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Watching him stand fearlessly before the gigantic cobra, a renewed sense of admiration for his courage flowed through me. Especially when she twisted her head to the side, sank her fangs through his abdomen, and lifted him off the ground so he hung from her mouth. He didn’t struggle or shout. Instead, a peaceful smile softened his face. Without struggling, he dangled effortlessly in her grip while she pumped him with venom.
Something he’d said made me turn to Rik. “You carry the antivenom for her bite?”
He nodded and held out his forearm. “I do.”
I hesitated, searching his gaze. “Will poisoning me make her stronger?”
His head tipped and he shrugged. “Her poison changes our blood when she feeds in this form, but having the antivenom won’t affect her ability to feed on you.”
I turned back to our queen. “I’ll take my chances.”
Xin draped across her coils, eyes glazed with pleasure but still very much alive. She lifted her head and swayed back and forth, allowing her poison to spread through his body. Blood and venom dripped from two punctures in his midsection.
I allowed one of my smaller tentacles to flit across the floor, dragging my suckers through the droplets of poison she’d spilled. It tasted… good, actually. Strong, dark molasses, thick with bitter minerals but still sweet. Like a lingering taint of rusted metal and the burn of oil from a shipwreck laying at the bottom of the ocean for decades, but still my queen.
Just as powerful as the beckoning siren call of her blood. One drop in the ocean would be enough for me to find her anywhere.
The tentacle suctioning up her venom numbed but I didn’t care. I spread my tentacles wider, searching out every drop of poison and blood. Even Guillaume’s and Xin’s. I would have it ready for her when she fed on me next. I touched her scales, tentatively cleaning the streaks of poison from her coils. Then more confidently when she didn’t object.
Inching closer, I entwined my tentacles with her coils. Offering myself to her. Lifting my chest up to her invitingly.
She moved so quickly I didn’t see the strike. I didn’t even feel the glide of her fangs through my flesh. Only the impact jarring the breath from my lungs. Spreading cold crept up my tentacles, radiating across my midsection.
“Fuuuuuck me,” Ezra muttered beneath his breath.
I laughed, though it came out more like a strangled wheeze. Her fangs were still inside me, penetrating my flesh. Claiming me in a way few would allow. Let alone crave.
:Drag me to the depths of the Deep Blue, my queen.:
6
SHARA
As the cobra, I could think coldly and rationally. My emotions were still there but distant, pooled in a silvery cup at the base of my identity. Even my lingering rage dripped toward that cup, draining away quickly as an inferno of anticipation rippled through me.
I could watch the way my venom spread through my two Blood and not feel the overwhelming guilt and regret at what I’d done to them. Tilting my head, I studied the effects, noting the differences. Xin had fed on my envenomed alpha before, so he carried the antivenom that prevented him from dying immediately. Languidly, he blinked up at me, his chest rising and falling deeply despite the black fluid leaking from the two punctures in his stomach as big as his fist. I’d cut his liver in half and shredded his bowel. But he still grinned up at me as if I’d given him the greatest gift of his life.
Okeanos was not so lucky. His belly swelled and blackened, his veins standing out like violet worms beneath his clammy skin. Though he looked at me in the exact same way. As if I was the most wondrous, magical creature he’d ever beheld in his life, even as he struggled to breathe.
Tentacles entwined around my coils, an odd tangling that excited me. His suckers moved on my scales like tiny mouths, arousing me even more. Making me think of a nest of mating snakes. Even as my poison spread through his veins, he managed to penetrate the same opening Guillaume had used before.
Before Xin had cut off his head.
The cobra didn’t care. Didn’t feel stomach-churning horror as my beloved knight’s eyes had flown wide, his spine severed. Though even in death, he’d smiled, one corner of his lip quirking with respect and admiration for the Blood who’d managed to surprise him.
The cobra didn’t mind the rattling sound of one Blood’s wheezing while she latched onto the other man and drank him down in long, powerful swallows, making his back arch. His heart stutter. His body went chilled and limp. Yet Xin cupped my serpentine face as long as he could keep his palms pressed to my scales.
His arms fell away. His head lolled like a broken doll, his hair spilling like shimmering satin against my coils. So pretty. I didn’t set him aside or allow him to tumble to the floor. Not after what he’d given me.
Though he was only the appetizer.
Okeanos twitched against me, his eyes roiling like an angry sea. Though he still gripped me tightly, winding our bodies together. His lower tentacles blackened with my poison, no longer the kraken’s lovely shades of purple and lavender. Virulent green leaked from his suckers, his swollen tentacles cracking open with the force of his grip.
Also pretty. And tasty, I decided, flicking my tongue along the dripping streams. My poison seasoned his blood with the power of the grave and the suffering of agonies. Rubbery bones and liquified organs and screaming nerves. So delicious. I opened my jaws wide and locked my mouth around him. Drinking from my original punctures.
The sea swelled in his eyes. Crashing waves and thunder tore through our bond, filling me with the wild rapture of a storm-tossed sea. He rose in my vision, taller and longer and wider, a true monster of the sea. Tentacles slamming into ocean liners and tossing them like toys. Cracking them open like kindling. His rancorous destruction a beautiful thing to behold. Glowing green leaked from his tentacles, a poisoned stream killing everything it touched. Whales, humans, Aima, nothing could withstand his poison.
Except me. His queen. Quivering with his final thrust, his body turned cold in my arms.
