A sound echoed along the corridor, a dim murmur of voices coming from the closed door far to his left.
The war room.
The sensible part of him said to stop but he couldn’t. He needed his female. His beautiful mate.
She had better control than he did though and pushed him back, breaking free of his lips and turning her cheek to him when he tried to kiss her again. He settled for kissing along her jaw and down her neck, his mouth watering as his fangs elongated, a different hunger rising in him as he felt her pulse hammering against his lips.
Beating in his chest.
“Later,” she whispered, and he could hear that she didn’t want to stop, she wanted to continue what he had started.
But the demon kings and his prince were waiting in the war room.
For them.
Bleu drew down a deep breath to steady himself, closed his eyes and focused to purge the hunger from his mind and his body, slowly clawing back control. When his need had gone from a boil to a fierce simmering in his veins, he reluctantly released Taryn and stepped back.
She looked up at him, her striking violet-to-white eyes dark with the hunger he could still feel in her. His female needed. It was almost enough to have him lunging for her again, dragging her back against him for another kiss. Only her hand claiming his stopped him together with her reassuring smile, one that told him she would keep that promise she had made and as soon as the meeting was done, they would pick things back up where they had left off.
Which only made him want to rush the meeting.
It wasn’t important.
So whatever they discussed might affect the future of the elf kingdom as well as the demon realms, and possibly all of Hell.
Big deal.
He closed his eyes and huffed, unimpressed with himself.
His kingdom came first. He had always placed it above his own needs and finding his mate wouldn’t change that. He had a mission and he would complete it. Nothing would stand in his way.
No matter how tempting and beautiful she was.
A blush rose onto her cheeks as he stared at her, probably looking like a lovesick idiot. He certainly felt like one.
She tugged on his hand this time and he obediently followed her towards the arched wooden doors of the war room. He steeled himself as they approached it, preparing to see Vail again. The male had been helpful and seeing him with Rosalind had lessened his hatred towards Vail, but it hadn’t lessened the pain he had locked deep in his heart. He wasn’t sure it was possible to heal that hurt. It would always be there, imprinted on him at a time in his life when he had been most vulnerable, too young to shield himself against it or know better than to idolise someone.
He faltered as she reached for the doorknob and she looked back at him, a curious frown pulling her eyebrows down over her incredible eyes. They searched his, a flicker of concern in them that her feelings backed up.
Bleu sucked down a deep fortifying breath.
“Is it the other prince?” she whispered and turned to face him.
He nodded, because in that moment he realised that he could share anything with the female standing before him. He didn’t have to hold anything back in order to protect himself because he knew she would never hurt him. It was right there in her eyes and in the way she squeezed his hand, sympathy and tenderness flowing from her and into him through their link.
“I served in his legion when he turned on his own people. I saw him kill those I called friend, but worse than that… he shattered… a part of me… the part that held him aloft, like a fucking god… idolised and adored him… like a fucking idiot.” Bleu looked away from her when her eyebrows furrowed and she reached up to touch his cheek.
Her hand stopped just short, but he could still feel the heat of her skin and the comfort she had meant to offer, and he cursed himself for denying himself both of those things in some ridiculous need to maintain some sort of distance between them. He didn’t want there to be any distance between them, not a single drop of air, but it was hard to overcome the instinct to protect himself. He sighed and exhaled hard, and fought to let it go. Taryn had shared her pain with him, and he wanted to share his with her. He wanted her to know him.
“When I joined the army, I worked hard with one goal.” He opened his eyes and looked across at her, met her soft and tender gaze, felt it soothe the hurt beginning to brew inside him, tempering it. “I wanted to serve under Prince Vail. When I was placed into his legion, it was a dream come true… but it turned into a nightmare.”
“You feel guilty that you survived.”
Gods, did he.
“I saw so many die… and I should have died too… I should not have survived… but I did… because…” He sucked down another sharp breath and curled his fingers into fists as he forced the words he had always kept to himself out into the world for her to hear. “Because he spared me.”
Her eyes widened.
Bleu broke away from her and shoved his fingers through his hair as he took agitated strides across the wide corridor, his heart pounding hard against his chest. He threw her a glance, caught the pity in her eyes, and growled.
“He looked right at me… covered in the blood of my friends… eyes wild and black… claws raised and poised to strike me down… and then he left… teleported… and I looked at the blood-soaked battlefield around me, a fight only a few had survived, my damn head spinning and ears ringing, and I knew… I knew he had spared me.”
“He left because it was you,” she whispered and his head spun and ears rang all over again as numbness swept through him on the heels of those words.
A realisation that left him cold.
Holy fuck.
Taryn was right.
Vail hadn’t merely spared him. He hadn’t been tired from the fight and done with it as Bleu had thought. Vail wasn’t that sort of male. He had never backed down from a battle, leaving before his victory was assured.
He had come face to face with Bleu and hadn’t been able to kill him, so he had found the strength to leave. He had chosen to end the battle because of him.
All of a sudden, the feeling that had always been with Bleu made a whole lot of sense. Taryn was right, and he felt guilty, but that feeling ran deeper than she knew, and he had ever acknowledged.
He had carried that guilt and shame with him through the centuries, a weight that had pressed down on his heart, not born of the fact he had survived Vail’s attack but born of the fact he had subconsciously known he might have been able to spare so many of his friends and comrades if he had only possessed more courage and found the strength to fight to reach Vail earlier in the battle.
Thousands more might have survived.
Hell, he might have been able to stop the assault from ever happening if he had been in the right place at the right time, there near Vail when he had launched the attack.
He wasn’t sure how to process that.
He looked at the closed arched wooden doors.
He wasn’t sure how to proceed.
Vail was in that room. Waiting. Aware that he was coming. How the hell was he meant to behave around him now? It had been hard enough knowing how to act after discovering that Kordula had been controlling him all those times they had fought. Now he didn’t have a damn clue what he was meant to do.
One thing was certain though.
He couldn’t bury his head in the sand by turning away and letting the meeting proceed without him. He wasn’t that fresh-faced youth anymore, the one who had tried to run away from the battle because he had been too afraid to face the male he had idolised as that male faced his darkest hour.
He had become a male who faced things head on, never backed down from a fight, and certainly never ran from a battle.
This was just another battle, and he would face it head on too, would take it one move at a time and adjust his strategy as he went, adapting to whatever happened. Eventually, he would win this fight and accept the things that had happened, and that the
re was nothing he could do to change the past, but right now there was a bigger battle that demanded his attention.
A war with a dragon that would decide the fate of Hell.
“You are decided?” Taryn murmured in a soft voice, and he nodded while silently thanking her for giving him time to reach a resolution and choose his course of action.
He took hold of her hand and she squeezed his, her striking eyes silently telling him that she would be there for him when he was ready to talk more about his past. It was an offer he would take her up on sooner rather than later. He needed to do it.
Iolanthe would tease him if she knew, but it was time he shared the burden he had carried for too long with someone else, letting them lift some of the weight from his shoulders. Taryn was that someone. Just as she would come to share her past with him, he would share his with her, and together they would work through everything and deal with it.
He led her to the doors, and shoved them open with his free one.
Almost everyone in the grand war room turned away from the huge map of Hell to look at him. He took them all in with one swift glance. King Thorne of the Third Realm had brought Sable with him, and the slender black-haired huntress stood near the right corner of the table map, her golden eyes fixed on Bleu and her demon mate’s left hand on her right shoulder, dark claws pressing into her black t-shirt.
Bleu looked up at Thorne, meeting his red eyes before they leaped to a point beside Bleu. He bared his fangs at the demon, warning him to take his gaze off Taryn. The male obviously sensed the threat, because he pinned his focus back on the map and tunnelled his free hand through his tousled russet-brown hair, pulling it back from the dusky horns that curled from above his pointed ears, following the curve of them down to the lobe.
Beyond him, on the far side of the map, King Tegan of the Second Realm preened his obsidian horns, an act he did often if the smoothness of them was anything to go by. They looked as if they had been polished, the ridges no longer visible, but other markings had been placed on them, intricate tribal carvings that were inlaid with gold. His thoughtful black gaze was the only one to have remained on the map. The impressive seven foot tall warrior had been born for battle, and Bleu had gained the distinct impression the few times their paths had crossed that he resented being born the leader of the Second Realm, one that was peaceful and rarely went to war.
He leaned over the map, planting large hands on the edge of the table, the muscles of his bare chest and shoulders bulging as they supported his weight. A hank of wild black hair fell down and he huffed and preened it back again.
Bleu was glad the male had chosen to keep his attention on the imminent threat and not his female.
The bastard was too good looking for a demon. The gods only knew how many females had fallen victim of him. Bleu had seen him flash a smile at a female once during a gathering and that female had fainted.
Literally fucking fainted.
King Tegan had been all too willing to administer first aid to the poor creature.
She was probably now part of the harem he apparently kept in his black castle.
To King Tegan’s right stood a beautiful female with a fall of straight white hair that her milky skin almost matched. It blended into her white corseted dress, and the paleness of her attire, her skin and her hair, made her blue eyes look ethereal and stunningly bright.
Those eyes drifted to rest on Bleu and cold swept through him in the second before he moved his gaze down to the map.
He swore she chuckled right in his head.
The phantom queen of the First Realm.
He suppressed the shiver that tried to run through him. Phantoms were dangerous. Their beauty and grace enchanted males and lured them under their spell, making it easier for the female to turn them incorporeal in order to mate with them and condemning them to an eternity as a spirit. If they didn’t feed on their soul anyway.
Somehow, King Valador, Melia’s fallen demon mate, had given her flesh and substance, allowing them to live together in the First Realm.
Queen Melia had assumed the role as King of the First Realm after the death of Valador and was set to rule until their son, Tarwyn, came of age.
Bleu lifted his curious gaze to the female beside Melia as the queen spoke to her. They were strikingly similar.
It was only the feel of another’s gaze on him that had him looking away from the pair of females.
Off to his left, beyond Loren, Rosalind the witch stood beside her mate, all fairness and light in comparison to him, with her wavy golden hair spilling around her shoulders and almost glowing in the bright light coming in through the tall windows at her back. She smiled softly at Bleu, one that made her blue eyes sparkle.
Vail growled low in his throat and slung an arm around her slender shoulders, his fingers curling over to pull on the black material of her dress. Those pale slender fingers transformed into claws as his armour completed itself. She sighed and looked up at her mate. Bleu looked at him too. Not a single ounce of regret touched Vail’s features, ones that were close to Loren’s now that his black hair had been trimmed and some of the darkness had left his violet eyes. Vail’s pointed ears flared back against the sides of his head and Bleu expected him to bare his fangs on a hiss.
He didn’t.
He looked at Taryn instead.
Bleu hissed at Vail, flashing his emerging fangs, warning the male away from her.
Vail frowned at her and then at him, all aggression gone as he raised an eyebrow and his violet eyes filled with curiosity, laced with something that surprised Bleu.
Happiness.
There was no mistaking that glow in his eyes as the corners of his lips curled into a faint smile.
Vail was happy for him.
The world truly had gone mad.
Bleu was heading right there with the rest of it, because while he wasn’t sure how Loren had managed to convince the council to agree to Vail’s presence in the kingdom, there was a part of him that hoped the elf male could do something in the impending battle that would help his cause. He wanted Vail to give the elders and the people of their kingdom a reason to trust him again.
“Shall we begin?” Loren’s deep voice cut through the silence and there was a murmur of agreement.
“The dragon skirted the Second Kingdom, passing along the other side of this mountain range.” King Tegan couldn’t have sounded more irritated if he had tried as he ran his left hand along the curving spine of mountains to the north of his kingdom, the front of his black leather trousers pressing against the edge of the three dimensional map. “He remained firmly inside the border of the First Realm.”
A faint purple-red glow lit his dark eyes, a corona around his pupils that warned the male’s mood was already degenerating.
King Tegan was hungry for a battle.
Bleu was surprised he hadn’t risked crossing the border into the First Realm in order to engage Tenak.
Still, the male would have his war soon enough.
“He came through my land on this course, decimating all in his path.” Thorne charted one that had many in the room falling silent, including Bleu. Tenak had cut right through the heart of the Third Realm. “He has recruited an army along the way. Men from my ranks, traders in the countryside, even some demons from the surrounding realms. We managed to evacuate some of the villages in his path, but others were not so lucky. We have lost many warriors and subjects already.”
Thorne sighed and preened his left horn, stroking his fingers along the dusky curve of it. Sable rested her right palm on his shoulder and he looked down at her, pain visible in his crimson eyes. The demon king had lost enough of his men and his people in a war with the Fifth Realm only a few lunar cycles ago. Losing so many more in such a short span of time was taking its toll on the large male.
“We will make him pay for what he has done,” Bleu said and Thorne raised his head, looked across at him and nodded.
Queen Melia drifted forwards, coming close
r to the map, gliding away from her companion.
“I have had word that the dragon’s army has passed through our outlying lands and has banked towards the centre of my kingdom. Scouts have reported he is on a direct course with a point beyond the demon kingdoms, and yours. It seems he is intending to recruit more, possibly from the other realms that lie that way.” Her soft voice floated around the room, an eerie quality to it. She ghosted her hand over the map, the motion strangely light and slow. Bleu suppressed another shudder. He had run afoul of a phantom once or twice in his lifetime and the experience had been enough to have his blood freezing whenever he thought about what Melia was. She lifted her bright blue eyes to him, as if she knew his secret fear, sending another shiver through him. “Tenak’s army is strong, with many dragons among its ranks. My men are engaged with them now. My advisor Isla came to warn me and she has witnessed the battle, so I brought her with me as she has valuable information.”
Bleu had the feeling that Isla was more than an advisor to Melia.
More than another phantom made flesh somehow.
If he had to guess, he would say she was a sibling.
He nodded towards the only realm on the course she had pointed out, wondering why she had chosen to speak of it as if there were more in that direction.
“Do you believe any from the free realm will be joining the battle on either side?” King Tegan said.
Isla stiffened.
Curious.
Melia had avoided naming the free realm during her report, and now Isla had reacted to hearing those words from Tegan’s lips.
“No,” Bleu said and watched the female closely. “We sent word but none of the sirens, nymphs, incubi and succubi, shifter species or furies offered allegiance and stated they would not side with a dragon either.”
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