Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
The afternoon air is crisp against my skin, cooling the heat still simmering in my veins.
It should calm me, but it doesn’t. The city below glitters and moves and is utterly indifferent to the chaos that hums inside my chest. Deimos and Cassiel still aren’t back.
I tell myself not to worry, but the edges of my mind fray anyway, little teeth at the hem of thought picking at me until I look hollow.
Bastion must sense it.
“Come on, Hellcat.” He nudges my shoulder, steering me away from the balcony railing. “You’re getting that pinched little look on your face. Let’s do something about it.”
I arch a brow. “Like what?”
“You’re getting antsy. I say we work off some of that energy.” He points to the open space on the balcony, a page of concrete with room to move. “Come on. I’m gonna train you.”
I cross my arms. “Train me?”
“You’re not prey anymore.” His golden eyes gleam under the city lights, as dangerous as a promise. “You’re a predator now. You should act like it.”
I smirk because the thought makes the tightness slacken for half a breath. “I do feel like a predator. Even if I’m feeling a little less ‘murdery’ than before.”
Bastion chuckles. “That’s because you’re bonded to Deimos now.”
I frown. “And that means… what?”
“Most newborn succubi struggle with control. The hunger makes them reckless.” He tilts his head, studying me like he is cataloguing prey and potential.
“But you—” He searches my face. “You bonded with an incubus as strong and as old as Deimos. That means your powers will settle faster. You won’t feel the same desperate, clawing hunger that others would. ”
The words land like a hand on my shoulder. I roll my shoulders, letting them sink in. The need is still there, coiled inside me like a live thing. It prowls under my ribs, breath hot against my spine. But it is not unbearable. Not like it was the first night.
Still, I bristle at the idea that Deimos is the only reason I hold it at bay. Some small, stubborn part of me wants to claim that control as mine.
“Good,” I say. “That means I can kick your ass without worrying about losing control.”
He barks out a laugh, the sound low and pleased. “That’s the spirit, Hellcat. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
We start slow. The first punch is a practice, a chime of motion. I throw it and Bastion slips past, a smirk tugging at his mouth.
“You keep moving like a human,” he taunts. “You’re faster than that. Stronger than that. Stop holding back.”
The sting in his words is sharp. I grit my teeth and pivot to strike again. He catches my wrist, twisting me until my arm is behind my back and my breath spikes.
I growl and wrench against him.
“Better,” he muses, releasing the hold. “But predictable.”
I whirl and aim a kick, clean and fast. He sidesteps, effortless as always.
Fucking show-off.
He is testing me. Not just my body, but the margin where hesitation sits. He pokes at every reflex I have, waiting to see which one fractures.
“Come on, Hellcat. Where’s that rage?”
I narrow my eyes. “You want me to be angry?”
“I want you to stop thinking so much. Just act.”
Fine.
I let thought go. I move like a thing that does not plan consequences. I use speed, not strength, and it surprises him. He shifts to block, but I twist at the last heartbeat and my leg sweeps beneath him. He stumbles, one second of imbalance. That is all I need.
I grin. “Gotcha.”
Bastion rights himself before he hits stone, but the gold in his eyes flashes a smile. “Not bad,” he rumbles. “Maybe there’s a fighter in you after all.”
The praise is a spark. Something inside me answers.
A warmth, faint at first, unfurls from my center.
It is slow and deliberate, like a creature waking and stretching inside the hollows of me.
Power rolls through me like fire under skin, licking along my limbs until the air around me thickens.
It hums with a dark current I have not fully learned to name.
Sound sharpens. Colors sharpen. The world cuts itself into edges and I am a blade.
I bare my teeth without thinking. A feral sound bubbles up from my ribs. Bastion moves again, faster than I expect, aiming to pin me the way he always does, but this time I do not only react.
I shift.
A snarl rips free of me, raw and animal. Heat roars down my spine like blood. For a heartbeat my hands blur into claws, something primally shaped and terrible, before the image recedes and the world rights itself. I smash into him mid-motion and the impact sends him down.
For the first time, Bastion falls.
He hits the stone floor with a heavy, satisfied sound.
I am on him in an instant, straddling his hips, my fingers pressing into his chest to keep myself anchored.
My breath comes in hard, ragged pulls. His golden eyes widen not with fear and not with surprise, but with a darker thing. Something pleased. Something hungry.
“Well, fuck,” he breathes.
I blink as heat rushes through me. His tone is different, yes, but it carries admiration threaded with a desire I did not expect.
I open my mouth to say something, to gloat or to mock, and then pain coils at my temples. A pressure, low and grinding, forces its way inward. Something in me shifts, the sensation urgent and ancient. My skull does not split. It changes. The world tilts in a new key.
I stagger and my hand flies to my head. I turn toward the glass doors and my reflection stares back, stranger and truer.
Horns.
They are small, not the massive wicked curves of a lord of the deep, but they are sleek and black and cruel as a blade. Two dark crescents rise from my temples, sharp and living. I reach up, trembling fingers brushing over them. Heat shivers beneath my skin. They are alive. Mine.
A grin spreads across my face that feels a little like a threat. “Well, look at that.” The sound of my own voice is different now, threaded with a new note I do not yet own.
Bastion’s hands find my hips, fingers digging in as his cock stirs beneath me. “I’d say that was a successful first transformation,” he says, amused and approving.
“I don’t feel any different,” I say, because I want to measure the change with something besides marvel.
“You just took me down. I’d say that’s different,” he replies. His voice is a warm blade. His eyes track my movements like a man cataloguing prey and promise.
A purr rises in my throat, low and pleased and not entirely human. It surprises me with its depth. Bastion tightens his grip as if he, too, feels the new radius of threat and desire around me.
I roll my hips, a small, testing motion, and his breath catches. A growl threads his chest. The way he watches is not fear. It is hunger laced with the willingness to be eaten.
I lean down until our noses nearly touch, the space between us alive and electric. “Think I deserve a reward?” I murmur.
His eyes darken, slow and hungry. “What kind of reward?”
I let my nails trail lightly down his chest. The motion is casual and wicked, and my voice is flat with honesty. “A woman. For me to play with.”
His eyebrows lift. “That’s what you want, Hellcat?”
I shrug, letting the edge of my smile sharpen. “Maybe. I liked kissing that girl. Women are soft. They taste sweet. And they listen better than men.”
A grin splits his face. “That so?”
“Yes.”
His thumb strokes my thigh in a slow, lazy motion that promises later debts. “We’ll see, then.”
Even as I sit there, straddling him, feeling the buzz of new horns and ancient appetite, there is a fierce new clarity.
My skin hums; something inside stretches awake and reaches.
The city hums below us, oblivious. Bastion watches me like a man about to be devoured, not with dread but with an eager hunger that makes my pulse quicken.
I do not know what I will become. I only know what I am capable of now. I am not scared. I am not sorry. I am hungry. I am budding into something sharp and beautiful and dangerous, and I would kill to protect it.