22. Chapter Twenty-Two - Returning Storm
“Culver.” Anna’s voice sliced through the howling wind like a lover’s whisper laced with venom, sharp and teasing, as she ascended the crumbling rooftop of the ancient castle.
She settled beside me with the grace of a predator born to the shadows, her long legs dangling over the abyss, heels striking the weathered stone in a rhythmic pulse that echoed a forbidden heartbeat. “How are you faring, brother?”
I did not turn toward her. My gaze remained fixed on the valley below, on the cattle moving through the tall grass with their dull, untroubled patience, their movements a monotonous procession.
Their mass shifted slowly, peacefully, as though the land itself had forgotten what it meant to be hunted, oblivious to the silent calculus.
They grazed without urgency, without awareness, blind to the way death often arrived quietly.
Often without warning or spectacle, much as it had claimed legions in the blood-soaked fields of bygone wars.
Their calm felt obscene.
It reminded me too much of the fragile lies mortals built their lives upon, the belief that safety was something earned rather than borrowed, a delusion I had watched shatter time and again.
I perched on the slick moss lining the cracked parapet, the ancient stone pressing into me like the fingers of a corpse long dead but not forgotten.
Sensation anchored me, a necessary counterweight against the abyss within.
It kept me from drifting too far inward, into the ancient currents of hunger and possession that had shaped my existence through tempests of power and loss.
“There is something stirring,” I rasped, my voice rough, scraped raw by the taste still coating my throat. I dragged the back of my hand across my lips, smearing fresh blood along my mouth and chin, the warmth trailing downward in thin paths. “I sense it slithering nearer, hungry and unrelenting.”
Anna cocked her head, her wild red curls whipping in the gale like flames devouring the night, framing a face as fierce and untamed as her spirit. Her smile held no warmth, only the glint of shattered obsidian in her eyes.
“You’ve always had a sense for these things,” she murmured, her hand gripping the stone, fingers knuckled as though she held back her own demons. “The clouds are rolling in.”
I leaned back on my palms and tipped my face toward the sky, allowing the storm’s breath to scour my features with the indifference of tempests.
The clouds churned low and heavy, swollen with violence, bruised and restless.
They pressed down on the land as if the heavens themselves were impatient, mirroring the inexorable pull of fate drawing ever tighter around me.
Silence stretched between us.
“Restraining myself has been torment.” The admission left me as my tongue flicked over my fangs. “She is… tempting,” her essence a siren call resonating through the vault of my eternal solitude.
“Tempting? No, that’s too tame for what she is.” She glanced downward, flicking dust from her coat with languid fingers that betrayed nothing of her hunger. “If Rupert’s ramblings about Soroush hold any truth, then you, dear brother, are setting a new bar for restraint.”
A low sound escaped me. It wasn’t laughter, not quite a growl either.
I shut my eyes and breathed deeply, drawing in damp stone, old moss, and blood. And beneath it all, threaded through everything, was my Ira. The mate I craved and prayed into existence across barren centuries, a divine convergence that bound me with chains stronger than any forged in mortal fires.
I would never let her go. Just as I hoped she would do the same.
“Come,” Anna urged finally, her voice silk-wrapped steel. “Indulge a while longer. You’ll crave the power when you face her again.”
Her words curled around my heart like something inevitable.
I did not answer. I rose and stepped forward without hesitation.
The ninety-foot plunge swallowed me whole.
Wind screamed past my ears as the fall closed around my body, a violent communion with gravity that lasted only a breath before my boots struck the courtyard stones below. Flagstones shattered outward on impact, fractures spiderwebbing through ancient rock, but the force barely registered.
I rose smoothly, rolling my shoulders as if shaking off an inconvenience, and lifted my gaze to Anna’s silhouette high above, her form stark and crimson against the storm-torn sky.
To us, Caerwyn Castle was never a relic.
It was Mother’s domain, shaped by her will into something far removed from mortal curiosity. By day, it wore the mask of history. By night, it revealed itself for what it truly was.
Her gatherings were elaborate deceptions, illusions of refinement that dissolved the moment the doors closed.
Beneath them lay truth.
There was blood, excess, devotion, and hunger stripped bare. Romance twisted into something feral. Pleasure sharpened by danger.
I shoved open the massive oak doors, their hinges screaming like damned souls dragged from confession, and heat poured over me in a suffocating wave. The air clung thickly to my skin, heavy with sweat, blood, and the musk of bodies pressed together without restraint.
There was no music, not truly.
Only the low, relentless rhythm of flesh colliding, throats opening in surrender, hearts hammering themselves raw.
I moved through it all like a shadow given form, weaving through the throng with calculated precision.
Bodies parted without thought, their minds too dulled by indulgence to recognize what passed among them.
I inhaled deeply, the sharp bloom of arousal curling through the room, veins swollen with life, fear sweetening blood into something intoxicating.
It should have been enough. It wasn’t.
My fingers curled slowly into fists as the pressure inside me tightened. The chaos was meant to distract me, to scatter my focus. Instead, it sharpened what was missing, honing the edge of absence into something unbearable.
I did not crave the bodies surrounding me, their offerings pale echoes.
I craved distance from her pull, but in the same breath, I craved her close proximity.
The dilemma was overwhelming in its complexity.
I found Rupert before I had fully crossed the threshold, slumped on a crimson velvet chaise, his spine rigid, his jaw locked tight enough to splinter stone.
Rage radiated off him in corrosive waves, his glare fixed on the writhing bodies before him as though their pleasure mocked something broken inside him.
“A beacon of joy,” I drawled, sinking beside him, the sprawl of naked flesh around us barely registering.
Rupert’s gaze never shifted. “Piss off,” he growled.
“You should have stayed with him,” I murmured, my stare dropping to the polished marble beneath our feet.
He barked a harsh laugh. “He despises me when I hover. You know that. If I’d stayed, he’d rage, slash at his wrists once more. Tempt fate again.”
Silence fell heavily between us, thick and unyielding.
I inhaled slowly and straightened, elbows braced on my thighs. “Enough games. At least drink something. You shall fade.”
His eyes flicked briefly to the abandoned crystal goblet by his boot, its rim crusted dark.
“It’s not his,” he rasped. “Sipping that would twist my gut. Everyone’s taste after consummating your mate never compares.”
My attention drifted despite myself, caught by a subtle shift deeper in the room. A woman arched between two lovers, her cries tearing from her throat as they claimed her from both sides, her body glistening with sweat and abandon.
It was savage. Beautiful in its own way. A raw enactment of desires that had echoed through the bacchanals of antiquity. It stirred nothing in me.
My hunger was singular, fixated upon the one essence that alone could sate the void within.
Ira’s name carved itself through me again, widening the ache no indulgence could fill, a territorial imprint binding her to the core of my existence.
I could see her too clearly.
Her image was etched with unbearable clarity upon the canvas of my mind. The subtle contours of her demeanor. The way she tried to hide worry behind sarcasm. The silence she left when she didn’t message, a void louder than any scream.
She owed me nothing. I knew that.
And yet her absence scraped against something vital inside me, a primal undercurrent coiled beneath layers of composure, threatening the delicate balance between devotion and dominion.
“You should join them,” Rupert said, venomous amusement curling through his voice. “Could help take the edge off that infernal hunger you’re experiencing.”
“No.” The word left me feeling sharp and final. “I want what is mine.”
“She’s back home,” he said softly, almost sing-songy. “Waiting for you. Maybe even wondering if you’ll come back to claim her... or if the danger in you will keep you away.”
Something inside me tightened with fury.
“I shall be different,” I said, more to myself than to him. “She will never fear me. I will be patient… gentle. She will come to me willingly, and she will want me.”
Rupert turned to me, his voice dropping into something old and cruel. “You’ll break her.”
My hand curled, nails digging into my palms until blood welled up. The blood was not mine but from the meal I had been feasting on prior. There was no pain, but it steadied me enough to hear him.
“You think I wanted to destroy him?” Rupert continued, eyes locked on mine, burning with a haunted fire. “You think I wanted to make him flinch at my touch, to see terror where there should have been passion? I love him. But it doesn’t matter. I’m a monster… and so are you.”
His lips parted in a wicked grin, shadows playing across his features. “When you fuck her, she’ll cry out in agony, not in pleasure. You’ll be too much. You’ll tear her apart from the inside. You’ll make her hate you.”
He wanted to wound me. And he did.