Everyone is always scared of me.
I drop toward them, as finally the effort of the battle and holding such an extreme form finally drains me.
I shift back into my normal form, falling onto my back in the middle of the blackened village. My cheek is smeared with ash.
Freya and Dove crouch over me, but through my exhausted eyes, they are reduced to blurred shades.
Maybe they were never real.
The peace wasn’t.
Could it ever have been with someone like me?
Now that they’ve witnessed who I truly am beneath my polite mask, crown, and pretty clothes, will Daire and Freya wish to be close to me?
Anyway, the peace treaty has been broken. How will I persuade the Blood Court to accept my nest mates? What’s the point when my mates will only reject me?
I struggle to sit up, but a wave of deep exhaustion and pain washes over me.
My eyes roll back, my vision grays, and I slump to the ground.
I take a final, rasping breath.
My cheek is crushing a lotus flower, and its sweetness mocks me, as I fall into the black.
CHAPTER NINE
Royal Vampire Nest, Blood Kingdom
Freya
Exhausted,I stagger through the high, cedarwood door. I brush over my grazed chin, while my other hand rests on the Shadow Vampire King’s back.
I am rubbing soothing circles without thinking about it, as if Lanlin isn’t a terrifying killer.
Yet he’s also a king who has just witnessed his soldiers being ambushed and slaughtered, his precious ancestral village being massacred, and the tomb of his family being turned to dust.
I’m almost relieved that he collapsed.
What the fuck do you say to someone after all that happens?
Daire picked up Lanlin with a grim expression and hoisted him over Devil’s back.
Shadow snarled when we tried to go near her, unsettled and distressed. Her ears were pinned to her head, as if she was prepared to leap on us if we tried to run.
Then she pointedly started to prowl down the path again toward the capital, Sheut.
Once we reached the high city walls, the shocked guards tried to stop us, but it only took the twin roar of the demonic lions for them to back off.
The guards’ faces were pale with terror.
Yet after seeing Lanlin and the demonic lions in battle, I understand why.
And this is the King who I am meant to bond with...or pretend to?
Now, Daire is walking on the other side of Lanlin, resting his wing over the slumped King to shield him from as many eyes in his own palace as he can.
Yet it’s too late for that.
