Chapter 32 A Claiming #2
“I bit him.” The confession escaped in barely a whisper, but it might as well have been a shout for all the reaction it provoked.
Death went utterly still, his entire being focused on me with an intensity that made the air between us crackle with unseen energy.
“You bit him,” he repeated, each word measured and precise. “Where?”
“His hand. Between thumb and wrist. I—there was this woman, Eriseth, and she was touching him, whispering to him, and I just—“ I broke off, unable to explain the fury that had consumed me in that moment, the possessive rage that had driven me to sink my teeth into divine flesh.
“And?”
“I drew blood. Tasted it. Swallowed it.” With each admission, I felt something shift in the darkness beyond our shared wall. Not movement, but change—as if the very air was responding to Death’s mounting fury.
“You drank his blood.” He paused. “Stars, Mireille… do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
I shook my head, sharp jerks that he was sure to feel. I hadn’t, nor was I sure I really wanted to. I knew there would be consequences, and with the taste of him still lingering on my tongue, the power and desire for more still running through my veins, I wasn’t sure I was ready to face them.
When Death spoke again, his voice was calm—too calm, with the kind of control that spoke of power held in check by the thinnest of threads.
“His blood should never have passed your lips,” he said, low and ragged, like the words had been torn from him. “Not his. Never his.”
The words hit me harder than a physical blow, carrying weight far beyond their simple meaning.
There was history in them, knowledge I didn’t possess, implications I couldn’t fathom.
But beneath it all was something else, something that made my chest tight with recognition even as my mind struggled to understand.
Jealousy. Not the petty, mortal kind, but something vast and ancient and absolute. The jealousy of a being who had watched from the shadows as another laid claim to something he believed was his.
“Do you crave him now, little fawn?” Death’s voice dropped to a whisper, low and lethal—a threat disguised as a question. “Did his leash feel like safety? Does your collar sing his name when you breathe?”
“No,” I whispered, but even as the word left my lips, I knew it wasn’t entirely true. There was something—a heat that lingered where his fingers had touched me, a memory that felt more like longing than revulsion. “No. I— I hate him. I hate everything he’s done to me.”
“Liar.” The word was soft as silk and twice as cutting. “Divine blood is not like the blood that runs in a mortal’s veins. It urges worship, demands submission, creates bonds that mortals were never meant to bear.”
I wanted to reassure him, to insist that I felt nothing but revulsion for Valen, but the words died in my throat. Because there had been something in that moment—when his blood had flooded my mouth, when I’d swallowed it with savage satisfaction.
“The effects vary,” Death continued, his tone growing colder with each word.
“Some mortals become addicted, craving more divine essence until they waste away from want. Others find their will slowly eroded, their desires reshaped until they believe their devotion springs from their own heart rather than divine manipulation.”
A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the dungeon’s perpetual cold. “How long?” I whispered. “How long do the effects last?”
“That depends,” he replied, and something in his voice made my stomach clench with dread.
“On how much was consumed. On the power of the god whose blood it was. On the mortal’s own strength of will.
” A pause that felt like a blade sliding between my ribs.
“And Vharok is one of the first. His blood carries the weight of eons.”
The truth of it settled in my chest like a stone.
I could feel it now, that foreign warmth, that restless energy that made me want to move, to seek, to.
.. what? Return to him? The thought made my skin crawl even as some traitorous part of me whispered that it wouldn’t be so terrible, that his touch had brought pleasure as well as pain.
“Why do you even care?” I whispered, my voice breaking under the strain of emotion. “Why does it matter to you if I fall into Valen’s desires or resist him?”
His grip on my hand tightened, fingers pressing against my pulse point with possessive intensity. When he spoke again, his voice held the suffocating grasp of absolute certainty, of truth delivered like a verdict from on high.
“You are not meant to belong to him.”
The force of his declaration crashed over me like a tide, leaving me gasping in its wake. If I wasn’t meant to belong to Valen, if that fundamental truth rang certain with divine law…
The question that followed tore from my throat.
“Then who?” The words came out breathless, desperate, raw with a need to know. “Who am I meant to belong to?”
I felt Death’s attention, could sense the careful stillness behind his pause, the way he measured each second before responding.
But he didn’t respond. Not with words.
Instead, his thumb traced that slow circle on the back of my hand, the gesture somehow more intimate than any caress I had ever received. There was knowledge in that touch, certainty, and something else—something that made my chest tight with implications I wasn’t ready to face.
I closed my eyes and drew in a shaky breath. I felt raw, exposed, ensnared by powers greater than myself. Gods, I didn’t even understand.
His touch steadied me. Calmed me. But it also marked me in a way I couldn’t name—something more than comfort, something that reached deeper than bone.
And that terrified me.
Because if I belonged to someone…
If my story was already written in a divine quill…
No.
A flicker of rebellion flared in the depths of my chest, hot and defiant. I would not belong to Valen, despite his collar and his claims and the divine essence that sang through my veins.
Not to Death, despite his protectiveness, his fury, the quiet circle his thumb drew on my skin like a brand.
I belonged to myself.
That truth was my armor, my rebellion, the single piece of me they would never be able to touch. I had buried it beneath grief and guilt, letting it suffocate under their will.
But not anymore.
I would reclaim what had been taken from me—not just my dignity, but my name, my future, my soul.
This was my life. My story. And only I would write its ending.