Chapter 16 Rome
She’s mine!
The table soars through the air before smashing into the wall, breaking into a bunch of pieces with satisfying cracks, but I ignore it as I reach for a chair and do the same with it.
I knew they had taken her even before I’d come to the house and smelled him.
Talian.
It was bad enough that the filthy demon had already put his hands on what is mine once; now, he’s come to my home and taken her as if he has any right to her.
I’d used every last favor I’d acquired over my very long life to ensure that my control over her mind would be unbreakable. The contract made her mine, but it didn’t make her want me. The whole reason she was with them to begin with was because she’d run from me.
At first, I’d enjoyed the chase, but it quickly became clear that this wasn’t going to work.
I hadn’t waited all these years to have someone, only for them to keep her from me.
No, I’d needed her to want to stay, and it had worked.
She was happy to be mine, and I was willing to do anything to keep her. I’d fucked it up the last time, but I wouldn’t again.
The kitchen is just as destroyed as the rest of the house, just as destroyed as I am with her gone.
But despite the way I ache for her, I know she will be back. I’ve ensured she will come back to me, craving me as I crave her.
This time, I didn’t use fear and power to keep her with me; this time, I made her love me and molded her into the perfect woman for me.
It’s been days already, though I don’t know for sure how many. I’d been away, unable to push off my duties to Heaven any longer, despite how desperately I wanted to stay with her.
She is everything to me.
All I’ve worked for, all I dreamed of, and everything I care about.
I’ll be damned to the lowest levels of Hell before I let those bastards take her from me.
They are demons. Sick, twisted beasts of men who have no divinity and nothing to offer.
No, Aerilyn will come home to me, eventually. I just need to make her miss me, and if that means making the pain of my loss a little harder to ignore…well, a little pain is worth it.
Especially if it’s not mine. Though I would happily endure it if needed.
“My little butterfly will be back in her cage soon enough.” I slam the front door shut behind me as I go, leaving the house in a state of chaos that is only a small-scale representation of what I feel without her.
I can’t stomach staying in the home I built for her without her.
The thought alone is enough to keep me going.
Aerilyn will be back, and until then, I have ways to keep myself busy because in order for her to go missing, someone had to know I was gone. Which means someone has been playing both sides of the fence.