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Oh, the gods had a vicious sense of irony.
Was this what her men felt when I took her?
My eyes swept over the giants anew. When I took her, yes, I’d asked her if I could feed from her, sleep with her. I had not simply stolen her away and done what I wished while she slept, her consent be damned. Such a thing would have been heinous and reprehensible. Utterly beneath any creature with the barest shred of a conscience or decency.
Except that for all those hours in the vault, these men hadn’t known that. And if she had consented to be with me before seeing them and explaining the situation, they never would have known I’d asked her permission first. No, to them, she was simply gone, ripped away from them, with untold horrors possibly happening to her for all the hours they’d been apart.
Because of a monster.
“Hey.”
I glanced to my right.
Niko rode beside me, his face somber. “Whatever it is,” he said, a hard note to his voice that I hadn’t heard from him before. “We’ll find her.”
I watched him, curious. He was young and beautiful with dark eyes and hair like Roan but with olive skin and a gentleness wholly unlike that man. Smaller than the others and thus closer to the size of a grown human male, he had always carried an air of trustworthiness and compassion. I estimated that he was someone I would have been honored to name a friend of the crown in my life before Zenirya fell.
But now it was clear he was in pain—from the loss of Gwyneira, of his trust in Roan, or perhaps just both. Yet even though he barely knew me as anything more than the vampire king who’d also once kidnapped his princess, still he offered comfort to me.
When he had to be as worried as any of them that his princess could be dying.
My head moved in a tiny nod. “Thank you. I…”
Hesitating, I did not allow myself to look onward to where Ozias rode, though I suspected the man could hear us all the same. But his true nature remained his secret to tell the others—if only because I suspected he would never dream of presenting a threat to Gwyneira. Quite the opposite.
And as for Roan…
Tightly, I returned the young man’s smile. “I believe you’re right. She will be fine.”
Niko’s expression turned grateful, as if we were friends and he appreciated my offer of comfort too. Echoing my nod, he kept going.
I started after him, feeling vaguely dumbstruck. Gods help me, after thirty years of isolation, this was certainly not what I envisioned it would be like when I left my castle behind. Crossing the Aneiran prairie with six Erenlians, pursuing a seventh who currently reminded me too much of myself for comfort.
All for a woman who defied description entirely.
But that was just it, wasn’t it? Never in any version of my life—human or vampire—could I have foreseen her.
For Gwyneira, I’d fallen harder than my angelic ancestors must have when they crashed down from their celestial realm. I’d been overcome by wonder at this impossible Aneiran beauty who’d not only survived becoming a vampire with her humanity intact, but whose sheer presence could somehow make me feel more human than I had in decades.
When I was with Gwyneira, I wasn’t a fading ghost clinging to the shadows of his former life. I wasn’t some gods-forsaken amalgam of human and monster, a pathetic creature pretending to be a man even as he forgot more of what that meant with the passing of each dreary day.
No, I was Casimir zel Elric ver Altreya, King of Zenirya, ruler on the opalescent throne of my ancestors and last surviving descendant of the royal angelic line. I was a living, breathing man capable of making her laugh and smile and moan with pleasure.
I was me.
And in a thousand ways, Gwyneira made it clear that above all else, that last part was more than enough.
No matter how much I enjoyed her submission or her incredible willingness to be claimed and dominated by me and by all the powerful men who shared her, the truth was that Gwyneira was the one who had claimed me. Body, mind, and soul, I would belong to her until the end of time.
Perhaps she was working the same magic on Roan.
Absently, I stroked my hand along my buckskin mount’s neck, attempting to soothe the beast while I regarded the men ahead of me. It was truly so strange, this unexpected situation I’d found myself in with them. Had my life gone the way it was planned, I would have been crowned King of Zenirya decades ago, elevated by ceremony and tradition rather than the mere default of being the only one of the royal line—or the entire nation—still alive. I would have been expected to marry, my prospects dictated by whoever provided the best political alliance at the time. And the idea of sharing that partner with others? Oh, that would have never crossed my mind, let alone come up for discussion.
Yet I found I didn’t mind the prospect. Quite the opposite, actually. It was comforting to know Gwyneira’s needs would always be met. That she had support and protection in everything, no matter what it might be. Equally surprising was the fact she didn’t mind if I partook of intimacy with her companions either, if they chose to share that with me.
She even enjoyed it too.
It was odd, sometimes, how life gave you things you never suspected you were lacking, and once you had them, you couldn’t imagine feeling as fulfilled any other way.
