“You’re finally home, Leo.”
Leo jerked his head and he saw her.
It was the woman he loved, he cared, he fucked, and he had been looking for. Yet, why is she here in the walls of his very home?
“How did you enter here, Rosette?”
She sauntered towards him, finger tracing his muscular chest. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.”
He smirked. Sensing the hotness in the room, he removed his shirt. His sweat-drenched chest didn’t stop Rosette from tracing her fingers. His beloved’s hand landed atop his manhood and he knew then. He knew she was craving for more.
“We just have sex earlier, Rosette. I am not surprised you are hungry for more.”
Rosette’s face briefly flashed as some sort of anger but eventually returned to her seductive look. Leonardo Richards just remained smiling sweetly.
“I missed you, baby.” Leo’s lips ventured into her temple, to her chest, to her navel, to her nape. He hoisted her from the ground and carried her in the burgundy-colored couch of the living room. “I will do you here, where we had our first time back in our twenties, Rosette.”
“I am the woman who you saw at that diner, Leo,” Rosette suddenly confessed. “I just glamoured myself because I can never bring myself to face you after all these years, after selling my soul to the Blood Rose in exchange for immortality.”
Leo just listened to her words, mouth wide shut.
“I…” Rosette took a deep breath before resuming, “I am in love with another man, Leo. He is a fellow creature of the night. Though I appreciate your efforts, I only see you as a brother and a loyal friend. Never a lover or a husband…”
Leonardo just smiled and brushed a kiss on her forehead. He definitely knew what he was doing. They smelled the same despite them being in opposing kinds and the fact that Rosette easily tracked him where he was living.
“Didn’t Rhella find you here?”
Rosette yielded a blank face and just simply shook her head. “Please, Leo. Enter me now.”
It was a plea, a request from the woman he had only loved. So he unsheathed the sword between his thighs without any hesitation despite of her recent confession.
“Shall we have a drink, darling?” He already stood even before she could reply.
“Yes.” He heard her answer as he reached the counter where their alcohols were. He grabbed several ice cubes in the little fridge and poured himself a martini and a brandy to Rosette.
“Thanks,” she muttered upon receiving the glass of brandy.
Leonardo watched her drink. “What?” She asked.
He just smiled and lifted her face with his hand. “You are beautiful, Rosette.”
Her smile was…different. Still, Leo bent down to kiss her. But before his lips could reach hers, he opened his mouth to speak.
“Stop what you’re doing, Rhella.”
She immediately leaped from him and stepped backward.
Rhella’s face now replaced Rosette’s. “So you went to see Rosette and made love with her and left me locked in here?!”
Leo just simply took a sip from his martini. “First of all Rhella, Rosette doesn’t like brandy. Second, she had colored her hair with streaks of violet. You are duplicating her with entirely wine-red hair.”
“So now what? You’re now lecturing me how to copy her properly? Gosh, Leo! Since when will you acknowledge that she is no good for you!”
“And you are?” Leonardo Richards countered.
Rhella’s face straightened. “I will tell this to the other witch queens that you made love to a vampire—to an enemy!”
“Even if you tell them Rhella, I am of Elder blood. The rest of the Witch Queens will never lay a hand on me, even Xellaena.”
Rhella crossed her arms. Leo just finished his martini in just one shot.
“And to remind you, dear half-sister…” Leonard walked closer, “You are just the Ephemeral Queen, an acting queen on my behalf. I am the one, true, and real Witch King!”
Rhella slapped him and the glass fell on the floor. Leonardo, on the other hand, yeeted her on the wall and choked her with his invisible hands.
“You don’t know how powerful I am, Rhella. You are just an adopted, half-breed like Maebh. You can never surpass a witch who possessed Elder blood!”
She raised her face to him, tears sliding from her beautiful, youthful face. “Why Leo?”
Rhella stood before him, fists clenched on either side of her. “Why would you never love me? I have loved you ever since your mother and father brought me into this family. Even if they passed away, which is in my own hands, I did it for my love for you. So that you’ll see me as a competitive witch. And then this Rosette came and she took everything from me. That old freaking whore snatched you away from me, Leo. Can’t you see that she’s only using you huh? Leonardo?”
“And you are not, Rhella?”
Her brows arched, “What do you mean by that?”
Her voice could never scare Leo away. “You only want me because you want to prove yourself that you were never inferior, that you are far more superior and higher than anyone. You are a selfish bitch, Rhella. You are a power-hungry, murderous witch!”
Rhella grabbed his face and drowned him in her lips. But Leo pushed her, sending her onto the tiled floor. “Get out, Rhella.”
“Leo, please. I loved you…”
“Get the hell out of my house!!!”
He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her until they were on the street. “Go anywhere but here. And tell your minions to never come to me again!”
“LEO!” Rhella cried, so loud that a thunder nearby burned a tree down.
Leo just shook his head. “From now on, I now stripped you of your title as the Ephemeral Queen. I, Leonardo Richards of Elder Blood, thereby reclaim my rightful title as the Witch King and hereby stripped this half-breed in front of me of her powers!”
Thunder and lightning flooded the area, as well as the whistling winds of the east and frigid gale of the west.
“Go now, Rhella. Before I’ll do something that I had never done to you.”
Rhella sprinted far away, without turning back again. Rain had soaked her. But her tears had already drowned her even before that.
“I WILL KILL YOU, ROSETTE!”
Unbeknownst to Rhella, Leonardo is just watching her from afar. He could hear everything she muttered in the winds as the air was under his control.
“Just try, bitch and I will rip you to pieces!” He declared.