Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
LEVIATHAN
It’s the music that wakes me. That familiar haunting tune that echoes through the house at odd hours of the night.
It’s one of my brothers, that I know, but we’ve all come to the unspoken agreement that none of us would venture out during the dark to determine who it is. We all have demons of our pasts that try to break free every second, and while sometimes we encourage them to roar, we also know when to let them rest.
Through the night, I’ve managed to wrap myself around Aiden’s sleeping form, my head tucked under his chin and my leg thrown across his hip, but he’s still not close enough. I press my nose against his chest, breathing him in, loving how he smells just like vanilla cookies. I’ve never been one for sweet smells, but on Aiden, they seem entirely welcome.
My cock thinks so too. It does what it’s done since I’ve met Aiden, thickening to a painful ache as I rub his hip. I can’t believe there was a point in time where I found sex disgusting. With Aiden, I never want to stop. I want to keep him plugged up with my cock and cum forever just to know he’s been tainted and torn apart by my hand.
I want to lick him. All the time. I never want to stop being a part of him or staking my claim, like some wild animal marking his territory in the wilderness. I won’t be satisfied until someone sees him and just smells me on him.
“Leviathan.”
I shut my eyes with a groan. I don’t know what the fuck Asi wants right now, but there’s no way in hell I’m getting out of this bed and answering the door to see what it is. I close my eyes, rubbing myself against my little lamb, and growl when Asi has the fucking audacity to knock. He knocks and knocks and knocks until Aiden starts to stir.
Shit .
“Levi?” Aiden mumbles, eyes still closed as he wiggles underneath me.
I place a hand on his chest to stop his movements and brush a kiss on his forehead. “Sleep.”
I get up reluctantly and my heart does this unusual twitch when Aiden’s hand shoots out and wraps around my bicep.
“Where are you going?” he slurs, sounding drunk as he tries to pull me back down. “Don’t leave.”
That same twitching heart speeds up at his words. A hot flush washes down me, but it’s not the same type of scorching heat I feel when we fuck. It’s something… different. Not as scalding— warm —and it makes me want to sit him on my lap and feed him cookies.
I clear my throat and move his hand back down on the bed. “I’ll only be a second.”
He grunts in displeasure, his nose wrinkling as if he’s entirely offended, and it’s adorable.
Adorable?
I get up quickly, snagging a pair of shorts from the floor. I spot the cat sitting in the corner of the room on top of an old pile of dirty clothes. To my confusion, I go over and pick him up, bringing him to Aiden’s sleeping figure. Fuck, because…
I shake my head and step away from the bed. While I was cleaning Aiden’s cum and piss off him, I noticed that he’d cut his foot, so all the glass shards are now in a neat little pile by the corner of the room, making it easy for me to walk toward the door. I unlock it and only open it a crack, mindful that Aiden’s naked and would be mortified if someone saw him like that, which is fucking ridiculous, but whatever.
Asi stands with his hands crossed over his chest, looking exceedingly bored, but also a touch irritated that he’s here. “You’re being summoned.”
“I’m busy,” I grunt, wanting nothing more than to go back to bed and not even sleep, just watch Aiden until the sun comes up. “What do you want?”
“I just told you,” he says, rolling his eyes when I just growl at him. “Jesus, you’ve turned into an animal. Just get your ass downstairs in five minutes or Mammon’s going to send Gore up here to get you.”
While I’m not scared of any of my brothers, and his threat is mild compared to what we’ve said to each other before, I have little interest in trying to fend off Gore’s batshit insane lock-picking skills. I wouldn’t even put it past him to scale up the trellis and climb through the bolted window.
With one last look at Aiden, I step out and close the door behind me, following Asi down the stairs. He leads me past the living room into the actual space we normally gather in. On the surface, everything needs to seem pristine and ordinary, but in the locked basement, we have our escape.
Some would call it a lair but that’s just being dramatic. It’s just like any other room, except the decor is a bit more… questionable. Instead of pretty and bland paintings on the walls, we have an assortment of weapons that Gore makes during his free time. For Bel, there’s a bunch of weird kinky shit that only he understands. He likes looking at them, only looking, because we’ve forbidden him from ever using any of it in our presence. Well, Gore hasn’t, but he’s a freak too.
Once Asi and I make our way down there, I see that all our brothers are sitting on the oversized leather couch that rests in a circle in the middle of the room.
And in the middle of the couch is a chair.
Fuck. No.
“Nope,” Asi says, grabbing onto my shoulders when I try to spin on my heels. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t need this!” I shout, trying to kick him away and cursing when Gore hops up and races to help him. “Put me down.”
“Do we have to tie you up?” Mammon asks, seriously considering it if the rope in Bel’s hands is anything to go by.
“ Pleaaaaase , Daddy,” Bel whines, on his knees next to Mammon, shaking his shoulder like an over enthusiastic poodle just as he hands him the rope. “I just learned a new knot!”
“Leviathan will behave,” Mammon says. He narrows his eyes at me as his fingers clench and unclench around the rope. “Won’t you?”
I will because I don’t have a choice. I could fight them all off me if I needed to, probably lose a few teeth in the process, but it’d be a fair fight. However, a fleeting thought reminds me that Aiden’s upstairs. For some reason, that makes me a lot more cooperative than I normally would be.
Because I fucking hate interventions.
I shrug Asi and Gore off and take a seat in the center of the room. I’m not unfamiliar with how this goes. We’ve all had to intervene once or twice when things got a little out of hand with one of us. They’ve ranged from simple things when we were children about picking up our clothes to real adulthood problems like when Bel locked himself away for a week and did nothing but watch porn.
“Let’s get this over with,” I huff, waiting for one of them to start. When they all look at Mammon who stays silent, I roll my eyes. “If there isn’t anything pressing, Aiden’s upstairs.”
“This is about him.”
Mammon’s words make my hackles rise. “How?”
“You’re acting different,” Asi starts, settling down beside Gore. “More…”
“Temperamental?”
“Moody?”
“Batshit?”
Asi levels Gore and Bel with a pointed look. “Sure. Let’s put it that way.”
“No. Let’s put it this way.” Mammon holds up a hand to silence our brothers. “You’ve been irresponsible.”
I don’t purposefully shrink in my seat but that’s one of the lowest blows Mammon could have delivered. Since we were brought together as princes, our life has been contained and dependent on following the strict set of rules laid out for us. We do nothing without Master’s approval. We do everything that Master asks of us. More and more, it’s been Mammon speaking through him, but the rules still apply.
Kill when you're told. Torture when instructed. Be silent when needed.
“Is this about that bitch?” I ask, referring to Aiden’s thankfully deceased ex-girlfriend. “It was one slip and I received my punishment for it.”
“It’s more than that,” Mammon insists, pinching the bridge of his nose. “For fuck’s sake, you’re coddling the bounty.”
“His name is Aiden,” I bark out.
“And that’s the point!” Mammon opens his mouth to say more but bites his tongue. He’s always been a master of control in a way none of those could ever dream of achieving. His nostrils flare as he takes a settling breath and runs his hand across his jaw. “He’s just a bounty, Leviathan, and you’re doing things you normally wouldn’t do with him.”
I throw my hands in the air. “I don’t get it. Asi befriends his bounties, Bel fucks them, Gore literally plays with them, and I’m the one that’s doing something wrong?”
“Well…” Gore scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “I don’t feed my bounties cupcakes.”
“And I don’t bring them into our home,” Bel adds with an apologetic shrug. “I also don’t steal their pets.”
“Or buy them pink knitting kits to make them happy,” Asi chimes in.
“You went to his house today, didn’t you?” Mammon asks, shaking his head. “You know to never go back to the scene of a crime unless Master has specifically allowed it.”
“He needed clothes,” I grit out. “And thanks to you, he needs new glasses now too.”
“Why?”
I rear my head back. “Why, what?”
“Why does he need new glasses?”
I look at Mammon like he’s an idiot. “To see?”
“He’ll be dead in a month, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“I…” But there’s nothing I can say to that. I draw a blank. At any point in time, I could take Aiden’s life. I don’t have to wait until the solstice ceremony to do it, and I haven’t before. Going through all this effort of painting a pig for slaughter is meaningless when the shot ends up in its head, nonetheless.
NO.
My skin starts to itch. Feeling discomfort, I shift in my seat, the nerves in my legs starting to go numb. My fingers find their way to my collar, tugging at it as my mind starts to thrash restlessly, everything firing at lightning speed. Everything coated in a red haze, a low rumbling emitting from the darkness, a?—
“You’re doing that more often too,” Gore says softly with a look of… Can I call it concern? “You never used to wear your collar for more than a few hours at a time.”
“It helps me,” I say through a clenched jaw, finding words harder and harder to articulate.
Asi nods as he leans forward. “Helps you with what, Leviathan?”
“It…keeps me…me in control,” I stutter out, tugging at my collar, scratching at my arms, tapping my foot. “So I d-don’t?—”
“Lose it?” Mammon sighs deeply, the years showing on him as he stands and reaches for the clasp of the collar. When I slap his hand away, he frowns. “What are you afraid is going to happen if you take it off?”
I’ll kill him.
I know I will.
If I were to take off my collar, there’d be nothing standing in the way of Aiden and the sharp end of my knife. Or the hard constraints of my hands. Or the other numerous ways I’ve pictured spilling his blood and watching it pool at my feet. I’d fucking drown in it, tear him apart until there was nothing left, and add him to my collection of kills that sit prettily on my wall.
Why does a thought that used to bring me such bliss—the idea of keeping him treasured in death—now make me hesitate?
“I think our point has been made,” Mammon says after a minute of watching me squirm. “He goes, Leviathan.”
“The sooner the better,” Asi adds in, standing as well. “Your experiment in being human is over.”
“You know we’re with you, but this has to stop,” Bel says. “It’s not good for you.”
“Things will be better like they were before,” Gore chips in cheerily, patting my shoulder. “You’ll see.”
All I do is nod. Nod because they’re right. This… what I feel … Aiden is…
I nod. Like a trained dog. Like Hades’ Hellhound. Like an obedient servant.
I’ll kill him because I have to. I’ll kill him because a sacrifice is required. I’ll kill him because I want to.
They all file out of the basement one at a time, each giving me one last parting word that does little to quell the rage bubbling within me. Rage at them and at Aiden and at myself. Fury because I’ve fallen prey for a bounty’s special allure that made him different.
But when I look up and see Aiden’s glasses, put together messily with duct tape, resting on the couch…
I take them anyway.