Page 36 of The Fallen Fae King

The dagger falls from my fingers, clanking to the floor.

Obey…Horus’ smooth, compelling voice commands…obey, Omega.

I can see nothing but the gray of his eyes like a tunnel.

I am no longer in control of my body anymore.

My inner wolf is howling and thrashing to escape the magic of his compulsion.

But I am mesmerized.

Relax, the seductive voice whispers, your dreams will come true if you only obey and follow me to Crocodile House.

CHAPTER FIVE

Crocodile House, Blood Kingdom

Lanlin

How dare Horus kidnap my blood bond Omega? My Queen?

To touch her is a death sentence.

I shake with feral rage.

I shall rip out his fangs and present them to my Omega as a wedding gift.

I prowl through the secret underground corridors of the punishment pits, which lead to Crocodile House.

My eyes glow. My shadows surge around me.

I don’t look around me. I refuse to remember the long months that I spent down here in the dark after the deaths of my family, while Horus and Sobek took turns attempting to break me.

My sunshine is somewhere above me in Crocodile House with Horus now, caught under his compulsion magic. I know intimately, carved into my skin, however, the cruelties of which my barbaric half-brother is capable.

Rage howls through me.

I can’t think, only feel the distress of my dearheart through our bond, when before her pleasure had warmed me.

I had lain, not knowing if Daire and his love for me was as fake as Dove’s white wings, which Heka’s magic had stripped away to their original black.

I had still dressed myself in my marriage outfit, a pleated linen kilt with an embroidered belt to match Daire’s.

I had placed my nestmates in a separate room not because I didn’t wish to marry them but because I was ashamed that I had lost control.

I was humiliated that I’d dared to dream I was someone who could be loved.

Also, I didn’t trust myself not to show them my dark heart, as well as the Void whispering inside my mind.

Except, I want to honor my endlessly beautiful Omega by looking good on her arm tonight.

I took time to wind ribbons through my waist-length black hair, adding glistening diamonds like stars. I carefully placed my crown, which is composed of two batwings around a diamond moon, on my head.

Then I smudged my eyes with Khol and smeared them with heavy gold and lapis lazuli eyeshadow, until they appeared cat-like.

Daire told me that he was friends with a cat called Five.

My heart ached.