by Meg Xuemei X
“I must mark you, mate,” Marrok gritted his teeth. “I need to. I can no longer not claim you.”
Marrok let my feet down, though my rear was still high in the air. He didn’t slow his thrust in me, but bent down on me.
The new sensation of his weight on me was more than welcome.
Marrok became bigger, and his power was like the hurricane.
My hands gripped the sheet as his next thrust brought me to an all-time high.
“My forever mate!” The wolf king roared as he pumped his warm, bountiful seed into me.
He continued thrusting into me with possessiveness and dominance, his lengthened fangs grazing the curve of my neck and shoulder.
A rush of pain punctured into me as his fangs pierced my flesh, and I cried out. Indescribable rapture washed over the pain and shattered my soul.
Everything else paled away.
I screamed as my release tore open like floodgate, spurring on the bliss flowing through my veins. I trembled and my nails raked over Marrok’s hard thighs, leaving my own mark.
Marrok thrust through my orgasm, his hands gripping my hips. My folds wrapped around his cock as my depth sucked it in.
I would never let him go.
I won’t go, he whispered. I’m yours.
When we both stilled, he pulled me on top of him with his cock still hard inside me, his hand coiling around my waist. My back relaxed against his chest.
I was fully sated for the first time. I tasted happiness I hadn’t believe existed.
“You’re mine, Kaara Nightshades,” Marrok said with awe. “I’ve never known satisfaction and happiness like this.” He licked the punctured wound on the joint of my neck and shoulder. “It’ll heal in a few hours. But it’s worth it.”
Of course, it was worth it for him. He bit me. It hadn’t been the other way around.
“You now belong to me completely,” he said.
And through our enhanced mating link, I knew what that claiming ritual meant. It wasn’t just a piercing of skin by fangs. Marrok had offered me his lifelong devotion. When he’d marked me, a mythical force bonded us for all eternity. Everyone in his pack now knew I was officially, irrevocably, his. They would smell his scent all over me.
His scent was now and forever in my blood.
It was silent all around us. Until now, I hadn’t noticed how quiet the Keep was.
A foreboding feeling came over me. “Did they all hear your roar?” I asked in horror.
He chuckled. “And your scream, sweet thorn. It was quite a scream.”
Heat stole into my face. I did not fear monsters. I killed almost every other day in order to survive. I’d had tons of lovers before I’d met Marrok. And I suddenly felt shy because I had had such fabulous orgasms?
I turned my face and found a spot on Marrok’s massive upper arm. I bent down my head and bit him hard. It wasn’t as easy as it looked since I had no fangs.
“Ouch,” Marrok called. “What was that for?”
“I’m claiming you,” I said simply.
He blinked and stared at me incredulously, then at my tiny teeth marks. He laughed. “That’s not how it’s done. There’s no ritual of claiming once claimed. It doesn’t work that way.”
I pivoted around him, keeping his hard cock inside me until I faced him. I planted my lips on the middle column of his neck and sucked as hard as I could.
Marrok groaned, and the fierce passion twirled back into his eyes.
When my lips left his neck, I eyed the red bruise I had marked him with, with satisfaction.
“Now you bear my mark as well,” I said.
Marrok laughed. “It’ll fade.”
That set me off. I wouldn’t allow it to fade! I was an Empath, I had never had any aggressive magic, but a strange, renewed power surged through me at my command. It wanted to claim the wolf king rightfully as mine. It wanted to imprint him to afterlife.
I lifted my hips and slid down his hard length, faster and faster, and I released the storm in me.
Marrok growled, his blue eyes flashing with unbridled lust.
He thrust up, raw and fierce and in desperate need, and I rode him harder than anything in his life.
“Yes, baby, yes, just like that!” he groaned. “You’re made for me.”
Then he stilled, shocked into silence.
My empathic power—its dark, aggressive, and possessive twin force I hadn’t known existed—swept into Marrok like the morning storm. It circled him, recognizing him and liking what it saw, and pounced. It bonded him to me with an unbreakable thread the color of a rainbow.
“You’re made for me,” I declared.
From the reflection in his widened eyes, I could see my violet eyes glowing.
“You—my mate—could do that?” he stuttered with amazement. “Never heard it could be done like that.”
“I claim you, Wolf King Marrok,” I said.
“You can claim me every night like this if you want,” he said hoarsely and thrust in me, still dazed.
Marrok released his own storm again.
Our storms merged, and together we came in waves of passion.
Chapter 17
“We mated in my bed,” Marrok said. “You’re now officially my queen.”
He expected me to sleep in his bed every night.
“I can’t,” I said, “at least not before the Angel’s ship falls. Fia will need to see me first thing every morning. I can’t abandon her now, even though I want to spend every night with you.”
I knew it was against his every instinct to separate from me, especially after he’d claimed me. It pained me to part from him even a second.
“When will the fucking Angel fall?” he grated.
“One day,” I said, clutching his face. “I won’t ask you for anything else, Marrok, but just this once, I need you to trust me. I need you to have faith, not in the Wicked Witch, but in me, your mate. We’ll leave Pandemonium, all of us.”
He studied me, then he swallowed and kissed me gently and passionately.
“You’ll have my trust, my faith, and my loyalty,” he said. “And you’ll have my love forever. I’ll do everything in my power to get us out of here. You’ve given me a new hope, my mate. We’ll leave here before this planet blows up. I have my personal score to settle as well.”
From what Antonio and Lou had told me briefly about Marrok’s exiled history, I knew my mate would want revenge. He’d want to take back the throne that was rightfully his, and I’d help him get it back. I’d go to war for him. I’d go to the end of the universe with him.
I would ask him more about his feud with the leopard shifters tonight. I wanted to know everything about him. I’d leave no stones unturned.
“Since you promised to keep me and Fia alive,” I said, “you should fulfill your first duty by spending the night in my bed in the Witch Tower.”
His eyes sparkled. “Does it mean the wicked ward would no longer keep me and my pack out?”
“If you pass the trial.”
“And that is?”
“Learn how to sleep properly on my breasts.”
He sighed. “That would be the hardest trial, but I’ll take it.”
“There’s more,” I said.
He arched an eyebrow, looking forward to more treats.
I pushed him down in bed, straddled him, and started riding him again. He grinned ear to ear. “I can take anything, anything you throw at me, mate.”
I plunged down to the base of his impressive hard length. “You’ll have to be very quiet tonight in the tower. You don’t want the Wickedest Witch to tear down our doors when we’re at the middle of it.”
He stared up at me with a long-suffering look, yet lust still stormed in his sapphire eyes.
“And now, my wolf,” I asked, “where’s the glass of wine you promised?”
Chapter 18
A storm formed over the City of Nine, and it was no ordinary windstorm. The gloomy, apocalyptic city became dimmer. Lightning p
ierced the dark clouds and crashed down. A second later it dawned on me that it wasn’t lightning, but the power burst of the last light from a ship before it had been drained completely.
A new ship was falling.
“Gather the gear!” I called my team. “We’re heading to the arena!”
Rocky assembled the men in a matter of minutes. We would be joining the wolf clan. Ever since Marrok and I had mated, whenever I headed to the Keep, my team fought to accompany me. Not for my charm, but for the privilege to visit the only bar in the City of Nine. They often resorted to drawing names from a hat.
“After that, everyone will get a drink,” I added.
The men and women cheered. More numbers joined us than Rocky had allowed.
I wasn’t as thrilled as they were.
Every time a ship fell, my hope only died. There were only so many blows I could take. And now when a ship tumbled down, I was dreading that the Lithuaria Empire had sent more bounty hunters to come for Fia and me.
Marrok had just returned to his Keep this morning. With the unexpected fallen ship, I expected to see him soon in the battlefield. He still got antsy about letting me fight at the frontline.
He often personally guarded me whenever I ventured out. Now that he had to return to the Keep, three elite wolves stayed behind to watch over me. There was no way I could drive them away. The wolf clan held the belief that I would secure their king’s bloodline and produce his heir. Also, there was word in the Keep that I would lead them out of Pandemonium and return them to their original home to take back what had been taken from them. So the whole pack devoted themselves to protect me.
I believed Marrok was the one to blame for the cult. He had his whole army centered around me. And the cult missed the point completely. It wasn’t me they needed to guard.
Princess Athena Faya was our only ticket to get out of Pandemonium.
Fia usually ignored Marrok and his wolves’ presence in the tower, as she ignored everyone else most of the time. She would attack only when she sensed a threat. The wolves also learned to give her wide berth, like any of her subjects, when she walked through with hissing darkness behind her and ice radiating on her skin.
As the last light faded from the muted sky, a black shuttle shot toward—
“Halt!” I called, and my team stopped.
The space shutter plunged toward Akem’s jungle instead of the grand, old arena littered with hundreds of junk spaceships.
That was a first.
A new terror flooded my stomach.
Fia was in the jungle.
What if the ship fell on her? What if it carried assassins more lethal than the Eshmaki?
And even if the ship carried the Angel, he wouldn’t make it out of that lethal jungle alive.
There went my last hope.
I didn’t slow down as I sprang in the direction of the dark jungle, where the three Furies guarded the entrance, and where Fia wandered alone inside to search for the path home.
Rocky and Otsana bolted beside me. Pattern and the others tried to keep up. Three wolves shot past us. Marrok had ordered them to guard me, but they also liked to lead and showed off their speed.
At the broken bridge, three vampires led a horde of undead cannibals towards us.
I tore through the hostile force with my angelblade. The three wolves leapt toward the vampires with snarls. Rocky cut down a cannibal with a battle cry, and the rest of the team shouted their own as they engaged our enemies.
Swords, teeth, and claws had all come to play.
The battle ended soon.
Two vampires abandoned their new recruits and fled.
The undead cannibals remained dead under our swords.
We’d lost three of our crew. One wolf had wounds on his shoulder and rear leg, inflicted by the vampires. I left Pattern and two others to tend to the wounded and led the rest of them run toward the jungle.
Furious roars and battle cries ricocheted off the jungle ahead.
Fia was besieged.
Rage and panic shot through me.
“Faster!” I shouted and charged toward Akem’s forbidden realm.
Three vast Furies with enormous red, taloned wings and a female human face chased two figures, who dashed out of the jungle at a blinding speed—no, it was one figure carrying the other on his uniformed shoulder.
A gust of ice shot up toward the shrieking Furies and darkness swirled over the sky to veil the escapers.
The man carrying Fia leapt over a broad, dark stream, massive black wings spreading behind him. Fia seemed to be scolding him and he retorted while binding her to him.
He wouldn’t let go of her.
A horrific scream rose from behind the fleeing pair.
The Furies wouldn’t come to our territory, unless Akem specifically commanded them. Fia and the man had reached the realm of the City of Nine.
Fuming, the Furies dove and snatched a few escaping criminals-turned-militants, who had assaulted Fia, and bit them in half. The Furies swooped back to the jungle, hovering above its high canopied trees with another round of shrieks.
I stared at the warrior’s black, glossy wings, my heart leaping in joy, though the wings weren’t as magnificent as I’d imagined. They were draping awkwardly behind him. Evidently, the Angel had broken them during the fall.
But at least he was standing.
He’d also fought out of Akem’s jungle. Another miracle.
It had been a thousand and thirty-one days, and an Angel had finally fallen.
The First Seer’s prophecy had come to pass.
And now it was up to us.
The Fallen Angel carried my future queen on his broad shoulder without much care as if she were a bag of potatoes.
His manners didn’t matter much, as long as he was destined to be her fate and my hope.
I couldn’t wait to see the look on Marrok’s face when he saw the Fallen Angel with black wings.
“Put me down,” my princess demanded, her voice icy and indignant. “Now!”
For the first time, her pale face was flushed.
The Angel was as big as Marrok, all muscles and arrogance and menace. His damp golden hair was tied in a bun, as if he had just stepped out of the shower when he’d crashed.
A black, mystic tattoo twining up to his temples told his proud origin, and he held a long, broad angelblade.
A predator. A natural conqueror. Just as the Seer had described.
He gave me, then the others a passing glance, then scanned the maze of broken bridges in the ruin. Seeing no threat for the moment, he dropped Fia to the ground, not at all gently.
Fia stomped on his booted foot with a hiss. She was, after all, the Wickedest Witch.
She didn’t seem to appreciate that he’d fended off her attackers. She probably believed that he owed her a life debt and already claimed it since she’d led him out of Akem’s jungle.
The Angel looked mightily pissed at her, yet he still held a protective stance. If there was any threat coming her way, he would explode into violence to remove it for her.
Something had transpired between them.
Ice frosted her breath, and darkness swirled around her.
He gave her aggressive dark magic a wary glance and shrugged.
“Who are you, stranger?” I asked.
His blue gaze fell upon me for a second before fixing on Fia. “I’m Archangel Gabriel,” he said, more for Fia’s ear than for mine, showing his displeasure at the witch’s disinterest in learning his name, “the most envied Captain of the finest spaceship ThunderSong in the universe, the High Prince of All Angels’ most trusted advisor and his best warrior, and a decorated hero of the fiercest angelic civil war that ended three months ago on the planet of Earth in the Milky Way galaxy.”
Fia snickered.
I tried to look friendly instead of mildly amused.
The others glared at him.
“Now that my shuttle has crashed,” the Angel commanded with irritation, “
you’ll assist me in contacting my crew. As we speak, ThunderSong is desperately searching for her lost, irreplaceable captain.”
“Good luck with your Thumb Song,” Otsana offered.
The Angel frowned at Otsana. “ThunderSong.”
I bet he would lose his pride and arrogance on Pandemonium in less than a week.
I hurried to Fia’s side and briefed her as we moved back toward the Witch Tower.
Gabriel stayed on her other side, his attention focusing only on her.
When we crossed the witch’s territory warded by her magic of darkness, no one warned the Archangel that he needed permission from Lady Fiammetta in order to pass through.
Fia didn’t say anything either, obviously wanting to give him some grief.
The Angel went through the ward smoothly, dragging his broken wings behind him. The barrier didn’t repel him. It didn’t punch his gut with punishing force as we expected.
Everyone looked stunned and unhappy. Fia looked surprised, annoyed, yet somehow relieved.
Unaware of what had happened and the significance of it, Gabriel narrowed his eyes, looking up at the dark tower that dwarfed the broken city of fire and smoke, and asked, “What the fuck is that?”
“The Witch Tower,” I said in mocking cheer. “Our mistress’s dwelling place in the City of Nine of the planet of Pandemonium.”
“Fuck me,” he cursed. “I crashed all the way to this shit hole?”
So this was it. I’d been waiting for a superhero and a savior type, and all we got was a foul-mouthed, pompous Angel.
I silently thanked the universe that it had paired me with Marrok.
A rush of guilt immediately slapped me at thanking fate for giving this Archangel to Fia instead of me. How could I wish any less for my future queen? But then, after a second look at them, I pitied the Angel. Fia was no less predatory than he was.
After all, she was the Wickedest Witch in the universe.
He was beyond wild and menacing, just the kind that could be the right stimulation for her.
The problem was that she would forget him tomorrow when she woke up. And every morning she’d have to learn who he was.
But at least he was here now.
