25. The Devourer #2
“Dev!!!” She screams my name just the way she has in all of my dirty dreams about her as I leap through the mist with the hot breath of the giant, toothed worm on my back.
Fuck yes. Made it.
As soon as we’re inside, I stop and turn to look back, satisfied pride sliding over my shoulders like an overcoat.
The beast that was chasing us roars, at least thirty feet tall and four feet in circumference.
His pale, mucus-coated skin glimmers like snot in the fading light, which is how I’m able to decipher this creature is a male.
Women are usually green. He’s only a dumb brute, but he’s smart enough to stay behind the mist’s barrier, which puts out a sulfur-like scent so that even blind monsters know better than to cross it.
He lashes his body back and forth like a whip for a moment before turning and disappearing back under the misshapen asphalt. I’ve caught my breath by the time my little kitten has recovered enough to speak.
“Too scared to fight him?” she needles.
Not even a word of thanks. But that’s to be expected at this point. Aliana isn’t a sweet-nothings sort of girl. I’d swear she were a blood-drinker if I didn’t know how utterly human she actually is.
“Yes. I’m cowering. He looks like a giant penis, and that makes me feel incompetent.” I roll my eyes as I wrench open the wrought-iron gate and tromp across the lawn towards my front door.
“Good to know that something can deflate that ego of yours.” She won’t stop. And I’ve hit my limit.
“What the fuck is your problem with me?” I growl, smashing the front door open so hard that it swings right into the wall. The smash echoes across the silver, metallic statues scattered around the front room. Something about her statement dives right underneath my skin like a poisonous dart.
I put her down on her own two feet. If she’s going to be such a little brat, she can walk the rest of the way to her room.
Aliana immediately crosses her arms and glares up at me, those pouty red lips of hers pursed. “My problem is you think you can own me.”
“Your problem is that you don’t like reality. Monsters own humans. That’s reality.”
“It’s fucking insane. It’s wrong! Gahhh!” She lifts her hands and squeezes the air, miming as if she were strangling me.
I bet if she put those tiny hands around my neck it would only feel good. But she’s vibrating with fury.
“I never said it was right,” I return in a low voice. “Only that it’s how the world works right now.”
“LIAR!” she screeches and turns, feral anger coursing through her and filling the air around us as she streaks away from me. Not down the hallway towards her room, but right for my studio.
She yanks the door open and marches inside, probably stomping off to find a corner to pout in.
I take a deep breath and shift out of my huge wolf form, because if my mate wants to fight, it will be easier for me to be gentle if my palms aren’t the size of her face. I won’t accidentally hurt her then.
When I’ve shrunk from twelve feet back to my normal, seven-foot height, and my face is nearly human again—only my horns, red eyes, and wolf-like tail still marking me as otherworldly—I glance down at my nudity.
I consider calling for a servant to bring me something so I don’t make her uncomfortable, but then I hear the clatter of canvases hitting the floor.
Is she destroying my studio?
NO.
Un-fucking-acceptable.
I rush toward her with single-minded intent. I’m going to yank that little vixen over my knee and spank her.
But when I reach the doorway of my studio, I freeze. My wooden easel has been knocked over onto its side. My carefully arranged studio lights have been disturbed. The paint splatter on the floor from the other day when Creep infiltrated my home like a fucking bastard reminds me why I hate him.
But I don’t see any of it. My gaze is locked only on Aliana. Because she’s across the room at my pile of canvases, chest heaving, tears streaking down her face, red blotches on her cheeks. She looks more furious than I’ve ever seen her. But also infinitely more vulnerable.
“You think slavery is wrong, huh? What about this? What the fuck about this?” She holds up my most recently completed painting.
There’s a jagged hole cut right in the center of it. Her figure, Aliana’s beautiful form—my best work ever—is gone. All that’s left are some trees, grass, the black border, and the midnight-colored bars that separate her from the viewer.
“YOU PAINTED ME IN A FUCKING CAGE!” she roars.
I freeze, and all the blood inside my body crystalizes.
Silence draws on and on, as cold as frost. It seems to coat the entire room and glitter on the walls.
“That’s what you think?” I whisper. “That’s what you think when you look at that painting?”
“It’s obvious,” she scoffs, throwing the ruined artwork aside. Her eyes are bright with disdain even as a tear glides down her perfect cheek.
She radiates so much hurt that I can feel it burn the back of my throat, as if it’s poison filling the air and I’ve just swallowed it.
Fuck.
“I didn’t paint you in a cage, Aliana,” I confess. The words are hard to dredge up; they come from the murky depths of my soul, but I hold their ugly truths up to the light anyway. Because I can’t let her think that. “I painted the way I feel when I see you.”
“What?”
“I can’t get through to you. I’m here. And you’re there.
And I can’t touch you. I’m trapped. I’m captivated.
I’m going fucking insane because you’re my mate, but you don’t want to be.
And it feels like—like…” I lose track of the words and stare down at the painting.
“Those bars weren’t around you. They’re around me. ”
I look down at the floor, gritting my teeth, not wanting to just take back the words but erase this entire conversation, because right now, my chest feels like there’s a hole in it the same fucking size as the one in that canvas.
With a screech like a banshee, Aliana flies at me, causing me to gasp as I glance up in surprise. What the fuck—
She leaps up, and my arms instinctively wrap around her, though I know she’s probably going to try to pummel me.
“You’re a goddamned fucking liar,” she growls, fury contorting her face, her eyes slitted.
But then my mate leans forward and kisses me.