Chapter 19
NINETEEN
I’ve never cared for feelings. Not mine, not anyone else’s. Emotions are the soft meat on the bone of power — easy to tear, easy to rot. I learned a long time ago that only strength matters. Only survival. Only control. Everything else is noise. Distractions for the weak.
So when Deimos pushed himself into her and followed it with a blade, I told myself it meant nothing.
Just another night. Another experiment. Another gamble with a human body.
But when the steel slid into her chest and her breath broke against the dark, something twisted in me.
Not pity. Not horror. Something heavier.
Something hotter. A pulse behind my ribs that felt like rage, felt like hunger.
He only smirked, eyes glittering with that beautiful, reckless madness that always makes me want to break his jaw. He didn’t just want to push her over the edge. He wanted to see what would happen when she fell.
And the worst part? It worked.
She transformed. She survived. She rose out of death and blood and sex as someone new, a new darker thing, and now I can’t decide if I want to drag her back down under me and fuck her until she shatters — or walk away before the soft edge of caring cuts my throat.
Because I do care. And I hate that. I hate it enough to taste it at the back of my tongue like copper.
I leave the house before the walls start to close in.
My boots hit pavement, and then dirt, carrying me toward the one place that still feels real: a bar that smells like ash and spilled whiskey, a hole in the wall full of ghosts and debts and people whose gazes don’t linger.
The door sticks, but I shove it open, stepping into the low murmur of voices and the hiss of a neon sign dying in the corner. Perfect.
I drop onto a stool, and the bartender doesn’t even blink.
He’s seen me before. He knows the rules.
I don’t want conversation. I want oblivion.
He sets the first glass down, clear and mean.
I knock it back. Then another. Then three more.
The liquor burns all the way down, but it’s nothing compared to what’s already burning inside me.
My eyes glow faintly in the dim light; the wood beneath my fingers creaks like it wants to splinter. No one comments. They know better.
I keep drinking. It takes a hell of a lot to make me drunk.
Tonight I’m committed. Shot after shot, the edge softens, but it doesn’t go away.
It never does. The image of her — Lillien — lying there with her dark hair spilled across the slab, blood on her chest, lips parted around a moan that sounded like a prayer — it sticks to me like tar.
It gets under my nails. It fills my lungs.
I shove the last glass away and push off the stool. This isn’t the kind of rage you drown. This is the kind you beat out of something. The kind you carve out with your fists until your knuckles are slick with it. That’s the only prayer I’ve ever known.
I never prayed to God. I never believed in His mercy. My altar was always pain. My psalms were fists, fire, fury. When I wanted salvation, I found it in blood.
Tonight will be no different.
The underground ring is buried beneath a forgotten mechanic’s shop, tucked behind rusted shutters and concrete dust. No signage. No cameras. No rules. Just fists, blood, and bodies thrown into a pit to see who crawls out breathing. It’s perfect.
I duck through the back entrance, brushing past the chains hanging from the ceiling like nooses. The lights above flicker erratically, half of them burnt out, the other half buzzing like a dying insect. The familiar stench of sweat, smoke, and stale fear hits me like a memory I never asked for.
The guy running the board looks up from his clipboard and grins like he’s just seen a ghost that owes him money. “Bastion,” he says, low and amused. “Didn’t think you were still crawling around this shithole.”
“I’ve got steam to blow off.” My voice is flat, heavy. My shoulders crack as I roll them back, already itching for pain. Someone else’s or mine—I don’t care which.
He eyes me, squinting like he’s doing the math on body counts and liability. “You gonna kill anyone?”
“Not unless they ask me to.” I mean it. If they do, I’ll make it fast.
He jerks his chin toward the back. “Get in the cage.”
I strip my hoodie, then my shirt, the fabric sticking slightly to my skin from the sweat that hasn’t had a chance to cool. My boots thud against the metal walkway as I step into the circle. The gate shuts behind me with a clang that echoes in my bones.
They throw me a guy with a solid build—probably a minor shifter, cocky and covered in ink that screams overcompensation. He dances like he thinks I’ll be impressed. I’m not. He lasts three minutes. I let him land a hit just to see if it would wake something in me.
It doesn’t.
The next two are bigger. Meaner. One’s got eyes like a predator, the other a scar running across his cheekbone that probably came from someone just like me.
They fight dirty. I fight worse. One of them gets a lucky shot across my jaw, and I see stars for a second.
I let him feel good about it. Then I break his ribs with a well-placed elbow.
The other one tries to run. Doesn’t get far.
By the time I’m standing over them, blood running down my knuckles, my chest heaving, the crowd roaring behind the cage—I still don’t feel any better. The ache hasn’t left me. The burn is still there, deeper now. It’s like pouring gasoline into a pit. All it did was give it room to grow.
She’s under my skin. And I don’t want her there.
The locker room reeks of iron and testosterone.
The showers hiss and echo down the tiled corridor.
A few groupies loiter near the benches—same as always.
Girls with eyes too wide, too glassy. One of them steps closer, hips swaying like she thinks it’ll do something for me.
She’s curvy, full lips painted red, tits spilling out of her top.
“You were amazing out there,” she purrs, tracing a painted nail down my chest.
I don’t ask her name. She doesn’t deserve it. I grab her wrist and drag her into the corner stall, shoving her against the dented metal of a locker. Her breath hitches like she thinks this is foreplay. Her fingers are already fumbling with my belt, needy and practiced.
I don’t kiss her. I don’t whisper. I don’t even look her in the eyes. I just fuck her. Hard. Fast. Brutal.
She’s wet. Warm. Tight enough to scratch the itch but not fill it. My hips drive into hers with the kind of rhythm that should’ve satisfied me years ago. She cries out, clutches at my shoulders like I’m a savior and not the fucking storm.
But the whole time, all I see is Lillien.
Her arched back, the way she moaned when Deimos marked her, the way her claws tore into the sheets. The wildness in her eyes when the bond snapped into place. She looked hungry. Ravaged. Glorious.
This girl? She’s a placeholder. Just a shell. A puppet with no fire behind her eyes.
I fuck her harder, my grip tightening around the locker above her head as her body shakes beneath me. Her cries get louder. One of her legs slips, but I don’t slow down. I don’t care.
I just want it to end. And then it does.
Abruptly.
Her head slams against the metal. Once. Twice. The sound it makes on the third hit is wet and wrong.
She goes quiet. Still. I finish with a grunt, buried deep inside her, and only then does my mind catch up.
She’s not breathing.
Her head is tilted at an unnatural angle, mouth open like she’s still trying to moan. Blood trickles from the corner of her lips, thick and red and final.
I stare down at her body, limp in my arms, and feel… nothing. Not panic. Not guilt. No remorse or dread.
If anything, I feel calm.
She’s a demon. Low-level filth. The kind that gets off on pain and attention. No one’s going to come looking for her. And if they do, they’ll know better than to ask questions.
But even if she weren’t—
What does it say about me that I don’t care? What does it say that part of me wishes it had been Lillien? That I could’ve broken her this way—brutal, bloody, permanent?
Except I couldn’t. She wouldn’t have let me. She’d claw me to ribbons first.
I pull out, blood and cum still hot on my skin, and zip up without another glance at the girl. I grab my shirt off the bench, shrugging it on as my phone buzzes in my back pocket.
Deimos: Need you. Now.
Of course.
I look back once—just once—at the broken body crumpled in the corner like discarded prey.
Then I walk out, still half-hard, still starving, still furious in a way no cage or cunt can fix.
She’s only been awake a few hours. What kind of damage has our little succubus already done? And why the fuck do I want to watch her burn the rest of the world to ash?