I concentrated on the motion, doing pretty well until an older man came forward.
The information he began to relay had my stomach dropping to the floor.
“There is a rouge pair of alpha lycans that have been spotted on the lands, Sire. From the region of Zenith, they are quite large and strong. Already he has quarreled with Lady Diana’s pack and Xavier's brood.”
“How interesting,” Hades nearly purred. “Does our queen happen to know any suicidal lycans from Zenith?”
“I know hundreds of lycans from Zenith. Do you happen to know why two lycans would take a trip to hell?” I shot back just as casually.
His amber eyes lit up, and a feral grin spread across his marred face. “Oh, is that a backbone? She’s much better this way.”
I didn’t give a damn what he thought of me, but I knew some response was better than none.
I curbed my panic into irritation, which wasn’t hard to do.
Why would Toby and James have stayed here all this time? Hades was correct in calling them suicidal.
“Do you happen to know these lycans’ names?” Reyes continued his line of questioning.
“Yes. One is Toby!” the old man shouted, right before he crumpled to the floor, screaming in pain and clutching his skull.
I damn near jumped out of my skin, watching in horror as blood began to stream from his every visible orifice.
“What's wrong with…” I stopped talking when I looked over.
Reyes was staring at the man intently; his eyes lit up as if they were flames.
Something akin to fear came over me as I realized he was doing this with his mind, not lifting a single finger.
He didn’t let up until the man was severely convulsing on the floor in a puddle of his own blood.
When he finally stopped twitching, it was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.
“Feed on his corpse if you wish, and then clean this up!” Reyes demanded.
My stomach rolled and a sour taste flooded my mouth when a few of the guards moved from their positions to the man on the floor. Shifters’ teeth elongated, vampire fangs doing the same.
They fell upon the man and fed off him like a pack of wild dogs. They ate as if they were starving when I knew for a fact they weren’t, snapping limbs from tendons and crunching bone.
Watching them made it hard to believe there had ever once been a vampire hierarchy before the depires had brutally wiped it out.
“Wait!” Reyes voiced after another minute or two. “Why is it I wasn’t alerted about these trespassers?”
A shifter was the first to gain control of his baser urges. He looked to Reyes with a blood-smeared face. Skin stuck between his teeth.
“We didn’t think they were—”
He suddenly doubled over, a low whine spilling from his mouth a second before everything he’d just devoured expelled back out, chunks of intestine spilling on his booted feet in a waterfall of vomit.
“That’s right. You didn’t think!”
His hand clenched around mine so tightly, the bones ground together.
At the same time, a vampire’s neck twisted so sharply to the right, it came off.
The air was saturated in fear, the guards against the wall sweating bullets, the ones that had been feasting terrified they’d suffer Reyes’ rage next. Dylan and Wesley were amongst them.
My stomach revolted at the mess in the room.
I stared at the supes covered in blood and organs. There was no reason for them to feed off this corpse.
They were savages.
But they were my savages, now.
I tore my hand from Reyes, ignoring the way it throbbed as I forced his arm away and rose to my feet. “Are you fucking insane?” I yelled at him, whirling around.
I looked at the men, now all kneeling in hopes it would grant them mercy.
“All of you get out!”
They reacted to the command instantly, Dylan and Wesley included, but much slower than the others.
When I turned back around, the look in Reyes' eyes almost had me following right behind them. I held his gaze, barely aware of his brothers making a joke as they took leave as well.
Only the two of us remaining, his eyes flashed before my own and returned to their normal color.
He stood, and I tilted my head back to look up at him. There was little room for him to move forward without forcing me down the stairs.
“You dare raise your voice at me in front of my men?”
Oh, so we were to have a pissing contest?
Heart hammering away in my chest, I swallowed and set my shoulders. “You mean our men? The ones you were slaughtering like pigs?”
“Funny, I don’t recall hearing them squeal.”
“You’re sick,” I spat.
He snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me forward. “That’s not the first time I’ve heard that this week.”
Without warning, he tangled a hand in my hair and smashed his mouth to mine—hard. I clamped my lips together and barred his entrance.
The hand around my waist glided down to my ass, grabbing a handful and pulling me even closer. The hand in my hair skimmed to my neck where pointed nails dug into soft flesh.
Pointed nails…
Since when did he have those?
He pressed in harder when I continued to resist. I gasped from the sharp pain and parted my lips.
His tongue invaded my mouth, wrapping around mine like a boa constrictor catching its prey.
I brought my hands up to his solid chest, feeling a steadily beating heart, far out of sync with mine. When he finally drew back, my lips were puffy and bruised.
“What are you?” I breathed.
“This lycan. It’s your he.” A statement, not a question, one I would never confirm nor deny.
“You don’t have to; your loyalty is misplaced but admirable. I’ll know who he is by the end of the week.”
I had nothing to add to that, and words were obviously not needed for what he wanted.
His hands roamed, finding their way beneath the skirt of my dress. Still pointed nails dug into the back of my thighs just beneath my ass, and he walked us backward.
He lowered himself onto his throne, pulling me down to straddle him. I released a hiss of pain as my skin split, thighs wrenched apart to be placed on either side of his.
My apex came to rest just above the bulge in his slacks. I grabbed hold of his shoulders to prevent myself from falling as he freed his engorged cock.
There was no foreplay or whispered words. Not a single objection spilled from my mouth as he shredded my underwear and slid the head of his cock up and down my slit, using his thick fingers to spread my lips before forcing himself inside me.
The brutal intrusion had me sinking my teeth into my bottom lip so hard, I drew blood.
Reyes’ eyes dropped to the small wound and he lurched forward, suckling it into his mouth. His hands moved to my hips, setting a rapid pace and bouncing me up and down on his cock.
Each thrust seemed to stretch me further, bringing forth a steady amount of juices that drenched him to his balls. Utterly shameful sounds spilled from my mouth, wanton moans and sharp gasps of pleasure.
I pulled back, grabbing hold of the arms of the throne, fingers gripping tightly to old bones. The severed heads balanced atop it rattled on their spikes from the force of our fucking. Their empty eye sockets seemed still able to watch our every move.
As I neared my peak, my pussy grew tighter and tighter, like a vise, clenching around the cock battering my insides.
I mewled pathetically, causing Reyes to laugh and make me fuck him harder. The climax had my head tilting back, nails biting into bone once more as I cried his name and brokenly moaned.
“So beautiful,” he rasped. “So disobedient,” he growled a moment later as his cock jerked inside me, semen jetting out.
I thought it’d be over then. Barely five minutes had passed when he lifted me, hoisted my legs over his forearms an
d continued to fuck me, my body contorted at such an angle I had no option but to take every hard inch of his cock.
I came to the point of pleading with him not to make me do it again.
He did.
After a while, not even the smell of him could mask the stench of death and blood inside the room.
He didn’t care; he continued bringing me to climax repeatedly, just to prove that he could.
~13~
Two days passed and nothing changed. I knew patience was a virtue, and this would take time, but that wasn’t on my side.
After our sexcapade in the throne room, the only new development was me having free roam of the citadel. With the walls having eyes and ears everywhere, I couldn’t even ask Dylan what the skeleton key was for.
On day three, I expected more of the same.
Imagine my surprise when I woke with my head still on Reyes’ naked chest, his thick digits massaging my scalp.
The scent of him enveloped me, comforting me in a way I was unable to explain.
I smothered a yawn and wriggled closer, enjoying his body heat. “What are you doing here?”
“Good morning to you too, beautiful,” he deadpanned.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. You’re just always gone by now.”
His fingers left my hair, and I suddenly found myself flat on my back and staring up at him.
“I thought I could spend the day with you.”
“The whole day?”
“Until the very end,” he replied, leaning down to ghost a kiss over my lips. I could either look at this as a bad thing or a good one.
“Duvessa,” he intoned, moving to my jaw-line and slowly to my neck.
“Hmm?”
His hands tugged down the comforter covering my naked body. I’d never redressed after his impromptu need to fuck me in the shower the previous night.
“I’m about to have my tongue deep inside your cunt. Do not think of anything else but getting off on my face.”
“I…oh,” I mumbled.
He spread my thighs, kissed down my navel, and then sealed his mouth over my pussy, beginning to feast.
He ate me greedily, as if he were a starved man. My hips lifted for a fraction of a second and he slammed them back down, pinning me with a long arm reaching up to wrap his fingers around my throat.
Three digits slid inside me, rocking at a steady tempo, stretching as they pushed down to make room for his tongue.
He used the tip of it to flick my swelling bundle of nerves every time he plunged it into my pussy.
I gripped his hair tightly, shoving his tongue deeper into my cunt.
“Duvessa, your pussy tastes exquisite,” he hummed his contentment, picking up his pace.
When my thighs began to tighten around his head, he held them open. I panted, feeling the all too familiar stirrings in my core.
“Reyes…”
I called for him as I came, his name drawn out on a long moan.
Before I could remotely come down from the soaring pleasure, he raised himself over me and gently eased his cock inside.
It was a little awkward eating breakfast together—an actual breakfast.
He’d had a cute spread delivered to our room, and now he sat across from me at the rounded table, eating an omelet.
Neither of us was dressed. I was in a robe, and he was in a simple pair of sweats. Every few minutes, I shifted to abate the soreness between my legs.
“You’re very quiet for once,” he commented, giving me a grin that made him appear boyish.
“I’m not sure what to say,” I answered honestly.
“Whatever you’d like. There isn’t anything you want to know?”
Lifting a shoulder in a shrug, I reached for my grape juice. “How did you get the scars on your back?”
“I was expecting something more complex than that. All depires have some variation of them. We were trained with bullwhips.”
I swallowed a sip of my drink and stared at him. “Trained how? For what?”
“To kill,” he said simply. “Depires were created to cause pain and destruction—nothing else. We taught ourselves to feel, and by the time we realized emotions were such fickle, fragile things, it was too late.”
“You never had parents?”
“We had surrogates who raised us after we went through ectogenesis. None of us came from a real womb. They killed off our 'mothers' when we were seven.”
Well, there went my appetite.
“Reyes, that’s terrible.”
“It was a long time ago, and we got the upper hand—as you can see. After the vampires killed one of our own because he wouldn’t submit to them, my brothers and I formed the resistance and wiped them out. It was easy; they were far weaker than us. Purgatory came a few months later.”
I hung onto his every word, eager to learn as much about him as I could. We were strangers who shared our bodies and a bed.
“What would you like to do today?” he asked, pushing his plate away.
“Wow. Is this real? Are you asking me what I’d like to do and not telling me?”
He leaned back in his chair and regarded me with a heavy stare. “Your nose is perfectly centered, and your cheekbones are…” he paused, slightly tilting his head to the side. “You’re extremely beautiful.”
I glanced down at my half-eaten croissant. Countless times he’d told me this, and it never failed to make me blush, even worded as oddly as that.
“Uh, thanks. Can we go outside?” I asked, looking towards the balcony doors that had yet to be unlocked. “I haven’t been outside since…”
Unsure how long I had been here, I couldn’t add a number.
“We can do that,” Reyes replied softly. “Let’s get dressed.”
Things didn’t get any less awkward, but the silence between us wasn’t strained. I thought that once we left the confines of our room, things might flow into an easy rhythm.
It was a fool’s hope.
On our way through the citadel, I spotted Jacinda scurrying off, completely in her world, and Scarlett passed by me with Cassimere, flashing a smile of…encouragement? Reassurance?
I had no idea.
Reyes guided me down a hall I felt I’d gone down a hundred times before, but no way could that be possible. I wouldn’t have guessed there was an exit here until today.
Dylan and Wesley trailed a decent distance behind us; those two were always my shadow.
At the end of the hall was a pair of iron-rimmed glass doors. Two guards were stationed on either side of them.
“Is your security always this intense?”
“There have been a few changes recently that have warranted it—you amongst them.”
I considered his words, wondering what exactly had changed since my arrival.
“How were things before I got here?” I gambled and asked.
“Boring,” he replied easily.
That was a universal response if ever I’d heard one.
At the end of the hall, the iron doors were pulled open and warm air spilled inside.
The first thing I noticed was that the sun had yet to return, but the orange haze remained.
We were behind the citadel on a smooth lane of asphalt that ran straight before splitting off in two separate directions.
Neatly trimmed hedges lined each section. A few ravens sat perched on the branches of coal black trees.
I looked around and began to get a good idea of how expansive the property was. It may have been even bigger than my father’s.
For all its darkness and underlying savagery, it was undeniably beautiful. The air was warmer, but it flowed no differently in and out of my lungs. There was no sunlight, but the orange glow bathed everything in a nearly luminescent light.
“I can’t believe you created this place,” I murmured.
“Well, Purgatory was always here. It was just an unclaimed wasteland that I made our home.”
“Our?”
“My family, my s
ubjects.” He placed a palm on the small of my back and guided me towards a rounded gazebo sitting by itself.
“Family…as in, your brothers?”
He led me up the gazebo stairs, cognizant of my heels, and we sat down beside one another on the bench.
“Them, too. All of the depires, actually. We’re a brotherhood. Once upon a time, my son was a part of it.”
“Your son?” I was glad I was sitting down; that bomb would have knocked me on my ass.
“He’s dead,” he added so casually you’d think he was telling me about the weather.
“I…I don’t know what to say. How did he die?”
“He should never have been born. There’s a reason I sought a solution for my kind to reproduce. Demis are the only ones capable of healthily carrying our young.”
Okay…I furrowed my brows and processed all of this new information. Reyes was intelligent—extremely, if he had anything to do with the serum I was injected with.
There were suddenly so many things I wanted to ask, but I didn’t know where to start, and I didn’t want to offend or anger him.
I’d hate to lose this precious leeway I’d gained. He was always so reserved and secretive, a walking question mark for the most part.
I went with a more obvious question and one I felt I should know.
“How old was he?”
“Old enough.”
I sighed and leaned backward, soaking everything in. Letting my head drop to the railing, my eyes drifted closed.
“You are…content?”
He sounded so perplexed, I almost laughed.
“Yes,” I replied with a smile.
“You can come out here whenever you want. It’s not as if you can truly go anywhere.”
“That sentence would have been so much better without that last part.”
My lids fluttered open, and I sat up, readjusting myself on the bench.
A few supes and demis walked the other paths, smiling and chatting quietly.
“This place isn’t bad. In fact, give it a little pop of color and it would be even prettier than it already is.”
“I can arrange that, if you tell me what you’d like.”
Beauty & Rage (Broken Crowns Book 1) Page 9
