Chapter 24 #2
“You say that because you don’t remember us.” His voice turned so harsh and cutting that even Pyrion shifted uneasily, as if wounded by the sound.
“I know myself. Whether I remembered us or not, I’d never put my family at risk of death for anyone. I’d do whatever I had to, to protect them.”
Anguish flashed across his features. "So, you'd pick the first bad option and marry Thayden instead of me?
" The words erupted from him like a snarl, and something that sounded dangerously close to desperation.
His eyes blazed with fury, but underneath the anger, I caught a flash of something vulnerable.
As if the question had torn itself from some deep, unguarded part of his soul, and he was looking for a trace of the woman who had once promised him forever.
I stared at him, completely stunned, my mouth falling open in shock.
Marriage? To him?
The possibility had never even crossed my mind, and yet here he was, throwing it at me like a weapon forged from his own pain.
My mind reeled. The journal mentioned love, devotion, even belonging to each other. But marriage? This was the first mention of it.
"Marriage? Wolfe," I breathed, my voice barely audible over the relentless pounding of my heart.
For a moment, panic flickered across his features, as if he'd revealed far more than he'd intended. His jaw tightened, and he looked like he was warring with himself, caught between retreating behind his walls and pressing forward into dangerous territory.
Then his expression hardened with resolve, and he stepped closer, closing the distance between us until the heat radiating from his skin caressed mine.
He stared back at me, unblinking. "Yes, marriage." The rough whisper of his voice sent shivers down my spine.
“I…” The bravado drained from me, and I didn’t know what to say.
“Marriage,” he repeated, his voice rough with something he no longer bothered to hide. “I chose you knowing exactly what it would cost me.”
His eyes darkened, molten in the moonlight.
The air between us thickened.
Wolfe took a slow step toward me, then another, each movement deliberate, each movement predatory. Like the devil circling prey, patient and certain of the outcome.
And the look in his eyes… it was raw and feral, hungry and possessive.
Heat flared in my belly, low and treacherous. I had to fight to keep myself upright.
“I did not bind my soul to you because I hoped you’d stay,” he murmured. “I did it because I decided you would. Even if you never loved me again.”
The air stilled inside my lungs, trapped between fear and something far more dangerous.
I held my ground at first, mesmerized by the intensity burning in his gaze. But then he drew closer, so close the heat of him burned my skin.
A slow smile curved his lips. A real smile this time, revealing long, sharp canines that gleamed like ivory daggers in the moonlight. Then his expression shifted.
A flash of darkness, dark as pitch, rippled across his features, and for just an instant, his face became something else entirely: angular planes turned skeletal, blue eyes becoming hollow voids that swallowed the light.
The Deathwalker.
The monster.
The shadows around him came alive, writhing and coiling as they reached out to caress his form.
Gods, he was terrifyingly beautiful in the way that deadly things often were, but my survival instinct finally kicked in, and I took a step back.
“You’re afraid of me,” he rasped, smile widening.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“Yes, mage. But you still look at me like you want me to break you.”
Break me?
My pulse hammered in places I didn’t want to think about, and I hated how the dark promise made my body respond.
Was that it?
The trigger that made me fall for him?
That I liked his darkness, and I wanted him to break me?
The space beyond the hollow inside my chest hummed with the thought, and my knees threatened to give out beneath me.
I’d called him my Hades in my journal several times. I was starting to see why.
As if the devil could read my thoughts, he took one more step closer, eyes fixed on me.
I resumed my retreat, and he matched me step for step with that inhuman grace, never breaking eye contact. My recoil ended abruptly when my back hit the rough bark of a tree. His shadows followed him, surrounding us both until we existed in our own pocket of darkness.
He braced one hand against the bark beside my head, caging me in, while those burning eyes held mine captive.
“Wolfe…”
"Shhh," he whispered, his breath tangling with mine.
With his free hand, he cupped my jaw and traced along my jawline with the tip of his thumb.
“I realized something a long time ago.” The skeletal features flickered again, shifting from bone to flesh.
“You were never meant to pass through my life, Elariya Grayson. You were always meant to be mine. Mine whether you remembered it or not. You belong to me.”
“How can you be okay with claiming me when I have no memory of you?” I stuttered.
“You stepped into my darkness once,” he said, voice low and reverent. “All I need to do is remind you.” His voice whispered over my skin, spreading heat from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
“Remind… me?”
He pressed his powerful body against mine, moved his face until our lips were mere inches apart, and dragged his thumb in a slow, devastating caress down the sensitive slope of my neck.
My body betrayed me instantly, melting against him even as my mind screamed protests. Every nerve ending came alive under his touch, and I hated how perfectly I fit against him.
"Tell me you feel nothing when I touch you like this.” His lips brushed against mine, and his canines lengthened. Arousal. It meant arousal. “Tell me your body doesn't recognize mine, even if you don’t remember me.”
I couldn’t tell him anything.
If I said no, it would be a lie.
If I said yes, I was accepting defeat.
Shivers ran through me, and though I tried to steel myself, my body, mind, heart, and soul had already surrendered. Being this close to him burned away every rational thought.
“Can’t do it, can you?” He brushed his lips over mine again. “You can hate me, fight me, resist me all you want, but you can’t change what we are. We are… inevitable.”
His thumb paused at my throat, right over my pulse. His gaze drifted to my mouth slowly, as if he were committing the sight of it to memory.
Then his hand slid to the back of my neck and he kissed me, his mouth crashing into mine like he was taking back something that had always been his.
My body answered like it had been waiting, and it wouldn’t allow me to stop him.
His mouth was firm and unyielding, a claiming rather than a quest, reminding my body of a truth it had never truly forgotten. Heat flared sharp and consuming, and my breath shattered against his lips.
I should have pushed him away. I should have remembered everything that stood between us.
That he was keeping me captive.
That I was leaving.
That this could never be.
Instead, I kissed him back like I’d been starving, and my fingers curled into his hair.
A low sound tore from his chest at the contact, rough and broken, and the kiss deepened.
My Hades kissed me like he was relearning me, like every brush of his mouth was a vow carved into skin and bone. His thumb pressed lightly into my pulse, feeling the way my heart betrayed me, how it raced for him.
And, Gods, my body answered.
I tilted into him without thinking, my lips parting, my breath tangling with his as something old and familiar unfurled inside me.
Blessed Mother, the hollow inside my chest burned, not with the emptiness I’d grown used to but with recognition.
Then the thunderous beat of massive wings shattered the moment like glass.
Wolfe's head snapped up instantly, pulling out of the kiss, leaving my lips burning.
Hedion descended from the star-scattered sky in a rush of wind, returning from his scout. He landed next to Pyrion and roared when he saw me, then bowed deeply like Pyrion had.
Wolfe looked back at me, his gaze assessing my trembling form.
“Still think you feel nothing, Ziyka?” he murmured, his voice still rough from our kiss.
“I…I’m going to bed.” I couldn’t say any more than that. I didn’t want to.
I worried that whatever I said would betray me further.
But I didn’t need to say anything else.
He got his answer.
It was written all over me.
A win for him. A loss for me.
I stepped out of his grasp and darted for my books. I grabbed them and left, never looking back. Not once.
His gaze followed me right through the woods.
But I kept going.
That was exactly what I had to do tomorrow.
Keep going.
And don’t look back.