My mouth watered but I kept my face smooth and relaxed.
“Could you tell who was inside the flames?”
I hesitated before shaking my head. “Not through scent or sight directly. I suspect it was a wolf, though no natural wolf carries that kind of rage unless it’s rabid.”
She blew out a soft sigh, her breath tickling my cheek. “So we’re watching for a man who’s pretending to be dead, who tastes like one of Winston’s best pastries, and a rabid wolf covered in sunfires.”
One corner of my lips quirked. “Exactly so, my queen.”
She nodded, her brow furrowed. “Which means it has something to do with Karmen, and we both know a wolf king who fits the unstable bill. Though I don’t know that he’s so far gone as the creature we saw.”
“I see the creature in your bond,” Rik said. “Could it be something she’s creating to send against you?”
Shara’s eyes unfocused as she replayed the vision through her mind. “No, at least I don’t think so. If anything, I think it’s meant as a warning for her. Not me.”
Rik tightened his arm around her, tucking her deeper into his embrace. Rubbing his face against her hair, he worked his nose deeper. Finding the delicate skin behind her ear. He inhaled loudly, as if he couldn’t suck in enough air. His long exhale rumbled deep like distant thunder.
“Oh,” she whispered, her eyelids fluttering shut. “Did my period start?”
“Mm-hm,” he replied.
I barely breathed, afraid to inhale too much of the lush scent. One drop of her blood beading on her skin made all of us go rock hard in an instant. Her mind-blowing breeding scent was enough to make any and all of us behave like crazed addicts desperate for a hit.
Plus, I didn’t want to embarrass her or make her feel self-conscious. She’d been raised as a human. At first, she hadn’t even known how rare and special it was for a queen to breed at all, let alone so regularly.
“I remember when you first came to Kansas City.” Cupping my cheek, she opened her eyes. As deep and dark as the universe itself, her eyes gleamed with a sprinkling of bright stars. “I was bleeding then too.”
Involuntarily, I took a deep breath. Nostrils flaring wide. Taking in every cell and molecule of air I could load into my system. For all time.
Overload. Every drop of her blood I already carried seemed to catch flame, just like the fiery creature running across the ocean waves. Only I ran to her. Always.
Leaning closer, she brushed her lips in a teasing light kiss that made me tremble with the effort of restraining myself. She huffed out a low, soft laugh. “I almost sent you away because I couldn’t feel you. Now…” She slipped her tongue into my mouth to touch the tip of one of my fangs. “I can’t imagine not feeling you with me, every moment of every single day. I hated every moment you were gone on the hunt, even though I could still feel you in my mind. It wasn’t enough. I want to feel you, Xin. I want to know you more. Every single day.”
She kissed me again, deeper. Then whispered, “I see you. I hear you. I know you.”
For so long, I served in silence. An invisible, cold assassin. Never touching another living soul unless I needed to hold them for my blade to penetrate better or deeper. In hundreds of years, I never dreamed I would serve a queen who touched melike this. Who wanted me to feed directly from her silken skin. A queen who wanted me to lie next to her, our limbs entwined, our hearts beating in unison. Even if we didn’t have sex, such intimacy was foreign to me.
Sleep. Comfort. Touch. With a queen.
I would’ve sooner turned myself into a koi fish and hopped into Marne Ceresa’s pond than ever believe a queen like Shara Isador existed.
My queen.Mine, mine, mine.I couldn’t stop the rising aggression. Or rather, I didn’twantto.
Rik’s rumble deepened even more, and his bondtriedto rattle me to my core. A stone fist slammed into the foundations of the world hard enough to make mountains tremble. A wise Blood didn’t push his alpha too hard—especially if their queen was breeding. I usually wasn’t one of the Blood who needed to be reminded of my place, but I also wasn’t so possessive.
Now, though, my wolf crouched inside me, hackles rising on a low, silent snarl.
“Rik.” His growl cut off immediately, but his bond still weighed a million tons in my mind, trying to crush me in a landslide of punishing granite.
I couldn’t help but flash a smile. Rare for me again, but with Shara between us…
“Xin.”
My eyes snapped to hers, the wolf’s hackles lying down smooth.
“There’s enough for both of you. Goddess, you know I typically bleed so much everyone can have as much as they want. So what’s different this time?”
Eyes narrowed and hard, he held my gaze over her shoulder, though he couldn’t help but take another deep inhale against her skin. “You smell even better than usual. More magical. More… fertile.”
