“Drink it,” Er’it snapped, turning away from Ath’asho though he continued to chatter away about something inconsequential when compared to the Omega not paying attention.
She didn’t even look up. Shaking fingers kissed the cool silver before they slid right back to her lap, clutching the heavy folds and twisting them. Wringing the very life from the threads.
Ignored, Er’it’s temper snapped. Grabbing the back of her neck, he pulled the Omega to him. Goblet clutched so tight in his other hand he felt the metal groan under the strain, he pressed it against her quivering lips until they overflowed. Rich red staining her skin, tumbling in wild rivulets down her working throat to ruin her dress. It was far more intoxicating than any spirit Er’it knew of, so he did it again. Shrugged off Ath’asho’s quiet caution as he spilled more of the ruby redness between her lips and wished to all the many deities it was something far different she drank down with sputtering coughs and such miserable tears making her black eyes liquid.
Not until he drained the cup did he release her. Letting her tumble back into the seat, somehow even smaller as she curled in on herself and sniffled back those delectable tears. A curt flick of his fingers brought another server forward with the pitcher. Even wrapped up in her misery, so thick it coated the back of his throat with its bitter tang, she recoiled from the outstretched hand before the server scurried away much as the other.
If he’d thought a single glass of wine would relax her, he’d been so very wrong. If anything, it ratcheted up her tension to the point he worried she’d shatter in a gentle wind. The meal progressed, people milling and chattering around them, and she only became more terrified with every passing moment. Each server became a threat, something she flinched and cowered from, the clatter of plates enough to bring her hand up to smother her sounds of distress. The fabric of her gown became a craggy range of stiff peaks and crumpled valleys from where she wrung it in shaking fists. Tears seeped down her wan cheeks unfettered as Er’it slapped the silverware in her hand again and again to make her eat something.
It was only the third course before he lost the stranglehold on the frayed strands of his control. His chair stuttered across the stone, the quiet a palpable monster that sped through the room as the hollow echoes dwindled. They were all of them staring, but he didn’t care. Not even when Ath’asho reached for him and the growl rumbled through his chest, a grinding rockslide of fury and warning. Snatching up the Omega’s arm he paused only long enough to be sure he hadn’t caused actual damage at her piercing wail before he retraced their path out of the hall. Up the staircase with her sobs shattering against the unfeeling stone to the room that was hers and hers alone.
Now theirs. At least for tonight, perhaps tomorrow. There was a speech planned, one Ath’asho would give now that Er’it had bewildered, and no doubt concerned his people. Oh, many had abandoned him when he first chose this path of power, warnings of what it would bring upon his head spat into the dark of night as they fled. For those that remained, he took great care to keep what he’d become a private thing. He did not need them so aware of what his power had twisted him into, those that fell to his blade, the blood he consumed to take in that power. The pain he often administered to access even more of it. No, they didn’t need to know that, all of them content with their victories and no knowledge of how he accomplished it.
Cursing himself as much as the Omega, he tossed her to the floor. Letting her crumble to the ground, working her way to her knees to assume some posture of deference as watery apologies smeared past bruised lips. Shock registered for a moment as he saw the wet sheen of crimson there, thoughts racing as he tried to determine if he’d done that to her.
He didn’t want her to bleed for him. Not like this.
No, what Tor’en had helped him decipher was far different from a simple sacrifice.
“I am sorry! Please forgive me,” she finished, debasing herself over the cold floor. Arms outstretched, the fragile breadth of her hands splayed wide in supplication as she pressed her forehead against the smooth wood. Her entire body shook with the effort to contain her sobs, but she did. If not for the violent tremors of her gasping breaths, one would see her as little more than a well-dressed doll. The thought gave him an idea, one he relished. He could savor this, draw it out to its end. Taking these frustrations out on her soft flesh and obtaining the very thing he needed from her body.
“You dare to refuse my generosity. A place at my table, at my very side, given to you, and you behave this way,” Er’it snapped, the crushing weight of his boots endangering the quivering lines of her fingers.
Denial a low whine, she shook her head against the floor. Hair tumbling down around her shoulders to mask the crystalline sheen of her misery making her cheeks glisten. She tried to further lower herself, much of her upper body shoved against the floor.
It wasn’t enough to appease the molten rush of his anger, the blazing embers of it snapping through his veins as he set his boot
