3. Karmen

3

KARMEN

I could suddenly see what it would be like to take one of my Blood to my bed. I could imagine what it would feel like. And I wanted it. My body was more than ready. Just tasting Sunzi's blood again stirred my desire, but once he started feeding too…

Goddess. His mouth on my throat, his teeth in my flesh. Incredible. I wanted more, so much more. I wanted his bare skin burning against mine, his sure, steady hands gliding over every inch of me. Even the prospect of his weight on top of me didn't make my mind skitter away. As long as we were feeding on each other, I could imagine him fucking me without retreating deep inside myself to hide.

Was it just him that made me feel this way? Or would I be able to touch any of my Blood someday without fear?

Carefully, I freed my fingers from his hair but I didn't lift my mouth from his throat. Hunger still pulsed inside me like an eager fire, looking for more fuel to envelop. Instead, I lifted my arms out, offering my wrist to either Blood who stood nearby.

Fangs sank into my left wrist so fast I moaned against Sunzi's throat. The Impaler, Vlad, his mouth a red-hot iron on my skin. He drank eagerly, his jaws wide to take my entire wrist into the moist heat of his mouth, as if he wanted to inhale me.

Marcus cradled my right hand as gently as a newborn kitten, his fingers laced with mine. His mouth pressed butterfly kisses up the soft skin of my inner wrist. A kiss in the delicate crease of my elbow. Delightful shivers rushed through me. Images flickering through my imagination. His mouth wandering over my breasts while Sunzi locked his arms around me. Pressing me between them. Flames flickering in Vlad's eyes, a crazed desperation driving him harder, deeper into me.

I could do it. I wanted to do it.

But not yet. Not until I decided what I wanted to do about Ra's heir.

I knew what I wanted to do. I just hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge it. Let alone actually complete the task. The same as taking my Blood fully.

A sound came out of my throat that I didn't like. At all. Neither did my Blood. All three of them froze, ceasing the delightful sensations coursing through my body.

:No,: I said immediately in our bonds . :Don't stop. It's not you.:

Though it was too late. Vlad released my wrist from his jaws though he still held my hand. Sunzi quickly swiped his tongue over his bite, a quick, hard pass just to seal the punctures. Marcus, too, though he still cradled my hand in his.

My shoulders fell. I sagged against Sunzi. Crying. Ugly, jagged sobs hurt my throat and tore from deep inside my chest. I clung to Marcus and Vlad's hands, tugging them closer. I couldn't form the words in my head, but they held me, the same as Sunzi. A wall of flesh surrounded me. Strength and muscle and protection. A cocoon of safety.

I wasn't sure how long I cried. Eventually, I became aware of the soft words whispered against my hair.

"All is well, Your Majesty. We're here. You're safe. You'll never suffer anything like that again. We won't allow it. Nothing will ever hurt you now."

I curled against Sunzi's chest, listening to the ceaseless thud of his heart. Gaining courage from his unswerving honor, even though I feared what I said next would destroy his dedication to me. "Am I a bad person?"

"What? No. Of course not."

"But if I am… Would you still be my Blood?"

He only rarely touched me. Especially in a way I hadn't expressly asked. So his fingers sliding beneath my chin, pulling me up before him so he could see my face made my heart pound with anxiety.

His eyes narrowed to slits, his nostrils flaring with each breath. "Nothing you could ever do will change the way I feel for you. The only way I will cease to be your Blood is if you order one of your other Blood to kill me. Then, yes, I will die gladly at your command. Nothing else will ever force me from your side. No other queen, no wolf king, no enemy, not even if the god of light managed to resurrect himself. I am yours forever. By your side. Always. Your soldier, sword, or sunfire. Whatever you need me to be."

"I am your dogs of war, Your Majesty." Marcus' voice rumbled with the deep bay of his sundogs. "At the first light of dawn, we'll hunt your enemies across the skies."

"Your spear waits only for you to point me in the direction you'd like me to fly, Your Majesty." Though Vlad's chuckle was so unexpected that I turned my face enough to see his expression. His eyes flickered with an unholy, crazed amusement. "Though I beg you to let us burn the world and destroy all creation for the harm you suffered in Heliopolis before you lay our undying bones to rest."

"Hold me, please. All of you. As tightly as you can."

They pressed me between them, their arms locking around each other and me. Sealing me away from the rest of the world. If only they could so easily seal me away from my thoughts. The choking dread crushing my chest.

"Only tell us how we may assist you, and it will be done immediately," Sunzi whispered against my forehead.

I closed my eyes. Bracing myself for their reaction. Steeling my heart to lose them. To lose this. It'd been so nice to have men I could trust, who touched me so carefully and kindly.

"I want," I whispered hoarsely, forcing myself to say the words. "To be rid of it."

They squeezed me harder. Crushing my ribs. Making it hard to breathe. And I wanted to die at the thought of losing them.

"How can we help?"

EIVIND

I fucked up.

I've always been a fuck up, but this time, I fucked up so badly I couldn't find my way out.

I prowled and paced around the empty cabin where I'd grown up, a restless beast trapped in two legs. Unable to shift to my wolf for the first time in my life. As a king, the opposite had been my curse since childhood. I couldn't not shift. When the wolf wanted out, there wasn't much I could do to stop it.

The fear of ending up chained in the basement like my father had forced me to find a way to delay the shift at least until I was away from civilization, but more often than not, I ran as a wolf instead of a man. When I needed space from life or my responsibilities to House Ironheart, I retreated to the forests and wilderness and ran with the pack.

In hindsight, I realized I had been more wolf than man the last hundred and more years. My sister, Helayna, had been gone, lost somewhere, and I'd used the excuse of hunting for her to stay a wolf. It'd been an easy, carefree life, unburdened by caring about anyone or anything but hunting for my next meal. Hoping I might catch a trace of her scent somewhere, even though I hadn't found her for decades.

I lost track of how long she'd been gone. How long I'd been a wolf. Other than the occasional odd job I picked up to hunt down bad guys who'd managed to evade human police, I hadn't interacted with a living soul outside of the woods.

Exactly the way I liked it.

Now, I had no recourse. No escape. When I most needed it, my wolf had fallen silent.

Every moment I hung around the empty cabin, my wrath boiled ever hotter. Fury at myself. Fury at her .

Unfair, I know. None of this was Karmen's fault. Though I couldn't help but choke on my fury every time I remembered the secret revealed by her Blood. As former Soldiers of Light, they'd guarded her as skeletons armed with the painfully bright weaponry of Heliopolis and the fiery sunfires. Certainly impressive warriors, and the sunfires were some kind of solar demons I didn't fully understand.

One of them had shot a flaming golden arrow into my shoulder, and it still hurt like a bitch, even weeks later. The wound had finally closed, but the skin was still red and tender. Sometimes it throbbed badly enough I couldn't sleep. A constant reminder of my failure.

They were with her. Not me. They guarded her. They fed her, even though I couldn't imagine how in the beginning.

They were her Blood. Something I could've been if I hadn't been too chicken shit to allow her to Blood me.

Alone, that was enough to make my stomach churn on furious bile.

But then the one called the Impaler revealed the fucking truth. He'd shifted into a fucking man . Not a skeleton at all.

Which gnawed at my gut like a foul cancer.

She had ten Blood. Ten men .

When she could've had me. And it's my own fucking fault.

I raked a hand through my snarled, filthy hair, resisting the urge to pound my head on the nearest tree until I cracked open my own thick skull. How could I begin to fix this when I couldn't even find her?

The urge to go to her hammered relentlessly, even though I couldn't feel her anywhere. She'd gone through the shimmering sunfire portal and disappeared. For all I knew, she was on the other side of the universe. Day after day, the merciless compulsion to find her worsened, driving me mad. Turning me into a frothing at the mouth rabid idiot.

The fucking Call. I knew what it was. I'd dreaded it all my life, terrified of a queen ever trying to Blood me. Now, I wanted to shred my own skin off and bash my head in just to end the constant punishing need to be wherever she was.

She doesn't want me. She doesn't need me. She made her choice.

No. I made my fucking choice. Now I have to fucking live with it. Though if this was how I'll feel the rest of my life, it was time to find someone powerful enough to put me out of my misery. No fucking way could I live like this. Especially if I couldn't even shift to my wolf and run.

Flee.

My lips twisted in a silent snarl of self-hatred.

I didn't know what to do. Where to go. Who'd even give a fuck if I showed up asking for help? The Isador queen? I wouldn't get inside her nest before one of her Blood skinned me alive. She had plenty of opportunities to take me as Blood and she'd refused. Rightfully so. I didn't want to belong to her or any queen.

Karmen. My wolf howled mournfully, a distant memory inside me. Only Karmen. And it's too late.

I'd rather claw my eyeballs out and submit to a queen. Any queen. Than endure this insistent, helpless urge to be with Karmen. Surely if another queen bonded me, the Call would end.

There'd be queens in New York City. The remnants of House Skye, now owned by Isador, were still there. Surely one of them would be all too eager to leash a wolf king for herself. Yet I couldn't bring myself to even search another queen out. The most I could force myself to do was head back to Chicago.

Harris. The human detective pissed me the fuck off, but he'd given Karmen a phone. If anyone other than the Isador consiliarius knew where she was, it'd be him. Though the bastard refused to take my fucking calls.

Fine. He'd have a little surprise waiting for him when he went home. I knew his scent well enough to track him down to a shitty long-term hotel on the south side. Evidently, the poor bastard didn't make much, even as a detective. Or maybe he just didn't give a damn. Breaking into his room didn't take much effort.

Waiting for him to return, I snooped through his meager belongings. A few changes of clothes in the dresser. A couple of cheap-ass suit jackets of the mix and match variety, with plain dress shirts and dress pants, still wrapped in plastic from the cleaners. The small kitchen was mostly empty except for a few basic implements, a box of ramen noodles, and half a dozen bottles of bourbon. The fridge was well stocked—with beer and stale carryout containers of mostly strong-smelling Chinese food.

No laptop on the desk, just stacks of old manilla folders, mostly stained with coffee, dots of mustard, and god only knew what else. A few hastily scribbled notes on the back of torn-open envelopes and crumpled napkins. Nothing too interesting. Though Harris was smart enough to keep his good stuff on him at all times.

To kill time, I looked up the precinct and called the non-emergency number. A robotic-sounding woman answered. "Chicago P.D. How can I direct your call?"

"Detective Joseph Harris, please."

"Please hold." Tinny music played in the background for a surprisingly long time before she came back onto the line. "Mr. Harris is no longer employed by Chicago P.D. If you have a case number, I can refer you to the appropriate detective."

"Thanks." I hung up, my mind whirling. I'd never imagined him not being a cop. Had they fired him after his department-issued car was destroyed? He'd joked about the paperwork.

A sinister thread wound through my mind. Maybe he quit—so he could get closer to Karmen. He'd given her that fucking phone, and he'd certainly been interested in all the consiliarius talk before Helayna left for Iceland. Aima queens didn't like humans knowing their business, unless they were sworn to the house or long-time family help. A queen wouldn't normally take a human into her confidence, but Karmen didn't know our ways. She hadn't been raised in a court. She hadn't even known what being a queen meant.

A shard of something sharp tore deep inside me, as if my wolf's claws were counting my ribs.

She hadn't known anything about queens and Blood. She'd needed someone. Anyone. To help her. To protect her. It should've been me.

A horrible sound rattled in my chest, distracting me enough I didn't hear footsteps outside until the door crashed open. "Freeze, hands up!"

I jerked with surprise, my face flushing with embarrassment that he'd managed to catch me unaware. Wincing, I flinched at the pain in my sore shoulder after moving so quickly. In the darkness outside, I couldn't see him, but I recognized Harris' voice. To cover my reaction, I let my lips curl into a mocking smile and leaned back slowly in the shitty armchair. "I suppose those words still come easy even for former cops, right, Detective Harris?"

A shadow slowly peeled away from the doorframe and slipped inside the room. The door clicked behind him, and then he flicked on the overhead lights. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Wild Man?"

I snorted. "You've definitely moved up in the world if you're talking so high and mighty now. Why aren't you taking my calls?"

He walked over to the fridge and pulled out a beer. He didn't offer me one. Then he plopped down at the desk, making sure to turn the office chair so he could keep me in sight. If he'd drawn a gun outside, he'd smoothly re-holstered it. "I'm too busy trying to find another job to deal with you."

Certainly a reasonable response but he didn't look stressed or rumpled. His jaws were clean shaven, his hair trimmed and slicked back, his suit clean and pressed, though it screamed cop with the cheap polyester material and basic striped tie that looked to be twenty years old. In comparison, I looked—and probably smelled—like a bum off the street.

He casually dropped a leather shoulder bag on the desk but kept the strap under his arm, ready to drag it up and away. I opened my wolf senses as much as possible, trying to tell whether he had a gun on him. Not that a gun would slow me down much—but I didn't want his former cop friends hunting me down either.

"I figured you had a job with House Sunna now." I fought to keep my voice casual. "You certainly seemed to be real chummy with the consiliari at the cabin."

He let out a soft grunt. "Weird-ass vampire shit. I still have a hard time convincing myself I didn't hallucinate the whole thing."

I flashed a wolfy smile. "I could shift into my beast if you need another demonstration."

Though I immediately regretted the bravado. He wouldn't know—but that's all it was. Arrogant smack-talk. I couldn't shift now if I had to. The wolf refused to cooperate.

"Being hauled into the air in dragon claws was plenty of a demonstration for me, Wild Man." He shifted his weight back, stretching his legs out in front of him, ankles crossed. "So, what exactly are you doing in my room again?"

I shrugged, though it pulled the sore muscles up my neck and down my back, fire radiating from the old wound. "Looking for intel, what else?"

He sipped his beer, watching me with those damned cop eyes that didn't miss a fucking thing. The silence weighed heavy between us. He knew damned well what I wanted to know, but the fuck if he'd make it easy for me.

My jaw flexed and I swallowed down my pride, even though it felt like deep-throating a giant porcupine. "Have you heard from Karmen?"

His eyelids lowered a fraction, automatically trying to veil his thoughts. He weighed his options for several moments before he finally replied. "Yeah."

I fought the urge to leap across the short distance between us, seize him by his lapels, and drag him up into my face while I snarled and frothed at the mouth. A million questions flickered through my mind. Desperate. Pitiful. I finally settled on asking, "Is she okay?"

Harris nodded slowly. "To my knowledge, she's fine."

So the phone worked wherever she went.

I'd already asked for the number on the burner phone he gave her once. He refused.

"I need to talk to her." I swallowed the prickly pride again, uncomfortably sharp. As sharp as the Impaler's spear digging into my back when he'd made his threats. "Please."

Harris' head tipped slightly to the side. "Why don't you start by explaining to me why you care so much?"

I gripped the arms of the hotel chair, fighting to keep my body relaxed in the seat, rather than pacing like a mad man. Or worse, ripping this whole place apart while I howled like a wounded beast. "She was supposed to be mine."