Grayling: Nocturnal Creatures Book 3 Read online

  But he responded in kind.

  There was no world beyond this, the king beneath and against her, his cock like warm marble within his trousers, her teeth hard and long and desire keener than it had ever been, though she did not come from the sensation alone.

  She pinned his arms down, reared back, then lunged down to close her teeth over the neck he made vulnerable for her in his own need.

  Asha had never heard him make that sound. She had heard something similar escape her lips, desire briefly overriding control, helplessness neither a whimper nor a moan.

  That sound coming from him, and near enough to feel as well as hear its vibration, brought her hips down hard against his. Her thrall found a grip, binding him to her before he could get his own teeth into her. Rose petals stroked along her skin with gentler gusts. The king made short work of removing the rest of his clothing with the same magic, but his seed smeared between them before he could slide inside.

  She laughed into his neck, shaking her head to coax out the thicker blood. It provided neither the satisfaction nor strength that the elders had given her, but it suffused her as thoroughly as her thrall suffused him.

  His erection remained hard and hot between them. She was the one to raise herself up and slowly surround him, moaning deep into his veins at the reminder of new flesh, new sensitivities, new needs.

  The king levitated himself to his feet and slammed her back against the metal frame in a blow that would have broken her back. Already, he had shown all the ways he could have killed her as a human and all the ways such violence could no longer harm her. It hurt, but the pain stimulated her as surely as though it were pleasure, mimicking life in her body—life that the Gray had never provided but of the sort she imagined the Tapestry had known. Invigoration, stimulation, enchantment, fever and frost, blood-soaked rose petals… They all wrapped her in decadence as though meant all along for a demon queen.

  He entered into her, sinking his teeth into her shoulder rather than her neck. She sensed herself siphoning into him, emptying down his throat even as he filled her.

  She tore at his thick skin, less yielding than Lysan’s, then ripped flesh from his neck as she shrieked her wildness to the sky, the scream laced with a hiss like the call of her king. He pinned her to the copper, sinking his claws into her hips and legs, and slammed into her through their orgasm. Cold blood dripped down her shoulder from the king’s furious shudders that tore at her skin, though he drank what he could.

  He jerked his teeth from her and pressed his forehead to her shoulder instead, panting to hold onto his vaunted but once again tenuous control.

  She shuddered, her call subsiding into a moan that trembled as violently as he. Rose petals gathered around them, sliding up their bodies with velvet, slowly dissolving to yield the blood they contained. Blood slithered into their mouths as the king held her, the ink-black of his eyes reaching the edges as though she had pushed him into fully becoming the devil she had once believed him to be.

  He brought his clawed fingers up her body until he cradled her face once more. They moved and rocked and shivered and drank the blood he had commanded his roses to yield. Through the night wind unmoved by the king came the smell of smoke.

  10

  He closed all the copper rose’s sluices except for one. He led Asha to the first opening on that sluice to drink everything that the vial contained—his blood and the blood of his servants.

  She could taste each individual’s donation on her tongue, and upon her return to the castle, their perfume marked them. When she licked her lips, they would edge away, but she did not attack, and they did not run. Their fear made them more fragrant, but she was not the sole cause of it.

  The wolves snapped at each other, and much of the furniture had abandoned their posts at the king’s behest. Some had accepted his offer of joining the pack to fight with greater strength and reflexes on behalf of the king. Between keeping their own vulnerable skins and serving with greater power, a good number of them chose to fight. They were warriors, after all, trained soldiers, knights, and mercenaries of their other kingdoms. It satisfied them to take knives into their hands again, even if those hands now bore claws and their hearts bore the weight of their service. But once they had transformed, their appetites could not be fulfilled with kingdom criminals any more than hers could, and they joined the older wolves in their restlessness.

  The objects who did not join the wolves wrapped their lower halves in red to mark themselves as servants, and they prepared knives of flint and iron, unable to forge in steel with their limited skill. They bonded iron to the windows and checked the integrity of every door. They prepared the ever more expansive meals to cater to greater need for meat. Some donated blood when they could, but there were not enough donations to fortify their king and queen to the extent the dragons and their mistress would feed upon the towns.

  It had been three nights. The dragons and the woman could not feed during the day as freely as they could at night. They could hole up in a building in which they hoarded bodies, but they would still be limited, and some kingdom folk might have been better at hiding and fighting than the creatures had anticipated, which was the only explanation for the delay.

  The captain barely put in an appearance in the audience chamber. Asha did not think his avoidance was coincidence, although he had excellent reasons to patrol the courtyards rather than the castle corridors.

  Asha still slept in her own bed when she did sleep, the balcony window covered with red drapery of the sort the king kept in his master’s room, as much to hide the iron barring and binding the window as to shut out the sun.

  When he was not acting as her guard, Lysan trained new wolf warriors with other members of the pack. Callina stayed with Asha, guarding her within the walls of the bedroom while the servants continued to guard without. The king wished to sleep with Asha, but it was better for one of them to be awake and alert to protect the other in their vulnerable moment. Callina would curl next to her in bed, sometimes for sleep and sometimes for other things to precede it.

  But the captain stayed awake and angry, the burning ice of him returned tenfold. He could barely look at her when she crossed his path, and his temples jumped every time he clenched his wolfish teeth.

  The nights were not long enough, and each rising of the sun marked one day closer to an overwhelming force threatening to swallow them whole. Asha chose to leave the captain to the rage boiling inside his chest. She could not say whether she or the king was more the cause, but he bit his tongue, and Asha—despite cognizance of time slipping from her all the faster, despite already tasting death—left him to train his pack and do whatever he needed to do to face real war.

  By the fourth night, the bickering among new and old wolves reached a peak, and the servants nearly came to blows against the more belligerent or disrespectful when they entered the audience chamber with food.

  The king was taking his short time to sleep after a feed from multiple servants more than willing to lose themselves in the oblivion of his thrall before the end of their world. Several of the men had made the same inquiry of her, but they had accepted her refusal with equanimity that earned them at least a softer refusal.

  Asha could not abide sitting in the audience chamber, not even in the king’s throne, with the tension between the humans and the wolves continuing to intensify with suspense.

  She abruptly stood. “I need to be alone.”

  Callina glanced up from where she had been sharpening her knives with nervous energy. As Asha climbed along the wall to the passageway entrance, Callina made no move to follow her. Instead, she headed out of the room, perhaps inspired toward her own solitude.

  The darkness and silence of the passageways soothed her eyes and ears. The transformations had sharpened her sensitivities. A fully lit room almost hurt her eyes, and so many edged barks, growls, snaps, and shouts grated her hearing.

  The scent of rodents met her nose, but she did not expect to find any throug
h the narrow, pitch corridors. The wolves were eating anything they could get their hands on, including vermin. Life force was life force, and it was far more useful for the warriors than for the king and queen, who needed human blood more than anything else. Almost every last rat or mouse had been smoked from the walls and passages by the ravenous wolves.

  The rose windows barely glowed from moonlight, but Asha discerned the colors despite the darkness as she turned the corner to the room above her reading nest in the rose window hall. Under the circumstances, she had not returned to it. If she lasted beyond the battle to come, she would have to move the nest, perhaps to this room, where she could enjoy the light as the king did.

  It was not the king, however, who sat against the wall, his elbow against his raised knee and his head resting on his forearm.

  “Can a man not have peace?” he asked with a trace of a growl.

  “I came seeking my own, not to disturb yours. I can continue to another room.”

  “Stay, if you will it.” He turned away again.

  She lowered herself to the edge of the alcove, which allowed her to view a broad cross-section of the rose window hall. Color glittered in the air from the moonlight through the glass. Iron chain created new shadows, but the shadows could not mar the comfort of the light. She dangled her legs over the edge, unafraid now of a fall.

  “Have I offended you?” Asha asked. “Did my abduction or the king’s rescue, ill-advised though it was, sour your affection, captain?”

  “You have done nothing to offend me.” He still did not meet her eyes, but that he spoke to her improved their previous strain. “Were the king of the sort our army meets to discuss diplomatic relations, condemning his kingdom to slaughter would have been a more ill-advised decision. But he is a demon king of a kingdom that no longer respects why they agreed to tolerate him centuries ago. I understand his choice to sacrifice them so that he would not have to sacrifice you, cruel though his choice was. If the woman had not arrived, blood may still have been spilled. My anger with the king has nothing to do with you. And much of my fury has little to do with the king.”

  “The king himself did not sense Murial’s entrance, nor the abduction,” Asha said. “She must have engaged her thrall to keep us asleep. You cannot blame yourself for her first act of war.”

  “I very well can. We bound ourselves to the king for his protection and for yours, particularly yours when your flesh was more fragile. To fail in that duty is tantamount to treason.”

  “When you realized I was lost, you set to the kingdom to find me, as did the king. And you did not release yourself from your vow to the king when he stripped himself of a kingdom. You and your wolves did not have to stay to fight a lost war.”

  The captain raised his head. “Then you know it is a battle we cannot possibly win.”

  “My rescue was symbolic at best. Perhaps he sacrificed his kingdom because he knew it would not survive any more than us,” Asha mused. “He chose with whom to spend his last days.”

  “The dragons are of a kind with the king. Albeit diluted, they share his blood, as you do. What is to stop the woman and her brood from capitalizing on such a connection? If it is to his blood that we are sworn, the woman could thrall us.”

  “She did not try to thrall while in the square. Where would be the victory in that?” Asha shifted her legs so that she reclined next to the alcove, her back to the wall opposite his. Despite the space between them, the distance had shortened.

  “Perhaps not the king. Perhaps not even you. But I fear for my own loyalty and that of my pack if she purloins our bond for her ends. However, even were she secure enough in her dragons’ skills against our own not to interfere with the blood contract, the dragons are still too strong and too numerous. A wolf warrior is worth a hundred men, but if a still-starving dragon is stronger than a well-fed one, we are at a decided disadvantage. They can also fight a battle on two fronts—earth and air—while we are solely beasts of the earth. We carry both natural and created weapons too close to our bodies. We have never prepared for long-range warfare before, and a few days’ training with new wolves is hardly the time we need.”

  “How do you prepare for air warfare, captain, when wolves are bound to the earth as to blood? The skies are no more welcoming to me if only the king and I must fight the dragons in the air, and I am much more comfortable with my feet on the ground. To remain airborne while also using my own hand-to-hand skills against dragons does not strike me as an ideal tactic.”

  That earned her the ghost of a smile. Her enhanced senses detected what they once might not have.

  “The servants and the newer soldiers who still have their weaponry skills have made spears,” he said. “We cannot forge swords under such short notice, but we can repurpose our knives.”

  “They still require contact too close for comfort.” She closed her eyes. “When I begged, the law permitted me knives. If attackers divested me of my weapons, I would use whatever else I had on hand. Sometimes I used my coin jar, though to do so would spread my coins for all other beggars’ use, and I would go hungry. Other times, I would grab loose cobblestones and either use them to bolster my fist or pitch them at the men’s faces. I became accurate in my aim when I was but a child, with a child’s friends, a child’s curiosity, and plenty of ruins in which to practice. A young boy I explored with was proficient with a slingshot. We use iron to block the windows. Have you considered other elements to send into the air?”

  The captain unfolded himself from his contemplative position. “To do so would wreak more havoc upon the forest than is our wont, but the kingdom no longer needs protection, and we have already decimated the feral population as the dragons decimate the domesticated. What does it matter if the forest burns to the ground? Seeds will regrow, animals will return, and the lake and mountains can keep any blaze contained. There are unused stones from the castle’s creation, and fire is an endless resource in the belly of the castle’s foundation. Your kind burns as easily as any, and with the right leverage, a stone…”

  “Can bring dragons to the earth,” Asha finished for him. “It is not a guarantee of success, but perhaps it might discourage such an absolute defeat. Do we have the time or the apparatus?”

  “If the dragons do not come before dawn, we will have time. We have guards at all doors and upon the ramparts and turrets to sound the alarm. They have not detected the approach of wings. Screams still rise from the villages, and decay comes in on the wind. Despite their numbers, they have plenty of blood to feast upon yet, it seems. I must alert the weapon-makers.”

  When he stood, she lifted to her feet without effort. Though she did not reach for him, he nonetheless paused at the entrance back into the passages, nostrils flaring and fingers curling into fists. The subtle groan of flesh giving way as teeth grew and claws extended made her mouth water. The scent of him as a man mingled with that of the wolf, though he had barely changed.

  “If I have not offended, why level your anger upon me?” Asha slid closer, her toes dragging upon the floor. She released herself from the air to stand without magic. “Surely there are better uses for your aggression, captain. Is it because I am more convenient to hate, an object of derision for so long before? Is it because I have his blood in me and represent him in scent? Does my very presence demand your unwitting loyalty and resentment? Tell me, captain—do you want me to continue to stay away through the last nights? It would not be my pleasure, but I willingly submit to yours, whether you would leave or strike me or—”

  “Enough.” The captain grasped the frame of the passage. Dust crumbled to the hardwoods. “There is a battle to end all battles coming. My people and yours need time to prepare what little we can manage. You are a distraction that I cannot afford to…”

  Without her thrall, she could still see into his desire as clearly as if she had created it. His cock spoke for him, though, with the carnal disregard of a beast, too prominent for him to deny or dismiss.

  “All you hav
e to do is leave,” she said quietly. Her gown was loose, silk cut to flow away from her skin but also slightly big for her frame. She shrugged the sleeves from her shoulders, and the entire gown slithered down her body to puddle at her feet, as easy as magic. “I died but nights ago, to die again a few nights hence. Captain…”

  She anticipated his hand but did not attempt to avoid it. He grabbed her by the back of her neck and shoved her face-first against the wall.

  “Have you not tormented me enough?” he snarled through gritted teeth, pressing his body to hers. “The both of you. All I have done, the things you have taken… Can it ever be enou—” His anger quickened his breath, ruffling her hair and heating the scalp. “This would all be so much easier if I only had to be alpha to my pack. Instead, I not only fear for them but for him, for you, creatures that have nothing to do with me.”

  He rutted against her, making no attempt to curb his lust, animal though it was. Asha thought for a moment that he might only scratch the itch to remove the temptation.

  But the captain slowed his movements and released her neck, his pants slowing, though heightened heat remained. He drew his palms over her bare shoulders, down her arms to her hands. In less than a second, he closed his hands over hers and slammed them against the stone, though not with the same fury as before. He nudged her hair away from her neck, buried his face against her, then inhaled, slow, deep, deliberate, following the length of her neck to the place where her jaw met her ear.

  “Yes, you smell of him.” His growl rolled over her body like honey. “The blood is almost all his. But you still carry your old scent if I seek it.” He hummed, a wolf with a rabbit between his teeth. “I did not think the fever would still take you after your death.”

  “None of us did.” She exposed her neck to him for the sensation of his teeth, though she had become far less vulnerable. Her own unlikely heat rose to meet his own. Her face warmed as though burned under the sun.