Page 26 of The Fallen Fae King

“Like this?” I lick at the cut on Daire’s neck, using my saliva to help heal it, as Omegas in the Moon Court have been taught to help their Alphas.

“Heka surprised me. But then, you surprised him when you savaged his wrist. I hope that the bastard can’t do any more of his shady experiments.” Daire stretches. “Keep licking me, love. It makes almost being decapitated worth it.”

“I can still bite you.” I nip his collarbone.

Daire’s cock thickens. “Hmm, again.”

Instead, I raise the snowflake bond mark to my mouth and kiss it.

Daire’s eyes widen, and he smiles.

He raises his own wrist to his mouth, and I am fixated by the scorched skin from the iron chains.

He is still wearing the bands of black velvet, which are decorated with the House of Sin scarab beetle emblem and hieroglyphs that Heka designed to protect him from the burn of the delicate dragon iron bracelets.

Yet now it’s clear that Heka used the excuse of studying the bracelets to study Daire.

Under the guise of helping his king’s nestmates, Heka was investigating them to destroy him.

I suspected that Heka had conditioned Lanlin, seeing him as an experiment in how to train a monster, rather than being a friend to him.

I didn’t tell Lanlin because I didn’t want to steal the only good memory from his childhood that he had.

What a fucking mistake.

It would have been better if I had let Lanlin rip out Heka’s throat.

Daire presses his soft lips to the mark, and pleasure washes over me, as I feel his kiss through the mark.

I start to purr.

“You have no idea how much I bloody wanted to do that all the time I was chained down.” Daire feathers kisses over the mark, while I shiver. “Bondage is fun normally, but not when it separates me from you. I was desperate for you to know that I was thinking of you.”

“I know.” I shove Daire onto his back and straddle him. My purr deepens. He lets his wings fall wide; they’re long enough to jostle the drapes either side of the bed that flutter. He looks like a beautiful sacrifice underneath me, although a willing one. “You are always thinking of me.”

“I am, my Omega.” He is beneath me, but he looks fucking dangerous, as he bares his sharp canines. “And you were bloody glorious in your shifter form. We’d be dangerous together in a battle, aye? You shifted to protect your Alpha.”

“I do stupid things like that.”

By the Shadow Gods, seeing Daire bound on the altar as the blood sacrifice chilled my soul worse than anything in my life.

My transformation was spontaneous and unexpected, ripping through me.

I’d never felt so powerful and so hopeless at the same time.

I’m glad that we’re not lying in the Royal Nest with Lanlin. He may have ultimately saved Daire from Isis and the rest of his court, but I can’t shake the sensation of Lanlin’s sticky shadows pinning me to the wall, while he veiled my soulmate from me for excruciating minutes.

I glance at the golden wolf mask, which I’d worn at the ball. I hurled it furiously at the wall earlier, when the Beta Bloods ushered Daire and me into this room.

The mask lies in two pieces, staring back at me with hollow eyes.

I had been fucking happy when Lanlin gifted the mask to me.

Well, that’s what happens when you trust vampires.

Shouldn’t I have learned that when they slaughtered my entire court? My royal parents?

I clench my jaw.