Chapter 11
Balthazar
Istood still in the upstairs bedroom of Alina’s home, the stench of blood still thick in the air.
My gaze drifted to her sister’s lifeless body—limp, ruined, crimson soaking the rug beneath her.
My hands were still shaking, the final vibrations of the kill humming through my bones.
Adrenaline pulsed hot in my veins, a strange concoction of elation and worry swirling deep in my gut.
I had just slaughtered everyone in this house.
Every last one of them.
I thought murdering her adoptive father would satisfy me, but his cries—his desperate, pathetic begging—had tasted bitter. For a moment, something like remorse had coiled in my chest. But I crushed it. I did it all for her.
For Alina.
And now, she stood in the doorway.
Smiling at me.
I studied her carefully, searching for fear—revulsion—but there was none. Perhaps the smile was a mask of poise, a performance. Or maybe… she truly had no fear. Could it be she saw in me the very thing she desired?
I could see pieces of her father, Mathias, in her expression—a chilling resemblance that disturbed me. And yet, it only deepened my fascination. The world thought Alina was a delicate girl wrapped in finery and innocence, but I had always suspected something darker, something insidious and hidden.
She carried herself like virtue incarnate, but beneath it… Oh, there was wickedness.
With me, she didn’t shrink. She challenged. She had watched me kill before—and smiled. But this? This was different. This was home. This was bloodline. And still… she seemed aroused by it.
Her lip curled, the perfect picture of feminine disgust.
“What did you do to my family?” she asked, breathless.
She rushed at me.
With surprising strength, she tore the dagger from my grasp and raised it toward my throat. I caught her wrist mid-strike and wrenched it away, slamming her back against the wall.
The blade clattered to the floor.
We stood there, chests heaving, locked in a storm of fury and lust. Her pupils were blown wide with adrenaline. Her lips parted as if to scream—or kiss.
Had she meant to kill me?
Or tempt me?
Something was in her eyes—an ember of desire beneath the rage. It made my blood burn.
“I killed them,” I said calmly, cruelly. “Savagely. Brutally. I listened to every cry, savored every scream. Your father begged. Your sister wept. I enjoyed it.”
I retrieved the blade from the floor, lifted it to my mouth, and licked the blood from its edge.
Then I sheathed it.
A deliberate act.
A promise.
“I wanted to see what you would do,” I said, stepping closer, so close I could feel her breath against my mouth. “To see if your heart is as wicked as mine.”
Her chest rose and fell, her skin flushed, her lips red with fury—and want.
“Tell me, Alina,” I whispered, my mouth brushing hers. “Are you displeased with me now that you’ve fully seen the monster?”
She stood silently, framed by the golden blaze of morning light. The sun poured through the tall window behind her, setting her hair aflame, cascading curls of fire around her pale, expressionless face.
The room was bathed in blood.
The white sheets, the marble floor, even the broken remnants of furniture—all drowned in the aftermath of slaughter. Shattered glass caught the sunlight like tiny mirrors of madness. Her sister’s defiance had left its mark in the chaos… and now, in silence, it bore witness to Alina’s choice.
Alina inhaled deeply, her eyes fluttering shut, her lashes casting shadows on her cheeks.
“Answer me!” I growled, my voice ragged with desperation and desire. “I’ve shown you what I am. The monster I’ve hidden from you all these years. Look around you. Look at what I’ve done. Tell me, how does it make you feel?”
She opened her eyes.
And smiled.
Slow. Lethal. Beautiful.
Her fingers lifted to the clasp of her cloak. She unfastened it, letting the heavy fabric fall to the floor with a whisper, where it pooled in a sea of blood. She stepped forward, radiant in the carnage, her lips parted slightly in something between awe and hunger.
“Alina!” I shouted again, desperate to break the silence that choked me. “Don’t you fear me now that you’ve seen me for what I am?”
When it came, her voice was breathless and trembling, delicate, but unwavering.
“I’m happy you killed them… my lord.”
I flinched at the title but held her gaze.
She moved closer, every step deliberate, graceful, hypnotic.
“I’m proud of my dark, wicked monster,” she whispered, her breath a caress. “I despised my adopted family. Their voices. Their rules. Their pathetic attempts to control me. And now... now you’ve freed me.”
Her fingers brushed my shirt collar, gentle and intimate, and a shiver raced down my spine. She wasn’t afraid of what I had done.
She was aroused by it.
“You crave a monster,” I rasped, curling my fingers around her chin, tilting her face to mine. “You crave the man who kills.”
Her heart thundered, the rhythm pounding between us like a war drum. But her face remained composed, porcelain smooth, serene in the wreckage of death we stood within.
Only her body betrayed her.
Heat rolled off her in waves, thick and suffocating like lust-drenched smoke. Her lips, swollen and parted, whispered silent pleas for my mouth, my hands, my ruin.
And her eyes… gods, her eyes.
They didn’t shimmer with innocence or fear.
They blazed with hunger. A deep, deviant hunger that mirrored my own.
She wanted to be devoured.
She wanted to be undone.
She wanted to be corrupted by the darkness I had spent years trying to keep buried.
“I don’t fear you,” she said, her voice soft, sure. “I want you. All of you. Finally, I feel alive. Liberated. And it’s because of you.”
“Fuck, Alina,” I growled, breath catching in my throat. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”
She reached up, her touch featherlight but commanding as her fingers traced the edges of my face. Then she slid lower down my chest, across my stomach, until her hand disappeared into my breeches.
Her grip closed around my cock—tight, claiming, merciless.
“Watching you kill,” she whispered, eyes locked with mine, “makes me soaked.”
I nearly lost control right then.
And she knew it.
Without hesitation, she lifted her skirt and shoved her underclothes aside, reclining back on the bed like a dark goddess baring herself for sacrifice.
Her fingers slipped between her thighs, gliding over glistening folds. She moaned low and deep, the sound hitting me like a punch to the gut.
I snapped.
I seized her hips and opened her thighs wide with a growl, tearing at my clothes as I climbed over her. My cock throbbed against her entrance, already slick and desperate.
“I want you to fuck me like a monster,” she snarled. Her legs wrapped around my waist, heels digging into my back, pulling me deeper. “Ruin me.”
I plunged into her with a brutal thrust, burying myself to the hilt. She arched beneath me with a cry so filthy, so primal, it made my blood roar in my ears.
My grip tightened around her throat—not enough to hurt, just enough to claim. I leaned in, my mouth brushing her ear.
“I’m going to make you mine,” I growled, voice guttural with need. “You’ll be my queen. My wicked, sinful queen. And I’ll drown you in so much darkness, you’ll beg never to see the light again.”
She met every savage thrust with greed, her nails carving red paths down my back, her body wild and unrelenting. She wasn’t breaking beneath me—she was rising with me, burning with me, consuming me.
There was no room for tenderness. No pause.
Only slick skin, gasping mouths, and the relentless rhythm of lust crashing into madness.
Only two broken souls, clinging to each other through the destruction of their sins.
I had never felt so alive and so claimed. So… seen.
The thought rattled me.
I’d once thought I knew what love felt like. I adored Zara. I worshipped our children. I would’ve died for them.
But they were gone—ripped from me by betrayal and blood. Now they haunted my dreams like soft wails from the underworld, reminders of everything I’d lost.
I forced the memory back, shoving it deep into the bowels where it belonged.
Because Alina was here.
Alina was real—feral, wicked, mine.
I stared into her eyes as I moved inside her, feeling the energy between us like a storm, violent and magnetic. But then—something flickered.
A glimpse, subtle but unmistakable.
There was a darkness in her. A wild, glimmering force just beneath the surface. Not mine. Not yet.
She was darker than I’d realized.
Much darker.
And for the first time… I wasn’t sure if she would be the one I corrupted—
Or the one who would destroy me.