Chapter 120 Fractured
❦ Nikolai ❦
In my mind were two men. One was enjoying the massacre enough to forsake my mate.
The other was constantly on the lookout for her, paving the way, calculating the perfect move.
Neither was winning. The push and pull was intoxicating.
My fangs dripped with venom, my vision tinted red with rage.
As my claws stabbed through a chest, fingers closing around its cold heart, one thought echoed—they’d dared?
To attack my mate, my queen. THEIR queen.
They needed to be taught a lesson.
But then the rational part of me glanced in her direction. I’d had her location locked.
She had been shielded on all sides by guards who tore down her attackers almost as mercilessly as I did.
She wasn’t there now.
She’d vanished. Their center was empty: the guards defended nothing but space.
The crowd was too tight and packed for speed, for tracing. A wrong move would have me trace into a body.
I’d never done that and couldn’t risk the result.
Chest heaving, I blinked again.
She simply wasn’t there. I’d lost her.
“Maeve!” I bellowed into the melee.
The town’s vampires still engaged the guards.
The queen’s carriage was turned on its side, the doors and fine cloth torn off.
My cold, dead heart slammed in my chest.
She was gone. No.
I cut a path to the guards. Those in my path recognized something feral in me from the way they parted, escaping my wrath.
Soon, the awareness spread. The queen wasn’t here.
The moon’s rays glistened on the blood-coated street as the cowards ran in all directions.
“Maeve!”
No answer.
My hands trembled, my gaze flicking everywhere at once.
A flash of silver hair in the distance. I traced immediately, grabbing the shoulders of the slight figure.
One glance at the face and I saw it wasn’t her.
I squeezed.
The body of the woman hit the ground. Headless, twitching.
My mate was gone!
I roared to the sky.
Had she been taken? But it couldn’t have been that easy. She was a hybrid now, with all her powers, even untrained.
I lost my mate by letting the wrath take over.
I let blood and chaos distract me. The pop of skin as my claws sliced. The crush of bone under my fists and the wet rush of blood—
I hit my temples with both hands.
Getting distracted again!
Blood. Screams. Death.
They deserved it. Every single one of them.
But one deserved it more. The one who dared to dream of her skin as I did. The one who claimed ownership of my queen.
The wolf. Bastian.
I zeroed in on the castle’s shadows in the distance.
I’d stopped myself from buring him to ash because of my mate’s desires. To protect our fragile bond.
She had sworn to forsake me if I hurt the wolf.
She was lost now. Nothing holding me back.
Excitement built. I would take his head, slowly skin him, and deliver the pelt to his damned pack.
They’d know never to cross me—
“Nikolai.”
I whipped around, fast.
There she stood.
My regal mate. My queen.
Her crimson dress was dark in spots, wet with blood. Her updo had come undone; silver strands dusted with more blood.
But her shoulders were straight, her eyes flashing like the lights of stars.
I shivered as her eyes roved over me. My cock shot up like a bar of steel.
Then my fists clenched as guilt assailed me.
I’d lost her, accepted her absence, and planned to go against her wish within the span of seconds.
Unworthy.
“You’re covered in blood,” she whispered.
“Not mine.” Not a single drop.
Her eyes were eating me up, her tongue peeking out to lick her lip. “You, as you are, make my blood light afire. My soul calls for you.”
I inhaled sharply. “I lost you—”
“I traced,” she said simply.
My heart stalled.
She’d traced.
My lovely queen mastered a skill requiring intense focus and months, even years, of training.
I released my breath in awe. How had I ever thought to doubt her?
Then my heart froze again. My jaw clenched.
She could trace.
She would stop at nothing now to get to the wolf.
“Nikolai,” she said firmly, “your mind will fracture with all the thoughts running amok in it. I can see the intensity of your heart through your eyes. Silence it. For me.”
Yes. Anything for her.
Strong, wide steps carried me to her.
I wrapped my arm around her waist, the leather of my glove tilting her chin up.
I wasn’t blind to the situation.
Half of the town was slaughtered. We stood in a river of blood.
But then the lamps shone reverently on her pale skin, her lips plush and inviting.
Confusion threatened to floor me.
I needed her like the drowning needed air. She gazed at me with the same intensity.
But what she’d been through—
“Kiss me, my darkness.”
I needed nothing more.
My lips slanted over hers, arms pressing her lush body against my hardness. Electricity wracked my body from the feel of her soft form, her tongue chasing mine. Bliss.
This queen had broken my mind. Shattered my heart.
But moments like this, when she ordered me to calm and kissed me to stupor, I never wanted to give it up.
My madness.
Anything for my dark queen.
My mind processed the whizzing of the weapon before it ever drew near.
I held out my hand behind her head, catching the thrown blade in my palm.
But even pain could not compete with the fire she razed in me.