Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Twenty-Six

“My father always called me Vivi,” the little white-haired creature lying against my chest told me. Softly, she said, “He was killed by a Vorakkar.”

I tensed.

Her words from our journey to my horde returned to me. She’d told me she’d learned to fear the Vorakkars but would not tell me why.

Now I knew.

There was a lingering question in her voice…and that unspoken thing made me pull her off my body. There was a wet sound between us as my seed leaked from her and I reached over towards the furs hanging close to the fire basin, the ones I used to dry off after baths. I cleaned my cock first, still slick from my come and her own.

“What are you asking me?” I growled softly before turning towards her. Even though irritation made my voice gruff, I tried to be gentle as I wiped my seed from between her thighs.

Her breath hitched. I saw she was tender, a little reddened. Some blood had mixed with my seed and the sight of it made me angry all over again. The tension was just bubbling under the surface of my skin, waiting to break free.

I’d almost lost control with her. In a bad way. Then again, I’d been trained to.

That thought cut me. A flash of a memory rose before my eyes. Of her body on top of mine, of her golden eyes glowing in the darkness, and her gold-painted lips smearing across my skin. She’d always painted herself for our…encounters.

Nausea roiled in my belly—my still hardened cock finally began to soften—but I breathed in deeply, throwing the spare furs back towards the fire. I swore I could smell that cloying, overly spiced perfume that Mala had always worn across her neck in the air.

But then I smelled kuveri when Vienne shifted on the furs and I sucked in a lungful greedily, needing it to ground me before my mind took me to other places, places I didn’t want to go.

I refocused my attention on her, opening my eyes to pin her in place. She was watching me carefully, with a similar expression to the one she wore when she used whatever power it was that she possessed over me. But I didn’t feel the telltale tingling, that strange buzzing sensation that thrummed the air between us.

“You are asking me if I killed your father?” I rasped. I needed this anger. I needed this anger as a distraction before my mind fragmented. Already, I could hear the rushing in my ears, already I was looking towards the shadows behind her.

My little Vivi didn’t say anything. She merely stared up at me—when had I stood from the bed?—and I wondered if she needed this distraction as well.

I huffed out a breath. Sex never relaxed me. Not fully. The aftermath always made me feel restless and I was half-tempted to throw Vienne back onto the furs for another round, if only to expend some of the energy building inside me. But I would hurt her if I did. I didn’t think I could be gentle this time, not with her accusation making my temple throb and irritation at her making my blood heat.

I wondered what had brought this little standoff about.

Because you called her Vivi, I remembered.

“You see, leikavi?” I said, narrowing my eyes on her. “Names do have power. They have power to make you feel things you might not want to.”

She blinked, surprise evident in her gaze. Then…guilt?

“Nik,” I growled, the taste of her still coating my tongue. “I have never killed a vekkiri in my life. Nor have I ordered any of my darukkar to.”

“You…you haven’t?” she whispered. Her startled expression made me feel like I was being scraped away on the inside.

“If you think me such a monster, Vivi, if you think it was me that killed your father,” I snarled at her, “then why did you beg me to fuck you? What does that make you?”

She gasped, unable to contain the hurt and shock in her expression. She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

I didn’t wait. Instead, just like last night, I jerked my discarded trews up my legs and shoved into my boots, my tail waving wildly in irritation behind me. My temple throbbed harder.

That was when I saw it. A shifting in the light in the corner of my voliki.

Nik, nik, nik, I thought but I felt helpless and unable to look away, wanting to see her.

Despair pierced me, my grief rising up like it did every single time I saw her. My sister’s shadowed figure stood next to the empty chests that were meant for a deviri, an offering to my Morakkari, my future wife. Gifts that I should’ve been accumulating and collecting for her over these long years as Vorakkar. But since I never intended to take a queen, I hadn’t bothered and the chests sat empty and discarded, a constant reminder that if I couldn’t protect my own family, I had no right to take a wife for my own…or make a family of my own.

“Davik,” came Vienne’s voice, but it sounded like she was far away.

My gaze connected with my sister’s shadowed eyes, my own. Their red color was faded, however. She was smiling at me but it was sad.

“You know better,” my sister, Devina, said, her voice nothing but a whisper threading through my ears.

You know better. She’d always told me that, after I lashed out, or did something our mother didn’t like. She’d always been the calm one of us, level-headed and pragmatic, whereas I embodied turmoil and trouble.

Then it happened just like it always did. Black blood began to bloom underneath the light dress she wore, spreading over her abdomen. Bile rose in my throat, my heartbeat thundering in my ears.

“Pyroth,” I breathed, pleading. Stop. But I didn’t know if it was meant for the blood spreading rapidly or for myself. “Hanniva.”

“Davik!” came my name. My sister’s mouth had sounded it out silently but the voice had been Vienne’s.

I felt hands on my face, over my scar. Vienne was in front of me, trying to get my attention.

Bellowing, I jerked out from beneath her hands, tearing my gaze away from my dead sister, feeling that constant dull ache in my chest where Devina’s life force should’ve been.

It isn’t her,I thought desperately, my temple beginning to pound. It should be. She should be here. But she isn’t. Gone. Lost.

Taken.

I needed to kill Jarun and Ollisan all over again. Those sons of whores. I wouldn’t be right until I felt their blood on my hands again. To this day, the Dothikkar had never known what happened to them. No one but me did.

My eyes were unseeing as I pushed away from Vienne. She stumbled back, words I couldn’t understand falling from her lips. I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt tight. When I left my voliki, when I felt the cool night air brush through my hair and across my face, I sucked in a deep lungful, needing to get it into my lungs.

I laughed, the sound desperate and humorless, echoing across the encampment.

That night, when I’d still been deep inside Vienne, as she was rocking her hips against me so sweetly, beginning to tighten around me, with her soft moans in the air, looking at me like she’d found something utterly wonderful…I thought I’d found a semblance of peace. I’d felt more centered, more in control than I ever had before.

She’d smiled as she found her pleasure, pure and delighted and innocent…and I’d felt something give and loosen within me at the sight. A surrendering of something I’d never given a female before.

Just this night, I thought I could be right for Vienne? I thought I could be someone different, someone gentle for her?

This is who I am, I knew.

The Mad Horde King, who saw shadows that spoke. The Mad Horde King, who couldn’t fuck a female without remembering her, with her cloying scent and seeking hands, who had once fed on my desperation and grief like a parasite. The Mad Horde King, who had butchered the ones responsible for his family’s murders, who had grinned as their blood dripped from his hands.

My laugh died.

I was the Mad Horde King and I would never be anything different.