Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  “Got it.” This was likely how Albert had gotten his tattoo, and naturally he’d told Marlowe all about it. I wished I could’ve been there to hear it.

  All my mates pulled up their sleeves and watched their symbols. I held Zac’s gaze until he nodded. Then I pressed the scepter’s symbol to his wrist.

  “Holy mother of…shit!” He squeezed his eyes shut, but didn’t try to get away, though his arm muscles went rigid.

  Within a few seconds, I felt a surge of electric energy bloom into the last spoke of my tattoo. Then it exploded throughout my body and into my core. And I could have sworn I just had an orgasm. All my mates groaned and convulsed in their seats. They traded embarrassed glances, as though they had been involved in an orgy together.

  I took the scepter away from Zac’s arm. His symbol first looked charred into his skin like a brand, but then it smoothed out and glowed blue like mine. His part of the symbol was slightly less bright than the others. But that was soon to change.

  Queen Eleanor slapped the table. “That was fucking awesome!”

  Zac grinned down at his new symbol, touched it lightly, then looked up at me.

  I stuck the scepter back in my robe. “Are you o—”

  Zac didn’t give me time to finish. He stood and swooped me up in his arms, looking straight at Eleanor. “Where?”

  Her eyes went wide for a moment before she laughed and pointed to a door just behind and to the left of the table. “Right back here – my favorite room.”

  He whooshed us into the room, set me on my feet, closed the door, and ripped off our clothes before I could even get my bearings. Zac carried me to the bed and tossed me on it. He then zipped around to the foot of the bed and crawled onto the mattress. I lay dead still and watched as he planted soft kisses on my feet. His lips gradually traveled up my shins, knees, and thighs. He paused just before he reached my pussy, which was already soaked and aching for him.

  “Give me your hand,” he said.

  “O-okay.”

  My jaw trembled as he took my fingers and guided them to my clit. Then he sank two of his fingers into me.

  “Come for me, Wren.”

  I flicked my clit as he pumped his fingers in and out. With his gorgeous turquoise eyes on mine, it took just a few seconds for the orgasm to explode through me. I cried out and threw my head back only to have him knock my hand out of the way to replace my fingers with his mouth.

  The intensity of him licking and sucking while still finger fucking me drew out another orgasm that left me screaming unintelligible syllables like I was speaking in tongues. Just when I thought he was stopping, he went at it again.

  Four orgasms later, I was a quivering mess of giddiness. My head swam like I’d just ridden the most intense roller coaster in existence. And I knew exactly why he’d left me feeling this way.

  As he snaked his way up my body with those wet and luscious lips, I stammered, “Y-you’re my Thriller.”

  He grinned wickedly and buried his dick inside me. “Damn right. And I mean to live up to my name.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Zac

  My new tattoo did strange, amazing things to me. It brought me hope for a better future. It made me think I was part of something larger and more important than I could ever imagine. That someone like Wren believed in me so much that she wanted me as one of the five vampires filling her heart.

  And the sex… Let’s just say it took us all of thirty seconds to go down to Wren’s suite and get naked once Talia teleported us back into the bunker.

  The tattoo throbbed in time with my thrusts inside her, tingling outward and upward. It made me feel like I was floating to another level of existence where every sensation was magnified an infinite amount. It was fucking amazing.

  Wren squeezed my ass harder as she threw back her head and shuddered. She moaned loudly into my kiss, her orgasm close, and I pulled back to watch her come apart around me. Her breasts jiggled with the powerful roll of my hips, begging me to fondle and tease them. I sucked a nipple between my teeth as I kept my gaze on her face. Her mouth opened with a loud, sensual cry. She was beautiful, and at this moment, she was mine. I growled as I bathed her nipple with my tongue and deepened my thrusts, needing to feel every inch of her quivering pussy. That did it. My orgasm crackled through me like a goddamn firework.

  When we both floated back down, we stared into each other's eyes and grinned like fools.

  "Thank you,” she sighed.

  I chuckled as I dropped kisses down her jawline. "My pleasure."

  "I mean, thank you for being here. Thank you for being my fifth mate. This is the way it should be, and I couldn't be any happier."

  I pulled back when I felt a tear slip down her cheek then brushed it away with my thumb. "Then why the tears?”

  "They're happy tears, I promise," she said as more and more followed. She looked thoughtful instead of upset, though. Determination sparkled in her eyes as well as her tears. “I can do this, Zac. I can be queen, and I will be a damn good one."

  I swept my lips over hers, never more proud of her than in this moment. "Then let's go make that happen."

  "I love you.” She cupped my face in her hands. “I couldn't have done any of this without you right from the beginning."

  I didn't think I'd ever get tired of hearing her say she loved me. "I love you too. Completely.” I kissed one corner of her mouth and then the other. “And totally."

  A soft smile lit up her face, touched with love and forgiveness and hope. It made me feel like I could save the world. Or at least help save the Southern Vampire Clan.

  "Come on," I said, swatting her hip as I climbed off of her. "There's a crown with your name on it. I'd bet money it looks better on your head than on Ravana's."

  She sat up and grinned. "Well, that's a given. I have better hair."

  Once we were dressed, we strolled through the bunker hand in hand toward the kitchen. For the first time ever, it was empty.

  "It's quiet," I said, crossing to the refrigerator for two blood pouches.

  "Too quiet," Wren agreed. "Either they're up to no good, or Hawk is showing them all funny cat videos."

  I nodded as I tossed the pouches in the microwave and hit start. "Got to get those daily cat videos in."

  "Another joke?” Wren said, wrapping her arms around me from behind. “I think we're starting to rub off on you."

  "You might be right."

  The smell of my once-favorite burritos wafted out of the microwave. I grimaced, partly from the new aversion to the smell and partly from knowing I couldn’t feast on burritos and fried chicken again. There was a lot I’d miss about being human, but with Wren at my side, I could learn to let it go and embrace my new undead life.

  With steaming cups of blood in our hands, we found everyone in the large living room, not a cat video in sight. Hawk sat on the floor while playing fetch with Killer, a smile on both their faces. The other guys were sprawled around the couch and chairs trying to watch the Florida Gators and LSU Tigers game, but Archie or Duke or whatever the cat’s name was sat on top of the TV, facing the wall, his tail strategically swishing to cover the plays on the screen.

  "Hawk, grab your cat," Ashe demanded.

  "One does not grab Duke. That's a good way to lose body parts." He turned to Wren in the doorway. "Maybe even important ones."

  "Well, we wouldn't want that." She walked up to Hawk, bent over, and kissed his cheek, then crossed to Duke. "Come here, my lover boy."

  The cat went limp in her arms as she scooped him up and held him like a baby. His purr rumbled louder than the game.

  Hawk shook his head and threw the ball for Killer again. "I've always known she had the magic touch."

  Charles tipped his chin at me. "Thanks for letting Wren come out of her bedroom."

  I nodded as I sat next to Marlowe on the couch. "Figured it was time to get something else done."

  Wren grinned. "For a little while at least. I need to set up a rotation or somethi
ng."

  Charles raised his finger. "I get W—"

  "We know," everyone including me shot back, then easy, comfortable laughter filled the room.

  Marlowe clapped me on the back, and just like that, I felt accepted into the fold. I was one of them now, one of the lucky ones, instead of the mysterious, distrustful stranger standing on the sidelines.

  I smiled into my drink while the others talked at once, and Wren caught my eye from across the room and winked. She knew what I was thinking, of course, and somehow I loved her even more for it.

  "So, about Queen Ravana." Still holding Duke, Wren picked up the remote from the coffee table and turned the game off.

  Instantly, the mood turned serious. Hawk stopped throwing the red ball for Killer. The others scooted to the edges of their seats, their attention rapt on Wren. I couldn’t stop smiling. This was exactly where I was supposed to be. This was exactly where Wren was supposed to be, about to take her reign.

  "Bitch gotta die,” she said. “Let's send her that message and tell her to clear her schedule for a war of queens."

  Ashe leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees and glared at the floor. "We could take a page from her playbook. Do a live TV broadcast of you declaring war on her. Make it so she'll have to listen and feel backed into a corner.” His hands made fists like he was imagining strangling Ravana. “That's how all of her live broadcasts have been that have made a lasting impression."

  Especially with him. His sister’s public death had affected all of us, but I knew it would haunt him for eternity.

  "That's not a bad idea," Marlowe said. "Call her out. Make it even more personal than it already is."

  Wren nodded. "Okay. I need a film crew."

  "We can make that happen for you, chère," Charles said.

  "Do you want us there on camera with you?" Hawk asked. Killer scooted the ball closer to Hawk with his nose, but Hawk’s full attention was on Wren.

  "Yes,” she said. “I want all of your faces known. I want her to see all of us coming for her."

  "And once she agrees?" I asked. "What's our strategy then?"

  "Pain,” she said simply. “As much as she's given us and more. I want the Knights there with us, my scepter, all of your talents, everything we have that can be used to inflict as much damage as possible to her. And then I walk away with her head on a pike."

  Charles leaned back in his chair. "The Knights are ready. We'll work on some new formations, but that will only take an hour at most."

  Ashe cracked his knuckles. "I’ve been concocting a new poison, ten times stronger than the one I was going to give Devin. It won’t take long to make it."

  "Marlowe and I can combine forces and see what available resources from the FBI and SFBI we can use," I said.

  He nodded. "Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours. And I might have a few other surprises for them." Marlowe conjured up a spinning fireball in his palm and extinguished it when he made a fist.

  “They know about your demon half now, after the sanitorium. So you can’t count on that as a surprise,” Wren said as she cast an apologetic glance at me. That night would always haunt me, and all of us, but I had to push through the guilt and concentrate on the here and now.

  Hawk stood to his full height without a whisper of sound. "All I need are my bare hands and my Glocks. I'm ready when you are, Wren."

  Wren looked at each of us in turn, a deadly smile on her face. "Then let's get shit done and sever that crown."

  “Fuck yeah!” Charles said.

  Wren laughed. “Keep me updated, please.” With the cat still blinking up at her lovingly from her arms, she left the living room.

  Hawk followed with Killer nipping at his heels until he gave in and picked the poodle up. Ashe left, too, his face tight with stormy determination.

  Charles, Marlowe, and I whipped out our phones. Except I never got very good reception on my pay-as-you-go burner phone down in the bunker. The only thing that worked well was my laptop, and I didn’t want to use that and leave a digital trail to what we were planning. I rose from the couch with my phone in the air for the slightest signal and wandered out in the hallway. Upstairs was no better, and I certainly couldn’t go outside with this new tattoo on my arm marking me as a target. As I wound my way back downstairs, and then down farther to the very bottom level where Wren’s suite was located, I got one bar and then two. There must’ve been a signal booster or a specialized access point down here somewhere.

  Whatever the case, I could now dial the D.C. office. After one ring, the receptionist picked up.

  “Get me Williams, please,” I said. “This is Zac Palmer.”

  “One moment.”

  As I waited, I wandered past Wren’s suite to the end of a corridor where I now had three signal bars. A metal door loomed ahead labeled Keep Out: High Voltage. I tried the handle and was surprised to find it unlocked. Inside was nothing that looked like it could electrocute anyone. It was a large circular room with white walls and white-tiled floors gleaming under the ceiling lights. But there was a strong breeze that rattled one section of the wall and whistled through the room. My gaze flicked up to the vents, but none of them aimed in that direction. I crossed toward the shuddering wall and placed my hand on it. Much colder than I expected. I moved my hand to a section of the wall that wasn’t rattling, and it was noticeably warmer.

  “Mind telling me when you plan on coming back to work?” Williams’s take-no-shit voice said over the line.

  I moved my hand back to the cold wall, pushed into it to stop its shaking, and then leaped back when that section of it snapped outward like a secret door. A rush of cold air scented with musty dirt filtered through. I opened it farther and stared down a long, dark tunnel only slightly taller and wider than I was. It had rough dirt walls and floor, and the breeze sweeping down it chilled my face. What was this?

  “Zac? You there?”

  At one time, Bronwen had been just as eager for an underground, post-apocalyptic society as Ravana. Had she connected her bunker to the same place Ravana and her minions were holed up now?

  “You hearing me?”

  Queen Eleanor had said we couldn’t cheat during battle, but knowledge wasn’t cheating. She’d also warned against a surprise attack, but we didn’t necessarily have to use the tunnel for that purpose. We possibly had secret access to Ravana now, hidden admittance to get more information about how to put Ravana at a disadvantage against Wren.

  I smiled into the phone, ignoring the tunnel’s wind as it whipped against my face. “Sorry, Williams. I’ll have to call you back.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wren

  Musty cold air blew my hair around as I stared into the dirt tunnel that led into pitch blackness. I could smell nothing living or unliving, but the way the wind howled, it almost sounded like screaming. I shivered, not from the cold, but from knowing what this tunnel signified.

  “Then it’s true,” I said as Zac wrapped his arm around me. “She really was a monster.”

  Stupidly, I’d clung to the hope that it had all been a misunderstanding, that my mom had never been involved in something so insidious.

  “No. Not a monster. A woman who made mistakes and tried to rectify them.”

  “Just too little too late.”

  He nodded and held me close, kissing my cheek. My other mates stood in a half circle behind us. I wondered if in the back of their minds, they thought I might become just as evil as my mother had once been and my aunt still was. From what Eleanor had told me, it apparently ran in the family.

  Marlowe searched digital blueprints on his laptop. “There’s no indication of any tunnels leading from the bunker.”

  “There wouldn’t be, would there?” Charles said. “The whole idea was to keep it underground, as in secret from everyone but the family, right?”

  “Makes sense.” Ashe wrapped his arm around my other side. “Sorry, Wren. But you’re nothing like your family.”

  “Ex
cept Albert,” Marlowe said quietly. That simple statement squeezed my cold, dead heart until it hurt. We both still felt the weight of his loss and probably always would. At least I could grab onto the knowledge that I carried half his genes – the genes of a good, honest man who was instrumental in turning my mom’s life around for the better.

  “What are you planning?” Hawk asked, his eyes narrowed at Zac. “I can hear the gears turning from here.”

  Zac turned to face all of us. “Okay, hear me out. We could use this to our advantage to finally win this battle, depending on where the tunnel leads.”

  “Queen Eleanor made it very clear that we couldn’t cheat,” Marlowe reminded him. “If we do, she can’t help us.”

  “Knowledge isn’t cheating.”

  “And a surprise attack is suicide,” Charles said. “Considering she knows a lot more about these tunnels than we do.”

  “But does she? If she knows the entire layout, wouldn’t she have already used it to attack us here?”

  Zac’s gear-turning must have been contagious. I smiled as all my mates turned this over in their minds. I couldn’t have had five better guys at my side even if I’d picked them all out myself. If my mother did one thing right before she left this world, it was ensuring I had a harem with diverse talents who would have my back no matter what.

  Of course, Zac hadn’t been in her plan. But I couldn’t imagine the late Benjamin Leeds who’d died while fucking someone in a bologna factory would have been any better.

  Then again…Zac was still a new vampire. He hadn’t had time to fully explore his abilities and master them. Yet considering my aunt’s batshit crazy crew of mates, would Zac’s novice status be that much of an issue? He still had an amazing array of talents from his human years.

  “Wren?” Ashe nudged my arm, breaking me from my reverie. “What do you think? Should we explore the tunnel or board it up? It’s your choice.”

  “Let’s check it out. It can’t hurt. It might be unfinished and lead to nothing useful, but at least we’ll know if it does.”