Blood Rising

by A M Proctor

  I met Ryzier’s gaze, “You threw me to the wolves and here I am, leading them like you expected.”

  I turned to Alexei and met his angry gaze steadily. “You might not have been the one to break me but you had the power to stop it. You’re responsible for what you allowed them to turn me into. Why? Because you didn’t want to appear weak in front of your court.”

  I turned back to the court. “Well, here I am motherfuckers, blood tears and all. Do I appear weak to you all?”

  No one met my gaze. All the heads were bowed before me. Then someone moved forward. Her burgundy dress swishing the ground as she glided through the males of my court. Red curls piled high upon her head. Diamond’s catching the light at her throat.

  “You are weak and young, Nevaeh. Foolish to challenge our king now. Stupid to choose that conniving demon over my king. Especially when your children are here.”

  Out of instinct, I lifted my hand and flicked it at her. A gust of wind hit her in the mouth, blasting her back against the far wall. Narella’s mouth gaped, not with the astonishment her bulging eyes held, but with the force of the wind shoving past her lips and down her throat. Filling her lungs. Not allowing her to exhale.

  I twisted my wrist and lifted my fingers up. Her body rose up the wall, pressed against it like the G force of a carnival ride. “You’re wrong, Narella. I haven’t chosen the demon over Alexei. I’ve chosen me above all. I also choose my girls over you.”

  Her lungs expanded as she kicked wildly against the wall I pressed her to. The delicate fabric of her bodice tore open as she struggled to exhale against the wind invading her body.

  “You threatened the royal princesses. Therefore, you are a traitor to the crown.”

  I was tempted to explode her lungs right here, right now. Would she die from it? I wasn’t sure. She was ancient. She might regenerate if they gave her enough blood. I lowered her body and pulled the wind from her lungs. She knelt on the floor, gasping and coughing violently.

  “You belong to the males of the court now. Unworthy to be considered mate to your king. You hold no power here anymore, Narella.”

  I addressed the twenty-nine males before me. “I claimed the traitor demon as mine but I present you with a gift. She’s yours now. Yours to play with, to feed from, and yours to fuck. Kill her if that’s your wish. I do not care. Move her belonging to the dungeon. Take her from my sight. If I see her again, I’ll kill her for you.”

  A few males were looking towards Alexei for guidance. I refused to allow my gaze to follow theirs. These were my orders, and they would follow them or suffer the consequences. Apparently Alexei nodded his consent because the males bowed their heads and moved towards Narella.

  Then Gregory was kneeling before me. “Mercy, your highness. Please have mercy on my female.”

  “Like you had mercy on me? She lives when I could have exploded her lungs just now. I believe I have shown great restraint. She threatened the offspring of the royal family. I’ve seen our king execute others for less. She is no longer your female, Gregory. She doesn’t have a harem anymore. She serves the Blood Court.”

  His voice was defeated and heartbroken under that bowed head. “Yes, my queen.”

  I turned towards Alexei then. He no longer regarded me with bristling anger as I walked over to him. Instead of sitting on my throne, I settled into his lap. Might as well find out if he will strangle me now rather than later. His hands clutched the arms of his throne as he allowed me to sit on his thigh.

  I met his pale green gaze for a long minute. He gazed back at me with remote curiosity. I kept my features relaxed, my voice casual. “You created this monster queen. You handed me your court because you claim to love me. Need me. I too need you. Somewhere deep inside this monster is a female who still loves her mate. But it’s time to balance the scale of our hierarchy, Alexei. You and I have to work this out as equals. I don’t want your court. I don’t want your power. I want your respect and love, but most of all, I want our daughters safe and happy here. I want all the children safe and happy.”

  His voice was even but full of power. “You betrayed me.”

  I nodded. “I did. I played the game, Alexei. I played and won, but I don’t want the spoils. I only want to raise our children in a good place. A place where they will choose their destinies. No more games. No more female broodmares paired with studs the moment they are born. We have an opportunity to forge a new future… together as equals.”

  His gaze moved between my eyes. Studied my face before his hand rose and touched my cheek. “You’ve come into your fae goddess powers.”

  I nodded. “I also got my wings too.”

  He smiled slowly. “I know.”

  I hadn’t unleashed my wings in over a year. I’d been too afraid to display my dark feathers in a world of vampire wings. “How do you know?”

  His gaze flicked to Ryzier still kneeling on stage. “He told me I had a beautiful dark angel for a mate.”

  Gaze returning to mine, he added. “One so powerful that she’d take my court from me and force us all to kneel before her.”

  I whispered, “I don’t want to take your court from you. You’re the king. You handle them better than I would. I just want us to work together, Alexei. I don’t want to go back to the old ways, I want to forge a new way, a more equal way for us all.”

  His thumb grazed my cheek tenderly as he admitted, “I’ve been longing for the past too long, haven’t I?”

  I allowed my gaze to soften slightly. My lips turned up just a hair. He could still snap my neck. “Let’s make a new future… together.”

  He jerked his head towards Ryzier. “What about him?”

  I leaned in and pressed my forehead to his jaw. His arms enfolded me gently. “Honestly? I don’t know how I feel about him. He betrayed me, and yet he protected my daughters. I want to hurt him and yet, I want to hold and comfort him as he screams in pain.”

  “You don’t have to decide about him now. He’s got all the time in the world to convince someone to love him enough to free him from those chains.”

  He angled his head to gaze down at me. “Will you release me from my throne now?”

  I considered his request. It all came down to one huge thing for me. “Can I trust you, Alexei?”

  He smiled tenderly. “You could always trust me, mate. Everything I’ve ever done has been to protect you.”

  My smile fell a bit. “Can we agree that I can protect myself now?”

  His smile widened. Green eyes lit with respect. “Yes.”

  “No more deceit between us. I have serious trust issues with you… with everyone now. You must earn my trust, Alexei. I have your back, but you must prove you have mine. Everyone will. I need open honesty from you and I promise I’ll be open and honest back. The race won’t survive a war between us.”

  He pressed a kiss to my forehead, and I resisted the feelings that threatened to rise with it. He whispered against my flesh. “Partners then?”

  I took the first step towards partnership, towards trust. “I release you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  King and Queen United

  Alexei kisses me deeply with passion after I release him. “I don’t care about the power shift, Nevaeh. I only care that you’re still mine.”

  I look into his pale green gaze and nod. “I’ll always be yours Alexei, just as you’ll always be mine. Promise me we’ll be true to each other before all else.”

  His gaze moves from one eye to the other as he cups my face with a large hand. “I promise you... Us before everything else.”

  I smiled, allowing myself to relax for the first time in over a year. I don’t know why, but I believed him. Maybe I’m still naïve. Maybe I still want to believe in the kind of love I’ve only ever read about but never experienced. Maybe I’m a pain slut now. Speaking of pain slut.

  I move off Alexei’s lap and over towards my broken and chained sex demon. Since I’m being stupid and laying it all out now, I reach down to
the specialized lock holding the god chains around Ryzier. Gray eyes meet mine. Pain radiates through them as he says, “It won’t work, Nevaeh.”

  I touch his chiseled face gently, and he presses his lips to my palm. “How do you know if I don’t even try, Ryzier?”

  Crystalline tears form just behind his long lashes. He’s too dehydrated and weak to produce enough tears to fall. “How can you still love me after what I’ve done to you?”

  I bite my lower lip. I’m not sure I still love him. The emotions his presence evokes from me are conflicted. I hate him, but I can’t stand to watch him suffer the way he is. Is that love or weakness? My finger slides into the lock, and I feel the sharp prick. Without seeing my finger, I know that blood is welling up inside the lock.

  Seconds feel like minutes and then the lock unlatches. The magical chains that bound Ryzier fall off his tortured and broken body. He lets out a sob as he bends over against me.

  “I’m sorry, Nevaeh. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I should have cherished your love, instead I couldn’t bring myself to accept it. I destroyed us.”

  I stand up and say one word as I fight my own emotions. “Go.”

  His gaze lifts to mine in disbelief. My face is hard, unforgiving. “Go Ryzier. Leave my court and don’t come back.”

  He says one word. “Nevaeh…” Then he was gone.

  The last bit of my heart froze up and crumbled. The pain of losing him was almost too great for me to bare. I keened with it. And then Alexei was there. He lifted me into his arms and carried me like a child back to our suite as I wept against his chest. I let him undress me, bathe me and make sweet love to my body.

  What was wrong with me? I still loved Ryzier, even after he delivered me here. Even after he caused me so much suffering. I let him go. Ordered him to leave and when he did as I requested that was what broke me? I was physically tortured and raped for months. Yes, it changed me. Yes, it sucked. But this cut me deeper than any whip ever did. Why? Am I that fucking damaged?

  Alexei’s mouth on my pussy tugged me out of my head. I moaned as he edged my clit. “Alexei…”

  He purred against my flesh. “I love when you call my name like that.”

  I ran my hand down my stomach and through his dark hair. He rewarded me with his tongue flicking across my clit. I called his name again and again until I came hard for him. He worked his way up my body, kissing and nipping my flesh.

  I arched up against his mouth on my nipple with a gasp as he draws it into his mouth. His arms slide around my back as he holds me to him. I writhe under him, panting into his head and nipping his ear.

  He turns his mouth and claims mine as he lowers us back to the bed. I pull his hair back as he nudges my thighs open. His monster cock already thick and pulsing for my flesh. His hand slides down and around my ass as he inches his way inside me.

  “Oh fuck, Alexei.”

  He smirks as he kisses me, muffling my cries as he stretches and fills me. My womb cramps as my pussy stretches to make room for his immense length. He inhales deeply as he draws back for another slow thrust.

  My pussy lights up with sensation as he fills me once more. I flood his cock as I cum on him. He pauses to feel my pussy milk him greedily. “You haven’t cum this hard on me since we first married.”

  I reach down and grab his hips, pulling him to me, urging him to fuck me, not chat about how we used to be. The fact is, I’m so raw with emotion, I need to feel his love. “Alexei, please make love to me. I need you.”

  He lowered his mouth to my neck, seeking to understand what I felt through my blood. As much as I didn’t want him to know how much I loved him or how much I loved Ryzier, I offered my vein to my mate. The moment he tasted my blood, his hips started moving again.

  He moaned after every swallow as I laid myself open to him. No more secrets between us. I needed him to see me again. To know the darkness that lurked just under the surface and the light, as dim as it was.

  In this moment, I submitted to my mate and king. He had a choice now, accept what he found or keep drinking till there was nothing more of me. In this moment, I was all right with either.

  He broke off with a groan and immediately moved his mouth to mine, covering me with insistent lips soaked in my own blood. He wasn’t to be denied as he kissed and fucked me.

  The amount of passion in his kiss tumbled me over the edge and I gasped around his mouth as pleasure spread throughout my body. He pushed himself against my cervix and came with me, flooding me with jet after jet of hot, forceful seed.

  Then he continued pumping inside me, just as hard as ever. Working both of us toward a second orgasm. He drew back and bared his own neck. “Take from me my queen. I lay open for you, just as you did for me.”

  Though it was forbidden to drink of the king between times of sacrifice, I drove my fangs deep into my mate. Thousands of years of knowledge flooded into me with each swallow, working from present day and going backwards in time.

  I moaned just as he did as he showed me everything. I clung to his love for me even as I accepted his darkness. The evil shit he’s done. The love he still felt for Narella, his first mate. The love he felt for my sire, his best friend.

  The losses he’d been through, hurting worse the further I went back in his timeline. Showing me that the older a vampire gets, the easier they deal with loss. I sobbed as I pulled away from the knowledge.

  He gently guided my mouth back to his neck. He wasn’t finished. He had thousands of years to reveal. Centuries of happiness and darkness to show me. Times when he was full of hope and goodness and times when he was lost to his own pain and demons. Centuries of despair and abuse. Centuries of joy and love.

  I pulled away from his vein to find his lips. I needed to show him physically that I accepted all of him. No matter how complex he might be, I loved him as he was.

  That evening had been one of the worst evenings of my entire life, and the best. I’d lost a part of myself when Ryzier disappeared. A part of my heart that I may never recover from.

  But what I gained in my marriage was unfathomably wonderful. All my doubts about my king dissolved when he trusted me with the knowledge of his ancient blood.

  ~~~

  Alexei and I fell into a loving routine as he forged ahead with our alliance. Once again our daughters brightened our lives. Jah and Rah slowly embraced their roles in the Blood Court nursery. While they had been happy in the Fae Realm, they refused to leave the girls and me.

  The last time I offered to send them back to the Fae Realm, Jah said, “When we are sure you are safe and happy here, we’ll accept your offer. Until then, let us stay with you.”

  The Blood Court was adjusting to the new laws that Alexei and I were rolling out. It wasn’t easy. My mate was set in his ways, but he also agreed that changes were needed. So we met in the middle. While female vampires had a duty to the race to produce as many offspring as they could during their fertile years, they were no longer the property of the males.

  A newly transitioned or pre-transitioned female must live under the protection of a clutch. They must provide for her and educate her in the vampire laws and traditions. She could also choose to learn a skill or craft. Her mind and body were her own between heats.

  She would choose her breeding harem within the members of the clutch. The clutch leader is to respect the female's choice of breeding partner. Before, the clutch leader would either retain exclusive breeding rights to the females of his clutch or choose the harem.

  When I learned of what some clutches did with the offspring, I just about lost it. “You mean to tell me that a clutch leader can take a newborn from its mother and trade the baby to another clutch for fresh bloodlines?”

  Alexei protested, “Honey, you’re thinking like a human again. A lot of these females don’t want to raise their young.”

  “Bullshit Alexei, I’m thinking like a mother. While there may be a few females who don’t want the responsibility of raising young, I imagine ninety percent of the
moms who have their babies ripped from them are devastated. Fuck, that would kill me.”

  Alexei leaned forward and asked, “So what do you propose?”

  “Children belong to the mother until they transition.”

  Alexei sat back and crossed his legs. “There are hundreds of clutches who don’t have the means to raise the children they breed.”

  I narrowed my gaze on him. “Means or want?”

  “Both.”

  I shake my head slightly and then roll my eyes. “Then they shouldn’t breed females.”

  His brows raise slightly. “So you’d deny them breeding rights just because they don’t want to raise children.”

  I give an exasperated sigh, my patience wearing thin. “Look I’m not in the business of telling people what to do. I think it should be the females of the clutch to decide how they want their offspring raised, not some male who thinks he’s god.”

  He smirked proudly at me. “All right, so the females control the offspring’s lives until transition. Then the clutch leader can trade them to another clutch?”

  I scowled at him. “You’re assuming that all clutch leaders care about their females and offspring. I can assure you that from the reports I’ve heard, most of them do not. Females and babies are a commodity, to trade, barter and sell.”

  Alexei interrupts me. “As is the clutch leader’s right. Most who even have a female to breed, make their money by selling the offspring. His clutch, his rules, if his followers don’t like it, they can leave or lead an uprising.”

  “Then females should be afforded the same rights.”

  He runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “How do you suppose they do that? Strike off on their own, risk getting taken by another clutch or worse how about them getting taken by crows? Females need the protection of strong male vampires. How do you think the males will react to a female announcing that she doesn’t want them anymore and requests a transfer of clutch?”

  “I expect them to treat her with respect and safely transport her to where ever she goes. Females are precious to our race. They should have a voice and say in their own lives, even if that means she puts herself at risk on the outside. I think we should open communications with the clutches that have females. We need to hear from them about what they want. We can’t sit up here like gods and decide about things we know nothing about, but you and I can agree that we need changes.”