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“I am aware.” He flashed me a warning glare. “It will be difficult for them when our daughters begin to mature. Nature screams that you must do one thing, your conscience telling you another. I will confess there was a night I came into your room as you slept, prepared to take you away. You had just come of age, and I felt I waited long enough. You lay on your side, that stolen pink rock in your palm. You must have been looking at it before you closed your eyes. Seeing you that way, vulnerable, I remembered that little girl who snatched it off my shelf. And I couldn’t bring myself to touch you.”
What was I to say to that? What was I to do but sit back and listen?
“To the other males, I may make it appear that denying your song was easy, but it was agonizing. I do not imagine many would be able to wait a year, let alone ten. My ability to withstand suffering—perhaps that is why Miranda would see me as her king.” Looking up from his work to stare me dead in the eyes, he said, “Eyes will be on you.”
Maeve was the born leader, not me. “I am not their queen.”
“Yet still they ask you to pave the way for them.”
From Thayer’s announcement that night, he—another general—would not wait longer than the few days to graduation. “The men… if they won’t practice patience like you did, our daughters will be in danger.”
There was no teasing, no suggestive male noises. Nothing but ruthless determination. “The academy is more necessary than you might wish. Females who have begun to mature must be put somewhere others cannot reach them. All mothers must hand over their daughters or face the consequences of what could take place.”
I could not imagine it, already feeling the loss of a child I could hardly conceive of. One I swore to myself I would never put in such an awful situation. “Humans may not see our children as people, and to them, separating a human-born hybrid from the birthmother may be nothing, but five years old is too young.”
He did not agree or disagree, only extoled the virtues of his precious academy. “There is a full curriculum on par with what the humans are taught. There is safety and food. And the library is well stocked. I’ve seen to it myself.”
He was being unreasonable, and I did not know how to make him understand. “Yes. And there are also hangings, and beatings, and armed guards watching you urinate. It might be called an academy, but its anything but.”
Peeling another food thing I didn’t recognize, he cut off a corner and offered me a taste.
Jarred by the sudden zip of sourness on my lips, I gave a shiver from head to toe yet found it delicious.
“Notice, you already eat from my hand, instinctively trusting your king. Set your fears aside and quiet your mind. It is distracting you from the fact that your gut knows your mate will take care of everything. You are safe.”
There was a hook in that bait. “If I get pregnant?—”
“When you get pregnant.” Direct, he held my eyes.
“—you’re asking me to?—”
Stuffing another slice of sour fruit in my mouth, he silenced me. “I know what I am asking. Eat, take your frustrations out on my cock, and then you will sleep. Tomorrow, your new responsibilities begin.”
* * *
After I was fed, I had ridden him within an inch of my life, tormenting his writhing snake with a slow, sinking onslaught and whispered demands. I had done so as if I might stretch the final night of my freedom from the academy, keeping him groaning from the sucking slit between my legs.
My tricks were allowed for only so long.
I might have been on top, but his powerful hands and thrusting hips were more than capable of taking what they wanted when it was clear I would not invite a knot until morning light.
I was fucked, hard, bracing against his chest and unable to do more than arch my back and take it. Then I was punished. Knotted and left leaning back against his bent knees for support, I watched as he took his thumbs and spread my slit until vivid purple stretched by a huge knot was on display. Braced and grinning, Cyderial’s long, demonic tongue slathered the mess of slick through sensitive folds until I realized there was no escaping.
Never again would I torture him without knowing the price.
Bearing down as hard as I might, I still could not unseat his cock.
Trapped, he made me come until I was sobbing apologies.
Only to suffer an endless knot and be licked for hours more.
As he did it, he whispered from the shadows clever threats and dark promises.
Things he claimed he would give me if only I might kneel to my king.
13
The cut and color of my uniform was no longer that of a recruit. Drab-gray had been replaced with stark-black. A male silhouette replaced by one that had room for breasts and flared hips. The image I presented was one of a woman, and a soldier, and a traitor to my kind.
