Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Daemon
ADMISSION
Damn it!
I yanked at the spear with all my strength, gritting my teeth against the pain of the gaping hole in my shoulder, and tossed it away once I had it out. I leapt to my feet and threw myself down the cliff.
Vhaena disappeared beneath the thorns before I even reached the bottom.
I landed hard, the stone cracking from the impact.
The rain crashed down, blurring the edges of my vision with the exception of the narrow gap she’d slipped through.
I bent down to see her feet vanishing within the maze of brambles.
She knew I couldn’t fit, and that I’d be trapped if I tried to follow. That was the point.
I slowly rose to my feet. I was panting like a feral beast, my hot breaths billowing through the chill downpour. My clawed fingers clenched at my sides, aching to rip something apart. But not her. Never her.
She had run away from me. Not a demon. Not a stranger. Me—the one who had been in her life for years, who was her brother’s best friend, who had watched from afar and protected her when she didn’t even know it.
I had come to this island for her. I had unchained my demon and killed others to keep her safe.
And she fucking left me.
“She can’t leave us. We’ve marked her as our own,” my demon reminded.
He was right. We’d passed the point of no return. I had told her what it meant. She had been warned.
I wasn’t going to let her get away.
Never again.
I bolted to the other side of the brambles, having to go around the impenetrable wall.
Following the scent of her blood, my demon growled low in my chest. My legs moved faster than my mind, driven by instinct alone.
Branches snapped against my mask as I tore through them.
The edges of the bramble bush sliced my side, but I ignored it.
I wasn’t letting anything stop me. Not fear of rejection. Not pride. Not the guilt clawing me from the inside out.
My demon roared inside me but not with violence—with desperation. He was just as feral for her as I was. While he craved her flesh, I craved something far worse. Something I knew she wasn’t going to give to me easily.
A flash of red caught my eye, cutting through the trees.
She had come out on the other side and was running as fast as her legs could take her. She stumbled, catching her ankle on a root, but she didn’t stop.
Hells, she was headstrong. Determined. Ferocious. And pumping her arms with that damn spoon clutched in her fist.
I intentionally stepped on a twig, and it snapped beneath my weight like a crack of lightning—just so she knew I was there; so she knew she couldn’t run. Her head whipped around, spotting me through the thorns between us. She flung herself through the trees faster.
I pushed even harder, coming around the brambles and closing the distance. I was close enough now I could smell the fear leaching from her, hear her ragged breaths, see her soaked, muddy clothes torn by the needles she fought through.
Fucking beautiful.
She glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes locked with mine. They were vicious, enraged, and broken.
She came to a sudden stop, spinning around and swinging with the spoon, putting every bit of force she had behind it.
WHACK.
The wood cracked against my chest.
WHACK.
My ribs.
WHACK.
My jaw.
I stood there without flinching, letting her unleash her fury on me. I hardly felt the hits. Not because she was weak but because I wouldn’t allow her pain to be more than I could handle.
WHACK.
This time I caught it.
She yanked against my hold, grunting in frustration.
“Fuck you,” she seethed from between gritted teeth. She reached up and ripped my mask down to hang around my neck. Her hot tears mixed with the cool rain on her cheeks. Her voice broke as she shouted, “Get away from me!”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She screamed and began pounding against my chest with her other fist, her arms shaking from exhaustion. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want your protection. Just…leave me alone.”
“Stop fighting me,” I snarled and pushed her back against a tree, holding her arms above her head to keep her from hitting me again.
Her strikes didn’t hurt. Her fury toward me did. But I wasn’t going anywhere.
“You don’t have to be here. You. Can. Leave,” she clipped.
“I can’t. I won’t.”
“Why…” She closed her eyes and shook her head before gazing back up at me. “Why are you here? I don’t understand, Daemon.”
I no longer cared what I was or wasn’t allowed to tell her. The way she asked, like all she wanted in the world was for me to answer—I would tell her all the fucking secrets of the universe, the Umbra Ministry and their rules be damned.
No more lies.
“I’m here because I killed someone and took their place in the Hunt. To get to you.”
The moment I learned you were chosen, nothing was stopping me.
She swallowed hard, and I felt her tense. “You aren’t here just to be ranked? You lied to me.”
“I’m here for you and you alone.”
“You came to hunt me.”
“I came to protect you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Bullshit. Now, let me go, and get away from me.”
“No…” My voice was cold and more demonic than ever.
“You think I wanted to be here? I turned down my original invitation for a reason. I never wanted to participate in this fucking Hunt, but I made a promise to Vosten to protect you. So, when I found out you had been taken, I did what I had to do. Because while I have no interest in killing any woman here, they do.” I gestured back toward the direction we came from, back toward where the other demons were.
“So here I am, murdering my own fucking kind and becoming the monster I never wanted to be. All to keep you safe.”
Her jaw tightened. “If you’re so pissed about it, then why are you still here?”
“I made a vow to—”
“Vosten. Yeah, I heard you. But he’s gone. They killed him. Did you know that? Your kind murdered my brother.”
My chest tightened. “I know.”
“Then you don’t have to keep your vow anymore,” she whispered through gritted teeth, blinking against the tears as they spilled down her cheeks. “Promises are worthless to the dead.”
My jaw clenched; hearing the words out loud made me see his body all over again.
“My vow may have been to him, but it’s for you.
” I leaned in closer, feeling her breath against my face.
I wiped the tears and rain running down her face, and she flinched.
I straightened, making sure she understood because my promise was so much more than empty words to me.
“So long as you live, then so does my vow.”
The lightning split the sky above us.
“I didn’t ask you to be here,” she spat.
“You didn’t have to. But it doesn’t make it any less your fault I’m here!” I let go of her wrists and slammed my hands against the tree by her head, caging her in with my arms as my claws dug into the bark. Not with violence, but with dominion. Not to trap, but to anchor her here with me.
“My fault?!” she screeched, shoving at my chest but unable to move me. “How is you being here my fault?”
“Because you made me love you!”
She sucked in a breath.
“With every glance, with every damn touch. With every silent word spoken with your beautiful fucking eyes. Every breathtaking smile. Every time my name was on your lips. Every time you came to me or looked at me. When you trusted me as a demon, fucked me, and let me mark you as my own. You made every single moment near you unbearable to not have another. And with each one, you made me fall further and further into the dark depths of my soul-crushing obsession with you.”
The only sounds were our breaths and the storm raging around us as I held her stare, not letting her escape from this.
“You can try to run from me,” I growled, my voice low and ragged. “You can hit me and push me away. You can scream at me and curse everything that I am. I don’t give a shit. If that’s what I have to go through to make sure you survive, then so be it.”
Her chin trembled. “You lied to me,” she said in a broken whisper.
“I protected you,” I said, softer now.
“You let me touch you without telling me who you truly are.”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I fucked you. I marked you as mine. Because even though you didn’t know who I was, it was me that you truly wanted.
” I never would have touched her if I hadn’t known with certainty that she wanted me just as much as I wanted her.
Not a demon. Not a random man. Me. “But I don’t regret it. Do you?”
There was a pause. Nothing longer than a breath. But her silence was louder than the thunder clapping above us. She stood there, soaked and seething, trembling with anger, confusion, and something else I couldn’t name—something she wasn’t ready to admit but couldn’t deny.
She said nothing. Never uttered a single word. Yet her eyes told me everything she needed to say. She didn’t need words.
She rose to her toes and crashed her mouth against mine.