Kiakoa
The distance between myself and the first thief disappears in three strides. My hand closes around his throat before he can draw breath to scream. I lift him from the ground with one arm, his feet kicking uselessly at empty air.
“You steal from me,” I say, each word punctuated by the pressure of my fingers around his windpipe.
His face turns purple. His hands claw at my grip, nails scraping uselessly against skin that might as well be stone. Behind him, the other thieves finally process what they face.
I drop the first man. He hits the ground gasping, alive but broken. Conscious enough to carry a message, if he survives what comes next.
The nearest attacker lurches at me with his curved blade raised. I catch his wrist mid-swing. The bones snap with a sound that echoes between the bone-white trees. His sword drops from nerveless fingers as he screams.
The sound awakens something in my chest that I had forgotten existed. Not just hunger, but joy. The pure satisfaction of being exactly what I was created to be.
My free hand closes around his shoulder. I pull, and his arm comes free from its socket with a wet tearing sound. Blood sprays across the pale bark of the nearest tree, marking my territory in the oldest way possible.
The thief collapses, shock stealing his voice. He curls around his ruined limb, eyes wide and staring, no longer capable of coherent thought.
Seven thieves remain. They spread out between the trees, trying to use the grove's layout to their advantage. Professional killers adapting to unexpected circumstances.
They have no idea what they face.
I have not unleashed my true nature in over a century. Have not allowed myself to become the predator that carved out this territory in the first place. The diplomat, the negotiator, the careful lord who manages resources and maintains alliances—all of that falls away.
What remains is hunger satisfied and strength amplified by the perfect pain Braith feeds me. What remains is the creature that survived the chaos after the Shift by being faster, stronger, and more vicious than anything else in the darkness.
A thief tries to circle behind me. I hear his heartbeat, smell the fear-sweat soaking through his leather armor, track his movement without turning. When he strikes, I am already moving. My elbow catches him in the sternum, driving bone fragments into his lungs. He drops, drowning in his own blood.
Two more rush me from opposite sides, hoping to overwhelm through numbers. I grab the first by his hair and slam his face into my rising knee. The impact crushes his nose, drives bone into his brain. He is dead before his body hits the ground.
The second thief's blade actually touches me, sliding along my ribs before I twist away. The cut is shallow—his weapon not designed for my skin's density—but it draws blood.
For that insult, he dies slowly.
I catch him by the throat and lift him to eye level. His legs dangle, feet scraping futilely at my chest. I want him to see exactly what he faces in his final moments. I want the terror in his eyes to feed the satisfaction building in my chest.
“Look at me,” I command.
He tries to turn away. I tighten my grip until his attention focuses.
“I am not the weakened lord you expected to find. I am not diminished by the frenzy. I am fed. I am focused. I am what your kind whispers about in the dark.”
His mouth opens, trying to form words. No sound emerges but strangled gasps.
“Tell me,” I continue, loosening my grip just enough to allow speech, “what intelligence did Vasek provide about my current state?”
“Weakened,” he chokes out. “Distracted. Lost to... to frenzy madness.”
“And what do you see now?”
His eyes dart around the grove, taking in the bodies of his companions, the ease with which I hold his weight. Understanding dawns in his expression, followed immediately by despair.
“Stronger,” he whispers. “Fed and... and controlled.”
“Yes.”
I snap his neck with a quick twist. Clean death. He provided useful information.
Four thieves remain. They have withdrawn to the edge of the grove, no longer interested in completing their mission. Survival has become their only objective.
“Run,” I tell them.
They hesitate, uncertain whether this is mercy or another form of cruelty.
“Run,” I repeat, stepping over the bodies scattered between the trees. “Carry word to your master. Tell Vasek what you witnessed here. Tell him that I am not the prey he believes me to be.”
They run. Crashing through the underbrush in their haste to escape, leaving behind their dead and wounded. I let them go. Live messengers serve my purposes better than corpses.
Silence returns to the grove. The bone-white trees resume their gentle clicking, branches swaying in wind that carries the copper scent of spilled blood. The fruit continues its rhythmic pulsing, undisturbed by the violence that protected it.
I move between the trees, cataloging damage, checking that no fruit was successfully stolen.
The thieves were professionals—they knew which pods contained the most concentrated pain, which ones represented decades of careful cultivation.
But they took nothing. Every piece of stolen fruit lies scattered on the grove floor, abandoned in their flight.
The satisfaction in my chest grows deeper. Not just the joy of successful defense, but something more profound. For the first time since the frenzy began, I feel completely in control. Not fighting my nature but embracing it, directing it toward appropriate targets.
Behind me, footsteps approach through the grove entrance. Light, careful steps that belong to someone trying not to disturb the scene she witnessed. Braith.
“Are you hurt?” she asks.
I turn to her, knowing what she must see. Blood stains my clothes and hands—not my own, but that of the invaders who dared violate my domain. The savage satisfaction still clings to my frame, changing the way I move, the way I hold myself.
The violence fuels a different hunger, a desperate heat that has nothing to do with feeding.
“No,” I tell her. “I am better than I have been in many years.”
She moves closer, stepping carefully around the bodies scattered between the trees. When she reaches me, she stops close enough to touch but doesn't. Not yet. She is assessing what she sees, deciding how to respond to this version of me.
Her breathing changes as she takes in the carnage, the blood on my hands, the way I tower over the destruction I've caused. Her scent, sharp with arousal, cuts through the metallic tang of blood and my control frays.
“I've never seen you like this,” she says.
“Because I had buried it beneath diplomacy and careful control because unleashing it served no purpose.”
“And now?”
“Now I have a reason to embrace my true nature.” I reach for her, bloodstained fingers touching her cheek. She doesn't flinch away from the contact. Instead, she leans into it.
Her pulse quickens under my touch, and I see her pupils dilate as she processes what she's seeing. Not the careful lord who feeds from her throat with such restraint, but the predator who just painted my grove with enemy blood.
“How do you feel?” she asks. “Right now, after killing for the first time in... how long?”
I consider the question honestly. How do I feel? Not guilty or diminished, as centuries of imposed restraint taught me to expect. Not empty or drained, as the old hunger used to leave me.
“Satisfied,” I say finally. “Complete. As if I have been only half myself for decades, and the other half just returned.”
“The feeding did that?”
“The feeding gave me the strength to do that. Your pain, freely given, transformed into power I could direct instead of desperate need.”
Understanding passes through her expression. She sees the connection between what she provides and what I just accomplished. Not just sustenance, but the foundation for controlled violence when circumstances require it.
“Vasek underestimated you,” she says.
“He underestimated us. He saw my frenzy as weakness, distraction, loss of control. He could not conceive that finding the right source would make me more dangerous, not less.”
I pull her closer, until she is pressed against my chest. The scent of her arousal strengthens, and I realize she is trembling. Not with fear—with need. Watching me unleash violence has awakened her own hunger.
My hands find her waist, fingers digging into the soft fabric of her dress. She's so small against me, so fragile compared to the destruction I just wrought. The contrast makes my cock throb harder.
“The other lords will make the same mistake,” I continue, my voice dropping to rougher tones. “They will see our connection as vulnerability to exploit, never understanding that it is the source of new strength.”
“Until it's too late to correct their error.”
“Yes.”
She rises on her toes, bringing her face closer to mine. In the pale light filtering through the grove canopy, her eyes show the same hunger that drives my own nature. She wants what I am, especially after witnessing what I am capable of when unleashed.
“I want you to feed from me,” she says. “Now. Here. While the satisfaction is still fresh.”
Feed from her while the joy of successful violence still courses through my system. Take her pain while surrounded by evidence of what protecting her means to me.
“Here?” I ask, gesturing toward the bodies scattered between the trees.
“Here,” she confirms without hesitation. “While you still smell like blood and danger. While I can still see what you really are.”
My mouth finds the pulse in her throat as I breathe in her scent. Honey and copper and arousal, the combination that has become more necessary than air. But also something new—excitement, anticipation, the eager surrender of someone who has found exactly what she needs.
My teeth extend, sharp points pressing against the pulse that beats so frantically beneath her skin.