Chapter 4 The Kingdom of Hell #2
I’ve never felt it in my entire life, but it feels so damn comforting it burns my eyes with wetness and causes my beast to release a long drawn-out whine.
Stopppp. You’re making us look like pups, Romey scolds.
My snark is right on the tip of my tongue, but the words crawl right back down my throat and hide in fear when a crisp white face snaps into color among the blackness.
What. The. Unholy. Fuck.
“Who’s your friend, boys?” The bone white face asks, her lips the color of ebony and her teeth rotting among the darkness of her tongue.
“Creatchin, I see you’re taking advantage of the wards being down.” Zilo pauses for only a second, and when she doesn’t answer, he continues. “This is Lady Cersia.” Zilo’s proud booming voice echoes loudly in my head, making me flinch immediately.
The woman seems to hear him. I don’t know how, but she does.
“Mmm, yes. The beautifully pained woman. Beautifully pained indeed.” With a single step, her willowy figure bursts from the shadows. Spindly arms and long fingers like spider’s legs reach out for my beast as well as myself.
I have to force my confidence and not back away from her ice-cold touch along my head, my pointed ears, and the long curve of my thick neck. Roman’s energy loosely envelopes me once more. I’m not sure if he’s meaning to calm me … or protect me.
“She’ll do just fine. He’ll absolutely devour her.
” Her big black eyes eat me whole as I simply stare up at her from my low place on the ground.
“Make sure you train her. She’s harboring many secrets, that one.
We do not have time for another dead bride.
” With a turn of her lips and a terrifying smile, she vanishes.
And I’m left gaping at that last line that hangs like a noose in the dark.
Dead bride? I scream the word so loud all three of them, my own wolf included, cower and whine, crawling around the shadows like scattering mice.
There was an…incident last week, Avian answers.
He has the balls to answer but the intelligence to be vague.
An incident that included a dead bride.
And now they want me to be the next in line to fill that vacancy.
Fucking cowards.
All of them.
Enough, Roman roars.
The shift of my form happens so fast. One moment I’m a wolf, the next … The smoke that shatters around me slices my skin in a fiery abrasive way. Worse than that…I’m wet. The thin mating gown clings warmly to my skin. I’m drenched from head to toe when my bare feet meet the cold rock floor.
My fingers stick to one another, thick goop sliding down my skin in a gagging sensation that makes me do just that.
I turn this way and that before bumping into a hard shoulder that is just so arrogantly unmoving, I know it’s him.
“What—what am I covered in?” I stare up at the shadowed space where I imagine those cruel condescending eyes to be.
A huff of a laugh shakes out of him and fans along my disgustingly damp cheek. Steady fingertips push back my slick hair, and when it tucks behind my ear, it’s pure nasty stickiness.
Please don’t be cum. Please don’t be cum. Please don’t be cum.
“My mucus, beautiful.”
My throat constricts with a heaving I can’t repress. It shoves against my chest with every gag I cough out.
“Oh. My. Fucking. Goddess.” My stomach lurches once more, but even in my sickness, I still can’t help the anger that rises above it all.
“You should count yourself lucky,” he adds with a snicker that throws me into action.
My nails dig into hard shoulders. I bring him down in one swift turn kick. But I don’t let him go that easily. I’m on top of him in a flash of speed. My knuckles are so covered in his fucking bodily fluid that the punches slap right off the hard edges of his face.
I can’t see him.
But I hear his discomfort. And that’s all that motivates me to keep going. With every grunting groan, I slam my fist down all over again.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until several hands grab my hips.
I’m hauled off of him. My back collides with smooth skin, and those strong hands continue to hold me in place against his chest. Even if I’m not struggling to fuck up that pretty face any longer.
I feel good. It feels good to finally release all the rage I’ve been pushing down within myself for so damn long.
It’s freeing.
It’s ecstasy.
Until Rome laughs. An amusement tinged with breathless pain kisses the darkness, and he just—why does he piss me off without saying a Goddessdamn word?
“You’re cute when you’re murderous, beautiful,” the jerk grunts as he stands, his warmth coming close enough to infuriate me all over again.
Only when I stop trembling with fury do the arms around me slowly slide down my arms, my wrists, ever so gently over my tightly held fists. It’s like he steals away my anger with that hypnotic touch that shivers down deep into my core.
I just know it’s Avian. It’s his calming caress.
It’s distracting.
For a moment.
My fist is balled up once more and flung forward immediately the moment I’m free from Avian’s calming hold. My punch is straightforward and cracking against the smooth line of Roman’s nose.
A growl is followed closely by excessive curses that bring a pleased smile to my lips.
“Fuck! Are you just irrationally violent all of the time?” He asks on a muffled grunt.
“Only sometimes. When it’s called for,” I whisper with a smirk.
“That’s enough. Stop antagonizing her,” a deep voice commands.
“Me? What about her?” Romey’s all but pouting while I’m all but sticking my tongue out at the fucker in victory.
Mom likes me best. Get over it, Bruh.
“Avian, come with me to check in with the Prince. Someone will be suspicious if the High Hell do not report tonight.” Zilo’s orders seem endless and articulate.
Even I’m nodding along like I have a clue what’s happening at the moment.
“Rome, take the girl to our bedroom. Don’t let her out, and don’t let her be seen.
And for hell’s sake, fix your fucking nose.
It’s disgusting.” Strong and direct footfalls stride away from me, and I’m left stunned in the dark.
With Roman. My lip curls lightly.
His hand wraps around my upper arm with just enough tightness to tell me he’s still pissed about the bloody nose thing.
I can’t see where we’re going. The flooring is cold concrete. It’s not dirty but not perfectly even either. Possibly large stone rocks but I can’t be sure. A slight chill bites the air, and I can’t help but wonder why the temperature is so low for hell. I imagined it a bit more…stuffy, I suppose.
Roman jerks me around this way and that as we turn maze-like corners every few steps we take, and he has yet to speak to me.
Perhaps I should apologize.
Perhaps I should not.
Definitely the latter. Yes. Definitely not.
My shoulders square despite how often my feet want to stumble.
I don’t, of course. I keep up, and I let him brood the entire way.
He stops us so abruptly that my mucus-sticky chest collides into his smooth shoulder.
He tenses. I wait. I count the beats of my heart, and three pulses slip by in the awkward silence before the churn of metal turning with a quiet click sounds just lightly.
And pale light casts across his golden skin.
With one strong pull and a shove, he tosses me onto a bed. The springs bounce beneath me, and my anger wants to rise up all over again, but I swallow it down and peer around at my new surroundings instead. I take an inventory of every detail.
I do a fine job indeed of pretending to ignore the naked brooding man in the room covered in ungodly goo.
No windows line the tall black brick walls.
The stone shimmers like beautiful poison glimmering among so much ebony.
A black velvet settee faces a cold empty fire pit in the middle of the room.
Two Victorian-style chairs also surround the circular pit, though they appear to be carved from black onyx, with sharp pointed backs.
Every inch of the room, including the bed I sit on, is inky or at best, dark ash. The sheets are silk beneath my touch. The color of charred coal. And the bed: it’s fucking enormous. A dozen wolves could sleep in this thing and never once so much as brush up against the other.
“Whose room is this?” My lashes lift, and I find Roman hunched over a basin bowl in the corner, his features darker than usual as he wipes away dried blood from the bruising bridge of his nose.
Ouch.
I pause to see how I feel internally about that.
…No. Still not sorry.
With the crimson-soaked cloth, he dabs once more, his eyes closing, his shoulders bunching together so tightly a line etches down the hard muscles of his shoulder blades.
Do not help him, Cersia. Do not pity him. He’s a cruel, cruel man. Do not extend kindness to the cruel, for they will accept it and then step on it until it bends, until it bows and until it finally breaks.
I know. I’ve been shattered by villagers just like him my entire life.
Roman is the type of man who could break me. His sea like eyes are too pained. He’s too handsome and too hurt to know how to be gentle with a cracked and battered heart like mine.
So I seal up the cage that surrounds the little beating thing in my chest.
And then I look away from the blood on his face.
“It’s the High Hell’s bedroom. We’re the final three of our realm.” I can hear the disdain in his voice.
He fucking hates me.
Good.
It’s mutual.
“The three of you share a room?” And more importantly a bed? Do tell me more.
I can’t help but remember the way he briefly showed Avian a different side of him. A softer side. A fleetingly fragile side.
“We share everything. We’ll share a life, and we’ll share our enemies.
We’ll do anything to protect the last of our kind.
We’re the tormented. We’re the surviving.
We’re the strongest, the darkest wolves hell has ever created…
” His words slip away into a heavy breath that keeps his full lips parted as he seems to think about his bond he shares with Zilo and Avian.