38. Declaration Murder
38
DECLARATION MURDER
GHOST
He’s going to explode.
I’m going to explode.
Emotions were expressed with words spoken this time, and holy fuck, it’s heavy. The heaviest thing I’ve ever felt. But it’s weightless, too, like the weight of it can’t be determined. It’s blanketing me comfortably, but also suffocating because of what it means.
The word ‘yes.’ Just in case…
Mine, mine, mine, my soul screams.
Run, run, run, my vulnerability demands.
Stay, stay, stay , my heart requires.
We both step back at the same time, the scared look in his eyes also reflecting from mine. I don’t know why it’s terrifying. It’s new, something rare, something that has never happened before, and the casual way we declared it doesn’t fit the volatile way we feel it. We’re twisted up, caught somewhere between sentimental and detrimental, unsure which reaction is right.
I wanna love him.
I wanna fight the love, deny it, take it back because it’s horrifying.
I want to throw love at him in droves because I feel it so strongly.
I don’t know how to be soft right now. My puzzle no longer sits on the table. The pieces are scattered all over the floor, my foundation is crumbled, and I’m not the illusionist who projects the mirage of me. I’m just some boy, standing in front of another boy, feeling things with my heart for the first time.
Put me back together!
“I—” I swallow down words, wanting to say them but not wanting to need to say them. “I need the ninety… I need?—”
“Death,” Killian says for me. “You need Death.”
Yes. Take me to her.
Because I unmasked Killian Hallows, and unmasking him is the epitome of breaking him. I’ve always wanted to break him; it’s been my goal for so long. I don’t crave it anymore. I don’t want him to be broken, but I don’t have it in me to express how beautiful he is without anything hiding who he is. Not right now. I’m way too vulnerable to start talking about beauty, and I need a brush with Death to stabilize me.
Me. Me. Me . Always me first. Because nothing proves my self-worth more to me than defying Death. I need to prove that I’m stronger than her.
I need it right fucking now!
Killian delivers. Because he’s feeling the same intense pressure and out-of-control vulnerability as I am. I see it in his turbulent eyes, the clouds brewing, readying to unleash their storm. On me.
He balls his fists and tries to tamp down his breathing, but when he snaps, it’s in my direction. He comes at me fast, charging like he has no control over his feet. When his body impacts mine, the air knocks from my lungs, but I don’t have time to think about that. His force carries me, my feet tangle in a random rope, and the bedroom's single-paned window shatters against my back.
I break through it.
Fear strangles me, but not hard enough that I can’t still laugh. Gravity disappears and my stomach rises to my throat as I explode through the second-story window. Glass shards surround me, and Killian lets go. A joyous, terrified scream rips through my vocal cords, Death watching me closely. Her hellions and demons all come forth, creeping out of shadows and crevices to bear witness to my fall from rancid grace.
The cool night air is fresh and shocking, the sky lit up with stars and a moon that’s only a sliver. As my legs scrape the sill, I fall backwards. My body tilts, the treetops and neighbouring houses come into view, and when I roll my eyes as far back as they can go, the ground and certain injury stare back at me. I smile at it because I’m sicker than Krypt. I laugh at it because I’m going to mar it as much as it’s going to mar me.
I jar to a stop, my teeth clacking so hard my mouth fills with blood and my stomach keeps falling while the rest of my body stops. The world goes still as I hang from the window, my calves still hooked over the ledge. I can’t see him, but Killian’s hands hold my shins, preventing me from falling but having the power to drop me whenever he sees fit. He once called himself my god…
My life is in his hands. I’ve never felt safer and in more danger than I do right now.
I throw my arms back, letting them hang as blood fills my head and puts pressure on my eyes. Upside down, Moros looks even more twisted. The trees sprout from the sky and the empty windows all blink at me, Death’s minions in each pane of glass. My heart is pounding hard, but Killian’s grip is a tether I didn’t think I’d want but feel assured to have.
I love him…
Just in case…
Fuck. I really don’t want to die now.
When my body jostles, I look up to see him tying my ankles to something. “I’m not close enough.”
“I know,” he says, continuing to wrap something around my feet while he pins my shins down with the other arm. He knows…
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m showing you off to that bitch Death. Stay there, sweetheart. I’ll be right back.”
When he lets go, I drop another few inches as the rope’s slack tightens, but the window above me is empty, no grey eyes looking down at me. So, I hang. Because I like the perspective.
But I like it more that Death is watching me. I’ve lured her here, and I’m in no rush to lose all her attention. Wickedly, I smile.
* * *
When Killian returns, it’s with an angry mob.
I hear the shouting first, angry voices coming down the street so loudly that they startle me from my deathly slumber. I can’t feel my legs anymore, and I should have pulled myself up long ago because the muscles in my abs won’t function now that they’re deadened with immobility. My fingers are numb, but my arms are tingly, asleep, limp, and out of my control. But my eyes still work.
I open them, looking at the street upside down. Killian leads the charge while a trail of angry people follow behind, yelling words I can’t yet make out. Killian is dragging someone, not slowing his pace at all, entirely blocking out whatever the mob is shouting at him. The parade and party on Death Row still sounds in the distance, but it’s washed out as Killian’s personal procession gets closer.
I swing a bit, trying to get a better view. My body groans, and the blood that has rushed to my head makes me exhausted and dizzy. Death is still here, waiting for my brain to give up on me, my heart to stop ticking, and my body to die because it’s stopped getting blood where it needs. At some point, my legs slipped over the windowsill and the only thing keeping me dangling is the rope he tied.
“Sweetheart!” Killian shouts, and when I look, I pull my body in as close as I can get it, crumpling in on myself because knives are flying my way. He throws three of them, the first two thudding into the windowsill and the third making the rope around my feet fray. “Tuck and roll, Soren!” He throws the fourth, and the sound of the rope shredding only gives me a two-second head start to get my body into position to make a two-story drop.
It snaps, and I fall. My heart thunders and my useless limbs don’t tuck like they’re supposed to. That roller coaster sensation disorients me, but when I slam into some hedges, the pain disorients me more. Branches scratch at me everywhere, and I’m grateful for the numbness because I don’t feel it all right away. I tuck, trying to roll out of the bush, but I don’t tuck enough. I land on the hard-packed grass, my shoulder popping right out of joint from the impact.
“Fuck,” I groan, holding it with my numb hand and rolling onto my side. “Fucking fuck, Killian!” I curl into the fetal position, cradling my shoulder so it doesn’t break entirely.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” His voice is impatient but amused when he takes my good arm and pulls me to my feet. I sway, off my axis and riddled with pain. His gaze finds the new words on my jawline before he holds eye contact with me. “Answer still yes?” he asks.
“You’re—” I cry out in agony when he grabs my scapula and my arm, snapping my shoulder joint back into place. “Fuuuck!” My eyes water and my stomach heaves, nauseous as the onslaught of torture peaks. “What the fuck, Kill?”
Killian lifts my chin, forcing me to block out the other people here. “You’re mine, Sauder. You said it.”
Okay? Where’s he going with this? The crazed look he’s throwing me isn’t putting me at ease.
“The fucking curse can’t have you. I don’t share.”
That’s when I look beyond him, seeing that the mob he’s led here is a group of fifteen Sauders. My back straightens and the pain fades, the numbness in my limbs only a mild irritation now. There they all are, the inferior family members I don’t want to be like. My cousins, at least ten of them, and three uncles. Two widowed aunts. They’re here, angry, glaring at me like I’m at fault for whatever Killian did.
“The fuck are you talking about?” I look at Killian.
“Pick one.”
“What?”
“Fucking pick one, Soren. I’m killing one of them right now to end this curse.”
The group erupts, pulling weapons, shouting their anger, and pleading for their chance to outlive the curse. I’m… goddammit, am I swooning?
Is he really so possessive that now that I’ve confessed I love the bastard, he won’t even let me half-ass belong to a curse? Fuck, why is that so hot? How is my cock hard through all this pain and numbness?
“Pick one,” he snaps at me.
But I can’t form a name right now because I’m staring at his lips, feeling his brand on my jaw, noticing my bitemark tattooed on his. My dislocated shoulder is nothing compared to how much it hurts to love him. On instinct and nothing more, I step forward, grip his rolling throat, and kiss the fucker like I’m falling for him even more for doing this.
Is it even true love if he doesn’t kill your cousin to keep you from a curse?
I wrap my fingers around his neck, digging them into his nape because I can’t get enough of him. He hisses when I press on the words I carved there, but he grunts against my lips and kisses me back.
“Stop fucking stalling and pick one or I will.”
I wanna fuck so bad right now. I’ve been turned on before, especially by him, but this is something else. This is a need so strong I don’t think I’ll survive without it. It’s a pull from deep in my core, emanating an energy so fiery the world will burn if I don’t get what I want. I’ve never flirted with Killian, but my tingling hand reaches down, rubbing his cock and feeling it so much more than I did that night in my grave.
He groans, biting my lip while a riot breaks out behind him, reaffirming his Vile given name. I’m fervent, unable to stop, needing to fucking feel him against my skin. I reach up, trying to shove my hand down his pants, but he grabs my wrist to stop me.
“Fucking hell, sweetheart. I will fuck you in front of them and then kill all your cousins if you don’t stop.”
The messed-up part is, I’m happy. Not because he wants to end my family curse, but because he wants to own me so completely that even it can’t hold a part of me. He’s snatched up all my pieces and hoarded them for himself, and with them in his hands, I’m falling apart yet so put together. I don’t care about the curse. I care that he’s possessive of me.
Because I’m fucking worth it and someone is finally appreciating me how I should be appreciated.
“The one in green. He’s a dipshit who blamed Remi for our dad’s?—”
He moves fast and with authority. A dagger flies into my cousin Tim’s shoulder, and another knife is held out in front of Killian to warn everyone away when he grabs the one in green. My extended family shouts, but no one tries to stop my man. I grin at that, and then I grin wider when Killian drags him over to me, a knife pressed to his throat.
My cock throbs with need, adrenaline pounds in my chest, and his eyes roil with more storm clouds than I’ve ever seen him possess. I don’t even watch the knife drag across Tim’s throat. I watch Killian Hallows kill my cousin as an act of possessive love. I bite my lip into my mouth as blood soaks into Tim’s shirt and the rest of the family goes silent. Tim is choking and gurgling the last seconds of his life away, and I pant ragged, desperate breaths as he slices from one ear to the other, Tim’s throat smiling as he dies.
I can’t smile. I’m too busy trying not to come in my fucking pants.
Blood coats his hand, dripping down his scarred and tattooed forearm all the way to his elbow, and still, he doesn’t look away from me. Fuck, he’s mine. He. Is. Mine. Has a man ever looked hotter than he looks right now? Hair dishevelled, body muscled and coiled, eyes riotous, and demeanour calm. He might murder with ease, but one move from me and his casual grace will snap in half as animalistic savagery barrels through.
And that’s my very own power to hold on to. The power to wield this man however I choose.
Death is still here. She’s watching, admiring me for defying her for so long and thanking me for bringing her to this show. She has a soul to take with her, and as Tim hits the grass, the weight of the Sauder curse rises from my pores, leaving me as nothing but the Ghost of Moros and Killian’s just in case .
The night stills, my family stops breathing. Killian grips the knife he used, but he steps over Tim’s corpse and flings it to the ground, the point sticking into the lawn. My thighs clench harder than my stomach, and my throat dries, so thirsty for him I can’t even swallow.
“The curse is lifted!” someone shouts. “I feel it! Oh my god, I can feel it lifting!”
“Thanks to him!”
“Killian Hallows!”
But I fling my own dagger at my uncle, glaring at him as Killian steps closer to me. “Don’t say his fucking name,” I snarl, pointing at him. “He’s mine.”
“Leave,” Killian seethes, eyes on mine.
I don’t know where they go or if they stay, but when Killian gets to me, my last speck of restraint shreds, and I give in to my base needs.
Death. Desire. Despair. They all come from Killian now.