BLESSING LUNA RISING

THE TONGUE

CHAPTER 16:

Darius didn't bring me Kael's tongue.

He brought me Kael.

He flew back through the shattered tower doors three minutes later, not five, his black wings beating so hard the furs in my nest rippled. In his one fist, he held Alpha Kael Thorne by the back of his neck like a dead rabbit, his legs dangling, his face bloody from being dragged through black ice.

Kael was conscious. That was worse. His brown Alpha eyes, which had once looked at me with disgust when I wore white lace, were now fixed on me in the nest — on my torn silk dress, on my double-marked neck, on my white wings that were wrapped around my own belly, on the faint white glow of the pup that even he could see now.

"Elara—" he choked, reaching for me.

He didn't get to finish.

Darius threw him. Not gently. Twenty feet across the tower, into the black ice wall opposite my nest, where he hit with a crack and slid down, leaving blood.

My father didn't move from the edge of my nest. He just spread one white wing in front of me and my mother, shielding our eyes slightly, but not stopping Darius. White Kings do not stop justice.

Darius landed in front of Kael, his bare chest heaving, his black crescent pulsing white, my bite mark on his shoulder glowing. He kicked Kael over onto his back with his bare foot.

"Look at her," Darius snarled, his voice so low the black ice vibrated. "Look at what you discarded, Alpha."

Kael turned his head, bleeding, his lips cracked. He looked at me, and his eyes filled with tears.

"Elara... you... you have wings... you have... you are glowing... are you... are you with pup?"

I clutched the furs tighter around my belly, my own wings tightening around it protectively. My mother put her hand over mine.

Darius crouched, grabbed Kael's jaw in his massive hand, and forced his head up to look at me.

"She is with pup," Darius said, each word a hammer. "MY pup. The White King heir. Three days. While you were crying in my snow in your rejection suit, I was nesting her. While you were begging my warriors for a second chance, she was wrapping her white wings around me and marking me back."

He squeezed Kael's jaw until Kael whimpered.

"You rejected a White Queen because you thought she was wolfless. Your mother poisoned her with wolfsbane for nineteen years so you wouldn't see her. You left her to die in a cottage in white lace."

Darius looked over his shoulder at me, his black eyes softening for one second when they saw my face, then hardening again when he looked back at Kael.

"Now bow to her."

Kael stared. "What?"

"BOW. TO. YOUR. QUEEN. BOW TO HER BELLY WHERE MY SON GROWS."

Darius stood, grabbed Kael's hair, and slammed his forehead into the black ice, holding him there, kneeling, forehead to the floor, facing my nest.

"My warriors told me you said you would not leave without her. So you won't. You will stay. On your knees. Outside my nesting tower. Until my Queen says you can stand. And if you ever howl her name again, I will not bring you up here. I will peel your wolf — what's left of it — from your spine down in the courtyard where your mother can watch."

He let go of Kael's head. Kael stayed kneeling, his forehead bleeding on the black ice, his shoulders shaking.

"Elara," Kael sobbed into the ice, not looking up. "Elara, please. I didn't know. I didn't know you were a Queen. I didn't know you were poisoned. My mother— my mother told me you were wolfless, that you would never give me a pup— and now you— you are carrying his—"

"Enough," my father Aeron said, his voice ice. "You do not speak to the White Queen about pups. You lost the right when you left her to die in white lace."

I finally found my voice. Small, but in the black ice tower, it carried.

"Kael."

He flinched at my voice.

"Look at me."

He lifted his bloody forehead an inch.

I unwrapped one white wing from my belly and spread it, just a little, letting silver dust fall onto the black ice between us. My double mark glowed black and silver on my neck.

"You told me I was empty. You told me I was nothing without a wolf. You left me in that cottage to die."

I placed both hands over my belly, over the tiny white fire that pulsed.

"I was empty because your mother made me empty. And now I am full. With a King who waited 200 years. And a son who will never know what it feels like to be discarded."

Kael collapsed forward, sobbing into the black ice.

Darius walked back to the nest, his bare feet silent, his wings folding. He climbed in, not even looking at Kael anymore, and pulled me into his lap, his hand covering my belly, his black wing wrapping around us, hiding me from Kael's view.

"Aeron," Darius said to my father, his voice calm again, purring starting again as soon as he touched me. "Take him to the lower ledge. Chain him where he can see the tower but cannot howl. Let him watch what a real mate does for his Queen."

My father stood, grabbed Kael by the collar like Darius had, and dragged him out, his white wings spreading to fly him down.

Kael didn't fight. His last look was at my belly, glowing faintly white in Darius's black wings.

When the doors reformed into black ice, sealing us in again, Darius buried his face in my double-marked neck.

"He saw you wrapped around me," he whispered, his fangs grazing the mark, possessive and satisfied. "He saw you carrying my son. He will never sleep again."

And deep in my belly, our son's white fire flared, as if he had heard his father, and was already learning what it meant to be a King who protects his Queen.