“The Kylorr eat food?” I couldn’t help but stammer out in my shock. The relief I felt as I watched him chew!

“Of course we eat food,” he snapped, a glare gliding into place.

“But…” I trailed off, not quite knowing what to say. I licked my lips, processing this new information as swiftly as I could.

He put his silverware down. A knowing, mocking smile appeared. “Ah, you wish to know why we choose to drink blood if we can get our nourishment elsewhere,” he murmured.

“Well…yes.”

“You drink wine, do you not?” he wanted to know, tilting his head. Was it me or had his fangs elongated with the question? They were pressing into his bottom lip, longer than they’d been before. “Now imagine that the wine you drink gives you unfathomable energy and strength. Imagine that it tastes like the best meal you ever had. Imagine that it fuels you in a way that mere food cannot.”

Realization hit.

“Food is merely a supplement,” Azur told me. “But blood…” My stomach tightened. “Blood is life. No Kylorr would ever give it up.”

His words were tinged in warning, and he gave me a maddening dark smirk that straightened my spine like a rod of steel.

“And maybe I’ll wash down this morning’s meal with another drink of it.”

My jaw set. My chin lifted.

“You never answered my question,” I informed him. My superpower was working for me today. My voice sounded as cold and strong as a glacier.

A huff of amusement left his throat. His laugh even sounded cutting. “Remind me what it was, wife.”

“Why am I here?”

He resumed eating, throwing me an icy look. “I told you. Eat.”

I was starving for food, but I didn’t make a move toward any of it. My mother used to read me ancient faerie stories, ones that had traveled all the way from Old Earth—the original planet my race had once inhabited. And in those faerie stories, a human girl knew better than to eat faerie food. For once she did, she would be trapped forever, bound forever to that strange world.

Which is ridiculous, I couldn’t help but think.

I needed to eat. I would need to eat soon. I was already trapped here forever.

I didn’t know why that old story suddenly popped into my head, but it made my appetite nearly vanish.

“Why did you single out my House?” I demanded softly, keeping his eyes. “Why did you demand a daughter of House Hara?”

Azur studied me from across the table.

For such an arrogant, cruel monster, I hated that I found him handsome.

The warm wind that blew across the private terrace tangled a strand of thick, dark hair around one of his frightening, spiraled horns. He was dressed finely this morning, in a blue leather vest, molded to his chest with a series of intricate silver clasps. He wasn’t wearing his gauntlets, exposing strongly corded gray forearms and black nails that just formed the tip of what could be considered claws.

His shoulders were impossibly broad. It was only fitting that his wings needed to be just as expansive to carry such bulk and heavy muscle. I wasn’t under the false impression that he couldn’t snap me in two if he so wished.

Yet I didn’t cower from his cool and assessing gaze.

“Instead of questioning why, wife, perhaps you should be kneeling at my feet and bestowing your gratitude however you see fit, considering what I did for you and your family.”

That casual, flippant arrogance burned me up inside.

“You think I won’t?” I asked quietly.

He actually snorted, a sound of amusement just as it was one of derision. He took a casual sip of the sludge in his cup before replacing it with a bright clink on the table.

“You have too much pride for that, Gemma Hara,” he said.

His tone was matter-of-fact. It grated my insides. It cut me to think that he had gleaned anything about me at all. I didn’t want him to know me. I didn’t want him to think he did.

That was more important to me than my damn pride.

I rose from my chair.

Azur stilled, his hand poised between us, reaching for the platter of what looked like a type of fruit—the rind a dusky purple and the inside flesh a midnight blue with plump black seeds as big as marbles.

Holding his eyes, I rounded the table slowly, every step bringing me closer to his side. Resignation and triumph both warred inside me when I saw his brief surprise until he smoothed it away. His hand retracted, watching me, waiting.

Challenging me.

When I was at his side, I set my jaw as I slowly lowered to my knees. The terrace stones were warm through the blue silk of my dress, which tightened over my hips and thighs with the uncomfortable position.

“Is this what you want, husband?” I challenged, my voice low. Inside, I was struggling to keep my resentment bound in a tight, manageable ball. It took everything in me to show him my wrist, to reach up and present it to him. “Why don’t you just take what you really want? It’s what I’m here for, after all.”

His expression flickered.

It morphed from cool understanding to desire. Desire mixed with a sudden rage.

He wanted to drink from me again. He wanted it badly.

And that sudden realization was almost enough to make me want to snatch back my wrist and stumble away. It made me want to flee.

But I couldn’t. I had nowhere to go and I was trying to prove a point.

Only, as he shoved his chair back and slowly rose to his full height, casting me in shadow…I forgot what it was I was attempting to prove.

Fool, I thought, my mouth going dry, staring up at him as he towered over me.

I was the only one to blame for this. Me and my stupid, stupid pride.

Azur took my hand. I shivered as he ran his black claw down the green-colored vein in my wrist, his pupils flaring, his fangs elongating. His touch was electric, zapping tingles down my arm in its wake.

“Be careful what you offer me, wife,” Azur rumbled above me. His teeth flashed and he bent low. His hot breath spread over my delicate and sensitive inner wrist as he said, “Because I will take it. When it comes to you, I will take whatever I want.”

The first sharp prick of his fangs came, making me gasp.

Then I watched as they sank deep into my wrist.

Chapter 12

Azur

I’d prayed to Alaire that I’d been wrong.

That my human bride wasn’t my kyrana. My blood mate.

That she didn’t taste as mind-numbingly good as I’d believed.

That I wouldn’t feel wonderful relief and dizzying need and primal hunger crash into me as I took my first deep draw of her rich blood.

Vaan, I cursed silently as her taste registered, as my hand tightened around her wrist, holding her in place, as my wings flared with a violent snap behind me.

On Raazos…she tasted even better than I’d remembered last night. I’d dreamed of her blood. With the memory of her scent swarming my mind, I’d woken this morning with my fangs lodged into my own arm because I’d dreamed of her, waking with a throbbing cock and half held on the edge of release, grinding my hips into my bed.

The blood madness was already taking hold.

It would not be sated for quite some time. And even then, I would endure stretches of it when the moon winds were strong. Even when I sent her back to the Collis, back to her broken House.

My swallows were greedy as I held her widened gaze. A dusky red flush swarmed her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her lips parted. As surprised as she was unnerved. I could see her wild panic just as I saw the wild pleasure begin to spread. On a particularly deep suck, one that made my cheeks hollow, I watched her eyelids flutter.