Chapter 8 #2
“He tried to take my mate. He’s mine.”
The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut bone.
The only sound was the blood dripping from Elias’s wounds to the leaves below.
Adonis growled low in his throat.
The wolf in him fought the order. Raged against it.
But Aeolus had earned this.
He’d bled for it.
He was the one who nearly lost everything tonight.
After a long, pulsing moment, Adonis released his grip.
Elias dropped to the ground, coughing, gasping, wheezing.
And still—he smiled.
“Ah,” he rasped, blood dripping from his chin. “Brotherly love. How very quaint.”
Aeolus didn’t blink.
His fist whipped forward like a thunderbolt, cracking across Elias’s face with enough force to send the vampire crashing backward.
Blood exploded across the forest floor.
And this time?
Elias didn’t laugh.
Because when he looked up—when he really looked into Aeolus’s eyes—
He saw it.
Not just fury.
Not vengeance.
But the calm certainty of a predator who had decided to end him.
No rage.
No madness.
Just death.
Aeolus stepped closer, his voice a quiet, lethal thing as he knelt beside the broken vampire.
“You made two mistakes,” he said, his tone emotionless.
Elias’s head lolled sideways, his smirk faltering. “Do tell.”
Aeolus leaned in close, his voice a razor sliding into flesh.
“You thought you could take what was mine.”
He drew a blade from his belt, the silver edge glinting in the moonlight—etched in runes, dripping with toxin, a weapon forged for monsters.
“And worse,” Aeolus murmured, dragging the blade lightly along Elias’s collarbone.
“You made her afraid.”
Elias didn’t smile again.
Not this time.
Because in Aeolus’s eyes—he saw his end.
And it was coming.
One brutal inch at a time.
* * *
The forest didn’t just burn.
It seethed.
With blood. With steel. With the roar of vengeance echoing off the trees like the wrath of the gods themselves.
No flames needed—this was war.
Death painted the forest floor in wide, wet strokes, and the moon hung high above like a dispassionate witness, bathing the carnage in cold silver light.
The battle had reached its peak.
And the Stavros brothers were the storm at its center.
Mercenaries—vampires with obsidian blades, rogue wolves frothing at the mouth, human hybrids trained to kill supernatural royalty—lay torn and bleeding across the moss and mud, limbs severed, throats shredded, their screams already fading into the dirt.
But the battle wasn’t over.
Not until Elias Dragovic was dead.
Ares was a whirlwind of savage force, golden eyes ablaze as he tore through two wolves at once, his claws coated in crimson, his mouth pulled back in a snarl that promised ruin. He fought like a being possessed, fueled by instinct and the need to eliminate every last threat to their bloodline.
Atlas moved beside him with deadly precision, his sword a silver flash in the night. Each swing was silent death, his focus unbreakable, his face unreadable. He was the strategist, the scalpel to Ares’s wrecking ball—and with every strike, the battlefield tilted further in their favor.
Candy stood at the edge of it all, chest heaving, knuckles white as she gripped her blade, watching as the war unfolded around her.
She should have felt victorious. The mercenaries were falling like wheat beneath the scythe.
But her eyes were locked on one man.
Elias.
He was sprawled across the field of corpses, his coat shredded, soaked in blood—most of it his own. His face was pale, smeared red, one eye swollen shut.
But he was smiling.
A sick, twisted thing.
His laughter crawled across the clearing like a plague.
“You think this changes anything?” he rasped, a line of blood trailing from the corner of his mouth. “You think your wolves can kill me and win?”
Candy’s grip tightened on her blade.
She wanted to watch him burn.
“You’ve already lost,” Elias whispered, coughing up more blood. “Because she’ll never belong to you the way she belonged to me. Not really. Not in the soul.”
Aeolus moved.
Silent. Deadly. Absolute.
He stepped into the clearing like a god of war, blood slicking his chest, his hands curled into fists still wet with the gore of the last vampire he’d gutted.
He didn’t speak at first.
He just stared.
And Candy had never seen anything more terrifying.
Because Aeolus Stavros was calm.
Too calm.
The kind of calm that meant someone was about to die.
“You’re finished,” he said finally, his voice low and sharp enough to cut bone.
Elias swayed where he stood, blood dripping from his chin, his eyes shining with manic delight.
“You can kill me,” he said, “but she’ll remember me. In every life. She’ll feel me.”
Aeolus struck.
No warning.
Just raw, violent speed.
He was across the field in a blink, his hand glowing faintly with the magic woven into his claws—the same claws that tore through Elias’s chest like paper.
The vampire let out a strangled gasp, jerking as Aeolus’s hand plunged deep, curling around his heart.
Crimson spilled from his lips, and for one heartbeat, he looked almost human.
Surprised.
Afraid.
Aeolus leaned close, his voice a whisper against Elias’s ear.
“You will never touch her again.”
Then—he ripped.
The sound was sickening. Flesh and bone torn apart in a wet, final snap.
Aeolus held Elias’s heart in his hand, still twitching.
Elias’s body dropped to its knees, then fell forward into the dirt, unmoving.
Dead.
Truly. Finally. Forever.
Aeolus stared at the heart.
Then, slowly—he squeezed.
It burst.
Blood sprayed across the mud, the final echo of a monster snuffed out beneath the stars.
And just like that—
Silence.
No more screams.
No more howls.
Only the hiss of wind through the trees, and the faint flicker of dying firelight.
The battle was done.
The enemy was ash.
And for the first time in what felt like lifetimes, Candy could breathe.
She didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate.
She ran.
Straight across the blood-soaked earth, past the bodies, past the firelight and shadows.
Straight into his arms.
Aeolus caught her, wrapping her in an embrace so tight, so fierce, it stole the breath from her lungs. His body trembled against hers—not from exhaustion.
From restraint.
From everything he hadn’t let himself feel until now.
Candy buried her face in his neck, breathing in the scent of smoke and steel and something raw and wild and beautifully, dangerously him.
His hands fisted in her jacket, one curling behind her neck, the other anchoring at her waist.
Like he would never let her go again.
Ever.
“Say something,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
His mouth brushed her ear, his words thick with everything he didn’t know how to say.
“You’re mine.”
She pulled back, just enough to see his face, and placed her hands on his blood-streaked cheeks.
“I thought I lost you,” she breathed.
Aeolus shook his head slowly. “Not in this life. Not in the next. Not ever.”
Tears burned at the corners of her eyes. But for the first time, they weren’t from fear.
They were from hope.
From freedom.
From love.
“I love you,” she whispered, the truth breaking free like sunlight after the storm.
Aeolus went still.
Then he pulled her in. “I love you more than anything in this world or beyond.”
His mouth crashed to hers, brutal and sweet, desperate and eternal, as if the only way to anchor himself to this world was to taste her again and again.
She kissed him back, matching his fire, letting every ounce of her fear and longing melt into the heat of him.
His lips, his teeth, his hands—all of him was claiming her.
Not as a possession.
As a mate.
As an equal.
As his.
When they finally pulled apart, foreheads pressed together, breaths tangled—
They were whole.
The war was over.
And for the first time in both their lives—
They were free.