Gasping, Renegade came awake on a strangled cry. Mouth stuffed with cotton, her tongue dry and thick as her muscles strained against the weight of a powerful orgasm.
Pleasure.
Bliss laced with bolts of pain that tracked up the inside of her pelvis, before exploding in wave after wave of diabolical, clenching delirium. A frantic wriggling pattern she could see in the pulsing vein located somewhere at the back of her eyeballs. It was echoed in each spasm of her fluttering pussy, distorting what she saw with every ticking beat of her heart.
A rough hand found its way into her hair, blunted nails scraping at her scalp as her attention was dragged down. As she was forced to see the male who’d rung such a volcanic orgasm from her body. Chin to chest, he filled her bleary gaze.
Rugged. Masculine.
Giaus.
Her chosen king.
And he was not alone.
Twisting, Renegade looked and found the other. Sinadim, in all his haughty, disfigured Karahmet glory.
He tipped his good eye toward her, hiding the mangled half in shadows that, to her, only enhanced the mutilation. Hiding scars she knew all too well, for she bore the same gruesome marks, her skin left twisted by the very same male. Hadim’s everlasting touch traced the inside of her right arm, from pit to wrist.
The shared trauma did little to soften the prince toward her.
As she watched, Sinadim’s lips spread over a wolfish grin. Teeth bared. Silver eye lit with a ghostly, metallic sheen… the other a vibrant green laced with feral gold. His fist worked in time to Giaus’ hips, and just for a moment—if she squinted—it was as if the prince was the one riding her hard and fast. As if he was the one who climaxed, pressing his knob deep as he might go only to be halted at her end.
Giaus snarled and shattered the illusion. His teeth pinching the cone of her left ear, he tipped her hips forward and filled her to overflowing. Each shuddering thrust adding to the creamy mess bubbling from between lips stretched wide as they could go. He withheld his knot and claimed her from the back. And then, with the rough edge of bloody knuckles, he guided her chin and made her look. Making sure Sinadim could see the helpless pleasure scrawled across her brow, so the other could see where he belonged in Giaus’ kingdom.
That he would never be anything but a guest in Giaus’ nest.
She could feel it all. The triumph and the hurt. The devious, ravenous, desperate need.
All of it Anhur.
Precious little left for her.
“That’s it,” Giaus rumbled. His voice a deep hum that could be felt in her marrow, her blood, through the fragile muscles in her heart, and all the way up to the intangible barbed dart hooked around her throat.
That sacred place meant for a Hathorian mate, forever tainted by the stink of two Anhur.
She felt it when he came, as if that thick, spurting prick were her own. As if the gushing torrent of seed were her victory. At once too full, and growing more drained with every shuddering thrust.
“Giaus—” It was too much. All of it, overwhelming. Her senses heightened to the point of crisis, she was left open to a new world. One that dazed and bewildered and left her vision sparkling with dark stars, her lungs seizing as she shook beneath the onslaught of his indulgence.
“Take it all,” Sinadim snarled, the prince too close and not nearly close enough.
At risk of disembowelment by Giaus’ hand…
… and yet, she ached for Sinadim to fill her just as Giaus had. To satisfy some unknown, primitive demand rooted in her very blood and bone. Aching because she could feel him, just there. She could feel the hurt throbbing through his blood before it bled into hers, where a deadly thorn worked itself ever deeper with each hopeless beat of her heart.
Keening, she squirmed and pressed her cheek against the warmth of Sinadim’s skin. Trying to soothe the insufferable, cruel prince who hadn’t earned what he needed from her. But she couldn’t help tasting his scent, taking frantic, shallow breaths against his outer hip. Couldn’t stop the ragged sound that spilled over her lips when Giaus snarled and halted her advance.
Jealous, blistering hatred assaulted her senses, and though his fingers were gentle, Giaus was not forgiving. Hands heavy, he pinned her in place and saw that she went no closer to the prince. Instead heating her spine with his nearness, filling her mind and body with him.
Sinadim laughed, but there was a seething darkness there, too. Something insidious that snarled and demanded she yield to his dominance. To shatter, and trust that he would remake her.
She’d been engineered to want that. To be what Sinadim needed in an Omega female, content to be the submissive and give up her rebellion at the first whiff of an Alpha male. It was, after all, a carefully selected trait, ingrained over a thousand generations of Hathorians who could pull pleasure from submission, arousal from fear.
And so, when her belly grew taut, ribs hollowed out as her insides flexed, Renegade couldn’t help but embrace that fantastic defeat—and was rewarded with an exotic heaviness growing swollen and ripe inside her.
“W-What’s happening?” she asked, teeth clacking together as Giaus shuddered and shook. All around her. So terribly deep inside.
