Chapter 17 Into the Ice
Into the Ice
Damon
Rut. It was the one thing all Alphas were defined by, no matter their House, no matter their nature. It was possibly one of the few things House Hades had ever learned to fear.
I was no different.
The messengers were gone, but the ghost of their presence clung to the air in the entrance hall. Normally, the intrusion would have merely irritated me. But something else filled my lungs with each breath, something that fractured my control.
Cora. Her scent had changed during the confrontation, her fear mingling with a deeper, more primal response. The combination clawed at the last threads of my restraint.
I tightened my hold on the column, and the crystalline structure of the stone groaned and fractured under the pressure.
A coldness that had nothing to do with temperature radiated from my skin, frosting the polished surface of the floo.
It spread not as a color, but as an absence of it, a void that left the air tasting of nothingness.
The intricate gold inlays of the House Hades crest seemed to recoil, their metallic sheen dulling as if tarnished by corrosive age.
In the high ceiling, the chandeliers began to vibrate, emitting a low, discordant hum.
The light wavered, bending and warping at the edges of my vision, struggling against a physical pressure in the room.
My security team fidgeted, the subtle scrape of their boots on the marble sounding like a landslide in the ringing silence. A sharp, coppery spike of adrenaline tinged their sweat, a temptation to the predator awakening in my blood.
Elara stepped forward, her expression grim. “Everyone out. Now.”
A guard hesitated, his uncertainty a palpable wave in the air. “Madam, the perimeter—”
“Do as she says,” I growled, a guttural sound that tore something loose in my chest. The staff retreated without question, leaving only Elara, Cora, and myself in the vast hall.
“This isn’t right, Damon,” Elara said, scanning me from head to toe with concerned eyes. “Your rut cycle wasn’t due for weeks.”
“Something accelerated it,” I shot back between gritted teeth. The Council summons. The confrontation. Her. “I can control it.”
Even to my own ears, my lie didn’t sound convincing. Elara didn’t let me get away with it. “Not here. Not like this,” she insisted, already moving toward the corridor leading to the private wing. “Master suite. Now.”
It would have been stupid to dig my heels in. She was right, and we both knew it.
As we left the foyer, heat built beneath my skin, sweat beading on my forehead despite the deepening cold. Each step weighed on me, making me feel like a particularly frail version of Atlas. It was only Cora’s lingering presence that kept me going.
The Blackwood portraits on the walls seemed to follow our progress, their eyes lost in deep shadow. My connection to the Shadow Realm screamed, as if my ancestors were reaching out to me.
Every sound amplified beyond reason. The whisper of Cora’s clothing, Elara’s controlled breathing, the shifts in air pressure. My vision sharpened until I saw details in the deepest corners that should have remained hidden.
Elara shoved the doors to the master suite open, the heavy wood groaning.
The familiar space was already a whirlwind of activity.
Servants moved with a hushed efficiency that grated on my raw nerves.
The bathroom door stood open, the massive stone bath already filling with water and ice.
The bedroom walls seemed to press inward, the familiar space of the suite suddenly suffocating.
Cora watched the frantic preparations, her face increasingly pale. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice a fragile thread in the charged air.
“Ice bath,” Elara explained without looking up from the swirling water. “A traditional House Hades method for rut management.”
“That’s torture,” Cora croaked out, her eyes wide with horror. “The temperature shock… It could kill someone.”
“He’s not just anyone,” Elara said, gesturing for more ice. “He’s a House Hades Alpha in rut. The cold is the only thing that can anchor him. Trust me.”
Cora grimaced, but didn’t protest further. She didn’t have much of a choice. “Assuming this works… How long will the effects last?”
“It varies. Enough for the Council, if we’re lucky.”
A vague answer, but it was the only one we had. Our ruts ran hotter than those of the other houses, and my recent reaction was unprecedented. At this point, there was no telling what would happen.
Another surge of heat ripped through me, and the light from the fixtures above us died completely. The servants quickened their pace, exchanging nervous glances as they finished. The massive stone bath was nearly full now, ice catching the remaining light.
“Everyone out once the bath is prepared,” Elara ordered, checking the water temperature.
The servants fled, but Elara wasn’t so easily dissuaded. “I’m not going anywhere, cousin. This can be dangerous. You have to be monitored.”
“And I will be. But not by you.”
The command vibrated from my chest, and the darkness on the floor flowed toward Cora. Not threatening, but claiming. “She stays. You go.”
Elara’s gaze traveled from Cora and me. She still had doubts. How could she not? But she was an Alpha in her own right, and she knew that right now, the last thing I needed was for someone to challenge me in my own territory.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, she gave a single, sharp nod. Without a word, she backed out of the room. The door shut behind her with a decisive click.
The fire in my blood roared in the sudden silence, clawing for purchase. I tore my clothes off, the fabric an agony against my oversensitive skin, and dropped them to the floor.
Across the room, Cora turned away, giving me a measure of privacy. But I could feel her watching, could sense the weight of her stare on my back. It was an intimacy more potent than any touch.
My first step into the bath was a violent shock, but I forced myself to endure it. I submerged myself completely, gripping the stone edges as every muscle in my body seized. The void reached for me, the same devouring cold that had taken my father.
For several moments, pain obliterated everything. My body convulsed, a battleground between the fire in my blood and the icy water. Then, through the agony, a sliver of clarity returned. The chaotic shadows in the room stabilized, the roar of the void receding into quieter whispers.
Water sloshed against the bath’s rim, the sound unnaturally loud. Ice chunks floated around me, melting faster than they should have, steam rising from my skin in ghostly trails.
Cora approached cautiously, her scent sharp with a terrified compassion a thousand times more dangerous than her anger. “Damon, are you sure this is wise? It looks like it’s killing you.”
“It’s keeping me sane.” The admission felt like swallowing glass. Talking was a lifeline, each word a link in a chain holding me to the man, not the beast. “But your voice too… it helps. Gives me something to focus on.”
She knelt beside the bath and looked from my face to my hands, clenched white-knuckled on the bath. “What is it you’re fighting so hard against?”
I had no desire to give voice to the monster clawing at the inside of my skull.
But maybe… After everything that had happened, she deserved an explanation.
“The rut… it’s not just heat. It’s hunger.
It wants… to claim. To mark. To finish what we started.
” I met her eyes, forcing her to see the agonizing truth.
“The Alpha inside me wants to mark you. Fully. And the fact that I can’t… ”
It hurt. Especially now, with the rut burning through my veins. It probably hurt just as much as her anomalous heat, if not more. And Cora was too clever to miss that, to not understand what I couldn’t say out loud.
“I see,” she whispered. She pushed herself to her feet, taking a deliberate step back. “Then I’m a liability here. I’m making it worse for you. Elara should be the one watching you. I’ll go get her.”
She was being logical. She was trying to help. But the beast didn’t understand logic. It only understood her retreat as abandonment. A primal terror I hadn’t felt since my father was consumed flooded my system.
Don’t go. Don’t leave me in this. Alone. A child’s plea echoed from the heart of the monster inside me. “Stay. Please.”
But she was already turning for the door, her resolve a fresh wound.
I didn’t think. I erupted.
At the back of my mind, Hades laughed. He’d dragged his unwilling queen into the world he knew. How could I do anything different?
I launched myself from the bath in a spray of ice and water, the frigid shock nothing compared to the searing panic of her retreat. The bathroom floor cascaded with the overflow as my arms locked around her waist.
The water swallowed her startled cry. I pulled her against my chest, ice chunks bobbing around us.
Her clothes soaked through in an instant, clinging to every curve, the thin fabric no barrier at all.
My shadows flared to life, wrapping around her to shield her from the cold that would’ve killed her.
“Let me go! You’re not thinking clearly—” She tried to push me away, a useless battle against the unyielding reality of my strength.
A single, frantic command beat against the inside of my skull. It spilled from my lips, impossible to contain. “I can’t,” I growled. The raw confession stripped away every other lie I might have tried to say.
“This is exactly why I needed distance! Your control is—”
“Still here. As long as you are.”
I focused my will into the shadows, forcing my own body heat to go to her. It was a desperate, silent plea made with the very power she feared, and it worked beautifully. Just like I’d known it would.
The lights flickered and died, plunging the room into a near-total blackness. Her struggles subsided as the truth of the situation settled over her. She was trapped in my underworld, but she was also safe. My Persephone.
A long moment passed as she processed what was happening. Or rather, what wasn’t. “It doesn’t hurt,” she whispered. “The ice… you’re shielding me, aren’t you?”
“I always will.”
It was a promise she shouldn’t have believed. Maybe on some level, she didn’t, just like she hadn’t before she’d tried to run away. I felt her relax slightly, just a fraction, anyway. “Damon… This is taking everything you have, isn’t it?” she murmured. “Just to keep me safe like this.”
“Yes.”
She absorbed that, the weight of my effort. “Then how can you face the Council tomorrow? Alexander will provoke you. They all will. If protecting me from this ritual is so hard… How will you have any strength left to fight them?”
Her question wasn’t a challenge to my control, but a fear for its limits. She understood the cost, understood what we’d soon be facing.
“Because in here,” I said, tightening my arms around her, “I’m fighting to protect you from myself.” I looked down at the top of her head, at the dark, wet strands of hair clinging to her scalp. “Out there, I’ll be fighting to protect you from them. It’s not the same battle.”
The words hung in the air between us, more real than the stone walls, more binding than the summons.
“So I’m still just a possession to protect,” she said, her question brushing against my chest, barely a whisper.
“You were,” I admitted, the words raw and unfamiliar. “But you’ve become something more.”
Her wet hair pressed against my chest, and I felt her heartbeat begin to match the rhythm of my own. “More what?”
I had no words for it. The concept felt too new, too fragile to be named. My arms held her, my power protected her, my will kept her. We had entered this room as captor and captive. Whatever we were now, adrift in the icy darkness, neither of us was prepared to say.