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SHARA
Even though I was exhausted, I could only sleep fleetingly. I felt Rik send Tlacel to the kitchen, his knees wobbly despite the kick of alpha blood he’d taken while I fed on him. I was aware of the silent communication flowing between Rik and Lew, questioning whether he needed to leave for food. I didn’t hear his response to my alpha, but Lew stayed at my back.
I wanted to sleep deeply, hoping I’d dream about the Blood I’d called. Instead, I roamed my house. Searching restlessly, I walked the halls, opening every door, looking for… something. Someone. My manor house blurred into the house in Kansas City where I’d grown up. The room in the attic, pitch dark and silent. Stifling. My parents’ bedroom before they’d died. Mom’s quiet yet piercing sorrow still hung in the air.
Down the stairs, remembering Rik and Daire laughing and teasing each other in those early days. Guillaume and Xin joining us. The pizza party in bed.
The smile slipped from my lips when I realized I stood before the heavy, thick door to the basement. I could already smell the musty, damp odor of the rock and cement foundation. Walls closed in, the door shut and locked behind me. The tiny window high up at the ground level. Blocked with iron bars. Rusted but too thick for me to bend with my bare hands.
Trust me, I’d tried. Screaming through the grate as the monsters closed around Mom. The bright red spray of her blood on the pavement, shining in the streetlight overhead. Pounding my fists on the door with desperate fury. Digging my nails into the loosened screws. Blood dripping from my torn hands but the hinge broke. Letting me out—too late to save her.
I must have whimpered in my sleep, or maybe the nightmare bled into Rik’s bond. His arms tighten around me, his lips against my ear. His broad chest an impenetrable wall against my cheek.
“You’re safe,” he whispered. “All is well, my queen.”
Still asleep enough to not be able to answer but awake enough to smell his skin. To feel the satiny heat against my lips. Hunger spiked so viciously I trembled, sucking in a harsh breath. An image filled my head. Tearing my way through his chest, cracking open ribs, so I could bite directly into his heart. The eager jump of the muscle on my tongue. His heart just meat in my mouth.
My eyes flew open. I jerked back from him, bumping back against Lew’s chest. Shuddering, I stared up into Rik’s steady gaze.
He wasn’t appalled in the slightest. In fact, his slumberous eyes dropped to my lips. “Take what you need, Shara. However it pleases you.”
My eyes fluttered, my pulse thumping so hard I could feel the veins moving beneath my skin. He hardly ever used my given name. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last time, especially since I’d ascended to Triskeles.
Just miles away in a rundown motel where I’d worked cleaning rooms, he’d said my name the same way the first night we were together. Somehow reverently—but also dirty filthy good. Like my name alone turned him on.
“It does,” he rumbled, stroking my hair back out of my face. “Everything about you turns me on, but especially your name. Shara fucking Isador, Last D?—”
“Just Shara.” I pressed my fingers to his lips. “I don’t want or need to hear a litany of titles right now.”
Lew tipped his head closer, his mouth on the top of my head. I felt him breathe in my scent as he rubbed his lips against my hair. The fierce surge of hunger in his bond. Not for my blood or power. Just… me. My scent, the feel of my body against his. “Shara, would you like for me to leave or stay?”
Rik’s gaze didn’t flicker, flinch, or narrow with concern or jealousy. His bond remained open in my mind, his feelings laid bare for me. He wasn’t closed off like before, trying to pull himself away to be the perfect Triune alpha—that I didn’t want or need. “You have two alphas in your bed, Shara. It’d be a fucking crime to send one of us away.”
“I didn’t think two alphas would play together very well.”
He gave me a wry smile. “This alpha has been reminded of his ideal role for his queen and has no problem whatsoever with any of his queen’s Blood, however you see fit to use them. In fact, I urge you to remember how many times Llewellyn must have fed on his former queen over the centuries. How much Isador blood he already carries. How much of her power may still reside in his body. Besides, you could use the extra kick his alpha blood will give you.”
“Stay,” I breathed out, letting my body relax between them.
A long, lean man behind me. A mountain of a man before me. So strange not to have Rik at my back, but I loved being able to rub my face on the impossibly wide expanse of his chest. Breathing in his scent stirred my hunger to a fevered pitch, but I couldn’t bite him yet. Not until my body had a taste of his strength, every cell and fiber yearning for the feel of him moving inside me.
He cupped my knee, lifting my leg up over his hips so he could sink into me on one smooth, powerful lunge. My head fell back, my body singing with pleasure. His dick stretched me wide, filling up every inch without any fumbling or straining. Like his cock was perfectly made to fit the sheath of my body while maximizing my pleasure. A blazing red-hot sword freshly forged, blazing a path straight through me.
I dug my heel into his hamstring, locking my leg around him. His palm wrapped around the front of my throat, his thumb stroking over my pulse. He simply meant to remind himself physically not to feed on me, but the feel of his gigantic hand on my throat sent a heavy pulse of lust straight to my core. So fucking big and strong, my formidable rock. I felt like a tiny delicate bird in the palm of his hand, even though we both knew I had the power to blast him into nothing more than a blackened smear of ash and charred bone.
“Just Shara likes that,” he murmured, tightening his fingers slowly. Letting me feel the immense strength in his palm. How easy it would be for him to simply crack my spine in half.
Lew reached around to seize my hand, twisting my arm behind my back. Exquisite pressure, grinding the tendons and delicate bones in my wrist, tugging my hand higher so I felt the strain in my shoulder. “Then just Shara should like this too.”
Something loosened inside me, a screaming tension I hadn’t even noticed until it started to wane. I loved being their queen. I loved our lives we were building here in my nest.
But here in this bed, in this moment, I realized how much strain I carried. Day in, day out, the royal weight of House Isador stacked another boulder on top of my shoulders. My chest. Making it harder and harder to breathe. The immense weight of power crushing me just a little more every single day.
So much fucking power.
It was a blessing from the goddess, and I wouldn’t change a thing, but it was also fucking exhausting just to hold so much power inside the fragile confines of this physical body. To call it and allow magic to pour out of me—without destroying everything I loved or killing myself. To guard against my own strength, constantly aware of how many people depended on me to protect them. The weight of so many eyes looking to me for every fucking decision.
Here, now, I didn’t have to do a goddess-damned thing but close my eyes and soak them in.
