Chapter 16 Aurora #2
Of all the times to be terrified, this should have been one, but I felt nothing. No spike of adrenaline. No fear flooding my system. No panic attacks or nausea.
Beautiful.
His presence acted as a magnet. Every cell urged me forward.
I raised a tentative hand to his shoulder, expecting to be burned by the radiating heat.
But as my fingers made contact with the golden markings, they flickered like dying embers and faded back into his skin.
The obsidian coloring followed, leaving him looking like himself again—devastatingly handsome despite being covered in gore.
“Harbinger?” I dropped to my knees. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Strained words. “Give me a minute.”
Blood seeped between his fingers where he pressed his hand against his side. Each exhale was a grunt of pain. When he tried to rise, his massive frame tilted forward.
I caught his shoulders, taking his weight. His skin had returned to normal temperature. Still running hot, but not burning like a dying star anymore.
“You need Selena. Wait here. I’m going to—”
“No.” His bloodied hand grasped my wrist. The blade clattered to the floor.
His face had gone white as bone. Bright red flared around his citron irises before spreading inward, battling the gold for dominance. Dark veins threaded down from his hairline, stark against his pallor.
Bloodlust. He was slipping.
“I need you.” His voice rasped with strain.
I understood exactly what he needed. Pulling my hair over my shoulder, I bared my throat. “Take as much as you need.”
His mouth moved along my neck with maddening slowness.
The scrape of teeth made me shiver. Fangs grazed my throat, their sharp edges creating friction that was both threatening and utterly erotic.
The pressure increased, his tongue and lips finding every sensitive spot until my heart hammered and I pressed against him with matching need.
A low rumble escaped him, so primal it made my nipples tighten against his hard chest.
“Aurora.” His arms locked around me, and his voice turned darker.
Then his fangs angled, their tips teasing me in the most delicious way. My skin gave way under those needle points, and a sharp gasp tore from me as they sank deep.
The gasp became a moan as sensation flooded me. Heat poured from where we connected, racing within my veins to consume my entire body. Fever swept over me, making me dizzy, while unexpected waves of pleasure made my head fall back and my legs tremble.
My pulse beat frantically under his mouth, and when Radu took that first deep pull, ecstasy shot straight to my core with enough force to nearly break me apart.
His growl vibrated against my throat. His fingers tangled in my hair, keeping my head back as he drew again, sending fresh cascades of bliss through me. The world shrunk to this single point of contact, to the incredible sensation of my blood flowing into him.
Another pull dragged a cry from my lips, and I raked my nails down his back, clawing at him as need consumed me. I wanted all of him, and I rolled my hips against his thigh in silent invitation.
Radu’s mouth was suddenly gone, and we moved in a different time, through different worlds.
Before I could process what was happening, my back hit the wall, his body pressed against mine.
Hard, unforgiving muscle and burning skin.
This wasn’t the composed captain I knew.
He was a beast unleashed, driven by whatever haunted those golden-crimson eyes.
“I need more than blood.” His voice was rough gravel against my ear, stripped of every pretense. “I need you.”
His mouth claimed mine before I could respond. Coffee and copper flooded my senses as his tongue swept against mine with wild longing. His hands found the delicate lace at my neckline. Tore at the fabric with a sharp rip.
Heat exploded between us. His knee pushed between my thighs as calloused palms cupped my breasts.
Thumbs circled the sensitive peaks until I arched into his touch with a broken moan.
One hand twisted in my hair while the other roamed with possessive urgency.
As if he needed to claim every inch of me.
As if he needed to chase away whatever darkness clung to him.
My leather pants and boots joined the scraps of my top on the floor. His blistering fingers found me already slick with want, and I gasped, taking hold of his wrist as that familiar spark ignited in my core.
Molten lava spread through me, burning from the inside out. I guided his touch deeper, and a microsecond later, I found myself on the threadbare rug.
This wasn’t about gentle seduction.
This was possession. Dominance. Unadulterated need.
Yet even in his frenzy, even with the way he pinned me beneath him like prey, he didn’t hurt me.
Just the opposite. Stinging tendrils of ecstasy spread throughout my body as he positioned himself above me, his breathing labored.
One hand curled around my throat as he unfastened his pants.
“Tell me to stop.” His hand braced against the wall above my head, our bodies poised on the edge of joining. “Before I can’t.”
Instead of answering, I pulled him down to me, plunging both hands into his hair and twisting my fingers in a firm grip. “Don’t you dare.”
He entered me with one powerful thrust.
Air rushed from my lungs. A jolt of pleasure bucked inside me, sharp and consuming. I breathed in the air he breathed out, tasted the essence of him—dark coffee and something uniquely male. My nails bit into his shoulders when he pushed too hard, too fast.
But he didn’t stop.
This wasn’t just about pleasure. This was about seizing control when everything else had spiraled beyond his grasp.
His kiss grew as demanding as his thrusts.
I could feel his restraint fraying with each movement as he clamped me to him, held me captive beneath his weight while he drove into me with increasing force.
“Is this what you need?” I whispered against his ear.
He hesitated. Faltered. My body cried out, wanting the peak it sought. Yet my heart wanted Radu—with me, not fighting through me.
“You should stay away from me.” He nipped at my earlobe, the minor pain causing a sharp spike of arousal. “I am not who you think I am. Not what you think I am.” His voice thickened with something deeper than desire—shame, maybe, or fear. “I’m so much worse than a monster.”
I kept my arms wrapped around his head, refusing to let him retreat into whatever hell lived inside his head.
“We’re all monsters,” I breathed and placed one hand on his steel-hard buttock, urging him deeper.
He hissed. Pressed harder. “But if your beast needs to unleash whatever brought you here—then do your worst.”
His eyes changed then. The fight left them, replaced by acceptance, maybe, or surrender. He kissed me with renewed intensity, raw and unguarded, as if I were his lifeline in a drowning world.
Pressure built as he buried himself over and over, each thrust more possessive than the last, as if he could chase away his demons by owning me completely.
The air vanished from the room. His movements became more desperate, the hand around my throat tightening just enough to remind me who was in control. The tide swelling inside me rose higher with each powerful stroke until it finally burst through, crashing against my bones like a boiling sea.
He groaned—part agony, part ecstasy—as he followed me over the edge, spilling into me with a shudder that shook his entire frame.
For a moment he lay breathless and spent. When he moved to pull away, I wrapped every available limb around him.
“Not yet,” I whispered, directing his mouth back to my neck.
His fangs found a different spot, breaking the skin with a tender care that almost brought me to tears.
The dual sensation of his bite and the aftershocks still rippling through me made me gasp.
I lost track of time—him feeding while I listened to his heartbeat slowing, felt some of the tension drain from his muscular shoulders.
Then he pulled back, bit down on his tongue with a sharp fang until blood welled, and kissed me so fervently my eyes rolled back. His blood mixed with mine on our tongues. Our minds collided like old friends finding each other after a long separation.
His emotions poured through the Blood Pact like a shot of adrenaline.
Rage. Pure and consuming, directed at himself as much as whatever had driven him to my room.
Hopelessness so deep it felt like drowning.
Sorrow that made my chest cave in. Grief for losses I couldn’t name but felt in every cell of my body.
All of it tangled together, feeding the beast that had demanded dominance, control, something to anchor him when everything else had crumbled.
Then the visions hit.
A mountain village carved into steep hillsides, stone houses with wooden shutters now hanging askew.
Smoke billowed from thatched roofs as orange flames devoured everything in their path.
Bodies littered the narrow cobblestone streets.
Civilians dressed in flowing robes and headwraps unlike anything worn in the Republic, some whole, others torn apart so violently I could barely make sense of the scattered limbs.
Rivers of blood flowed between the corpses, pooling in the spaces where families had tried to hide.
The screams were the worst part. High-pitched wails split the night sky and mixed with the guttural roars I recognized in a heartbeat.
Souleaters.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of them swarming through the village like a plague of locusts.
A woman’s voice rose above the chaos, shouting commands in what sounded painfully similar to Russkayan.
I felt Radu’s anguish as he answered her call, his magic exploding outward with such violence it nearly drained him completely.
A portal tore open before him—not the sleek doorways I’d seen before, but a gaping maw that swallowed the horizon.
His entire field of vision disappeared behind the massive gateway, infinite darkness streaked with lightning bolts, all converging on the same point.
But there were too many.
Even with his power, even with the fire arcs and earth spikes, water cannons and air strikes erupting from other elementals in the distance, the horde kept coming.
I felt his muscles burning as he fought, portals opening and closing in rapid succession, sunsteel blade singing through rotten flesh.
The exhaustion that came from hours of battle, from watching people die despite everything he did to save them.
Then the image shifted to aftermath. Houses reduced to blackened skeletons, smoke rising in dark tendrils toward the stars. More bodies caught in their homes, in their beds. Children who’d never had a chance to run.
His mental barriers slammed shut, and I gasped against his mouth as the waves of his anguish crashed against me. No wonder his beast had taken control. No wonder he’d needed to possess, to claim, to prove he still had power over something in this world.
Derzelas Almighty, he’d been fighting all this time. But the clothes, the architecture—none of it was familiar. Had he portalled beyond the Gloom? Were the Souleaters waging war on other nations as well?
So many questions crowded my mind I could barely breathe.
“Now you know,” he whispered against my lips, and I flinched as his thumb brushed away tears I didn’t realize I’d shed.
“Radu…” I traced the sharp line of his jaw, wanting to take away his pain.
“Don’t.” His voice was rough, pleading. “Please, don’t ask. I don’t want to lie to you.”
I kissed him again. Poured everything I couldn’t say into that desperate contact.
Radu was weaving himself into my heart thread by thread, and I already dreaded the day he tore it apart.
Because that day was inevitable, as certain as dawn following darkness.
Whatever truths he kept locked away would eventually destroy what we were building.
Unable to piece together the whys and wherefores of his secrets, I decided not to think about it and embrace this sweet self-deception.
He relaxed, the last of his defenses crumbling as I felt everything negative drain from him. Every doubt, every fragment of anxiety from the hell he’d just escaped.
The four-poster bed protested as we moved to the mattress, rusted coils poking through worn fabric.
But wrapped in his arms, surrounded by his warmth and the steady rhythm of his breathing, it felt like the finest silk.
His presence was a salve that soothed my frenzied thoughts, calmed the roiling seas within me.
I’d never felt so at peace. So completely at home.
For now, questions about where he’d been, what he’d faced, could wait. Dusk was still hours away, and I intended to savor every moment of this rare calm before the storm inevitably returned.