Page 37 of The Fallen Fae King

Is that why he didn’t judge me for talking to animals? Being friends with them as well?

Daire is fascinating, deadly, and as close to nature as I am.

When I finished layering the gold collar over my bare olive-skinned chest, which fell around my obsidian scarab beetle pendant, along with the gold bracelets on my upper arms and wrists, I stared at myself in the broken mirror.

I looked like a proper Shadow Vampire King on his wedding night — or at his funeral.

I nodded grimly at my reflection, before I climbed onto my destroyed nest.

I sniffed the clawed bedding, chasing the faint scent of my Omega and Blood Lover.

Then I felt Freya’s soft kisses on our bond mark, followed by the pleasure that she was sharing with me.

Separated, we were still together.

I could feel Daire and her in the nest that I had torn apart.

I didn’t need to spend my final day alone.

Suddenly, my moth spies darted toward me like papyrus caught in a storm.

I sat up, on the alert. “What do you have to report, my honored moon-moth? Why are you fluttering with fear?”

The night is full of fangs, the moth whispered like velvet against my ear. We listened to your mates. But the fae. The silver-haired one. He won’t move. I landed on his hand. His nose. His lips. But he would not wake.

I threw myself off the collapsed bed, prowling toward the door.

What happened to my Blood Lover?

My pulse pounded in my neck.

No one had the right to drain Daire’s blood but me.

His blood was mine. He was mine.

The moth flew after me in a blur of wings.

And the other one⁠—

“What about the wolf?” I growled around my elongated fangs.

They followed the cruel one into the dark. But they walked wrong. As a moth would after a lantern.

I slammed my fist into the wall, and Shadow rose from her bed with a roar. “She sounds compelled. Was it Hor?”

The cruel pretty one, the moth agreed. The wolf cries. But she follows.

Now, I rest my hands against the heavy doors that lead into the underground Crocodile House. The doors are obsidian with veined green malachite like a crocodile’s hide.

I am shaking with anger that Horus would dare harm my Blood Lover and steal my Omega.

Haven’t I made it clear that to touch them is to court death?

When I was first brought to the Blood Court and locked within the Scarlet Temple for training, Isis and her family were the ones who held the power.

They were cherished, from a noble family, loved.

Isis was the respected ex-Beta consort. She knew the other noble families and how to create a faction behind herself.