Blood Drenched Conquest (Ryze Book 3)

by N. Isabelle Blanco

Skin glowing.

  Bow-shaped lips glistening.

  Pale skin blushing.

  My vision blurs, heart-racing, the inner growl of the wolf inside me gaining strength once more . . .

  “Can I?” Soleria asks me again.

  That growl leaks out of me, without consent, forming words before I can make sense of what the Hyren in me is about to tell her. “You can do whatever the fuck you want, female.”

  Her throat bobs with her stunned swallow.

  Before she realizes I was talking about my body—not just, you know, life—I motion for her to follow me.

  “Lord Almighty.”

  Yup. Definitely awe.

  Don’t look back at her. Don’t—

  Her head’s tilted back as we walk deeper into the chamber, lashes practically kissing her burgundy eyebrows as she stares above us. “Whoa.” She whistles low under her breath.

  Inside me, I can practically feel the wolf rolling over at the sound, panting with eagerness.

  To give my hands something to do—before I grab her and accidentally break her—I yank my hair into a low ponytail.

  “What do you do in here?”

  Alright. Safe question. Easy.

  Remember, asshole, you don’t have to go there with her. It can be normal. It can be chill. Sex doesn’t have to factor into it at all. Just like Liz and Sil. Total platonic camaraderie. Nothing more.

  Soleria walks right by me, looking in all directions.

  My eyes fall to her ass instantly, as if magnetized.

  “Hello? Earth to Ianthen? Or . . . well, you know what I mean.” She faces me, arms crossed, waiting for me to stop acting like a fucking idiot.

  “We can see anything we want in here. That’s what the quartz dome is about.” I point above our heads.

  A small smile tugs on her lips. “Ah. Should’ve guessed that. Data storage.”

  She’s into crystals like that? Again, the wolf inside me huffs, as if trying to force me to dig deeper. Find out more about her. Get to the bottom of what makes her tick. “And amplification, to be honest. But don’t tell anyone that. File it under ‘top secret’ like everything else you learn here. The humans need to finish figuring that out on their own.”

  “Why can’t we know more about . . . all this?”

  “It is your races’ destiny to forge its own path. Has been from the very beginning.” And because the gods once ignored that, they all ended up paying the ultimate price.

  The planet did as well.

  The Dixieme Eductu left us all scarred. Even the humans that have reincarnated and lived through it carry the trauma in their souls, even though they aren’t aware of it.

  I expect her to ask me to explain that further. Instead, she nods, eyes bouncing back up to the dome.

  When she doesn’t reply to me, I find myself speaking, filling the silence for no logical reason I can think of. “I use it for another purpose, though. Not just viewing. I can see any corner of the universe in here so it’s useful when it comes to hunting.”

  “Hunting?” Her brows draw together and although she rips her stare away from me, I don’t miss the way her lips curve with a frown.

  “Not that kind of hunting,” flies out of my mouth. Once again, without my consent. What the fuck are you doing? You don’t owe her an explanation! That so? Then why is my mouth opening back up to produce words? “I don’t need to search for . . . that here. There’s places for that . . . “ Why in the flying fuck are you still talking?!

  “Yo! Inviting her to Sphynx? Already? Dang. Well, maybe she’ll be down. Lord knows Nythi, Liz, and Sil won’t go near the place.”

  Cyake. My shoulders tense. Is he fucking retarded? Why would I want Soleria at Sphynx of all places?

  She looks behind me and her frown disappears in the blink of an eye, a huge smile taking its place. “Hey you.”

  Hey you? What’s with the familiarity? She wasn’t speaking in that soft voice when she called me “you” earlier.

  “What’s Sphynx? I’m assuming we aren’t talking about the pyramid in Egypt,” Soleria says.

  “Only the happiest place on Earth,” Cy answers, his voice coming closer.

  She laughs, eyes sparkling at the sight of him. “That’s Disney World, fool.”

  Why the hell is he here?

  Why is she talking to him like they’re close friends already? She’s only been here a day.

  What does he want?

  “Nope. It’s Sphynx. Where the nymphs are always willing and ready.” My best friend’s heavy paw lands between my shoulder blades. “Isn’t that right, bro?”

  I ignore him, too busy watching as Sol’s happy smile disappears even faster than that frown did.

  “Nymphs?” she mumbles, and that tone leaves both me and my inner wolf roiling with confusion.

  “Yup. The Nymphs. Man,” Cy sighs wistfully, “they were especially wild when we went last night.”

  Forget a frown. There’s no name for the expression on Soleria’s face as she faces me, but there’s no denying how my stomach drops at the sight of it. “Last . . . oh. You guys go there to get laid. It’s like your own personal harem, huh?”

  Chapter 7

  IANTHEN

  “Y up,” Cy quips, at the same time I rush out, “I don’t have a harem.”

  Man, the silence.

  It’s bad enough when I look over at Cyake. My best friend is staring at me with an expression I really don’t want to decipher right now. Forget checking out Soleria. No need to get hit with a double-whammy of incredulity.

  “What do you want?” I snap at Cy.

  Which does nothing to ease the shitload of WTF all over his face. “Needed to talk. Damn, every time I come to look for you in here lately, you’re grumpy as a mother.”

  Crossing my arms, I grunt out a reply, very aware that my own face is probably portraying a whole lot of get on with it, motherfucker. “What’s going on?”

  The way his stare shoots over in Soleria’s direction is the only indication I need. This convo is of a personal nature. Just as I open my mouth to ask her to give us some privacy, Cyake wills those armchairs from yesterday into the chamber.

  Except, yesterday there were two, and there’s a nice, big third one positioned right behind Soleria, facing his. No need to do an over-the-shoulder to know my chair is placed less than six inches from my back.

  My brows snap low over my eyes, so low that I see navy blue hair in my peripheral. Before I can question what the hell this is all about, Cy sits, getting all comfy with the layback and waiting for us to do the same.

  Soleria and I exchange questioning looks.

  “In three seconds you’re going to do it anyway, so just plant your asses on those chairs,” my best friend comments calmly.

  “Divination. Right.” Nodding, Soleria nervously smoothes her hands down her dark jeans and sits down.

  “Dude, her too?” No explanation necessary. He knows what I mean.

  One of his large shoulders rises in a shrug beneath that black Gucci vintage t-shirt. “I was on the way to talk to you. Stopped right outside and saw I was meant to pose the question to her instead.”

  “Why me?” Soleria asks.

  I answer for him. “He won’t be able to tell you. He only looks about three seconds into the future. We won’t know the reason till it’s time for it to be revealed.” Left with no other choice but to play along, I join them.

  Out of nowhere, an arctic freeze settles over my spine, nearly crippling its ability to transmit electrical impulses. As I drill into Cyake with my stare, he keeps his eyes away from mine, making damn sure the Etaeryb doesn’t open between us.

  Doesn’t stop the endless questions playing merry-go-round in my head. What’s this about? Why does she have to be here? Does it have to do with that dream we shared yesterday? The very same dream both she and I are busy pretending never took place.

  The same dream where she reached into her pajama bottoms, fingering her wet cunt in front of me.

>   Shit. I didn’t even get to see what it looks like. I was too busy laying her back and sliding inside her.

  A blast of pure heat licks my cock, obliterating the cold from seconds before as it starts to swell in my jeans.

  Hungry.

  Needy.

  As if I don’t feed it a constant stream of sex and she’s the first gorgeous thing we’ve both come up against after a long-ass draught.

  What in Illion is this? Shifting in my seat, I stare at Soleria out of the corner of my eye. She isn’t the one. She isn’t the one. Come on, dude. You would’ve been showing symptoms already. Bondings work like that. Immediate. Brutal. Unlike the R’mannev that ruined my sister’s life, werewolf bondings are all identical, the composition of symptoms so detailed and precise that there’s no mistaking it when it happens.

  For fuck’s sake, the Hyrens have entire archives dedicated to the subject. Millions of volumes all describing the same exact experience for billions of my kind throughout the two-hundred-thousand years of us walking the planet alongside homo sapiens.

  Like I said. If she were the one, I would’ve fallen headlong into the symptoms the moment I laid eyes on her and it would’ve been instantly undeniable.

  “Umm, so . . .” Soleria trails off, eyeing both of us.

  Can’t blame her. Cyake is busy looking at his lap with those pensive, gold eyes, and I’m pretty sure I’m giving her the creeps with the force of my stare.

  “You’re a witch, right?” he blurts out of nowhere.

  Excuse me? She’s a what?

  Soleria’s nod is another surprise. “Yeah . . . come from a long line of them.”

  That explains the fucking aura. Most human witches are nothing but charlatans, yet a select few of them are the real deal. Different from the Vy’shis—descendants of the first human witches and warlocks gifted with godlike abilities—but powerful in their own right.

  For regular humans, that is.

  Cyake returns her nod, analyzing those jeans he’s wearing as if he can see the entire map of the universe in them. How every story is set, how it’ll end up playing out.

  There I go with the tensing again. Fourteen-thousand-years later—give or take a few centuries—and I still haven’t beaten this ingrained reaction. Simply imagining him staring that far off into the future brings back memories of those soulless, metallic blue eyes.

  How he stared at me like I didn’t fucking matter to him, all while prophesying my death.

  In my defense: I was a baby when it happened. Twenty-five-years-old. There’s a reason the term “childhood trauma” was invented.

  I, a being born with the potential to live until the end of physical time, was warned of my death at twenty-five. Been living my life with that in the back of my mind.

  Fourteen millennia waiting to die because of a female.

  Cy swipes a hand through that thick, dark hair of his, eyes finally releasing the dead-lock on his jeans. “Which cast?”

  Soleria swallows, her nerves rising, altering her scent from that fruity bouquet into something muskier. “I-I don’t really have one. As far back as my family can trace our roots, we never did. I mean, there’s some elements of Wicca and Santeria in what we do, but it’s nowhere near the same.”

  As I look her over again, the wisps of her aura float around her.

  Shit. The blue in it is dark. Almost the same color as the blue of my energy signature.

  Not almost. That’s definitely navy blue mixing with those white-and-red arcs.

  She’s not the one. Remember that. You’re safe with her. You have zero symptoms.

  She. Is. Not. The. One.

  Cyake’s voice yanks me out of the burgeoning hysteria of my thoughts. “Good. That’s what I was hoping for. Tell me”—he leans towards her, elbows braced on his knees, hands hanging limply between them—“what did your family think of moral causation?”

  Two simple words and the reality of what this is all about becomes very, very clear.

  My best friend’s eternal quest for answers.

  His obsession with finding a punishment aimed at him, not at his loved ones as he imagines.

  Or, at least, that’s the story he feeds himself. I know the truth. Deep down, so does he.

  Soleria’s lips tug down in a pout, her brows drawn in a look of concentration. “Karma, you mean. Right?”

  “Divine judgement.” Cy shrugs. “Whatever.”

  “But . . . aren’t you the divine?”

  His lips twitch with the beginnings of a smile. “When it comes to the laws of Cause and Effect, it doesn’t matter. Or at least, it’s not supposed to. We’re all supposed to be accountable to it.”

  Soleria crosses her legs, getting more comfortable, her shrewd stare locked on him tight. Steady. Analytical. This is how she’s dealing so well with the change, I realize. Why, just like her friends, she’s assimilated in a matter of hours.

  Some humans have broken upon learning of us all.

  “But you’re not accountable to it?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “Okay . . .” Her eyes move in my direction and I don’t blame her for all the questions I see flashing in them.

  “What’s happening with Ismini and Dyletri isn’t your fault,” I interject, wishing my best friend would understand the truth of his quest. What he’s really searching for, even though he won’t admit it to himself.

  Karma.

  Not the punishment. The cosmic, primal force that’s been MIA for over sixteen millenia. The one he was ripped from when forced into the physical plane at the moment of his body’s birth.

  He ignores me, as people who are in denial are wont to do.

  “What do you mean?” Soleria’s eyes bounce between us. “What’s happening with Ismini and Dyletri?”

  Shit.

  Double shit.

  No one’s told her that Ismini is due to be sacrificed?

  Cyake throws me a warning glare, putting a stop to any urge I have to explain.

  It isn’t my place to tell her.

  But fuck the gods, how has no one done so yet? I understand she’s only been here a day, but after witnessing how much she loves those two young mortals she calls her best friends, I can’t accept the cruelty of leaving her in the dark.

  Soleria arches a round, burgundy eyebrow. “Hello? Is someone going to answer me?”

  “You’ll know when it’s time for you to know,” Cyake mumbles.

  Sounding exactly like the Watcher of Destinies.

  Not that I tell him that.

  A ding goes off at the back of my head. A total lightbulb moment. That’s who I have to ask about the dream. If anyone would know, it’s her. I make a mental note to hunt Nylicia down later.

  “If it’s about the whole him banging her brains out thing, I already know. And from what I heard like ten minutes ago, it was going really, really well for them. Like, insanely well. I understand he’s the God of Lust, but still. That boy must have some serious skills, ‘cause I’ve honestly never heard anyone screaming like that in my life. No. Seriously. In. My. Life.”

  Cyake chokes on a laugh at her rambling.

  I’m too busy choking on my own saliva.

  Oh, she thinks Dyletri has skills? Please. I’d show her what real skills are. Have her screaming so loud her mortal pipes will somehow shatter every glass object all over this dimensi—

  What.

  The.

  Fuck.

  I’m pathetic.

  Stop thinking like that, you fidiot!

  Suddenly, Cy’s head snaps back up, eyes narrowing on . . . a spot about twenty feet from us.

  An empty spot.

  The hell?

  Shaking his head, he drops his eyes. “Never mind that. Like I said, you’ll know when it’s time. Back to my question.”

  “Yo. Ease up,” I warn him, scowling at his tone. “Say ‘please’.”

  “Sorry,” he says sheepishly, throwing Soleria an apolog
etic smile. “If you please.”

  She accepts his apology with a smile of her own, but I didn’t miss her expression when I demanded it. “Um, they believed exactly what everyone that believes in karma does. What comes around, goes around.”

  “Yes. But which theory did they go with? The one where the being responsible pays directly, or their loved ones?”

  Soleria’s confusion alters her scent yet again, and with each new nuance of it, I feel the restlessness in me growing worse. “Well, the popular belief is that you get hit either way, but my family always believed the pain had to be immediately personal. You committed the offense, so you should pay directly.

  “I did a lot of research on my own when I got older because there was just so many holes in our history, you know? Anyway, have you ever heard of the quote from the Mahabharata? ‘As a man himself sows, so he himself reaps; no man inherits the good or evil act of another man. The fruit is of the same quality as the action’. But hey, what do I know, right? You’re the god here.”

  Cyake’s expression says it all.

  That isn’t the answer he wanted to hear.

  See, it all comes down to one thing: my best friend has spent the last three millennia trying to save his oldest brother from destroying himself . . . while masochistically seeking his own demise.

  All because of an Oracle at Delphi.

  This motherfucker wants to get punished for what he perceives are his sins.

  Because then it’ll mean Karma is focused on him.

  “Bro, I’ve already told you a million times throughout our lives. Whatever happens to us isn’t meant to be your punishment. You’re immune to it because of who you are. It is what it is. Besides, you’re not that bad, asshole.”

  “Wait. Who are you? I thought you’re just the God of Divination.”

  Fucker ignores her question next, aiming one of his infamous sullen pouts at me. “You saying that, of all beings, is concrete proof that that opinion is BS, bro.”

  “Has it hit met yet? No. I was only twenty-five when it happened. Been alive fourteen millennia and I’m still here, aren’t I?” The statement is calm. Cool. Totally conversational. Yet as I say it, I can’t help but analyze him, waiting to see if his eyes will move in Soleria’s direction.