Chapter 15 #2
Alina’s face shifted.
“It does to me,” she said, her voice quieter now, almost wounded.
Without warning, I pinned her beneath me, my arm pressing hard against her throat.
A surge of fury tore through me, ignited by the memories I could never outrun—betrayal, loss, and grief. They returned, feral and uninvited, dragging phantom pain behind them. My jaw clenched. My fists trembled at my sides, rage scraping against the last fragile remnants of restraint.
“We’re done here, Alina,” I growled through gritted teeth. “Not another fucking word about where I come from. Do you hear me?”
She fought back like a wild animal, nails slashing at my skin. I could’ve subdued her easily and snapped her wrists. Crushed her voice. But instead, I ground my hips into her, letting her feel exactly how much power I held over her—how much want coiled beneath my fury.
She shuddered.
Even as she clawed at me, her body betrayed her. Her breath hitched. Her eyes fluttered. She closed them as my arousal pressed hard into her belly, and I knew—she craved this chaos as much as I did.
I grabbed her face, fingers rough, unrelenting.
Our mouths collided.
I sank my teeth into her lower lip, biting until I tasted blood. She gasped, but I didn’t stop. I drank the copper tang of her pain like it was the first mercy I’d tasted in years. Sweet. Warm. Human.
Then, just as suddenly, I rolled away.
Distance killed the heat. Cold air rushed between us.
Alina lay there, chest heaving, her hair tangled across the pillow like a crown of thorns. Her eyes burned with hunger, fury, and understanding.
I grinned. Wicked.
Dare me again, that grin said.
“What else would you like to know?” I asked, my voice a drip of honey. “What dark little secret are you desperate to pull from me next… since the story of my birth is off the table?”
She licked her bloodied lip, then met my gaze with something feral—like a fox caught in a trap, bleeding but still smiling.
“Tell me more about what my father was like,” she said. “Tell me about Mathias.”
The mention of Mathias sent my heart into a tailspin.
“He was always more than a friend to me,” I said, voice tight. “He was a teacher—someone I emulated, someone I respected. For a time, I believed he was the only man who truly understood me.”
I hesitated, the ache already rising in my chest.
“When I killed him, it left an irreplaceable void in my soul.”
I exhaled.
“But he betrayed me. So, in the end… I was glad I ended his life.”
“What did he do?” Alina curiously asked.
I stared at her for a moment, my silence heavy.
I wanted to tell her that her father was never the hero she believed in. But I couldn’t, not yet. I knew the storm would stir inside her—the confusion, the fury. She wasn’t ready for that.
So instead, I told her something else.
Not the whole truth—just the part I could survive speaking aloud.
“There was someone,” I said. “A woman.”
Zara. Her name flared in my mind like a match to dry kindling. My one true love. My first descent into ruin. The only person who ever saw me for what I truly was and didn’t flinch.
I kept my tone neutral, distant, even as grief slashed at the walls I’d built around her memory.
“She was one of Mathias’ students,” I continued, keeping my voice even. “But she was different. Dark. Dangerous. Lethal. We had an unnatural bond—twisted, intense. We pushed each other to the edge. Always competing, always craving more blood, more power.”
I paused, letting out a breath that trembled under the weight of everything I wouldn’t say.
Zara was more than that. So much more. But I couldn’t give Alina that truth.
The memory of Zara, what we built together—what we lost—was a wound still too raw and sacred.
The thought of exposing that part of myself, her, and our children felt like an unforgivable betrayal.
So, I gave Alina the version of the story she could handle—the surface, the blood and fire, not the love, not the pain, not my children’s laughs I still heard in my dreams.
“She completed me,” I said instead. “I told Mathias she was mine. And I was hers.”
Alina let out a low, guttural growl.
I turned, locking eyes with her—ice meeting fire.
“Where is this lover now?” she spat, her voice sharp with venom. “Do I need to kill her?”
The jealousy bleeding through her words was so thick I could taste it.
She was furious. Possessive. Mine.
I nearly smiled.
Alina was jealous of a memory.
Of Zara, the ghost I couldn’t speak of, couldn’t shake.
“Your father took care of her,” I said evenly.
Alina stiffened. Her breath hitched with a fury she barely contained.
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
I glared at her with eyes like razor blades. My stare could cut through steel, and I wanted her to feel it right now.
“I told your father she was mine,” I said, voice low and deadly. “And if there had been any way to have her again, I would’ve taken it. Every single time. Letting her go wasn’t a choice—it was madness forced upon me. Love turned my brain into water. It made me insane.”
Each word sliced through the air between us like shrapnel.
Alina’s fists clenched at her sides. Her glare blazed. “What is her name?” she demanded, voice edged with anger—and something else. Something raw and breaking.
I raised my chin, jaw tight with defiance.
“That name will never leave my lips,” I said coldly. My voice hit her like a gust of arctic wind, sharp enough to cut, cold enough to burn.
Her eyes flared with rage. Her whole body tensed.
“You’re driving a stake through my heart with this,” she hissed. “You speak of her like she still owns you, and yet I’m supposed to remain quiet, to swallow the pieces of your past without choking.”
She shook her head, tears brimming but unshed.
“Balthazar, you’re killing me.”
Then her voice turned to blades.
“I don’t want to hear another word about her. I don’t care what she meant. I want you to bury her. To bless us. We’re the killers now. We are the present. You and me.”
A dark smile curled on my lips—malicious.
“I’ll talk about her if I fucking choose to,” I snarled. “Your father knew the depth of what I felt for her. He knew. And still, he thought he could take her. He did take her.”
Alina froze.
My blood boiled as old rage surged up from the grave I’d tried to keep sealed.
“He was with her. Behind my back. Said nothing. Lied to my face. And then one day… I found them.”
I laughed—empty, a sound born from the edge of madness.
“I lost control. God, how I loved her. But it didn’t matter. In the end, everything was ripped away.”
Silence crashed down like a tombstone.
My words hung between us, heavy as the dead.
And then, from that silence, my voice emerged again—hollow and haunted, shaped by the shadows of the past I could never outrun.
“When I saw Mathias with her,” I said. “I lost control. I shredded every rule he ever imposed. I let the monster inside me rise without restraint.”
I stared through the dim light, vision distant, consumed.
“So, he punished me. Locked me in a cell filled with poisons—vapors that ate at my mind, twisted my thoughts into screaming knots. Madness clung to me like a second skin. And she…” I swallowed hard, my throat burning. “She never came. She never visited. Never comforted me.”
My voice wavered, then flattened.
“Mathias laughed. Called me weak. Mocked me for losing control over something as fragile as love. Then he said…”
I paused, barely able to force the words out.
“‘I can’t share her either,’ he told me. ‘Because I love her. I must kill her… so we both can be free from her.’”
I closed my eyes.
“I didn’t think he meant it.”
The air thickened, the silence suffocating.
“I was wrong.”
My voice went hollow. Dead.
“He killed her. Took her from me in the most vicious way imaginable. He drove a dagger into her throat… wiped the blade clean with his fingers… then licked the blood from them—while staring me straight in the eye.”
A bitter chuckle escaped me. It was a sound void of humor—just pain, hollowed out and dressed in mockery.
“He didn’t kill her for love. He killed her to control me. To prove he owned me. That I would never be free.”
I glanced at Alina, but I barely saw her. Ghosts clouded my vision.
“I got away with things he never knew,” I added quietly. “But not her. I couldn’t save her.”
Alina’s anguished moans filled the room, but they were distant. Echoes beneath the storm inside me.
Then I saw her expression change—pain warping her features. Through trembling lips, she asked the one question I hoped she wouldn’t—
“Do you still love her?”
The sting of those words burned more than any poison Mathias ever made.
“How could I forget the woman who gave me everything I’d been denied?” I rasped. “She gave me love. A home. A sense of belonging. I shared everything with her—body, heart, and soul.”
My throat tightened. My chest ached.
Every memory of her—the way she laughed, the heat of her skin, the wildness in her eyes—was etched into the walls of my heart, impossible to erase.
The grief surged up, sharp and uncontrollable.
A guttural howl tore from my chest—raw and inhuman—rattling the walls with its force.
The moonstone necklace dangling from Alina’s throat shimmered like a ghost, taunting me with its cursed beauty.
My gaze locked on it, and in a flash of rage, I seized the chain and yanked.
The gold snapped with a metallic cry, and the gem shattered in my fist. Shards of stone and twisted links rained to the floor like broken promises.
Alina gasped, her hand flying to her throat. “Why would you do that? I loved that necklace!”
A thin red line marked her delicate skin, where the chain had bitten into her as it broke.
“Because I gave that necklace to her,” I snarled through clenched teeth. “It was hers. The woman whose name I will never repeat.”
Alina recoiled, her expression morphing in disgust, as if horrified that she had worn something soaked in the memory of my dead lover.
I straddled her, my hand closing around her throat—not to choke her, but enough to let her feel the threat behind my fury. My voice dropped into something cold and final.
“The worst thing you could ever do to me, Alina,” I growled, “is love another. That is the only line you cannot cross. If you ever open your legs to another man, I swear to you, I will kill you. My dark lover betrayed me. She was everything. Everything.”
My voice simmered with barely leashed intensity.
Alina shoved my hand away with a sudden, startling strength. “Then why,” she hissed, “did you allow me to take lovers at the start of all this?”
I bared my teeth in a low, animal growl. “Because I was trying to protect the last pieces of my dark, broken heart. But no more.”
I leaned in close, voice vibrating with menace. “Promise me. Swear to me. Never betray me. Because if you do, I’ll ensure you never live long enough to regret it.”
“I won’t,” she said, looking directly into my eyes, her tone solemn. “No one will ever accept me like you do. That’s over now. We are the future. We are invincible.”
She paused, her breath warm against my jaw.
“I’m glad you killed my father,” she said. “Because if you hadn’t… I would have.”
Her soft hands moved with purpose, wrapping around my hardened length and guiding it to her slick opening. She was ready for me—eager, unashamed.
I growled in approval.
“I only ever wanted to corrupt the world,” I whispered. “To infect humanity. To overthrow my teacher. My master. But he betrayed me. Took away the only light I ever had.”
My muscles trembled as I hovered over the woman who now held that place—my everything.
But then I saw her expression shift into something primal and dark. Rage mixed with lust. It was as if she might tear my throat out if I spoke another word.
So, I silenced myself.
I crushed my mouth to hers in a savage kiss, devouring her breath, her doubt, her defiance.
And then I fucked her—hard, relentless, like war made flesh—branding every thrust into her bones. Letting her know she was mine. Only mine.
And if she ever dared to break her vow—
I’d already told her what would happen.
And I meant every fucking word.