Chapter 38
ONE MORE NIGHT
Anonymous-
It’s been a full day since I’ve seen my little dove—that’s the hardest part. Not the cold, or the endless driving. Not even the way my hands still sting from the jawbone. The stag didn’t want to give it up—not even after it was dead.
I had to work fast, before the winter froze the joints shut. My palms are sliced from where the teeth fought back, but if you ask the universe for a miracle, you have to offer a taste of your own life first.
I didn’t want to do it... to kill an innocent animal, but every time I close my eyes, I see that same nightmare of her falling. I’d kill a thousand stags if it kept her safe.
But it’s worth it.
She’s worth it.
Every mile.
Every bruise.
Because once I return, once I hold that final ingredient in my hand and complete the ritual, we won't ever have to be apart again. Not even for a moment.
I wonder if she misses me the way I miss her. I keep seeing her face in the fog on my windshield. That’s how I know I’m on the right path. She’s leading me to our destiny.
That’s what I tell myself as I pull off the highway and turn down an unmarked road. The trees here are gnarled and crooked, bowing over the road like a tunnel.
There’s no address.
No mailbox.
Just a red ribbon tied around a fencepost and the unmistakable scent of copper in the air.
I found the first two ingredients by listening—not with my ears, but with the parts of me that are most connected to her. That’s what led me to the jawbone buried beneath the church steps.
Tonight, though, the silence is deafening.
There are no animals.
No city hum.
Just the kind of quiet that feels like being watched.
I park on the edge of the gravel road and step out into the dark, leaving the engine running.
The cold gnaws at my skin. The little bite of pain keeps my mind from drifting back to Lumi—barely.
An old greenhouse stands half-collapsed in front of me.
Its bones curve in on each other like the ribcage of something long dead.
Most of the glass panes are missing or yellowed with time.
My hand hovers over a vine creeping up the doorframe.
Green and alive despite the cold outside.
Thriving in neglect. I wonder what that’s like.
I step through the broken doorframe, and my breath hitches. Something in the atmosphere is heavy with a vitality that feels... familiar.
My skin itches, a strange, crawling sensation beneath the surface of my arms, like seeds pushing up from the soil.
I’ve always felt out of place in the city, but here among the rot and reaching vines, I feel a steady thrum in the soles of my feet, like the earth is trying to strike a bargain with my bones.
I don’t know why I linger here longer than necessary. Maybe because I feel more at home in this damp, suffocating green than I ever did in my father’s house.
I find what I need suspended under a cracked glass cloche—a single bloom, pristine and untouched by its environment.
It looks just like the rose from that old Disney movie my brother and I used to sneak and watch.
We loved it, but dad said he wasn’t raising sissies.
He’d catch us in the glow of the TV and use his belt until the metallic tang of fear was the only thing I could taste.
He’d beat us until our throats were too raw to scream, then leave us on the floor to ‘be men’ in the dark.
I learned at a very young age that there was no such thing as fairy tales.
Beauty is something you have to hide, or someone will try to break it out of you.
That’s why I have to protect her. I’m the only one who knows how to prune the world back until she‘s the only thing left growing.
Dad was wrong. I’m not a sissy. I’m just the only one who realized that a rose is a weapon if you hold it the right way.
I pull myself out of my memory and reach for the Belladonna. Ink-dark petals streaked in violet dangle from a dainty stem. The exact shade of purple as the shadows under Lumi’s eyes when she hasn’t gotten enough sleep.
The moment my fingers touch the stem, the thorn pierces me. I watch my blood bead against the dark velvet, rolling down to the dirt. The bloom pulses once as if it recognizes me. It’s a transaction. I’m feeding it, and in return, it’s going to help me bring her home.
Lust-vein nectar only blooms beneath a blood moon. Thick, sterling ambrosia pools at the base of the stem—just enough to enchant the wrong person.
In a way, we’re the same—deceitfully beautiful on the outside, and capable of anything to keep the frost from winning.
The bloom trembles as I draw its nectar into a vial. The smell is intoxicating—sweet, vanilla twilight.
“One more,” I murmur, breath fogging. “And then I’ll be back with you, little dove.”
Trees stir wildly behind the greenhouse. Lightning flashes through the night sky as I walk back to my car. I clutch the vial until my knuckles ache. The wind shifts, sharp and sudden, carrying the faintest trace of smoke.
It leads me west, through the trees, across a frozen stream to a copse of thorns.
They look wrong, curling along the scorched ground on writhing black ivy. The air tastes bitter like charcoal,
My eyes roam over the brambles, and I spot a thorn that looks different than the rest. It sits half-buried in the rubble, hanging from a charred branch.
When I reach for it, the tip splinters, revealing a faint pulsing glow—the color of a dying ember.
It‘s hot, searing through the callouses on my thumb—a piece of the fire she needs to keep her warm.
“Found you.” I smile.
The last ingredient. The piece that ties this all together. Maybe it’s the wind through the blackened branches, or the way the hunger is starting to make my head light, but I swear I hear her voice. A soft, fractured ‘Hurry’ that vibrates in my ears.
“I’m coming, angel,” I whisper, cradling the thorn like my life depends on it.“Just one more night, and we'll be whole.”
I drive with one hand white-knuckled on the wheel, the other twitching like a severed nerve. My palm still reeks of charred earth and the black thorn’s bitter smoke. It slides down without permission—over my thigh, pressing hard against the ache that’s been building since I left her.
I should wait. Save it all for her. But God—I can’t stop seeing her face in the bathroom. The way she looked when I spoke to her through the window. I could hear every breath, smell the soap on her skin, and practically taste the heat rising from her skin.
I made her cum with just my voice. I wasn’t even touching her.
But oh, how I wanted to. I wanted to burst through that window and show her what it would feel like if I were really there.
If it were my hands instead of hers. My mouth.
My body pinning her against the floor while the water ran cold, and she forgot anyone else ever existed.
I’ve memorized every sound she made. The little hitch in her breath. The way she tried to stay quiet... and failed. The broken gasp when she finally let go.
And I wasn’t even in the fucking room.
My breath stutters. Fingers digging into denim, friction sparking through the fabric, not nearly enough—it’ll never be enough until it’s her hand, her body, her pitiful little gasps in my ear instead of being separated by his fortress of magic.
My hand moves without thought, rougher now, chasing the phantom of her. The zipper bites into my knuckles as I shove my jeans down my thighs. My cock springs free, thick and aching, and I wrap my fist around it like I’m trying to strangle the need out of my own body.
It doesn’t work. It never fucking works.
The black thorn pulses faintly on the passenger seat in sync with my heartbeat—or maybe hers. Maybe we’re already connected. Maybe we always have been, and this is just nature’s way of letting me know what my soul’s known all along.
“Soon, angel,” I rasp into the empty car, voice cracking like something inside me is splitting open. “So fucking soon.”
I stroke myself harder, faster, imagination filling in what my hands can’t give me. Her underneath me. Her eyes wide and wet, mouth falling open as I push inside her for the first time—the only time that will ever matter because every other man before me will be erased.
Overwritten.
She’ll forget she was ever touched by anyone else.
The highway blurs. My hips jerk up into my fist, chasing the edge, and for a moment I can almost feel it—her heat, her tightness, the way she’d clench around me like her body was made to hold mine,
Her name fractures on my tongue as I cum, vision blurring, hand slick and trembling as the car swerves hard onto the shoulder. Gravel sprays everywhere.
For five seconds, there’s nothing but her.
Her face in the bathtub.
Her voice calling the name I gave her.
The hallucinatory sensation of finally—finally—being inside her instead of being on the outside looking in.
Then reality drags me back.
The empty car, the dark road, loneliness.
Fuck.
My jaw tenses. I grip the wheel with my other hand and force the car back onto the slick asphalt.
I shouldn’t have—
That wasn’t—
That was supposed to be for her. I’ve planned every moment, every touch, every breath for when we’re finally alone in that cottage, and I just—
Wasted it, like some desperate fucking teenager who can’t control himself.
Shame curls low in my gut, but underneath it, there’s something worse.
Ravenousness.
Because I know exactly how good it's going to feel when it's real. When it‘s her skin under my palms instead of empty air. When it’s her voice breaking on my name instead of the silence swallowing me whole. When her body finally teaches me the secrets I can’t learn from watching.
I wipe my hands on my jeans and press the accelerator harder.
One more night.
That’s all that stands between me and everything I’ve ever wanted.
One. More. Night.