Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Thirty-Six

As I paced the floor of Davik’s voliki, I felt anger choking me.

Anger.

It was bitter in my throat, tasting of bile and frustration. I had felt it earlier, on Davik’s pyroki as he told me about Mala and his abuse when he was younger. But this was different. This was anger athim, not for him.

That might have been my only chance, I thought again as my bare feet treaded over the plush rugs and carpets lining the domed home.

Mala had had nothing to do with how he’d treated me after he’d spied the Ghertun. That had been all Davik, the Vorakkar, the horde king who expected his orders to be followed.

He hadn’t even listened to me. He’d decided for me, turned me down before I could give him a reason to let me speak with the Ghertun. I wore their mark on my flesh. They wouldn’t needlessly kill a slave…and they had to know who I was. What Lozza had sent me to do.

They might have even had a dose of the poison—both my antidote, for more time, and my doom—of the vovic that they grew deep in the Dead Mountain. The Ghertun smoked it. It was a drug. A relaxing drug and harmless to them. But when it was heated and compressed and the oil was extracted and left to age, its properties changed. The process made it deadly, so that even Ghertun slaves were vulnerable to it, though less so.

Most who owned slaves always had a dose of the vovic on them. Just in case.

That might have been my only chance.

A lucky coincidence. Or at least a lucky encounter, though I’d detested seeing a reminder of the race that kept me a prisoner.

Davik hadn’t seen it that way. He’d dragged me through the encampment. He’d thrown me into the arms of a guard, who stood watching me pace from the entrance of the voliki, and I knew another one was stationed just outside the door.

He’d made a decision for me without listening to me at all.

Which was why I’d been right not to give him my promise. The promise he’d asked of me, not to enter his mind anymore.

This is why, I knew. Because earlier this evening, my will had not been my own. He’d taken it from me.

I was mad and frustrated. And even still, underneath those hot emotions, I was worried. For him. I was still reeling from what he’d confided in me earlier. I felt compassion for him while also feeling burning rage.

My heart and my head were a tangled mess. This was why I should’ve kept my distance. Developing feelings for a horde king of Dakkar had never been a good idea in the first place.

I heard his voice outside, no doubt dismissing the guard. Davik entered the voliki and I almost gasped at what I saw. Green blood—Ghertun blood, I knew—was splattered across his bare chest, dried down and dark. He was scowling, his jaw tight.

But it was his eyes that made me still in my pacing.

He was furious too.

He’d been…unhinged.

That look reminded me so much of when I’d first met him. When he’d purposefully tried to frighten me in Dothik, when he’d purposefully tried to put me on edge around him, as if he got off on my fear or at least enjoyed it.

But I knew better now.

His eyes were cruel and hard, like chips of ice. But I’d studied him long enough to see that underneath that furious exterior…something was wrong. Something had unsettled him.

“Rothi kiv,” he rasped to the guard, who immediately inclined his head and left, leaving me and an enraged horde king alone.

My belly burned.

“You had no right to brush me aside like that,” I said through a clenched jaw, though my voice was soft. “I needed to speak to them.”

I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. This was us. I trusted that I could give him my anger and he wouldn’t hurt me for it.

Davik stalked towards me, his heavy booted feet falling hard on the rugs.

“Cease speaking, kalles,” he growled, invading my space, his hand curling around the back of my neck, as it always did.

I glared at him. He was running hot, his temper rising.

What had his sister said in that memory? That he needed a female patient, kind, and forgiving because he had a nasty temper?

No, Devina, I thought. He needs a female that will give his anger right back to him, to challenge him with it.

His palm was hot at my nape and the metallic tang of Ghertun blood rose between us. He backed me up until the pole stabilizing the voliki’s ceiling was pressing hard into my spine. Davik seemed to grow in size, his muscles shifting and rippling in his anger.

“You will never get near another one again,” he growled, his eyes practically daring me to argue. And if I did? There would be consequences. “I ordered my pujerak to burn them. They are nothing but ash now.”

“No,” I whispered, aghast, shocked.

Gone.

Any chance that they’d had vovic on them was lost now. Disbelief made my spine straighten. I felt like I was burning. Like my chest was on fire with my anger.

“I’m glad I didn’t make that promise to you,” I told him. I pushed at the solid bulk of his chest, though it flaked off some of the Ghertun blood. “I’d glad I didn’t because—”

He flipped me until the pole was pressed between my breasts, my cheek against the strong black metal. I felt him rip my trews open, splitting the seam down the back until the ruined material pooled around my ankles.

“I am not right tonight, Vienne,” he rasped. “Vok, I am not.”

I gasped, stilling against him. He pressed his hips forward, keeping me pinned. He was hard at my back, his cock thick and ready. His teeth came to my neck and I shivered when I felt his bite, when I felt him hold it…like a beast forcing its mate to remain still.

“Come into my mind,” he taunted, though I heard an edge to his voice. Like a plea. Desperate with despair. After what he had shared with me earlier, I knew that this was different. This moment was different. “Come into my mind and make me stop…or take your fucking, leikavi. Your choice.”

My heart was hammering in my chest, twinging with what I heard in his voice. My anger and frustration were morphing into need.

They were feeding it.

I didn’t understand why.

“I will not be gentle,” he warned in my ear before biting it, making my nipples tighten. A warning. A promise. “Not tonight. I cannot be right tonight, Vienne. Though I promised. Vok!”

Still, I didn’t use my gift, though I had gathered it like a shimmering veil over me. I knew Davik felt it too. He’d told me it felt like fingers over his skin, touching him all over, and he groaned.

A cry tore from my throat when he thrust into me from behind hard, sheathing himself inside as far as he could possibly be. Stars burst in my vision, my lips parting, the tendrils of energy from my gift sizzling over me.

I had never thought it could be erotic—the power I wielded. But on his next brutal thrust, I bit my lip to keep him from hearing my ragged moan and then I unleashed that power over us, almost unconsciously, wrapping us both in it.

“Vok,” he groaned.

I gasped as his need ran hot in my blood, my eyes widening when I felt the depth of it. It went beyond simple need, however.

“Oh gods,” I whispered.

He was frightened.

For me.

And it made him so, so angry, that fear, because it made him feel helpless.

He wasn’t angry at me. Not at all. And just like I’d known, this was different. If I was going to love Davik, I would accept all his flaws, all his demons, all his darkest secrets.

And what was happening between us now?

I had a feeling it would unravel us both.

His clawed hands gripped my hips, pulling them back for more leverage, forcing me to clutch onto the pole to keep my balance.

My teeth clattered together as he unleashed his own power over me, as he unleashed the strength that he’d been holding back.

His thrusts were so swift, a quick punch of his hips, that it felt like he never left my body. He was there, every moment, filling me and owning me and claiming me as his.

Davik gave me his strength, his ferocity, as he kept me still for my fucking. Desperate, ragged sounds tore from my throat, cries that I hardly recognized as my own as the pleasure mixed with the pain, heightening into something entirely new, something that scared me but something that I craved.

His mind was jumbled, a mess just waiting to be untangled. His emotions flashed quickly, cycling through his fear, his desire, his bloodlust, his grief, his need, on an endless loop. He fucked those emotions into me, pouring them into me, until they filled me just as readily as his cock did.

Then I was coming around that cock, my orgasm taking me by surprise, stealing the last of the breath from my lungs.

Disbelief spread through Davik’s mind. “I can feel you, rei leikavi. Vok!”

He could feel my pleasure?

It set off his own. I gasped, shaking uncontrollably as he began to lose himself to his own desperate pleasure. His mind went blank with it and I felt it explode within me like a second orgasm, this one even harder than the first.

Oh gods, oh gods!

My legs gave out, my vision blackening. The only sensation I felt was Davik’s hot seed filling me up, coating me inside, and his strong arms catching my fall, bringing me up until my back was against his chest.

He shuddered and fucked and groaned against me.

Afterwards, quiet stretched between us as we both tried to calm our breaths. I still hadn’t moved. Neither had Davik. He clutched me to him like he needed me close…and since I was still deep in his mind, I knew for a fact he did.

What just happened?I couldn’t help but think, over and over again.

There were moments in my life when I’d known nothing would be the same. Usually they were tragic, horrible moments. Like watching my father die, then my grandmother. Like being taken by the Ghertun. Like watching my sister be abused by her sibi.

Or they were moments like meeting a horde king with red, glowing eyes. Like going into that horde king’s mind for the first time in Dothik, knowing that something about him called out to me.

And this…this was another of those moments. Feeling him deep inside me, his rough exhalations across the back of my neck, connected to his mind, deeper than I’d ever been before. This felt...

Permanent.

In that mind, in Davik’s complex web of emotions, I felt determination rise suddenly, so strongly that it blocked out everything else.

Still embedded deep inside me, he grasped my chin between his fingers, turning my face until I met his eyes. Instead of the wildness I’d seen earlier, now I only saw certainty.

Unwavering resolution.

“Davik,” I whispered, my brows furrowed.

“I have no deviri to offer you, leikavi, but that cannot be helped now. I will make it up to you with time.”

Deviri?

“What are you talking about?”

His jaw was set. He was as steady as I’d ever seen him, his emotions stable and firm. That mating, as intense as it’d been, had seemed to calm him. It seemed unreal to me that earlier this evening, he’d been feeding me in his lap and then we’d gone out riding on Nillima, his deep voice in my ear as he told me one of his darker secrets.

“You are mine now, Vienne,” he murmured. My breath hitched. “Though I think we own one another.”

“What? Davik, I don’t—”

“You will be my Morakkari,” he said, that jaw tightening further in his decision. “My queen. My wife. My mate.”

I froze.

“I have decided. It is done,” he said. As if to himself, he said softly, “This is the only way to keep you safe.”