Lashes thick with puzzling wetness, her pupils were luminous, even in the glare of the sun. Dark and ringed in gleaming, feral gold, she glanced at his face as if helpless to deny herself. Still nervous to be in his presence, still trying to deny the comfort he offered, though she no longer bothered to conceal her nudity.
Instead, her lips parted on a silent gasp, and he knew she could feel it. His need for her. It was there in the way her thighs pressed together. The way slick dropped from a drooling slit, golden ambrosia enticing her mate to fall into the rut. To be enslaved to her, exactly the way Sinadim had warned him against.
“Then come,” he said again, and grinned when she watched that slow pass of his fist. Pumping up… then down. “Take your reward. Yield to me as I have done for you. Let me tame the fire that pleases me so. Here. Now,” he murmured, sure to use every drop of leverage he possessed. Flooding her inferior system with a rush of the demand pounding through his veins. “Be mine before the eyes of these males I have claimed in your name. A queen, truly. But not in the way of the corrupt fools in the Silver City, to whom the title is merely another word for ‘breeding wife’. You, sweet ferocious Renegade, shall be a queen in the ways of the ancients. Mounted, knotted, and bred before the pack—absolutely, yes. There can be no question whose seed fills you. But here, you will rule at my side. Second only to my wishes.”
Using her Hathorian curse, the mating bond, against her, Giaus grinned. Knowing he’d already won. That there wasn’t a need to cajole or flirt, but to claim her, here, in this way… it was his pleasure to use her every weakness to his advantage and feel no remorse for doing so. Just as it was his joy to lavish her with her every insatiable want, to pamper and spoil the female who’d claimed him.
In an instant, her ears flicked back. Pupils narrowed to seething pricks of rebellion. Fists clenched at her sides, she showed the smooth line of her teeth, and said, “I will not be a sleeve for your cock! You will yield tome. Swear fealty tome. Only then will I give you what you so desperately desire. That is my price.”
His grin came quick and deadly. Echoed by the distant sound of a trap snapping closed. “Done,” he said, only because it was everything he’d ever wanted. And, moving without warning, never leaving his knees, he surged into her. Muscles working in a smooth, effortless arc, he caught her with one hand on her lower back. The other cradling her head.
Delicate where it was needed.
Brutal where it wasn’t.
Dumped on her back, Renegade was flipped before her skin touched the gore. Positioned on all fours, a feast spread before him. Her thighs widened to accommodate, not a second was wasted on the courting of a female already dripping for him. Ready to be bred and submitted. Knotted placid as his seed took root.
No, this was a victory lap.
A conquering. Of his mate. Of the wilds. And of this ragged pack of males who would create the foundation of his kingdom. All of them, claimed.
For her.
Mane standing on end, Giaus took himself in hand and sent his knob through all that delectable Hathorian cream. Wetting his helm, his tail held high—arrogant and stiff—he sent the fingers of his free hand to tangle in the glossy black silk he loved so dearly, and wrenched her head back. Keeping her from sagging into the muck, even as he prepared to mount her in the middle of an ocean of carnage. Before an audience of males who could look but never touch again.
“You are mine,” he snarled, lips hovering scant inches from the shell of delicate ears. Words spoken not just for her benefit, his wicked glare slid up… and found Sinadim at the ready. The other male all but vibrating with the need Giaus alone would slake.
Offering only a smirk, Giaus pressed forward. Slow. A single leisurely stroke, he bullied his way inside and didn’t so much as blink as he did it. Showing Sinadim just where he belonged in their twisted trio.
Renegade shuddered beneath him. Lower back bunched where her tail would have flicked up and away, lifted for him. The way cleared of any obstruction. Her breaths came short and shallow as she tried to accommodate a girth meant for an altogether different species, Renegade arched as she mewled.
“Sing for me,” the king murmured, and felt his knot bloom early. Desperate to lock inside her and fuck a litter of hybrids so deep inside she’d be pregnant for the rest of her life. Fat and swollen with him. Only him.
Hands slapping at blood-soaked stone, Renegade took a breath—and exhaled a delectable purr. Serenading them with the notes of a throbbing, delicate melody that bubbled up from the deep past, it was an ethereal coo that hooked him behind the nose and led him to ruin.
He couldn’t help but groan at even the barest whisper of that sound.
It was a drug that held them all in thrall. Hybrid and Anhur alike. A beautiful song he tried not to judder as he withdrew, hypnotized by the sight of all that stretched and bloodless sodden flesh. As he spread the globes of her ass with a hand more than twice the size of one full cheek, just so he might admire that tight pucker dimpled and winking by his invasion. His heart hurting for the scar where her tail had been.
Pacing just outside of his reach, Sinadim’s mane bristled. Denied access to touch the female who’d marked him. The gleam of newly feral eyes never leaving the place where king and queen were joined.
“Sing for your mate,” Giaus said, taunting as he pressed all the deeper. Returning her song, his chest vibrated with the mangled thing he called a purr. Filling her with a nearly sub-audible rattle that turned her bones to jelly. Until she was held aloft by his hands, thick cock, and little else.
Sinadim snarled, besieged with a deadly rush that had no outlet. None he dared act on—even with the advantage of the rut coursing through his veins—for to do so was to invite a confrontation he could not win.
One he’d already lost, and lost badly.
Grinning, leaning into the cruelty, Giaus shunted forward and filled his queen with everything he had. Stretching all that was wet and wanting, he found her end. Emptied her lungs with an inelegant squawk as their hips clapped together and he bent against that final, hallowed gate he meant to corrupt.
“Good girl,” he drawled—and pulled back just to do it again. Deeper this time, ensuring she was made to move around him.
She grunted. Hands scrambling for purchase with every jarring impact of an increasingly frantic pace.
And then she seemed to melt. Accepting his rule, she gave up the fight. Going fluid beneath him, she moved in a sinuous arc of intentional feminine beauty. Flexing that tight sheath in such a way only a Hathorian female could, she fluttered and clenched those fine muscles. Working for it, she fucked him from below. Robbed him of sense with a coy glance over her shoulder, ears tipped forward and back.
“Gorgeous,” he breathed, the word torn from the bottom of his lungs, given spontaneous life that redoubled the depths of her purr. Rewarded for the slightest hint of kindness, he shuddered as he rode her, stroking one possessive hand down the length of her spine. Painting pale skin with the stains of her past, Giaus petted where she was marked with ink. A lineage he couldn’t read, left by a crueler master than he’d ever be, it was her given name.
The sum total of her value as a harem slave.
