I hope your female is fine. Please understand, these are highly social snakes, also understand, that means to include other individuals and exclude all others. The question is, which ones are included.
They do not have books, or biologists or science telling them what they are suppose to do, so like primitive man, they often eat others of their same kind, and simply because, they do not think of those others as the same. So the "others" are no different then any other kind of snake in this case, or human with people. They are simply the other.
The best way to support them getting along is raising them together. If that is impossible, then the next good way is to put them together in winter when the temps are low and they are not feeding.
I keep pairs and groups of kings together and have since 1964 or so. I can't remember having a problem, but I have seen what you had happen. So your not alone.
Please understand, its not that you have to do those steps, some individuals get long right off the bat. But others don't.
You can also time the copulation. That's when the female is emitting strong pheromones. But that is still dangerous. Often they copulate then one eats the other. Simply put, social animals need to be raised socially to behave in a social manner, If any social animal is raised in a solitary situation, they are poor candidates to ever attain that "normal" social behavior. Its inherent and learned. Best wishes

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