CHAPTER 127: ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY SEVEN

Evadne

"You’re lying," she spits, cheeks growing flushed with anger. "I may not matter to him, but his child does. He would never abandon me here if you had told him--"

"Have you no sense of self preservation?" It’s not an insult, but she flinches like I have slapped her again. "If he gave the order to have you cut down, what difference do you think it’d make if you’re carrying his child? It’s a baby. Babies can be made by anything with a cunt. You think yourself a sacred vessel for or are you just a complete air head?"

She shoots to her feet and I stay perfectly relaxed as she storms forward on her pretty, broken ankle, only to be halted when the chain on her ankle runs out.

"I am Queen--"

"Of nothing. Nowhere." I rise, making the distance she’d so desperately wanted to close. "Protect him all you want." My voice drops as I stare up in her face. She has a classy beauty about her. Shame, that it is wasted on the likes of a boy who doesn’t know the right way to treat a woman. "But know that if we lose," my fingers pokes the spot over her heart and I feel her heartbeat spike.

"...you will die in here," I whisper, my breath skating across her cheek, "alone. Forgotten." The words are meant to sting, but they don’t. Her pulse jumps beneath my fingertip, wild and hot, and mine answers like a curse.

"It’ll begin slowly," I whisper, and her brown eyes drop to my mouth. "First, you will thirst. Then you will hunger like nothing you’ve ever experienced. And then, to get rid of it, you will consider chewing on your beautiful skin, then find it repulsive. And when you finally give in to the cannibalism, you will find that your teeth have become too weak to tear into skin. And then, you will begin to dry and shrink as that pup inside you feeds on you from inside out."

She stares at me for a long time, pink lips parted slightly. There’s fear in her eyes, but she hides it well. It doesn’t irk me. I’ve always thought a healthy dose of fear was good. "And then?"

"You’ll wish I’d killed you instead."

She exhales softly, her heart thuds even harder. "He was a good man," she says softly. "We were friends before anything else. He didn’t have a normal upbringing, didn’t even get to be a child, but he used to be kind. Maybe that’s why I never noticed. Because when you try to understand a person’s every action, it’s usually harder to accept them for what they truly are, as you continue to give excuses that never run out."

Her voice drops to a low rasp. "His grandmother hit him all the time. So he hit me, too. When she cut him, he cut me. Called it discipline, like she did. Called it care. I think a part of him really believes that--" She breaks out with a soft laugh. "There I go again, giving him excuses."

Her jaw tightens. "There will be no surrendering. No prisoners. I’ve never met anyone who hated your kind like Rafael. It is so deeply seated, it is futile to make sense of it. He believes wolves are the supreme race, the Draemont line that started all of this impure. He seeks to erase, annihilate. He sends his half-breeds and soldiers of no standing to die for him. He lets the foolish human prince expend his resources to win this war on his behalf and keeps his larger reserve on Silvermoor soil. Rafael is like a Queen on a chess board. Protected all round, moving only when necessary to save himself. This is just the start of it. This is nothing compared to what he has planned."

Well, fuck.

I turn on my heel abruptly, needing to get this to Trenton, but Astrea catches my wrist. Her fingers feel like a brand. "You take information from me and give nothing in return."

I arch a brow. "You should’ve bargained better--"

A hand drops to my waist and my brows furrow when she begins walking me back. Maybe I let her do it, back me up until my spine brushes against the wall.

"I’m not a complete air head, you know?" she whispers, reaching her hand up to my hair, where she tugs out the last pin and it clatters to the ground not too far off.

Then she cups my cheek firmly, tilting my head up to hers until our breaths mingle. "You’re not my first. And I am no innocent."

Before I can answer she closes the distance.

The kiss is sudden, catching me off guard. But her lips are soft, warm and inviting, her tongue teasing the seam of mine before they ever fully close over mine.

Instinctively, I part for her, and it deepens, her hand on my waist palming harder, pulling my closer and higher, until my heel rises off the ground. My hands rise to her shoulders, to steady, to push off the straps of her dress or push her off, to pull her closer. For that insane breath, I do not know if I am returning it or taking what she is giving me.

Her body shudders against mine as my fangs nick her bottom lip, a raw sound echoing in the back of her throat and the sheer hunger in it makes my knees weak.

I usually make the first move. More out of protection for myself, my mind. My body locks down when I am touched without consent.

This feels different.

For a flash of a moment, I forget who she is.

Because the two weeks elapses tomorrow. And we have mere hours before the enemy tears down our walls and sacks our homes. Hours before we lose and I make the choice between becoming prisoner or killing myself before I let another man break me.

I let her hands run up my ribcage and squeeze my breasts. My lips part on a surprised groan, my head dropping back against the wall as she teases the peaks into stiff aching points.

A hand lowers, exploring my figure as insolently as her tongue does my mouth, and it drags down my hip, going around to cup my ass, hauling my ship forward to meet the thigh parting my legs.

My heat splinters, my hips grinding, the heat amping up to an unreasonable furnace.

Her hand leaves my ass.

And then, something sharp and cold stabs into my neck, ice exploding against the heat and eradicating it for good. I feel the impact and pressure and the metallic taste of iron and copper rush up my throat.

Her mouth leaves mine. Confused, I reach up reflexively to where warmth gathers in my throat, clogging my airflow. And there, in the curve of her wet fingers, I feel a rusted nail.

"Forgive me," she breathes, her breath warmimg my skin. Then she drives the nail deeper.