Nightmare
Blood-orange smears bleed across the horizon, burning themselves out against the frost-bitten spires of Bloodgrove as another identical day crawls from the ash of the last.
I wake with my face pressed into the cold, damp silk of the pillow, my lungs stuttering through a dry, rattling gasp. My fingers claw instinctively at the emptiness beside me, searching for moonlight hair and violet-blue eyes, that only exist now in the burning wreckage of my own mind.
You killed him, the internal judge spits, cold and merciless, as I force my leaden limbs to untangle from the sheets.
I can’t cry anymore. The wells went dry weeks ago, replaced by a dull, pulsing ache behind my eyes where Cain’s daily compulsions slide through my thoughts like a surgeon’s scalpel.
He carves away the jagged edges of my grief, scraping out my memories of Blake with meticulous, sadistic precision, trying to replace the ghost with himself.
By the time the sky hardens into a bruised, ash-gray slate, the daily routine swallows me whole.
Training. In private, locked chambers where Cain stretches my mind, my body, and my resistance across a rack of escalating, depraved disciplines.
Every afternoon blurs into a teases-and-tethers cycle of exquisite humiliation—blindfolded navigation through maze-like shadows, whispered degradation that curls my toes, and postures held until my muscles scream for mercy—all designed to break my defiance down to pulp before the sun even dips below the treeline.
Meg and Jenny vanish into the early auction wagons without a goodbye, leaving their empty pallets as a silent reminder of what happens to livestock that isn’t chosen.
I’m chosen now. I’m his favorite.
And because the strict laws of the Crimson Order forbid Cain from legally claiming me until the auction block officially opens, he takes his ownership in the dark, carving his claim into my flesh behind bolted doors.
The bruised violet of dusk bleeds into ink-black night by the time he arrives.
He simply commands, and my traitorous, blood-addled body obeys.
“Look at me, pet,” Cain murmurs against my ear, his breath glacial as a winter gale.
Cold, sentient tendrils wrapping tight around my skin, holding me completely helpless while he strips away my nightgown.
No! This is a dream. I glance up. My hands are tied to the wall, but Cain bound my wrists with silk ropes.
My heart hammers a frantic, nauseating rhythm. Fight him! My mind screams, rebelling even as my core floods with traitorous, agonizing heat.
Cain steps between my spread thighs, his obsidian eyes burning with a dark, possessive hunger that eclipses my thoughts.
He leans down, sinking his sharp fangs deep into the exact same spot on my throat where Blake once bit me.
The pain is exquisite, a hot, searing shock that floods my veins with his thick, metallic venom. He is trying to rewrite me.
‘Drink.’ His telepathic voice commands, sliding into my brain like silk over a razor. Forget the ghost. Take my blood. Let me wash him out.
I swallow greedily, my lips parting against his skin as his venom rushes through me, rewriting my nervous system, blurring the line between who I was and who he is forcing me to become.
The terrifying part isn’t that it hurts; it’s that it feels identical.
Cain’s heavy, dominant weight pressing down into my mattress mirrors Blake’s phantom form with terrifying precision.
His large, cold hands grip my hips, bruising my flesh with the exact same possessive fury.
He is stealing my soul. Every nerve ending catches fire, the friction of his cock driving me toward an obliteration I never asked for, mixing Blake’s memory so thoroughly with Cain’s reality that I can no longer tell where the ghost ends and the master begins.
When we shatter together, my scream is swallowed by the heavy velvet of the curtains.
-
I find him in the darkness.
He is waiting for me, his silver hair spilling across his shoulders, his violet eyes burning with that familiar crimson ring. He reaches for me, my body melting against his.
“You came back,” I whisper.
“Always,” he breathes. “I will always come back to you. You just need to call.”
His hands find my waist, pulling me closer. His mouth finds my throat, and I feel the sharp press of his fangs, the delicious sting of his bite. Pleasure floods my veins, hot and electric.
We move together in the darkness, slow and deep and endless. I lose myself in him, in the feel of his skin against mine, in the sound of his voice whispering my name.
-
The sky outside begins to streak with the pale, sickly yellow of a new dawn.
I wake with my face pressed into the damp silk, my fingers clutching the empty sheets, my throat burning with Cain’s venom.
I rise, dress, and wait for the sun to sink again, a prisoner in the golden cage of my own ruin.