My throat burned with a venomous rebuttal. I was never his, not really. But I couldn’t let Michael and Abaddon tear me away from my true mate for the second time. I had to give this everything I had…
The beast inside me was writhing in her rage. If I still had my wings, there would be no holding her back. She’d shift and rip apart our abuser. And I’d let her. But we didn’t have that option anymore. My guts twisted with trepidation as I realized Sane Jess was going to have to steer the ship on this one, not Reckless.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tamped down on my nerves and wrapped my arms around Abaddon’s neck. Using every shred of my imagination, I thought of Lucifer.
My eyelids fluttered shut as phantom sensations ghosted over my skin, making my lower belly flood with warmth. A swamp of heat tickled between my legs, where I could almost feel the silken strokes of Lucifer’s tongue. And the bruised flesh of my hips where he’d hungrily gripped my thighs, whispering dirty, unholy promises into my cunt while he licked me until I melted.
The orgasm he’d given me had been world-shaking, my senses splitting as I had gripped onto his shoulders for dear life. But coming apart around his mouth had been nothing compared to the violent, mind-shattering climax brought on by the thick, swollen mass of his cock. I was lost to that moment. So sweet, so perfect. My breath rushed out at the fresh memory, bubbles of need rushing through my veins, making my blood grow hot. Huge hands gripped my breasts, and a deep, throaty groan feathered over my lips and face. Then wings tightened around me, pulling me flush against taut muscles.
Wings.
My eyelids flung open just in time to see Abaddon’s mouth closing in on mine. His kiss was just like him. Brutal. Unrelenting. Cruel. It ate me alive, devouring me from the inside out. His fangs gnashed my lips, and one beat of my heart later, the bitter tang of blood flooded my mouth.
I bucked against him, my cries of protest smothered by his demon maw attached to my face, sucking me like a leech. When I slammed my teeth down onto his tongue, he broke the kiss, a wicked grin twisting his blood-stained lips.
“Do you remember, My Queen? Does this bring you back to the day we met? Remember how I claimed you in front of them all.” The chilling blue of his eyes twinkled with fondness like he was recalling a sweet wedding day with me dressed in white, walking down the aisle. His grin turned lethal. “Remember how you fought me? Your attempts were so pathetic but cute.”
Abaddon brushed my lower lip with the pad of his thumb, smearing my blood across my skin like an unholy sacrament.
“He may have won you in the end, but if I have anything over Lucifer, it’s the fact that I broke in that sweet little hole of yours first.”
My chest burned with bile as the memories of that shit day came ebbing back.
My beast remembered too. Like a breaking dam, the memories of that bleak day came crashing down over me, searing my mind like a cigarette burn stamped into my brain.
3
The Eighth Circle - Past
I’d always hated crowds.
In the Eighth Circle, gatherings were always gruesome occasions. This deep in the bowels of hell, the layer where the fraudulent souls were sent to be tortured, was the place among the savage wastes where some of the most brutal and barbaric demons roamed.
Here it was hot, filled with hellfire and brimstone. The landscape was treacherous, filled with jagged mountain ridges and deep trenches scattered between. Nestled in the center of the mountains was a flat plateau of dried magma where the occasional crack ran deep in the igneous rock where steam rose up, and molten lava could be seen deep below. It was like a hellish amphitheater. When souls and native demons gathered here, it was a location fit for a bloody spectacle.
Sweaty, sticky bodies in dense numbers would gather, usually for public beatings and executions. Murder was commonplace this deep in hell. Most of the shifters here didn’t care about the lack of an afterlife for our own kind.
Here, death happened on the daily. So while a particular demon’s demise was interesting enough to draw large numbers, it meant the monster had made a lot of enemies and probably had it coming. That or they were a halfway decent person, and down here, decency rubbed most demons the wrong way. But here it was tomato–tomatoe. They always ended up the same, face down in a pile of their own blood.
But today was different. “Special.”
Today was the day the king of Hell would select a queen.
This king was new, a young and powerful shifter who was easily twice the size of most males. Demon shifters lived a long time, so any given king could reign for eons. That is until a new challenger rose up and tore off his head, with it earning the crown.
There were rumors about this new king. Rumors that he was an archdemon, a powerful and rare kind of demon. No one knew exactly where their species came from. But this one named Abaddon had seemingly come from nowhere and ripped off the old king’s head with his bare hands.
So far, it would seem that this new king was curious enough of the reigning monarch’s traditions to uphold them. At least when it came to the barbaric task of picking a mate and queen for himself.
I hadn’t been born yet when the last king had selected his mate, but I heard the stories of the vicious tradition.
Whenever a male had managed to defeat a king in a battle of brawn and might, he earned the crown, which had the power to compel all souls and native demons. It was a long-standing tradition for the new king to select a mate from the crowd and “mark” her as his mate by fucking her in front of all the citizens of her native circle.That wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t a sick preference for the last handful of kings to use the crown to compel the crowd and select a female who showed any kind of resistance.
Where was the sport if they were a willing victim?
The last king had selected his queen on the second circle. The upper levels were easier to fair, meaning the females were softer, more gentle, easy to tame and dominate. Down here in the most savage levels, the women were hardened. We were accustomed to fighting off males stupid enough to try to mate us against our will.
The fact that this archdemon was coming all the way down here meant he wasn’t looking for a soft, fair queen.
