Chapter Twenty-Two
Haide
I’m kind of impressed at the level of perfection for this royal garden. Roses and trailing vines, flowers fat and heavy-headed, drunk on their own beauty. Magic-book shit. The kind of place children dream about before they learn pretty things make the best killers.
London drifts ahead of us, her fingers skimming a cluster of deep violet petals, and she tilts her head the way she does when she’s forming a thought.
“Interesting.” She turns the petal over between her finger and thumb. “How even nature rotted in her presence.”
My eyes slide to Legend, standing exactly three feet away. The bond between us vibrates at a frequency that translates to don’t and I fucking dare you at the same time.
“Huh.” I keep my voice light. “Imagine how rotten you’d be if you’d had your dick in her for a few months.”
London’s bark of laughter seems to surprise even her. Legend’s growl doesn’t make a sound, but I feel it crawl through the bond anyway, warm and furious, a hand closing around the back of my neck. It’s irritating enough to make me want to keep going.
“That’s not funny,” he says.
“London thought it was.”
“London has a death wish.”
“London is right here,” she says pleasantly, letting the petal go and drifting farther down the path.
Even with half a garden between us and the long table, I can feel the rest of them working hard pretending they don’t hear a damn thing.
Legend steps closer, dropping his voice. “You’re doing this on purpose.”
I shrug. “I do everything on purpose.”
“Haide.”
“Legend.”
His eye twitches, barely, and satisfaction coils low in my spine, nasty and sweet. He makes several attempts to speak before finally settling on his words. “One day,” he says, slow and careful, “you’re going to push too far.”
I bare my teeth in a smile. “Looking forward to it.”
I turn before he can answer and take my seat at the table, where our names sit in neat script on folded cards like we’re civilized. Mine is wedged between Zev’s and an empty chair at the corner.
Legend’s card is opposite, planted directly in my line of sight.
Someone planned this.
The amusement flicks through me, quick and sharp, and before I can choke it back, Legend’s voice snaps through the bond. Something funny?
Heels click against the stone path, announcing someone new. I glance up on instinct, and familiarity punches me low and strange, old recognition firing before my brain can catch up.
I know her.
From the island. The woman who moved through the exiles like she’d been placed there on purpose.
“Mother?” Creed’s voice splits right down the middle.
Everyone in the room shifts position.
“Mother?” I echo, and it comes out sharper than I mean.
She moves with grace that functions purely as a threat. No wasted motion, no softness, no apology for the space she takes. Her gaze skims the table, counting bodies, then lands on me and Zev, and a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.
“Ah,” she says. “My precious Exiles. I’m so glad you made it.”
That’s why she was familiar, from before I even knew Legend was mine, when I helped London break free and they took reign of the kingdom.
Zev, to his credit, doesn’t even blink. He tips his chin at her like they’re old friends. Are they?
Sinner leans toward Knight, hand half-raised. “Should we be worried about you poisoning our food? Asking for…everyone. I’m Sinner by the way, in case you still can’t tell your twins apart. Knight is over there.”
Her eyes drift to him. “If I wanted any of you dead,” she says, measured and absolute, “I wouldn’t need poison.
” Her wrist flicks, tiny, almost lazy, and dinner proceeds.
Zev’s fingers brush my elbow when he reaches past me for the bread, the unconscious contact of two people who’ve survived in close quarters for a decade.
I lean into it without thinking.
“This is completely fucking over-the-top,” he says. “Aren’t you kinda glad we didn’t have family?”
I laugh for real, my head swinging back.
Legend goes still, sending a wall of ice down the bond.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
His voice slides into my head. “Am I?”
“Yes. You’re being possessive over something you threw away. Remember that? Because I do. Every fucking day.”
Zev’s hand drops from my elbow to the back of my chair, casual, easy, his arm warm behind me. I feel Legend’s control snap through the bond like a rubber band stretched past its limit.
“You think I don’t know every place his hands have been?” Legend’s voice drips through my skull. “You think I can’t feel you relaxing into him because he’s safe?”
“He is safe.”
“He’s a complication,” Legend argues.
”He’s mine.”
The word hits possessively in my own head when I didn’t mean it that way, but it’s too late. Legend has already got it gripped in his hand.
“Yours. Interesting word choice, little monster. Care to explain what the fuck you mean by that before I paint this whole fucking dinner party red with his blood?”
Zev leans in close enough that his breath ghosts across my ear. “He’s going to murder me in my sleep, isn’t he?”
“Most likely.”
He shrugs. “Worth it.”
Something dark and heavy slips through the bond. “Wanna see a trick?”
“What—”
Reality drops out from under me.
The terrace and table vanish. The queen’s sharp eyes dissolve into nothing—and I’m standing in darkness.
Cold stone materializes beneath me as the air whisks over my naked body.
Torch brackets throw shadows across walls.
I remember it from before—when he’d pinned me here with hellhound leashes that couldn’t hold me.
Except now, I’m in restraints that actually hold.
Iron shackles bite into my wrists and my ankles, spreading me exactly how he wants me.
The gag between my teeth tastes like leather and submission, and the metal is cold against skin that’s already running hot.
I can’t move. Can’t speak. Can only feel.
Legend circles me like he’s got all the time in the fucking world and intends to spend it making me suffer. His footsteps slow while I track him through the bond—that electric current between us tells me he’s enjoying this more than he’ll admit.
“You want to know what I’m going to do to you?” His voice drops low enough to scrape against my spine.
He stops behind me, and my skin erupts in goosebumps. “I’m going to take you apart. Piece by piece. Until you want me so badly you’re begging me to take you back.”
His hands find my thighs, spreading them wider. The shackles allow exactly that much movement and no more—he’s calculated it down to the inch.
“I’m going to touch you exactly how I know you like it.” His thumb brushes higher, not quite where I need it. “Build you up until you’re shaking. Until you’re so wet I can hear it.”
Another brush, closer this time. “And right when you’re about to come—”
His fingers slide through me, finding me already slick, and I make a sound behind the gag that would be embarrassing if I had any dignity left.
I don’t.
“I’m going to stop.”
He works me the way only someone who is your mate does, every stroke designed to build, never satisfy.
Circling my clit without direct contact, his finger slips through wetness that’s getting worse with every pass.
Heat pools low and liquid between my thighs, an ache that spreads outward until my whole body feels like one exposed nerve.
The Nightkin purrs in my chest.
Let him play his games, Hellpet. We both know how this ends.
Legend’s fingers finally—finally—land where I need them, and my hips jerk forward involuntarily.
The shackles hold me in place, metal cutting into my wrists, but I don’t care.
He circles my clit with exactly the right pressure, the right speed, reading every signal my body gives him and using it against me.
I’m climbing fast, too fast, my breathing cracking apart into something desperate. My thighs tremble, clenching around nothing. I can feel how wet I am, can feel it on my inner thighs. My whole body tightens like a wire being wound past its limit.
Right there. Right fucking there—
He stops.
Steps back.
I strain against the shackles hard enough that the metal bites deep, a frustrated sound tearing from my throat that the gag turns into something pathetic.
He watches me with an expression that gives me absolutely nothing, but I can see the cracks if I look.
Shirtless, with his jeans unbuttoned and hanging off his waist, his breathing shifts, desperate.
“That’s one.”
He drops to his knees in front of me and spreads me wider with his hands, holding my thighs open while his tongue finds my clit.
The first contact makes me sob behind the gag.
He works me with unhurried focus, like he’s got nowhere else to be, like taking me apart with his mouth is the only thing that matters.
The wet sounds of it fill the chamber. His tongue circles and flicks and sucks, and I’m writhing against the restraints, trying to get closer and more.
If not for the shackles, I’d have collapsed already.
The pressure builds faster this time because my body remembers what he denied, stacking sensation on top of frustrated need until I’m vibrating against the metal.
I’m making sounds I can’t control—whimpering that climbs in pitch with every stroke of his tongue, muffled pleading that he has to understand even through the gag. My whole body pulls tight, that familiar coil of heat that means I’m about to—
He pulls away.
“Two.”
I want to kill him. Want to tear these shackles off and show him exactly what kind of monster he’s playing with.
The Nightkin laughs dark in my chest. Patience. Our turn comes soon.
Legend reaches up and removes the gag, pulling the leather from between my teeth. My jaw aches. The first thing that comes out of my dry mouth is, “Fuck you.”
“Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to finish what you started, you sadistic—”
His fingers slide through me again, barely a touch, just enough to make me gasp. “Be specific.”
The words burn coming out, but my body screams louder than my pride. “I need to come. I need you to make me come.”