Unfortunately, Zaihadmet the Dark Commander and Consul. The latter might not know of the last few days of Gaia’s reign when Zai had betrayed the Dark Hunters and his Queen, right before the Elementals had staged their ultimate coup. And the Commander had been abroad on a military excursion before he had to rush back to defend his Queen.
If Zai’s luck held, they wouldn’t immediately arrest him for his crimes against the Blood Moon Queen if he encountered them.
“Victuals can be found at the long house,” one of the guards said.
“Stay close until you are summoned.”
With that, Zai and Ben were left alone. The barracks were empty at the moment. It was the middle of the night, so the soldiers and other temporary visitors must be up and about, either in the vast outer court of the citadel or in the surrounding villages at the base of the hill.
“Wow,” Ben uttered in awe beside him.
“This place ishuge! Those walls are massive, cut from gigantic blocks of white stone. Where did the builders even get the stone? How were they conveyed here? Everything is so much more advanced than what has been documented in history books. I wish I could take pictures back with me as proof.”
Zai didn’t know what he was talking about, but the boy’s words proved what he’d suspected all along—that Ben came from a far-off realm beyond Zai’s ken.
“Stay close to me, human,” he grunted.
“Your looks might pass for a Dark One now, but you still smell like human meat.”
Ben raised his arm and sniffed one of his pits.
“All I smell is day-old BO,” he said. “What are Dark Ones supposed to smell like?”
“Sex and aggression,” Zai replied.
“Huh,” the boy huffed.
“Yeah, that’s definitely not my default mode.”
He walked closer to Zai until their shoulders sometimes bumped together as they strode purposefully across the wide, stone-paved paths. He sniffed audibly, leaning close before pulling back.
“You just smell like leather and smoke, and a whole bunch of dirt and sweat,” the boy declared.
“I don’t see what the big deal is.”
In a split second, Zai caught him behind the neck with one hand, brought them chest to chest, hip to hip, and bore down into the boy’s face. Ben’s startling green-blue eyes widened with surprise, breath arrested from shock.
Zai snarled until his upper lips bared his gleaming, elongated fangs, and he let his eyes glow red with bloodlust. He knew that heat radiated from his skin like a bonfire, roasting the boy like a fat rabbit on a spit, making Ben squirm with discomfort. His half-hard cock gouged into the human’s lean belly in warning.
Everything about him said:don’t fuck with me. And if you do, I’ll nail your ass through a wall or suck you dry. Or both. At the same time.
“Okay,” Ben whispered, swallowing hard, making the knob in his throat bob.
“I see what the big deal is.”
Zai glared at him for a long, unblinking moment before letting go and picking up his strides again.
Ben caught up after a couple of delayed seconds.
“That was seriously badass, man,” he said with awe. “You definitely have enough pent-up sex and aggression for both of us.”
Zai ignored him.
“The only Dark Ones I spend a lot of time around are my parents. But they’re kind of special, you know?”
Zai didn’t know and didn’t care, but his silence didn’t discourage Ben from expounding further.
“They’re vampires, but they both have Pure souls. Isn’t that cool? Maybe that’s why they don’t give off the same vibes you just did. Well, and because they’re my parents. Maybe they keep the sex and aggression on the down low around me, thank God.”