Page 10 of Mated to the Kings
WeleaveLilithalonein the room to unpack and go down to sit in the living room. I don’t really want a witch staying in the same room as me at night, but we need to be able to keep an eye on her. There’s no telling what she is capable of. I have never seen someone drop Kael like that before, and she did it with little effort.
She acts all respectful and innocent, but I know somewhere inside of her is all that darkness that everyone is afraid of. She can act as innocently as she wants, but soon it won’t matter. We don’t need to reject her to get rid of her. Our curse will do it for us.
Isn’t that just our luck, though? We finally find our mate, and she’s a fuckingwitch. I feel weirdly protective over her, though. When Kael choked her, I swear to the Gods I could’ve ripped his head off. I know he wouldn’t have hurt her because he feels the connection, but that doesn’t stop something feral from coming out of me. I can’t say that part of me isn’t a little proud of her for standing up for herself.
There for a moment, I thought she was going to fawn or shut down like all the other girls. She looked terrified when she cowered away from me. The markings on her chest and abdomen were blood-red. Honestly, if we had not seen those markings, we never would’ve known she was a witch. She abruptly stopped talking when we were asking what we thought were innocent questions, but she thought we were closing in on her. That triggered the markings to pop up. When she opened her eyes and I saw that they were also blood red, it solidified what we were suspecting with the markings. She’s a witch.
Witch or not, she’s fucking gorgeous. Her hair is as dark as a raven’s wings, cascading down her back and ending just above her perfectly round ass. Her tits are fucking immaculate, and I just want to take those little pink nipples between my teeth and make her squirm. Her soft ivory skin is begging to be marked by me. When I bury my face between her mouthwateringly thick thighs, I will make sure she knows she’s in control of her pleasure and pain. If the girls just die after we fuck them, I might as well make sure that they enjoy it. I can already taste her on my lips just as much as I can already see what she will look like when she dies.
I hate that this keeps happening. I’m tired of them dying. Everyone thinks that we are just these ruthless monsters that fuck these women to death. I guess we are, technically, but it’s not our intention. We don’t want to see woman after woman die like that. No matter how annoying she is, it’s fucking heartbreaking to see them all suffer like that. I have no desire to see my mate, witch or not, die a slow and painful death.
We do regular research to figure out how to break this curse. Our fathers died because they fought the curse. They either went insane or died slower and more painfully than any of the girls did. It’s been going on for generations, and it all started with those fucking witches. I wonder how many witches have died in our beds? Not enough. I just wish that she wasn’t our mate. It would make everything easier and make her death that much sweeter if she wasn’t our mate.
Thinking about Lilith dying makes my soul ache. It’s the kind of ache that makes you feel hopeless, lonely. That pain will never go away, but I will take that over rejecting her. Political bullshit aside, none of us have it in us to reject her. It wasn’t my intention to scare her, but it made me angry when she suggested that she could reject us. I know that no matter how much she hates us, she wouldn’t be able to do it either. However, if Kael keeps acting out like he has toward her, she may find the will to reject him. It’s not an all-or-nothing, so I hope he realizes it’s a real possibility.
Callum is already smitten with her. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at her. He knows the history of the witches, but he’s easily overlooking it for her. I want to believe that her respect is genuine. Why would she go out of her way to be respectful to us, or anyone else, when the entirety of the country sees her as a lowly fox shifter? She owes no one anything, yet she willingly offers herself and her respect to anyone who wants it.
Zypher treated her like garbage by letting all of those men fuck her, but she doesn’t seem to care. I’m not sure if she knows that it is far beyond the scope of her responsibility towards him to lie down with his entire pack, plus visitors. I sense that is why he kept her so isolated. None of the other maidens are isolated like that. They are free to come and go with the expectation of returning when called and remaining loyal to the person to whom she was assigned. As much as I want to isolate her so no one knows we mated with a witch, she seems to do a good job at remaining undiscovered. That is also something we can help her with. It benefits us just as much as her for her to remain undiscovered. However, if the country finds out that we have found our mate, we can’t tell them the way she’s going to die. We will have to make something up. If we kill our queen, they’ll have our heads. Queens are held in such high regard that even with her being a ‘fox shifter,’ no one will put up with it.
If she makes it that far, we are going to have to figure out a way to break this curse. I don’t want to give this country hope for a queen, just for her to turn around and die. We will also have to find a way to coexist peacefully. Kael will be the hardest for her to win over. It will take me some time, but she already has Callum wrapped around her finger and doesn’t even know it.
I know Kael is going to be unreasonably cruel to her in an attempt to mask the pain he will inevitably feel when she dies. He will never admit it, but the connection and pull he has to her is intoxicating. All I want to do is touch her and be with her. I would love to be up there fucking her stupid right now, but we need to let her settle in before we all take a turn with her. We cannot wait too long, though. I’ve seen the shadows lurking in the corners of my vision all day. Soon they will creep forward into the forefront of my mind and start to consume my logical thoughts. Paranoia will sneak in, and I will be susceptible to making rash decisions that I wouldn’t normally make.
We look after one another to make sure we don’t let it go too far. Sometimes, we all go through moments where we are done being the reason that these girls die. We will deny ourselves sex, and the symptoms will quickly sneak up on us. Those fucking witches knew exactly what they were doing when they chose sex to be the temporary remedy to keep off the insanity. It has absolutely ruined having sex for pleasure.
In the beginning, it was fun. We fucked, had fun, and just pushed aside all of the guilt we would accumulate. We made sure we weren’t around when they died so we didn’t have to see the pain on their face when their body shut down. We would muffle their screams with headphones and loud music so we weren’t reminded that their pain was our fault. We had others clean up their blood so that we didn’t have to see the mess that we made. Then we would move on to the next fox shifter.
All of that changed when the symptoms of the curse hit the girl while we were having sex with her. Kael was the one who was inside of her when it happened. At first, we thought her screams were pleasure because they started as groans. When she murmured the words “What have you done to me?” It broke us. All the weight of the curse slammed down on us, and all the guilt we had pushed off swept in. We denied ourselves as long as we possibly could, without the insanity becoming permanent. We started taking care of the girls after sex and not only making their experience as pleasurable as we could but also providing aftercare should the symptoms hit them.
Ultimately, the symptoms always came on. Sometimes it took months and other times it took days, but… it always ends the same. It starts with a simple headache that grows into a migraine. As the pressure builds in their head, they will get a nosebleed. The pain will become more excruciating as time goes on. Eventually, they will be reduced to nothing more than blood-curdling screams as blood and brain matter leak out of every orifice on their head. It is gruesome and tragic, but we sit there with them through it all. We refuse to leave their side because no one deserves to go out like that alone. Not even Lilith.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” Kael huffs as he dramatically flops down on the couch.
“We wait,” I say simply.
“You know, we could always work with her to see if she has the power to break the curse,” Callum says.
“She’s never been trained. Zypher kept her so isolated that most of what she knows she likely learned before she went to him. She’s just perfected it in the meantime,” I say.
“It’s worth a shot,” Callum shrugs.
“I don’t want help from a witch,” Kael grumbles.
“So, you’d rather just keep fucking these poor women until their brains melt?” Callum snaps.
“Her kind is why we are in this position at all,” Kael growls.
“She doesn’t even know that. How was it her fault for something she didn’t do? She is not the one who cursed us. She doesn’t know her parents, let alone her ancestors,” Callum says calmly.
Callum has always been the calm one. He is quiet and observant. You would not know he’s even there unless he makes himself known. Kael, you know he’s there, but you just can’t see him. He is always a threat, and when he lets you see him, it’s because he’s about to fuck up your day. I am just reserved. Only certain emotions I allow to slip through. If I let all of them out, it’s going to include all of the pain and regret I feel from watching hundreds of women bleed out of their heads because I had sex with them.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s still a damn witch. Every one of them is capable of evil,” Kael says.
“All of us are capable of evil, Kael. You cannot sit here and tell me truthfully that you will be happy when she dies. I know you better than that. You will be just as broken as you always are when the curse gets her,” I tell him.
“It’ll be a deserving death, and I’ll happily watch it happen,” Kael spits out.
“That is not true, and you know it,” Callum says. “That girl hasn’t done anything to anyone.”
