down next to Lanlin in the cascading dunes of cushions.
They truly are made of my favorite materials in oranges and greens.
Giving myself over to my Omega instincts, which are heightened during my heat, I claw and nuzzle at them, rolling around on the linen quilt and mountains of woolen blankets.
Blood-red linen hangs from a gilded circular cedar frame that is built around our nest.
The top of the nest is open to the sky, however, and I can’t wait to be claimed by my two Alphas underneath the stars.
Daire leaps onto the nest, bouncing up and down. “Soft. Wow, look at this: long cushions, star ones, and ones shaped like lotuses. And you’ve woven precious objects into the walls: beads like bats, dove feathers, and the Ankh symbol in—”
“This is our journey.” Lanlin’s face is in shadow. “Our love. I have a final gift. It is fitting, right? Something of beauty to drive away the nightmares that I have spent my life painting.”
He turns, pulling out from underneath the pile of cushions a parchment. He shoves it at me like he thinks that I may reject it.
I stare down at the painting.
Surely that’s not me?
I used to gaze in wonder at the paintings that hung on the walls of the Moon Court, especially those of Prince Bard, who I had a crush on until he rejected our bond. Somehow, by immortalizing themselves in art and then framing themselves, the elite legitimized and immortalized their power.
It became impossible to refute.
It’s dangerous.
I didn’t understand then how power can both come and be abused in many forms, even art.
I do now.
Yet this painting isn’t like that.
Instead, it reflects back to me everything Lanlin tried to say in his vows — his love.
“Bloody hell.” Daire reaches out like he wants to trace over the picture that Lanlin has drawn of the three of us together.
We’re not wearing crowns or looking regal.
Instead, Lanlin has captured one of our unguarded moments, when we were together in the early hours of the morning, sharing honey and date bat cakes.
I remember it.
It hadn’t been a dramatic moment. Lanlin had fed an hour or so earlier from Daire, which is why in the painting we both look blissed and relaxed in each other’s arms, while I am lying over their laps stuffing cake into my mouth and offering it up to Daire because he always needs to eat after being fed from.
We look…happy.
Content.
Like family.
My eyes become wet. “This is how you see us?”
Lanlin licks over his dry lips. “Isn’t it how you see me?”
“I do now,” I reply.
That appears enough for Lanlin.
“Put it at the far side of the nest,” I say. “I become wild in my heats, and I don’t want to damage it. But I still want to be able to see it.”
Lanlin crawls to prop the painting at the far side of the large bed, then he crawls back to me.
“There you are, my Queen.” He cages me, studying me like he is memorizing every freckle. I squirm, flushing. “There you are.”
Then he feathers kisses over my face, before capturing my lips in a slow, tender kiss. He looks at my dress like it is personally offending him for covering my skin.
“Undress our Queen,” he commands Daire.
“I’m a king in this bed too,” Daire retorts. “Why are you in charge?”
I wince.
Daire is such a brat.
Lanlin slowly turns with predatory grace.
When I catch the amusement dancing in Daire’s eyes, I know that he has challenged the other Alpha on purpose.
Lanlin snatches Daire by the throat. His claws elongate, threatening to pierce the other Alpha’s skin, only they don’t.
Shadows flow from Lanlin, pinning Daire’s arms and wings to his sides as if with rope.
“Because you are my Blood Lover.” Lanlin lifts Daire up in the air, but gently like a cat playing with a mouse. “Because I reached the nest first and won the bet. So, you will undress our Omega, then you will pleasure her with that shameless tongue of yours.”
“Punish me with tonguing and you’ll only encourage my shamelessness.” Daire grins. “I don’t need to undress because there’s nothing under my kilt.”
“Shall I check?” Lanlin tips Daire upside down.
Daire yelps as he lands in a heap in front of me, revealing that he is naked underneath his kilt. His cock is already hard, glistening with precum on the tip. It must be painful for him to know that he can’t knot me yet but like always, he’s putting the rest of the pack’s needs first.
I can’t resist, however, sliding my hand down to slap the pale moon of his ass.
Daire raises his head and moans. “Punish me again. I haven’t learned my lesson.”
“You’ll never learn it.” Lanlin sounds far too amused by that.
“Aye, true.” Daire pushes me back until I am lying propped in the cushions.
Like a holy ritual, he unbuckles my sheathed dagger from around my waist and places it beside my head.
Then he draws my wedding dress over my head and instead of flinging it carelessly like is normal for him, he also folds it neatly.
Then he moves down my body, dropping kisses across my breasts, stomach, and hips, until his head is between my legs, just where I like it to be.
“You’ll just have to keep teaching me lessons like this.
” Then his expression softens, as he strokes at my wet thighs.
“I’m going to prepare you for your Alpha’s knot. You ready, love?”
“Yes, Alpha.” I glance at Lanlin, who is sprawled across the bed, watching with a hungry expression.
Lanlin’s dark hair is damp between his ribbons and diamonds.
He is tipping into rut as well.
He grips hard onto the blankets, ripping at them with his claws.
Daire languorously tongues down my pussy, lapping at my slick. I purr, as my pussy loosens, ready for my Alpha’s knot under his clever worship.
“You taste like roses and summer. You are the one who tastes like a god.” Slick glistens on Daire’s lips, and he licks it off with relish.
“B-b-by the m-moon.” My back arches, and I push up against Daire’s face, while I grab his curls and pull him down onto me again.
I desire to make his entire face wet. I need him to never forget my taste.
“Keep s-saying things like t-t-that, and I’ll n-n-never let you up from b-b-etween my t-thighs. ”
Daire mumbles something against my clit, which I have a feeling is, you two truly don’t understand this punish-reward thing, do you?
I laugh, loving how playful he is, despite the heat rushing through my veins, and the rut rushing through him.
I tug on his curls, however, to teach him that I do.
By the way he moans, however, humping against the nest, I realize that I may have the line between punishment and reward mixed up along with him.
When I glance across the nest, Lanlin’s dark gaze is fixed on me with such intensity that it takes away my breath.
Then he flicks aside his pleated kilt, revealing his hard cock.
My mouth dries.
Never taking his gaze from mine, he drops his elegant hand to his cock and slowly begins to stroke it in time to the movements of my hips as I ride my other Alpha’s face.
I groan, allowing my head to fall back.
I stare up at the bed of stars above me, bright and more ancient than the Void Pyramids. Magic, dark and primal, shimmers in the air and between us. I have never felt anything like it.
It’s electric.
Are my ancestors watching me from the moon? Am I shaming them by bonding with a vampire? Or do they understand why I am forming this pack of enemies?
This goes beyond love.
It feels destined.
Daire calls it the game of Shadow Kingdoms.
Except, it’s more than a game to me. It’s about the fate of the realms, and it only needs a spark to set them alight in revolution or burn them all down.
Panting, I drop my hands from Daire’s curls to his wings, clawing at him. “I’m going to…”