The place my soul rests spasms. It startles me with a warmth that spreads all through my chest. That has—never fucking happened before. Probably just heartburn from eating too fast... Fuck, I could be dying for all I know.
Her body goes down hard then. It happens so fast. A chef with a cutting knife stumbles over her, knocking her fully to the floor in her pretty gown. His shining black shoe tears the hem of the fabric in his fucking atrocity of fumbling limbs.
“I—” His wide eyes look immediately to Christian. “I am so sorry, my prince.” He flings himself to the ground immediately.
Every muscle in my body is tense and hard. My teeth grind one by one, and all I see is this fucker’s stupidity.
And then I hear her soft voice.
“Ow,” she whispers.
My gaze slides to her fast. Seven is helping her up, but there, on the delicate length of her pinky finger... is a drop of blood.
“You fucking cut her!” The plate I’m holding shatters forgotten to the floor. On booming steps, I’m on him in less than half a second.
“I—I...” He scatters back from me, but the knife in his right hand is all I can see.
He fucking cut her! He could have killed her so easily.
My fingers wrap fully around his scrawny wrist, the edge of the knife slicing through my own skin when I twist. And then I keep on twisting. Cracking and screams claw through the suddenly silent kitchen. With a heave of a frustrated breath, I break it clean off. A meager amount of blood dots the kitchen floors where he lies crying, clutching the blunt end of his wrist. Istand stiffly, tearing myself away from him. The knife clatters to the floor at my feet. And his right hand is crumpled in my palm.
I’m still fuming over his incompetence when I’m struck by big green eyes boring into me. It’s a strange emotion I’ve never seen in her. Not even when she was thrown to the floor at Boris’s feet.
She’s afraid. Of me.
Fuck.
I toss the cold hand to the floor. It rolls until it hits his foot.
“Clean yourself up. And watch where you’re fucking going next time.”
A smirk lines Christian’s lips.
I ignore him.
Seven’s hand is at her lower back, and he guides her away from the kitchen and into the hall.
Did I fuck that up? Was I just supposed to let that prick hurt her?
Why are my thoughts so jumbled and polarizing? One second, I’m thinking about murdering anyone who so much as brushes against her, and the next, I’m wanting to kneel down right here and now and taste what Seven got to taste earlier.
And then more dark thoughts of our king doing just that slam through my mind.
Among the bustling of the chefs, the kitchen knife is picked up from the floor and laid on the edge of the shining black countertop. My fingers curl around the cold hilt of it, and I slip it quietly into my jacket.
I’ll be seeing Boris soon. And perhaps it’s time for our king to find himself in the same position my father was in decades ago...
More fanatic thoughts lash through me until I want to scream out and bury myself between her thighs and just fucking hide there.
“Fuck,” I hiss out as I shake my head ever so slowly at my fucked-up mental breakdown I’m currently drowning in.
It takes several minutes to reach the garden doors. We travel at a slow human pace. It shouldn’t bother me, but it just gives me even more time to dwell on the fuckhole we’ve thrown ourselves in.
And Christian, he’s so far down in that fuckhole, he’s starting to decorate it like it’s our new home we’ll be living in for the rest of our fucking relentless lives.
The change in him is subtle, but I notice it. He’s too tolerant with her. He doesn’t drag her through the castle like that first night. He’s careful and thoughtful, even if his features remain impassive and vacant.
I never thought I’d see the day this fucker actually cares. But I know he’s also thinking the same thing I am: our Pretty Pet is in deadly trouble when our king sees her. Because of us.
