Chapter 25 #2
My own release followed seconds later.
I came with a groan, spilling over my fist, my cock jerking as I pumped myself through it. Pleasure whited out my vision, my knees nearly buckling, and for a moment I couldn't think of anything except the sight of her trembling through the aftershocks, my shadows still buried inside her.
When I could breathe again, I withdrew.
Slowly. Carefully. The shadows retreated from her body, leaving her wet and swollen and still twitching with residual pleasure. She settled back against the mattress with a sigh, her body going boneless, sinking into a deeper sleep than before.
I cleaned myself with quick efficiency, tucking my softening cock back into my trousers. My hands were steady as I returned to the kitchen, picked up the knife, resumed slicing the cucumber as if nothing had happened.
By the time she stirred, I had an entire meze spread assembled—olives and cheese and sliced vegetables, feta crumbled into a small bowl, fresh bread warming in the oven. The domestic normalcy of it was almost absurd given what I'd just done.
"Hakan?"
I glanced over my shoulder, carefully arranging my expression into innocence. "Good morning."
Ada sat up slowly, the sheet pooling around her waist. Her hair was a disaster—tangled from sleep and sex—and her cheeks were still flushed with the afterglow of an orgasm she didn't remember having. She looked down at herself with obvious confusion, her brow furrowing.
"Why am I...?" She pressed her thighs together, and her eyes widened. "Why am I so wet?"
I raised an eyebrow, turning back to the vegetables. "How would I know? You've been asleep for the past hour."
"But I feel like I just..." She trailed off, her fingers drifting between her legs. When she pulled them back, they were glistening. "Hakan, did you—"
"I've been making breakfast." I gestured at the spread with my knife. "Perhaps you had a pleasant dream."
Silence stretched between us. I could feel her eyes boring into my back, that sharp intelligence working through the possibilities.
"A dream," she repeated flatly.
"An exceptionally vivid one, apparently." I couldn't keep the smugness from my voice entirely. "You seemed to enjoy it."
She threw a pillow at my head.
I caught it with a shadow, tossing it back to the bed without turning around. "Careful. You'll disrupt my artful arrangement."
"You're impossible." But she was laughing now—that bright, surprised laugh that I'd do anything to hear. "Absolutely impossible."
She climbed out of bed, not bothering to cover herself as she padded to the bathroom. I watched the sway of her hips, the marks I'd left on her skin, and felt something dangerously close to contentment settle in my chest.
This. This was what I'd fought for. What I'd risked everything to protect.
The knock at the door shattered the moment.
"Hakan." Sarp's voice carried through the wood. "Milan's here. Wants to talk to you."
I tensed, setting down the knife. "Where is he?"
"Lower study."
Ada emerged from the bathroom, a robe wrapped around her body. "Is everything alright?"
"Fine." I crossed to her, kissed her forehead. "Just need to handle something. Stay here, eat breakfast. I'll be back soon."
I found Milan in the lower study, standing by the window. He turned when I entered, and something in his expression told me this wasn't a social call.
"You said you'd explain later," he said without preamble. "It's later."
I closed the door behind me. Of course he'd come for the explanation I'd promised—the one I'd been dreading since the moment I'd returned from Kara Cehennem with half-truths on my tongue.
* * *
"How's my mother?"
"Confused." Milan moved to the small cabinet, poured two glasses of wine, handed one to me.
"She doesn't remember being in Kara Cehennem at all.
Keeps asking how she got home, why she feels so tired, why she has bruises she can't explain.
" His gray eyes searched my face. "What did he do to her, Hakan? "
I took a long drink. Stared at the table.
I tried to find a way to describe it that didn't require me to go back inside it. There wasn't one.
"He hurt her," I said. "Deliberately. Carefully.
The kind of careful that means he's done it before and knows exactly what he's doing.
" I set the glass down. "Broke her fingers.
Caged her head. Made her stand there for hours while I was unconscious and couldn't—" I stopped.
"And when it was over I asked him to wipe it from her memory.
Because she's carried enough. She doesn't need that too. "
Milan said nothing for a moment. His wine sat untouched.
"She thinks the portal scattered us," I said. "That we ended up in the human realms. She's home, she's confused about her hand, and I'm the only one who remembers what he did to her." I looked at him. "That's what he wanted. Me carrying it alone."
"And what did he threaten?" Milan asked quietly.
"Everything." The word came out hollow. "He showed me glimpses—what he could do to her mind if I refused him.
Trap her consciousness in eternal darkness while her body kept breathing.
Make me watch while he shredded her memories piece by piece.
" I ran a hand through my hair. "He let me go.
Told me to settle my affairs here and then return to serve him. Gave me time to... comply."
"Does he know about Ada?"
"No." The word came out sharp, certain. "I protected her. Built walls around every thought of her, every memory. He knows I'm protecting someone—he could taste that much—but he doesn't know who. Doesn't know her name, her face, what she means to me."
Milan's expression shifted, something complicated moving behind his eyes. "That's why you came back. Not because Erlik let you go—because you needed to protect her."
"I need to protect both of them." I turned to face him fully. "Ada and my mother. Erlik thinks I'm here to settle affairs before returning to serve him. He doesn't know I have no intention of letting him anywhere near the people I love."
"And how exactly do you plan to stop a god?"
The question hung between us, heavy with implications.
"I don't know yet." The admission cost me something.
"I'm looking for a way—some loophole, some weakness.
Something that will let me keep them safe without becoming my father's puppet.
" I met his eyes. "But if it comes down to it.
.. if there's no other choice... I'll sacrifice myself before I let him touch either of them. "
Milan set down his wine glass. "You'd give yourself to Erlik? Let him have you completely?"
"If that's what it takes to keep Ada and my mother safe? Yes." The words tasted like ash, but I meant every one. "He wants an heir. Wants me to serve him, learn from him, eventually rule beside him. If I go willingly—if I give him what he wants—maybe that's enough. Maybe he leaves them alone."
"Or maybe he uses them against you forever, knowing they're your weakness."
"Then I'll make sure they can't be used.
" My shadows coiled around my fingers, responding to the dark turn of my thoughts.
"I'll end things with Ada so completely she never comes looking for me.
I'll make my mother forget I ever existed.
I'll burn every bridge, destroy every connection, until there's nothing left for him to threaten. "
Milan was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. "You love her that much? Ada?"
"More than I've ever loved anything." The confession came easier than I expected. "More than my own life. More than my freedom. If destroying myself is the only way to keep her safe, I'll do it without hesitation."
Something flickered across Milan's face—there and gone before I could identify it. "Then we find another way. One that doesn't end with you martyring yourself."
"We?"
"I've been protecting your family for two hundred years, Hakan. I'm not stopping now." He clasped my shoulder. "I'll help. Watch over Ada when you can't. Gather information. Look for weaknesses we can exploit." His grip tightened. "You're not alone in this."
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust that there was someone else who understood what was at stake.
"Thank you." The words felt inadequate, but they were all I had.
"Don't thank me yet." Milan released my shoulder. "We haven't saved anyone. We've just agreed to try."
I returned to my chambers to find Ada cross-legged on the bed, picking at the meze spread. She looked up when I entered, and the simple domesticity of it—her in my robe, eating my food, waiting for me—made something in my chest ache.
"Everything alright?" she asked.
"Fine." I crossed to the bed and kissed her until neither of us could breathe. "Just checking in about my mother."
"How is she?"
"Adjusting." Another lie. "She's been through a lot."
Ada studied my face with those amber eyes that saw too much. But she didn't push—just pulled me down beside her and curled into my side.
"I love you," she murmured.
The words hit me like a blade between the ribs. "I love you too."
We spent the rest of the day tangled together—talking, laughing, fucking with a desperate intensity that left us both breathless. I memorized every moment. Hoarded every sound, every expression, every whispered confession.
If these were my last days of happiness, I would spend them worshipping her.
* * *
That night, sleep dragged me under.
The dream began in silence.
Not the comfortable silence of rest, but something deeper—a void that pressed against my consciousness like cold water filling my lungs. I couldn't see anything. Couldn't feel anything. Just darkness, endless and absolute, swallowing me whole.
Then the whisper came.
"My son."
The words slithered through the void, wrapping around my mind like shadow-silk. I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even breathe—but I knew that voice. Would know it anywhere, in any realm, across any distance.
Erlik.
"I've been watching you."
The darkness shifted. Not lightening—that wasn't possible here—but becoming somehow more present. More aware. Like the void itself had opened its eyes and found me wanting.
"A seat on the council." The whisper carried something that might have been approval. "Gün Ata's blessing. His trust. His gratitude." A pause, thick with implication. "You've exceeded my expectations."
I tried to speak. To scream. To do anything but float helpless in this ocean of nothing while my father's voice coiled through my skull.
"The Light God grows weaker by the day. His divine flame gutters. And there you are — his trusted advisor, welcomed into his inner circle, given his blessing and his gratitude."
Something brushed against my mind—not a touch, exactly, but an awareness. A presence testing the walls I'd built, probing for weaknesses.
"You're still protecting someone. I can feel it—that desperate devotion, that willingness to burn for another's sake." The whisper dropped lower, and became almost intimate. "I don't need to know who. Not yet. The knowledge will come, in time. It always does."
The void began to compress. Slowly at first, then faster—the darkness pressing in from all sides, crushing, suffocating, reducing my existence to a single point of terrified consciousness.
"Time is running out, Hakan."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Could only feel the weight of eternity bearing down on me, the promise of what awaited if I failed.
"Settle your affairs. Say your goodbyes. Make whatever peace you need to make with the life you're leaving behind." The whisper was inside my head now, woven through my thoughts like poison through blood. "And then come home. Come to me. Take your place at my side."
The pressure increased. I felt something crack inside my mind—not breaking, not quite, but bending in ways that shouldn't be possible.
"Or don't." The words carried a smile I couldn't see but could feel, sharp and patient and hungry.
"Refuse me. Run. Hide. Protect your precious secrets with whatever walls you can build.
" A pause. "And I will find them anyway.
I will find everyone you've ever loved, everything you've ever wanted, and I will show you exactly what happens to those who disappoint me. "
Sevda. The image flooded my mind before I could stop it — that broken thing dragging itself across obsidian, every joint bent wrong, the wet clicking of bones that had been shattered and reassembled incorrectly, the mouth that couldn't close, the eyes that couldn't forget.
Sixty years of continuing. Not living. Continuing.
And Ada — my Ada, my starlight — crawling across a stone floor with her spine curved the wrong way and her jaw hanging open and her golden eyes emptied of everything except the memory of what she'd been before he broke her.
The void shattered.
I woke gasping, drenched in cold sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape. The sheets were twisted around my legs, soaked through, and my hands were shaking so badly I couldn't make them stop.
Ada stirred beside me, reaching for my hand in the darkness. "Hakan? What's wrong?"
"Nothing." My voice came out rough, barely recognizable. "Just a nightmare."
She curled into my side, warm and solid and real. "Want to talk about it?"
I pulled her closer, burying my face in her hair, breathing in jasmine and sunlight until the smell of the void faded.
"No." I pressed my lips to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. "Just hold me."
She did.
And I lay awake until dawn, watching shadows crawl across the ceiling, feeling my father's whisper still coiled around my thoughts like a promise.
Time is running out.
The words echoed through my skull, and somewhere deep in my chest, I felt the first cold fingers of despair beginning to close around my heart.
I would find a way. I had to.
Because the alternative was losing everything—and everyone—I had ever loved.