Mina’s stomach churned with acid. “The one you plan to murder in a blood rite the hour he’s born.”
She froze, her cutting gaze knifing through Mina like the sharpest blade. “How did you know?” Morgrid’s scowl darkened. “Do you have the sight?”
Dominik shook her from behind. “Answer the queen.”
“I do not,” Mina replied just as the edge of an icy sting pricked at the base of her spine. “But a friend of mine does.”
Morgrid sipped from her goblet, casting a look past Mina to Dominik behind her. “It’s that Red Witch in Silvane Forest, no doubt.” The queen laughed. “Yet again, it matters not. You’ll do your part and give me what I want, even if we have to chain you to the bed for the rest of your life.”
“Not a bad idea.” Dominik pulled her back against him, the hard press of his body against her bottom and back a frightening presence. “But there will be no need. She’ll know her master soon enough.”
“See that she does.”
“And what about King Grindal?” asked Mina. “What does he think about your plans to spread sanguine furorem and cast the world in an eternal black magic veil?”
Mina had known King Grindal to be a cold, calculating vampire, but he was the one who’d always enforced the laws so that humans wouldn’t want to revolt. Though it had happened anyway once the queen started spreading her blood-maddening disease, which flowed in her own blood.
“He doesn’t think of anything…anymore.”
“You killed your own king?” Mina didn’t understand why she was so shocked. Morgrid was maniacal beyond imagining.
Morgrid turned away. “Put her in her room till tonight, my son.” She sashayed toward Radomir, whose worshipful yet cold gaze was fixed on his queen. “And, Dominik?”
He tugged Mina by one arm toward the door.
“Yes, Mother?”
“No bedding her till after the midnight ceremony. The child we need must be legitimate from conception.”
He said nothing. Mina didn’t dare look at him.
With a hand resting upon Radomir’s chest, the queen looked over her shoulder, still holding her glass of blood. “Son, I only need the firstborn. Then you can beget as many as you like on her.”
“Of course, Mother.”
Mina locked on Izzy’s gaze and mouthed, Be brave. It will be all right. Izzy nodded, her springy curls limp on her shoulders, but she swallowed hard and lifted her chin as Radomir pushed her toward another exit from the parlor.
Dominik marched Mina back out, not bothering to slow his strides for her. Though she was tall, she wasn’t nearly as tall as him. He didn’t speak to her the entire walk back to the bedchamber, a place of dread. Turning into his bedchamber, he strode through the door, opening and slamming it closed.
Without warning, he pushed her back to the door, opened his mouth with fangs sharp and thick. Her fight instinct took over in a flash, her vampire claws extending as she swiped at his face. When she reached for his eyes, he jerked up just in time. She raked his cheek and gouged hard.
A fierce growl rumbled from his chest.
“Fucking bitch,” he snarled. Hauling back, he backhanded her to the floor, the sharp pain radiating across her face so hard her vision blurred.
Rolling to her back, she saw him coming, reaching for her. She kicked hard, barely missing his groin, hearing the satisfying whoosh of air leave his lungs as her foot landed in his gut. Then his body crushed her to the floor. Clawing out again, she drew blood at his throat, wincing at the bitter tang of his scent in the air.
He manacled her wrists and pressed them above her head, his other hand at her throat.
“Settle down,” he growled, bearing his teeth like a wolf to its prey. “I could kill you so easily.”
His fingers squeezed till she couldn’t breathe, and she saw her own death in his eyes. He wanted to kill her. And would have.
Then his clutch loosened. She sucked in air in gasping breaths. His gaze shifted from raging fury to dark lust. His great paw roamed to her breast, where it squeezed hard. Even corseted, it was more sensation than she cared to feel from him.
“I hate waiting.”
Self-preservation took root, keeping her wits about her. “Queen Morgrid said you must. You can’t go against her.”
He chuckled, squeezing her breast to a painful point. “Like you care what the queen wants.”
He lifted up, hauling her by the wrists from the floor, then swiftly flung her facedown onto a midnight-black counterpane. Before she could push up, he was on her again, pressing her into the mattress, his erect shaft at the cleft of her bottom. Pinning her wrists again to the mattress with one hand, he gripped a fistful of hair and yanked her head, arching her neck back.
She screamed, unable to keep from crying out in pain though she refused to beg him to stop this time. That didn’t work with Dominik.
He ground his pelvis into her bottom with a rumbling growl at her ear. “I can wait till tonight.” He licked along the crook where her neck met shoulder. “But I’ll give you something to remember me by.”
His fangs sank deep, spearing pain into her shoulder. She wept silently, furious at her helplessness, at this malicious, sad, horrific twist of fate. He groaned and sucked her blood, injecting more elixir into her bloodstream. The wave of violent power flooding her veins and rippling through her frame wasn’t a shock this time. It hurt, nevertheless.
When he extricated his canines, he was breathing heavily. He didn’t lick the wound to help it heal. Her body could self-heal if she’d fed recently, which she hadn’t. He remained with his heavy body pressing her into the mattress, almost suffocating her.
When she started gasping for air, he eased up a fraction. Suddenly, he jerked her off the bed and planted her in a silver-brocade chair facing the bed.
“You will not leave this chair, do you understand?”
She nodded.
“You will sit here in this chair all day and night. You won’t sleep. You’ll think about me and watch me and listen to me fucking and drinking from my concubines until it’s time for our wedding rites.” He bit her again, higher on the neck.
She cried out as he punctured but didn’t suckle, giving her the pain of his bite for no other reason to show her he could. For his own sadistic pleasure.
“Then I’m going to teach you about pain. And who your master is.”
He wrenched her hair till she felt some of it pull loose, her scalp stinging till her eyes pricked with tears. Her head arched back, though she could see his dark gaze looking down over her.
“Say yes, master.”
“Yes, master.” She didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t loosen his hold as he bent low and suckled her bottom lip gently into his mouth, as if he were a true lover.