13. The Aftermath
Aleiraah
I am bleeding profusely from the puncture wounds on my neck—I think in a daze.
My attention drifts to a pretty crystal lampshade mounted on the wall. Moonlight threads through it, scattering rainbow colors that dance with quiet indifference across the room.
It makes me nauseous.
Perhaps my mind is desperately trying to dissociate from the horror of my current plight—but failing miserably.
Silas is still inside me, crushing me under his weight. His body feels like an inferno against my ice cold one. But the chill in my bones doesn't dissipate.
With his fangs still piercing my neck, he purrs deep in his throat and the pain amplifies.
His arms crush me to his chest as he tries to thrust, but there's hardly any room for movement.
I can feel him latching to my inner walls with the tiny barbs on his cock, to finish claiming me and lock in his spend.
Moments later, his hot seed spills inside me but there's no familiar rush of energy. There's no strength left to scream anymore. He holds me tighter still, making my bones creak, as if afraid I'd be snatched away from him.
Strangled sounds escape my throat. I can feel my life force draining away from my limbs slowly but surely.
"FUCK!" Rinn curses, sounding angry, "We need to get him off of her! And––and a spell to ease her pain, he's going to tear her apart otherwise."
I think Alistair says something, but then someone asks if they should get in the way of a panther's claim.
I'm in too much pain to make sense of anything.
Silas finally withdraws his fangs from my neck and licks the twin bites with his tongue. I can't even muster the energy to flinch. A strange mewl pierces the ringing noise in my ears. My mind feels fuzzy.
Maybe finally it's over.
Shouts erupt in the room but I'm too tired to react to any of it. Peaceful darkness envelops me into its welcoming folds.
Silas
I'm trapped.
I gape in horror at what I've done, unable to reach my panther half. The panther doesn't understand that he shouldn't have claimed our Kitten in this way. Biting her to the bone with our fangs.
He mewls at her lack of response. She's limp like a rag doll in our embrace.
In the predator's eyes, Aleiraah is our true mate, and he took things out of my hands tonight when the Veilmoon rose high in the sky. My panther instincts had been pushing at me to claim her for a while. I held off because I thought it’d be impossible to claim a non-shifter as a true mate.
Fed up with my reluctance, he caged me this time instead, within my own mind, while I was angry and distracted with Aleiraah's actions.
I'm not angry at her anymore—I'm furious with myself. Disgusted with my panther, disgusted with what I've become.
The thought of her life slipping away is like a blade sawing into my sanity.
Archer didn't challenge me, yet the panther took it as one and bashed in his skull. I was screaming in my mind for him to stop, that Archer was not our enemy, but only a single thought was riding the panther—Claim Mate!—Mine!—Breed Mate!––a litany of madness.
The last Veilmoon, I had put myself in a magically reinforced cage to avoid accidentally breeding any willing female panthers.
I was not ready to give into my duty and procreate for the sake of my pack's continuity.
I was not married to Aleiraah at that time.
My sweet yet sassy Kitten. My only love.
How do I come back from this?
I'm drowning in full-blown panic at my actions, when something sharp hits my back. An involuntary high pitched growl escapes me. A dart is jutting out of my left ass cheek, followed by another in the middle of my spine.
The panther twists our torso like a puppet master, and growls baring our fangs at the audacious demon. Before he can pounce on Rinn, who's holding a fukiya with another dart loaded in its barrel, everything goes black.
Ifrinn
Thank fuck that worked!
I lower the fukiya—containing the sleep-potion laced dart—from my mouth, and immediately feel disgusted with myself. I wasted precious time searching for it in my chambers while she was getting destroyed by Silas.
This went too far! I went too far!
A harried looking Alistair and a solemn Rhazien dash forward to move Silas's unconscious form off of Aleiraah's equally unmoving frame. She looks so tiny and broken, my Flame.
I want to run to her too, and check her myself. Her faint heartbeat reaches my ears from where I'm standing near the door, but my feet remain rooted to the floor. It's as if the weight of my sins have shackled me, stealing my ability to move.
I shouldn't have let my temper get the better of me. I let what my hell-side family's been whispering get to my head.
She somehow knew...about that night...and when she called me out on it, I panicked. My immediate response was to deflect and then I felt justified in my anger. If she could get pleasured by a mortal, then did that night really count?
That mortal's face buried in her skirts brought my ugly emotions to the surface. I didn't think, I just kept reacting—one mistake slipping into the next. I sank so low—I don't think I can ever surface back.
A sorry will not cut it, Flame. I know. But if I could, I'd take back every harsh word, every action that caused you pain.
Alistair
No, no, no! Were we too late?
I grab the back of Silas's neck, and haul him off, uncaring of his unconscious form, when Zien stops me. "Wait, let me check if he is still locked-in. We might end up hurting her more if we aren't careful."
He checks down below and then her throat. "Fuck! She's still bleeding from the neck wound! Why isn't she healing?”
Aleiraah looks so pale, her skin almost translucent, the blood dripping down her collarbone looks garish in comparison. I swallow hard, a sense of doom tightening my guts.
“He doesn't appear to be locked-in. Get him off of her." Zien motions toward Silas, sounding unhinged.
As I lift Silas off and lay him down on the sofa nearby, Zien tries to heal the puncture wounds left by Silas on Aleiraah's neck with his vampire saliva but they continue to bleed. I grab her cold hand, dread breaking my voice, “Delight, please, wake up.”
"Baz, get the 'Crimson Silence' potion! It's in my private chambers." Zien shouts the order at Baz, frantic, while pressing his palm against Aleiraah's bleeding neck.
Baz nods quickly and darts out of the room.
Azael is suddenly at my side, teeth bared. "Move, so I can heal, Aleiraah."
He had been channelling his healing manna into her by holding onto her calf but it didn't stop the blood from flowing.
I do as he says, mentally reviewing all the spells I know that might help her. But it’s all jumbled up.
There's a haunted look about Azael's face I haven't seen before. I’m certain I'm wearing a similar expression. All of us are, to an extent.
He studies her body critically for long moments, then snaps the 'Chain of Chastity' off her slender waist, and it melts away into nothing, courtesy of his angel fire.
An immediate flush suffuses Aleiraah's ravaged frame. Azael hovers his hands above her, not touching, and slowly moves them all over her body, channeling his healing manna into her with renewed zeal. The bruises begin to disappear as Baz sprints back into the room.
"Here, let me." He says, sliding his arm under her neck and tips the lavender hued potion into her slightly parted mouth.
"Please drink, Starling...please." He pleads, anguished.
I stand frozen, appalled, when the full scope of what we’ve done sinks in.
Archer lets out a mournful howl, sitting on the floor on his haunches in wolf form, head raised as he cries for our mate.
Bazrosh
I ran as fast as I could, grabbing the glass bottle with the lavender potion swirling in it, almost crushing it in a hurry.
But my Starling is unable to swallow it. I feel tears running down my face as I take the potion in my mouth. Squeezing her cheeks so that her mouth remains open, I push the potion down her throat using my forked tongue.
Rinn yells in frustration, "Why isn't the blood flow stopping?"
Zien answers something, but I pay no heed. I keep dribbling the potion down her throat, stroking it gently to make sure she swallows.
After a couple of tries, Zien exclaims, "It worked! Look, the bite marks have stopped bleeding."
But, Aleiraah lies still as a marble statue, chest barely rising. I can hardly breathe as I absorb the ruin our hands have wrought.
What was I thinking?!
So what if she got a bit carried away? It's Veilmoon for fuck's sake! Every supernatural being acts out of character!
We have no excuse for how we behaved. The way I acted...
Horror and remorse grips my chest.
I'm so sorry, my Starling...Please open your eyes!
Rhazien
I'm bloated with my love's blood, yet she lies looking sickly and pale, her skin leeched of color in the receding moonlight.
The intensity of the moonbeams reduced a while back. Strangely, I could think clearer once the room was no longer awash in the silvery-pink glow.
The blood I drank threatens to rise up my throat. My body wants to purge itself from within.
Never again.
I tortured my one true love, who has always embraced me in every way. And I almost sucked her dry, causing her pain.
When she asked why I wasn’t healing my bites, my thoughts stalled. I was so high on the feeling of dishing out punishment that I didn't even think to heal her.
I always heal her. Why didn't I this time? It simply wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. Did I just want to make her suffer more?
Once upon a time, as a blood slave, the bites inflicted upon me were seldom healed. I still have scars. I remember the constant pain from the bites healing slowly. And I subjected Aleiraah to the same fate.
Like my thoughtless Sire, I doled out the same pain that I had begged to escape.
Shaken to my core, the damage hits me hard and a thought takes firm hold of my mind––I can never drink a drop of blood after this.
Azael continues to heal her, patiently, a savage look on his generally blank face, but she doesn't wake up.
Wake up, Love. I need to tell you, I am disgusted. With myself.
Azael
Heal, Aleiraah, heal!––I keep chanting in my head, on the brink of madness.
Dread coils inside me as I take in the destruction we've caused. If I lose her, there’ll be nothing left. Only madness.
They see the quiet. What they don't know is how close I stand to the edge—every day. A gaping abyss threatens to swallow me whole, and I'm only tethered by her light.
Falling from grace twisted something inside me. And every year, the darkness seems to eat away at my soul. My Aleiraah, my Azizam, my last tie to all things good in this world. I might cease to exist if she can’t love me anymore.
After my actions today, when I let the darkness take lead, for all I know, I may have lost her forever.
When we tied her to the bed, I sensed that there was something wrong with Silas.
Maybe we all did. But I chose to ignore it.
Blamed it on the Veilmoon. I let the darkness surface, spilling words I didn’t quite understand myself.
We didn't try to stop Silas. We probably could have, together.
But all of us stood aside instead, an invisible force pushing us, muddying our minds. And the indecision, the will to see it all play out, almost cost us our mate.
It still might.
But I'll never be able to let her go. I'll happily burn in the fires of hell for eternity if she deigns to forgive me.
The manna seeps into her blood, strengthening her as it weakens me. I needed time to replenish my reserves after healing Archer's skull that was leaking brain-matter. But there's no time.
Heal, Azizam!
Zien responds to an inane question from Ifrinn that tests my patience.
Doesn't the demon know basic shifter biology?
Silas's panther bit her deep, driven by animal instinct to claim his mate. I want to bash Ifrinn's thick skull in, maybe that'll silence him as I try to heal our mate.
She's in poor shape, still oozing blood from the bites Zien didn't heal. That 'Chain of Fucking Chastity' not just muted her allure, but actively leeched off her magic.
I wonder if she knew that.
I'd wager none of us did. I felt the enchantment's true nature as I melted it off using my fire.
Time moves at a sluggish pace, but her eyelashes don't even flutter as I keep moving my hands over her limp body, pouring in every last drop of my manna.
Heal, Azizam...I cannot bear to see you like this. So still. So cold.
Archer
Don't these blind idiots notice she's still tied to the bedposts? My wolf sprints forward, gnawing at the magical restraints on her arms. My shifter healing kicked in alongside Azael’s, leaving me drained.
I can't shift back for hours, and my wolf doesn't trust me enough to allow it anyway. We have never been at odds like this and he’s furious.
The others realize at the same time that Aleiraah is still tied up and immediately jump in to help free her.
A heavy wave of shame threatens to drown me. My conscience is riddled with a thousand daggers.
I feel sick with myself, remembering how I knotted her again and again, mindless with rut. I never treated my deceased true mate, Belle, this way. Why did I treat Aleiraah so? My sweet Moon.
The only thing I could smell was that filthy mortal’s stink on her pussy. And I lost it. He touched what’s mine, and I had to claim her back. I couldn’t control my inner werewolf, with a fog dominating my mind.
I came back to my senses once the rut eased off, but it was too late.
Silas was lost in his own mind. I could feel his panther was in charge.
I tried to stop him but he was moon-mad, stuck in a claiming rut himself.
I don't remember him bashing my skull, but once Azael healed me sufficiently, I wasn't strong enough to maintain my werewolf form.
I'll get you free, my Moon!
We should've never listened to Rinn and tied her down.