Chapter 20
The second Troy’s voice cut off, I was already moving.
I don’t remember leaving Roman’s estate. I don’t remember Draugr shouting after me or Volken swearing at me to think instead of run. All I knew was the bond, Sorcha’s terror slamming through me like a blade to the chest.
It burned. It hollowed me out. Every heartbeat was her scream.
By the time I hit the gates of my estate, I wasn’t a man anymore. I was nothing but rage, nothing but hunger.
The demons had breached. When I screeched to a stop outside the mansion the first one came at me before the car had even stopped moving.
Black eyes, too many teeth, claws dripping with venom.
I tore the door off its hinges as I stepped out, my hand snapping around its throat.
Bones cracked under my grip, black sludge spraying as I ripped its head clean from its shoulders.
Another lunged and I drove my fist straight through its chest, ripping the heart free. Its scream was cut off as I flung the carcass into the stone wall, shattering both.
More. Always more.
The grounds writhed with them, shadows crawling over the earth like a living plague.
They came in waves, sleek black bodies darting under the silver wash of moonlight, their claws catching the glow as though mocking the stars themselves.
Their hisses rolled across the estate, a chorus of venom and hunger, high-pitched and guttural, layered until it felt like the night itself was screaming.
My men were already fighting, steel flashing in arcs that left trails of dark ichor through the air, gunfire snapping like thunderclaps as rounds found targets.
The stench was everywhere, sulphur, rot, old blood burned to ash.
I caught sight of Troy, his blade cleaving through a demon’s chest, Jericho slamming another to the ground and driving his dagger into its skull.
Ivan’s weapon cracked, splitting heads with precise, efficient brutality.
Samson was pulling his blade out of one’s chest a crazy smile spread across his face as he lifted his hand calling another to him.
But for every demon cut down, three more poured from the treeline, shadows twisting into new forms, teeth gnashing, limbs clawing across the ground in unnatural jerks. The grass was slick with black blood, the soil churned into mud under the weight of bodies, demon and vampire alike.
It should’ve looked like chaos but to me it was clarity. They were between me and Sorcha which meant they were already dead.
I ripped one in half, my fingers sinking into its ribcage and tearing it apart as its shriek split the night.
Another transformed from human to demon form before me, before it lunged for my throat, and I caught it midair, slamming it down hard enough the marble path cracked under its body before I stomped through its chest.
More came, a knot of five moving as one, their limbs contorted, their eyes glowing like coal.
I met them head-on, steel and claw, fangs bared.
One swipe of my blade severed a head, another swing carved through two torsos, but claws still raked my arm, searing through muscle.
Pain flared, but I welcomed it, let it fuel me, let it remind me of the price these fuckers owed.
They thought they could breach my gates. They thought they could smell her, touch her air, breathe where she breathed. I would make the ground drink them dry for even trying. I didn’t feel the hilt in my hand anymore. Didn’t feel the sting of the claw marks burning across my arm.
The world narrowed into nothing but motion, claws, fangs, black blood spraying hot against my face.
My own teeth tore into the throat of one before I even realized I’d dropped the blade.
I ripped, shredded, spat its essence to the dirt as another leapt, and I caught it with bare hands, crushing its skull between my palms until bone cracked like brittle glass.
The screams blurred together. They were my roars of absolute rage and their screams. I didn’t know anymore. The only thing I knew was Sorcha’s face behind my eyes, Sorcha’s scent just beyond the storm of rot and sulphur.
I tore one’s arm off and used it as a weapon to bludgeon another into the ground. My fangs punched through flesh, my nails dug trenches through demonic hide. I wasn’t Lucien anymore. I wasn’t strategist, brother or man.
I was violence. I was hunger. I was the storm made flesh. I had turned into the predator that I was.
“Lucien!”
The voice cut through the haze like steel on stone. Deep. Commanding. Draugr.
A hand slammed into my chest, not hard enough to knock me back because at the moment no one could, but it was heavy enough to stop me mid-lunge. His eyes burned, fire meeting fire, and grounding me. Behind him, the fight still raged, my men driving the last of the demons toward the treeline.
“Enough,” Draugr snarled, his face inches from mine. “She needs you whole, not lost to your inner beast.”
I blinked, breath ragged, blood dripping from my fangs. My hands were slick, claws curled into fists that ached to keep tearing. But Draugr’s words struck deeper than claws ever could.
She needs you whole. I staggered back a step, chest heaving, and for the first time since the first scream split the night, I felt the weight of what I’d done.
The ground was carpeted with shredded Demon bodies, the scent of ichor choking the air.
My men were staring, not in fear, not in disgust, but with the wary respect of soldiers who had just watched their commander nearly vanish into the abyss.
Draugr’s hand stayed on my chest. It was solid, steady. “She’s waiting,” he said. No softness, or pity. Just the truth.
Sorcha. Her name broke through the haze like sunlight through smoke. I ripped myself free of the trance, snapping my blade from where it was laying on the ground back into my grip, and turned toward the mansion. Toward her.
I could feel her fear under my skin. The way her panic clawed at me, choking me. She was cornered. And if they got to her…
I snapped.
“Lucien!” Draugr’s voice, rough and sharp, his expression grim. “She’s in the panic room. They didn’t touch her!”
The words barely registered. All I heard was panic room.
Safe. But not safe enough I realized as I approached the front door to see that it was shattered, splintered open. I tore through it, past the bodies of my own men and the corpses of demons that had fallen before them. My boots pounded the marble, my vision nothing but red.
The panic room was hidden, but not from me. Not from the bond. I felt her there, shaking, terrified, her hands pressed against steel.
I slaughtered two demons that had managed to survive and were in the hall with my bare hands, one the spine was ripped out, and the other the skull crushed against the wall until it was nothing but pulp.
Then silence. Only my breath, ragged as I rushed upstairs until I was standing outside the panic room. I pressed my blood-slicked hand against the cold steel, my forehead leaning hard against it. “Sorcha,” I growled, low, guttural, broken. “It’s me. I’m here.”
I punched in the code and heard the lock disengage with a metallic hiss. And then she was there, staring at me, her eyes wide, her lips trembling, her hand flying to her mouth as she saw what I was, what I had become.
A monster painted in blood, but I was her monster.
I reached for her, my hands still dripping black, my chest heaving like I’d just clawed my way out of hell. “You’re safe,” I rasped. My body shook with it, with the truth of it, with the need to see her breathing in front of me.
“You’re mine, Sorcha. No one, no one…will ever fucking touch you.”
And for the first time in hours, I could breathe again.
Her eyes, wide and shimmering, locked on mine. Her small hand lifted, trembling, brushing against my jaw despite the blood still slicking my skin. That touch broke something in me, the violence giving way to raw need to protect.
The door behind us creaked, boots heavy on the marble. I turned instantly, baring fangs, but the sharp silhouette in the doorway was no demon.
Volken.
He stepped in like a shadow given form, his eyes scanning the room, landing on Sorcha, then me. His gaze was steady, but the muscle ticking in his jaw told me the news he carried wasn’t good.
“They didn’t reach Sorcha,” he said first, his voice flat, but beneath it there was a weight, a thread of relief. “Good.”
I tightened my grip on Sorcha, pulling her closer against me, daring him to bring more chaos into this room when she was still trembling in my arms.
Volken’s eyes flicked to me, unreadable as always. “Malakai was sighted tonight.”
The name was a knife across my chest. Every nerve in my body snapped taut, my fangs lengthening again in reflex. “Where?” I demanded.
Volken shook his head once. “We couldn’t hold him. He’s slippery and was gone by the time Viking and I got there.” His gaze sharpened, and then he added, “But he left you a message.”
I stiffened. “Say it.”
“It’s meant to be a present.” Volken’s tone didn’t change, but his words landed like grenades. “Dropped off at the gates with a big red bow tied around his neck.” He paused, letting it settle. “Keller.”
Sorcha gasped against me, her body tensing. My vision blurred.
Volken continued, calm as a surgeon’s cut. “There was a note pinned to him. ‘Don’t have a use for him any longer. You can have him now.’”
The growl that ripped from my throat has Sorcha placing her hand over my heart. My claws dug into my palms until they broke skin. “He dares…”
Sorcha’s hand pressed against my chest, weak but steady. The sound of her voice was soft, but it cut through the rage threatening to devour me whole. “Lucien…”
Her voice was enough to make me bite down on the fury and swallow it, just for her. Keller, Malakai, all of it could burn later. Right now, she was here, alive and breathing.
I lowered my head until my forehead rested against hers. My voice was hoarse when I asked, “How are you feeling, baby?”
Her lashes fluttered, her body trembling but her gaze clear when it met mine. “Shaken and tired. But… safe.”
The words should’ve soothed me. They only made me hold her tighter, because no matter what she said, I knew it wouldn’t be the last time Malakai tried to rip her from me.
But tonight, she was in my arms. And that was enough to keep me from tearing the world apart.