I’d do literally anything my queen asked of me.

I’d kill anything or anyone who threatened her. I’d die for her. Gladly.

But I couldn’t bear to stand aside and feel her pain, hear her scream, and do nothing.

Fuck. Her pain was so intense I couldn’t see or breathe myself. A Blood was dedicated to his queen’s wellbeing, so one aspect of the bond meant that any pain or discomfort she felt was magnified a hundredfold. If my queen was hurting, I’d know it, because I’d feel it a hundred times worse than she did.

We all did.

Daire retched beside me. Guillaume was on his hands and knees, head down, groaning miserably. Xin stood, but he stared up at the silvered moon and red tears trickled down his cheeks, his face drawn and hollowed with pain. Mehen thrashed on the ground, raking his fingers through the frozen packed snow. Red stained the white, his hands bleeding and torn from ice. He threw his head back and bellowed, so much like his dragon, even though she’d chained his beast.

Nevarre plunged his hands into the thorny patch, shredding his arms up to his elbows. “Take my blood. Not hers. Spare her, Morrigan. I beg you.”

If his goddess heard, She didn’t stop our queen’s torment. Instead, Shara was jerked off the ground and lifted high into the sky. Her scream of agony cut through me like Guillaume’s deadly blade. I tried to shift, determined to wade into those vines to get to her. Surely thorns wouldn’t be able to pierce my rock hide. But for the first time since she’d given me her blood, I couldn’t shift.

I could only kneel there in the snow and listen to her scream.

The vines started braiding together, forming some kind of giant tree. The limbs shook, raining down droplets of blood.

Her blood.

Every drop sprouted another vine. Another torturous plant loaded with spikes. Buds formed on the branches and opened to the full moon. Roses, so dark red they were nearly black. They covered the towering tree and the ring of thorns around it. I’d never seen a rose tree, but that was the closest way to describe it. The sweet perfume lay thick in the air. It smelled like Shara. The soft, sweet scent of her skin, as if I’d buried my face in the hollow of her throat behind her ear, her hair falling down over my face.

She lay stretched out on her back across the crown of the tree, vines wrapping up her arms and legs, making her a part of the tree. Her clothes hung like tattered rags in the lower branches. The full moon hung low in the sky, aimed perfectly to illuminate her and the tree like a spotlight. I strained to see if her chest was moving. If she was still alive.

The ring of deadly thorns parted enough for Nevarre to squeeze through, though the plants took their toll from him in blood. He looked back at me. “I think we can get her now.”

I pushed after him, ignoring the scratches that burned like fire on my thighs and stomach. They were nothing, like fireflies against the fireball of agony our queen still bore.

The tree itself towered well above our heads. The only way to get her was to climb up a prickly trunk of braided rose branches fused together.

“I’m lighter.” Nevarre paced beneath the tree, looking for the best way up. “Throw me up as far as you can and I’ll lower her to you.”

He found a good spot to squeeze through, a thick branch nearly ten feet above my head. I took up position below it and he scrambled up my body. The other Blood joined us, bleeding from scratches on their arms and faces, as though the branches had fought them hard. Mehen grabbed one of Nevarre’s arms and Guillaume the other, steadying him until he could stand on my shoulders.

“It’d be a hell of a lot easier if you’d shift and fly up to her,” Mehen grumbled beneath his breath.

“I find myself in your unenviable position,” Nevarre replied in a voice as hard and cold as chipped ice. “We all do.”

“You can’t shift? Fuck.” Mehen blinked, then scowled back at all of us glaring at him. “How the fuck was I supposed to know? I can’t ever shift without her.”

“Don’t you think I’d be up there with her, shielding her from the thorns with solid rock if I could?” I retorted, fighting back the urge to punch the arrogant bastard. I wouldn’t need the rock troll to flatten him.

My patience was gone. My control dried up in the blistering heat of rage that pulsed like hot sludge inside me. But I wasn’t angry at Mehen, not exactly. I was angry at whichever goddess had made my queen scream.

“The price—” Guillaume started to say but I cut him off with a fierce growl.

“I know. I don’t have to like it.” I worked my hands beneath Nevarre’s feet, waiting until he steadied himself in my grip. “Ready?”

“Throw me as high as you can.”

I took all my rage at her pain, my irritation with Mehen, and my own frustration and helplessness, and shoved my arms up as hard as I could with a roar. I’d fucking throw Nevarre to the moon if that meant we could end her pain.

He grabbed hold of the branch above and yelped, but didn’t let go despite the thorns.

“Get her the fuck out of there!”

At least the thorns helped me hold on to the branches despite the blood slickening my palms.

I didn’t allow myself to think. I just climbed as quickly as I could, straight to the top of the tree. It had to be nearly thirty feet high, even taller than the one my mother had grown. Which meant Shara had bled so much she must be near death. My mother had been weak for days after growing the heart tree, even with ten healthy Blood to feed her back to full health. My queen only had six, and she faced an external threat from Skye, and an unknown queen, Zaniyah.

We had to get her back up to full strength quickly. Or everything she’d managed to restore would be bulldozed one way or the other all over again.

I poked my head up out of the canopy, ignoring the scrape across my forehead, though the blood dripping in my eye was annoying.

I’d seen my mother’s trial. I thought I was prepared.

But the sight of my queen, trapped and bound with massive spiked thorns driven through her flesh, made my stomach heave. Looking at her, I didn’t know where to start. Vines as thick as my wrist wrapped around her arms, legs, and waist, as if the torturous tree was determined to hug every inch of her into its branches. Thorns dug into her flesh, piercing completely through her wrists. But the worst…

A giant thorn had pushed through her back and punctured through her chest, poking up between her breasts. It had to have gone through her heart.

“Get her down!” Rik bellowed up at me.

My hands shook. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t want to hurt her more than she was already suffering. Pulling those thorns out of her…

Goddess. I don’t think I can do this.

Shara made a low sound and her eyes opened. Blood dripped from her eyes, nose and ears, but she smiled. She fucking smiled. At me. “Nevarre.”

Blood dripped down her chin, her fangs distended painfully long. Her bond roiled with too much pain for me to sense her hunger, but as drained as she was, she must be ravenous.

She tried to lift her head, but her hair was tangled in vines too. She gasped with pain and Rik roared something again, though luckily I couldn’t make out his words.

“Band-Aid approach,” she whispered, meeting my gaze.

Rip it all off at once, quick and smooth. My stomach pitched queasily, but I nodded. “We have to get them uncurled first.”

I found the corkscrewed tip of the vine tightly wrapped around her leg closest to me. I pulled on it, as hard as I dared, trying to unwrap it from her thigh. At least the top. Her breathing quickened to a frantic pant, but she didn’t cry out again. Rik would probably have ripped the tree out of the ground and beat me with it for being so slow. With the vine peeled back, I could see the damage it’d done to her skin by the red, angry welt.

One leg free. At least her upper thigh. But as soon as I let go of it to work on the ones tightly coiled around her calf, the upper vine quickly snaked back around her in a new place, making her cry out.

“NEVARRE,” Rik roared like a category ten hurricane.

“I’m trying my best but these fucking vines…” I growled my own wordless curse. “Morrigan, please, let my queen go so—”

The vines quivered and released her at once, though the spiked thorns were still pinning her in place. I pushed up to my feet to gain some leverage. Balanced precariously, I had to lift her straight up off the thorns to do as little damage as possible. She met my gaze, her eyes solemn, braced for pain, but not afraid.

Gripping her forearms firmly, I counted out loud, taking deep breaths. “One. Two. Three.”

I pulled her straight up against me. My fearless queen didn’t make a sound though I felt the slide and pull of those wicked thorns grinding against bone and tendon and muscle. Blood should have fountained from her chest, but she didn’t have much left. She flopped, lifeless and heavy, almost toppling us both out of the tree. I knew exactly which one of us Rik would catch and it sure as hell wouldn’t be me.

“Jump,” he ground out. I could see him pacing back and forth beneath us, but there were a lot of branches in the way.

I gathered her closely to me, tucking her arms beneath mine so she didn’t accidentally catch on a branch. Then I closed my eyes. “Great Queen, Goddess of Shadow and War, move Your branches out of our path so I may get my queen to safety.”

I didn’t look to see if She heard my prayer. I jumped, clutching Shara tightly to me. My hair snagged on a branch, pulling my head sharply to the side and likely yanking a good chunk out of my scalp. Another branch swiped me slightly on the shoulder. But otherwise, we slipped straight through the vicious branches and dropped into Rik and Guillaume’s arms.

Rik already had his bleeding wrist pressed to her mouth, cradling her against him. A massive hole gaped in her chest and blood ran from so many wounds I couldn’t even begin to count them. Yet she lived.

“Of course she lives,” Guillaume said softly. “She’s Isis’s daughter, and she’s feasted on the headless knight’s blood. The tree could have ripped her head off and she’d still find a way to come back. But my blood can’t do anything about the pain she must endure to survive.”

My knees quivered and I sagged against Guillaume. Surprised, I looked down at myself. I too bore many punctures and tears and scratches, and while no massive thorn had spiked my heart, I’d lost enough blood to be wobbly.

Guillaume offered his wrist. “Feed, my friend. She needs us all prepared for Skye’s attack, and she’s not going to be up for feeding any of us tonight.”

Grateful, I carefully bit into his wrist. My eyes fluttered shut as the first soothing, rich flow hit my tongue. Sharing blood was such an intimate thing. We already shared our minds through her bond, but this would deepen my sense of only him. It was like our souls brushed together.

He was so old and weary. Not as old as Mehen, but the great king of the depths had his rage and thirst for retribution to sustain him. For hundreds of years, Guillaume had nothing but his honor. While he’d served Desideria, that honor had weighed him down like a massive chain around his neck, dragging him slowly to hell. Something so treasured and valued had become the sole source of his torture.

Even now, I saw him in battered armor, bloody, dirty, dented. But Shara’s blood had wiped away the tarnish from his armor and cast the chains aside. She’d freed him, just as she’d freed the king.

Just as she’d freed me.

I lifted my head. “Thank you, Sir Guillaume. I’m indebted to you.”

“There’s no debt among Blood.” A corner of his mouth twitched slightly, the closest thing to a smile I guessed his face ever got. “Her Blood, at least.”

Rik groaned, drawing our attention to him. She’d recovered enough to sink her own fangs into his wrist. Though he’d made a wound for her to drink from, sometimes instinct took over and you buried fangs in the one you loved. Something I had missed sorely with Brigid. Ropes of come spurted onto the ground, some onto the heart tree’s trunk itself.

“Sorry, Morrigan,” he panted, eyes closed.

A gust of wind whipped my hair back from my face, carrying with it a hint of a woman’s sultry laughter. “I don’t think She minded. At all. In fact, She’d probably love it if we all made such an offering.”

The breeze twirled my hair back into my face and I smelled the roses again, thick and sweet and heavy. The roses Shara had grown with her blood. Ghostly fingers brushed my cheek and trailed down my chest. Powered up with Guillaume’s blood, I intended to offer myself to Shara with the hopes that she’d sink those brutal fangs into me too.

She opened her eyes and looked directly at me, though she didn’t lift her mouth from Rik’s wrist until I stepped closer. “Are you sure?”

Dropping to my knees beside her, I tipped my head to the side, offering my throat. “Without question.”

She started to sit up, but didn’t have the strength yet to make it on her own. I pulled her close while Rik lifted her, holding her between the two of us. She sank her fangs into my throat and my back bowed, every muscle straining with release. My come dripped onto the ground and my head buzzed with the whisper of Her trees. Too long, son of Morrigan. Shadow walks again. Call to war. Danger is coming.

I forced my eyes open. “Danger,” I forced the word out, meeting Rik’s gaze. “The trees sense it coming.”

My alpha’s hard eyes drilled into me. “What is it?”

Guillaume pressed against us now, and Shara turned to him, sinking her fangs into his throat too. I scooted away enough to press my hand to the thorny trunk of the heart tree, ignoring the immediate stings on my palm. Closing my eyes, I sank into the tree, letting it pull me down through the trunk, pulsing with our queen’s blood, deeper into the earth. Cold, rich earth, dark and fertile though stony. The tree was happy to be here, even though it wasn’t Ireland or Scotland. New dirt, new organisms, new life. Root fingers dug through the soil, deeper, tiny wires that connected the heart to the grove, and the grove to the surrounding woods.

Through that network, I felt the disturbance in the ground. Something forced its way up through an underground cavern. Millions of tiny creatures, working together seamlessly. Their queen was in the back, protected by her soldiers. The trees sensed her like a malignant cell, marking her for elimination, because she carried a drop of Skye’s blood.

They marched with determination. Pushing aside dirt and debris, climbing through miles of rock and soil and, most importantly, thick roots, to reach us.

I opened my eyes. “Ants. A huge army of them. They’re…” I closed my eyes a moment, trying to gauge how far away they were. It was hard since they were so deep, but the trees helped, echoing one by one to help me mark the distance. “An hour away, probably. Close—but not ready to explode up out of the ground yet.”

“Fucking ants?” Mehen retorted. “That’s the great trap Skye is sending against us?”

“Millions of them,” I replied grimly. “And they’re not just normal ants. Each of the soldiers are nearly an inch long and they have large cutting jaws. I’m pretty sure they could devour a corpse in a matter of minutes. Their queen is the one we need to worry about though. Keisha Skye marked it with her blood. I’m guessing the queen is supposed to get to Shara and sting her, injecting her with whatever spell Skye has worked into that blood.”

“So how do we kill them as quickly as possible?” Rik looked at each of us one by one. “If we’re talking millions, we don’t want to waste time.”

“I say you let me shift into the dragon and I’ll light the fuckers on fire. I’ll just blast them with continuous fire as they try to crawl out of the ground.”

Shara lifted her head from Guillaume’s throat. She looked better for the most part, but the wound in her chest was still ugly. She still looked… dented and misshapen. Blood still dripped from punctures she hadn’t been able to close yet. “Fire should kill them. I’d throw fire on them too, but I don’t know that I’ll be up for that in an hour or less.”

Daire squeezed in between her and Guillaume, rubbing himself against her. “You should ride on one of us, just to be safe. If we keep you off the ground, you’ll be harder for them to get to. I’m game, but G’s hell horse would probably be the best bet. It’s not like either of us are going to be very good at killing something as small as ants.”

“Agreed,” Rik said. “Take turns if you need to with Xin too. If Mehen’s able to roast them as they emerge, I’ll smash any that escape, and Nevarre can attack from the air.”

“The trees will help.” Rik looked skeptical, so I added, “they’re voracious. That’s why they make such good defense. Their roots can ensnare anything in the ground, and they can change position as needed.”

“Trees. That move.” Mehen smirked, shaking his head. “That I’ll have to see to believe.”

“It’s pretty… creepy,” I replied, shrugging. “I can’t explain how they do it, but one moment, the tree is paces away, and the next, you’re surrounded by trees you didn’t even notice.”

“We may get the chance to see them in action sooner than later.” Shara turned to Rik, giving him her hand. “We’ve got company.”

“What?” He stood, pulling her up into his arms. “Who?”

“I’m guessing it’s another one of your sibs. The trees say there’s a man walking through the forest about two miles away.”

I didn’t wait for Rik’s order. I leaped into the air and called my raven to explode out of me. It was going to be one busy fucking night.