23. Eivind

23

EIVIND

I hated most aspects of so-called civilization, especially enduring polite conversation around a dining table. But I've never been so viciously tormented and punished until forced to watch Karmen and her Blood interacting.

The way the alpha touched her. Blatantly stroking his fingers over her throat, the same as he'd done at the hotel. The asshole from Sparta down on his knees beside her, pretending to be so subservient and humble. What a crock of shit. The smug curve of his lips every time he caught my gaze made me want to flip the table and slam my head through the nearest brick wall. The mocking arrogance. Fucking intolerable.

Yet I could do nothing but sit and silently stew in a disaster of my own making. For all I knew, the Isador wolf was directly behind me, blade hovering at my throat. No, I didn't think that was Xin's style. He'd rather go for the liver or kidneys. Really make it hurt first.

The Isador contingent escorted us outside to the blood circle but didn't cross beyond. Once out of the other queen's nest, Karmen's Blood quickly surrounded her in a wall of protection, with Dagny and Harris inside with her. As soon as the burning ring of sunfire energy started to flare, my shoulder itched and burned. A current of painful electricity rippled down to my fingers, and my hand twitched uncontrollably. Fucking great.

I crammed my hand down into my pocket to hide the trembling and waited to see what she would say to me. If I dared try to speak to her again…

The portal glistened in the air, but the golden surface remained opaque. I couldn't see what lay beyond. Though several of her Blood leaped through into the unknown, preparing the way for their queen to pass.

"You okay, Wild Man?" Harris asked.

Bad news, man. I hadn't heard him approach. All my senses were fucked up right now. Dagny said something to Karmen that I didn't catch and followed through the portal. Another Blood—the one with the bow. At least I wouldn't taste his arrow again. This time.

"Hart?"

The volume startled me, as if he'd been saying my name several times. I focused on his face and forced a grin. "The problem with having a fake name is remembering to respond to it."

"Yeah. Sure." The narrowed look he gave me confirmed he saw through my bullshit. He always had. That's why I hated him so much. "Are you headed back to Minnesota?"

"Fuck, no. Why would I go there?"

He stepped closer, dropping his voice to a low whisper. Not that any Aima worth his salt wouldn't still hear every single word. "Look man, I'm trying to give you some free advice. If you've got thoughts of trying to follow Karmen, I'd forget it and high tail it out of here."

I rolled my eyes. "Sure."

"They might have tolerated you inside with those other queens, but if you think they're going to let you follow her into her home?—"

I had both hands fisted in his shirt, jerking him up on his toes, before I could blink. " Tolerate me?"

One word, only, from Karmen. "Eivind."

Shame suffused my face. I jerked my fingers free of his shirt like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"I need to speak to him," she said softly to her alpha. "Give me a moment."

He lowered his head slightly, his eyes locked to hers. No doubt speaking in her head. Sharing thoughts with her. Like any Blood would do with his queen.

It shouldn't have pissed me off but it did. Like every fucking thing.

Nodding, she reached up and touched his face gently. A minor caress, speaking of nothing but tenderness and affection. It choked me. Razors sliding down my throat. Cutting up my stomach. Acid burning.

Because I would never know such a touch from her.

Slowly, she walked closer to me without her Blood. They stood at the ready but gave her the illusion of privacy as she'd asked. "Thank you, Detective. Why don't you catch up to Dagny?"

"Sure thing." Harris hesitated, glancing over at me. "Your Majesty."

A subtle reminder of what she was. Not that I needed it.

I could feel her power in the air, shimmering and humming like a fine, well-tuned racing engine, eager to roar ahead. The poison in my shoulder responded, cramping so hard I bit back a grunt. I tried not to let anything show on my face. Evidently, I failed.

"Your shoulder is only going to get worse."

I raked my good hand through my hair, staring at the ground. "Can't you pull it out of me?"

She hesitated long enough that I risked looking into her face. Smooth, perfect marble, flawless and devoid of any emotion. Though solar fire flared in her eyes. "I could," she finally admitted. "But I don't believe either of us is willing to pay the cost."

Which could only mean one thing.

Crushing weight in the region of my chest made it difficult to breathe. "I'd have to be fucking Blood."

She dipped her head in a single nod. "Mine, to be specific. Then my blood would be able to pull the sunfire essence out of you."

The wolf gnawed inside me, caged, trying to eat his own foot off to free himself from the trap. "You know how I feel about that."

"I do." She smiled but her eyes darkened, the solar flares cooling like banked coals. "You do realize just minutes ago you were sitting at the same table as three queens, and no one tried to chain you against your will?"

I tried to scoff but only a strangled sound came out of my throat.

"I thought you should know." She shrugged faintly. "It's entirely up to you, as it has been from the beginning."

From the beginning. When I saw her injured and weak, nearly dead, lying in a pile of garbage in a Chicago alley. When I turned away and left her to the care of humans. Or when I drove away from the Ironheart cabin like a pit of hell was opening beneath me?

"What the hell do you want from me?"

Her eyebrows arched with surprise. "Nothing. You're free to go."

Slobbering and howling desperately, the wolf clawed inside me. Run to ground. Captured. Even though we were free. He didn't trust me to handle this.

I didn't trust myself to handle this.

"I fucked up." Every word a snarled, garbled syllable I wasn't even sure she'd understand. "I'm falling apart."

Ever so softly, she whispered, "Yet you still think I'm the monster."

I staggered backward a step as if she'd punched me in the guts. "I'm trying to apologize, but you won't listen."

Her head cocked to the side and the flares returned in her eyes. But they weren't fiery gold any longer. This time the sunbursts were white hot. "I'm listening."

"I'm sorry, alright? I shouldn't have left you. I should have made sure you were safe."

She didn't react, merely stared expectantly at me, her lovely face distant and cold. Untouched.

"Don't you have anything to say?"

She shrugged again, and something broke off inside me and slipped into the darkest depths of a bottomless ocean. "I accept your apology."

"And?" The word hung in the air, vibrating like a wire strained to the breaking point. Ready to lash and slice us both to ribbons.

"What more do you want from me?"

I spluttered out, "What do I want?"

"I accept your apology," she repeated slowly. "What more do you want from me?"

I shot a glare at the waiting Blood. Silent, watchful, judging every word and action. At least none of them were smirking at me now, but the blank, empty stares on their faces reminded me all too well of the creepy-ass skeletons the human bodies hid.

Unbidden, the memory of her hand stroking the alpha's cheek ripped through me. The opposite of that gentle touch. "Do you have to touch them so much? Especially in front of me. How the fuck am I supposed to feel about that?"

"How you feel? About me touching my Blood?" Her eyes blazed brighter, almost frosty blue. Though her voice was still the same calm, measured tone. "The men who saved me. Who risked everything including their immortal souls for all eternity to get me out of Heliopolis. The men who'd give me every drop of blood in their new bodies, even if that made them die forever, simply because I needed it. You're upset that I touch them? What if I told you they touch me too? And I like it, Eivind. I like it a lot. It's nice to be touched without excruciating agony for once in my very long, miserable life thus far."

She changed before my very eyes. Without moving a muscle, she radiated regal, goddess-level energy. Her hair rippled and floated around her face even though no breeze touched us. Her eyes burned like a white-hot supernova. Sparks danced around her, the air vibrating with rising energy. Charging ahead of a devastating storm.

"I'm so very sorry that my anxiety in a strange place led me to touch the only people I trust for a modicum of comfort and security. So I could sit at a table with a Triune queen and negotiate a tentative friendship for my house. So I could function without sobbing, or curl up into a ball, moaning in pain, as I expel the last of Ra's cursed touch that dared try to overtake my own body. Did it never occur to you that I need them to touch me? That I'm terrified every time I must step out of the only place of safety I've ever known my entire life?"

"I'm sorry," I whispered, the words tearing my throat. "I didn't know. Let me?—"

"Goodbye," she said in a flat, emotionless voice as she turned away. "You're free to go, wolf king. Go. Run. Flee. It's your favorite thing to do."

I wanted her emotion. I wanted her to rage at me. So I could rage back. So I could…

What? Point the finger at her and call her a monster, just like she implied?

My sanity was already at its breaking point. If she left… Now…

I reached out to grab her arm.

Light scorched me before my fingertips could brush her skin. Sunlight shouldn't fucking hurt so fucking much. The world's worst sunburn. Staked out naked to roast in the Sahara Desert at high noon. Dipped head-first in a vat of boiling gold. Every inch of me scalded, tender, and charred.

Wheezing, I stared up at the sky, not sure how I ended up flat on my back. With two snarling dogs in my face, dripping more acid onto my skin that hissed and burned. Red-hot burning points dug into me. Spears. Swords. Knifes. Turning me into a pincushion. But not a single drop of my blood. A clear message.

My blood isn't hers. She doesn't want it.

"What the hell do you want from me?" She repeated my words back to me, but her voice was carefully pleasant and controlled, empty of any emotion whatsoever.

I carefully lifted my head just enough to see her. At least she'd turned back toward me. Of fucking course she'd force me say it. Out loud. Fucking queens. Always playing the game.

"I want," I rasped, each word hammering through me. "To be. Blood. Yours."

I expected her to be relieved, for all the tension and anxiety to bleed out of her. Instead, she stiffened as if the Impaler had stabbed his spear up her ass instead of mine. "Why?"

"Don't you feel it?"

"The urge to ask you for help? To be near you? Wherever that is? Even if it's pure hell?"

"Yeah."

"I did, at first. I don't any longer."

Stricken, I let my head fall back to the ground. "Because of them ."

She suddenly stood over me, glaring down at me with rage. Liquid gold dripped from her fingertips. Sunfires burned around her head, turning her hair into a rippling nimbus of punishingly bright solar power. I squeezed my eyes shut, but my retinas still felt scarred.

"No. Because of you . I needed you—and you left. I needed a Blood to strengthen me and teach me what I needed to know so we could survive. Someone to help me. Shelter me while I went through the terror of having my body invaded against my will. Someone who simply believed me.

"Instead, you abandoned me. You refused to believe me. Even after you saw Soldiers of Light with your own eyes, you still doubted me. Every time I look at you, I see you driving away again. I'm standing barefoot and practically naked in front of strangers, weak and scared and hurt and fucking ravenous, and you left. You. Left!"

She paused, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Her chest heaving for breath. Her body trembling, braced to run, fight, scream. I wasn't sure.

Then her alpha touched her. Just his palm settling on her lower back.

All the tension bled away. The vengeful solar goddess melted back into Karmen.

The woman. The queen. I should have…

I couldn't even think it. Not now. It's too fucking late. For her and for me.

"I won't have a Blood I can't trust. I won't have a Blood who will turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble. Who still worries I might change my mind and put you into chains. You're already in chains, mighty wolf king, and I refuse to exist just to be your key—so you can hate me for the very thing you asked me to do."

She turned into her Blood's embrace, and he swept her up into his arms. All the sharp points disappeared. "You were in chains long before you ever saw me dying in that filthy alley. When you turned around and walked away, you left me to my fate. Now, I leave you to yours."