34. Chapter Thirty-Four - Atoning Sins
Standing in the doorway, I surveyed the scene in silence.
Three mortal males. Completely unremarkable in every way that mattered, save for the atrocity they stood on the brink of committing.
I catalogued them with clinical precision, engraving their faces into the endless vault of my memory where nothing ever faded.
I would remember them exactly as they were in the moment, down to the tremor hidden beneath their bravado, down to the way their fear had not yet learned how to breathe.
The one nearest to Ira spoke first. He had the audacity to open his mouth. The insolence to command me. “The hell, blud? Get the fuck out.”
My gaze never shifted toward him. I allowed the words to linger uselessly in the air between us, small and mortal and doomed.
Then, slowly, silently, I closed the door behind me.
The soft click of the latch rang through the room like the final note of a requiem.
Whatever protest they had been preparing dissolved instantly, swallowed whole by the weight of my presence, by the cold certainty that death itself had entered the room and would not be leaving alone.
And then I saw her.
Ira lay sprawled between them like something discarded, her body arranged carelessly, stripped of dignity by unworthy hands.
To them, she was an object. A thing to consume.
To me, she was everything. A fragile miracle suspended in filth.
The sight of her nearly ruptured something inside me.
Her limbs hung limp, her breathing too slow, too even, the rhythm unnaturally measured in a way that made violence rise behind my ribs.
Not unconscious. Drugged. I could hear it clearly in her pulse, in the sluggish way her blood crawled through her veins with forced compliance.
One of the males still had his hand hovering near her throat, as though the memory of touching her lingered against his skin.
My own hand tightened violently at my side, the strain of restraint biting so deeply into me my bones threatened to crack beneath it.
They had touched her. For that alone, there would be no mercy.
The first creature barely had time to register confusion before I flung him across the room with a negligent flick of my wrist. His body struck the far wall with explosive force, drywall rupturing outward as bone gave way beneath the impact.
The wet crunch echoed beautifully through the room before he collapsed in a broken heap, unconscious and twitching, reduced to nothing more than ruined flesh and shame.
The second attempted to speak. Perhaps to plead.
Perhaps to curse me. The distinction was meaningless.
He never finished. I lifted my hand again, and the invisible force of my will hurled him upward.
His body collided violently with the ceiling fan, blades snapping apart with a grotesque metallic shriek as the mechanism ground to a halt beneath his weight.
He hung there tangled and convulsing, suspended like some grotesque parody of life.
A faint click of my tongue escaped me, more amused than enraged.
There was something almost comically pathetic about it, like a forgotten puppet dangling from the remnants of a cheap joke.
The amusement vanished instantly because Ira—my Ira—was still lying there. Unmoving.
The one who had pressed his repugnant, pathetic anatomy against her.
That one would die. Not quickly. Not cleanly.
No, he deserved pain that unfolded slowly and methodically, carved into every corner of his consciousness until the very idea of mercy became incomprehensible.
I would dismantle him piece by piece. It would be ritualistic.
But fury stalled me where I stood.
I remained motionless for one terrible second, suspended beneath the crushing gravity of what they had tried to do to her.
My breath turned heavy with loathing, each inhale scraping against the monster clawing beneath my skin.
Disgust curdled through me, not only for them but for myself.
Because I had allowed this. My caution. My distance.
My precious restraint. All of it had handed them an opportunity.
He met my gaze a second too late.
The movement of my hand was minimal, barely enough to disturb the sleeve of my coat, but it sent him flying across the room.
His body smashed into the television with catastrophic force, glass exploding outward like shrapnel as circuitry burst and fizzled beneath him.
The crash rang through the room like music, sharp and satisfying, and for one fleeting instant it almost soothed the savage burn clawing through my throat.
Then the blood followed.
It struck my senses in a violent wave: metallic, sharp, intoxicating.
Even from these worthless bodies, the scent awakened my hunger, rage, and desperation.
The leash I kept wrapped around myself strained brutally beneath the pressure, threads fraying one by one as the sight of Ira lying there dragged me closer and closer to the edge of losing myself entirely.
I had not tasted her. Not even once. My body had burned for her for months, every instinct inside me sharpened to the point of agony by wanting, but I had denied myself completely.
And now she lay there sprawled across the mattress like something already lost, her warmth leeched from her limbs by chemicals, her voice stolen by fear.
My Ira.
My hands trembled as I bent toward her, not from weakness, but from the terrible strain of restraint.
I lifted her into my arms as though she were made of glass, every movement unbearably careful despite the violence raging beneath my skin.
Her body was cool. Her breaths were shallow.
She weighed almost nothing, yet the emptiness of her weight gripped me tighter than any wound I had suffered in centuries.
Rage clawed at the inside of my throat so viciously I could taste blood from where my fangs threatened to descend.
I had failed her.
Not because she defied me. Not because she tested me. But because I had been too careful. Too distant. Too consumed by terror over what I truly was. I told myself I was giving her time, giving her space, allowing her freedom to choose me willingly, but the truth underneath it was far uglier.
I was afraid.
Afraid that if she saw the monster lurking beneath my restraint, she would recoil from me in horror. So I watched her. Waited for her. Circled her like a starving thing pretending not to hunger.
I had spent years convincing myself I was nothing like Rupert.
That his mistakes were not mine to repeat.
But perhaps the difference was not the virtue I once believed it to be.
Rupert controlled his soulmate. Soroush despised him for it, yet he lived untouched and unharmed.
Mine lay drugged and limp in my arms while my restraint rotted around me like a failed prayer.
And as that realization settled into the marrow of my bones, something inside me fractured beyond repair.
The fragile illusion that I could love her gently split wide open beneath the weight of what nearly happened to her tonight.
As I carried her through the house, the air swam with stench: spilled alcohol, sweat soaked deep into the walls, cheap perfume thick enough to curdle the senses.
Every mortal soul inside seemed to still as I passed.
Their conversations faltered. Their eyes followed us in silence, instinctively recognizing something lethal moving among them, but I acknowledged none of them.
Except him. Carter.
He remained tangled around some vapid female, drunk on his own delusions, oblivious to the devastation unraveling around him.
My gaze locked onto him across the room, and the beast inside me curled awake in anticipation.
His scent was unmistakable, adolescent lust layered with deceit, spoiled from within by selfishness and cowardice.
He had not even noticed she was gone. Oh, he would, though.
I would ensure that everything he valued collapsed into ash between his fingers. He and the girl clinging to him would beg before it ended, and when they did, I would lean close enough for them to hear me whisper her name into their ears like a final sacrament.
Ira. It would be the last thing they ever heard.
The drive passed in suffocating silence.
Every second stretched thin while I monitored her breathing, her pulse, and every sluggish shift of her body.
I adjusted the mirror not for the road, but for her.
I needed to see her chest rise with every breath.
Needed proof she remained tethered to our world.
The drugs still polluted her blood, stealing her strength molecule by molecule, and the thought of leaving her anywhere else tonight, of returning her to her mother’s home and pretending it had not scarred us both beyond repair, was unthinkable.
Taylor would ask questions. Questions that could not be answered without destroying everything. And even if they could, blame would settle exactly where it belonged.
On me.
I did not possess the patience for diplomacy tonight. Not when vengeance prowled so close beneath my skin. So I drove away from the wreckage of the party with Ira unconscious beside me, devastating even now in her fragility, and the decision settled itself with absolute certainty.
She would stay with me.
There would be no debate.
Distance was no longer something I trusted myself to give her.
When I finally laid her against my bed, the storm inside me did not quiet. It darkened. Deepened into something ancient and starving. But the instant her body touched my sheets, her scent unfurled through the room like smoke curling around my spine.
Hers. Only hers.
The lingering traces of alcohol and other males evaporated beneath the warmth of her natural scent, familiar enough to feel like madness itself.
I drew the covers over her with painstaking care, my fingers lingering near the hem of her sleeve as though even the small contact might tether me to sanity a little longer.
Every violent instinct inside me strained toward the unfinished carnage I had left behind.
The urge to return, to tear the creatures apart slowly and drown myself in the sound of their screams, pulsed through me with nauseating intensity.
But I could not. Not yet. Because if I surrendered to it now, I would not stop.
And Ira would wake alone and frightened and confused. Vulnerable in the aftermath of something that had nearly shattered her. I would not abandon her to that darkness while I indulged myself.
I slipped carefully into the bed beside her.
The mattress shifted faintly beneath my weight, and the proximity of her nearly undid me all over again.
She stirred softly, a fragile sound escaping her lips, and it sent a violent shiver racing beneath my skin.
My hand found her waist instinctively, gentle enough to soothe but selfish in its purpose.
I needed to feel her. Needed the undeniable proof that she remained here with me.
Where she was alive, breathing, and safe.
My nose brushed the curve of her neck, and Gods, that nearly destroyed what little restraint I had left. The warmth of her skin and the slow pulse beneath it wrapped around my senses instantly, dragging something feral to the surface.
She smelled divine.
Her blood moved beneath her skin in slow, intoxicating pulses, a song only I could hear, winding itself around my senses until it became unbearable.
My fangs throbbed painfully against my gums. The beast inside me clawed upward with desperate hunger, screaming to mark her, to sink my teeth into her throat and bind her to me in a way that could never be undone.
One bite. One irreversible moment, and she would belong to me beyond death itself.
I did not take it. Barely.
Instead, I pressed my face against her throat and trembled beneath the sheer brutality of my restraint.
Her warmth seeped into me slowly, grounding something monstrous clawing at the edges of my control.
Her breathing steadied mine. I drew her closer against my chest, not out of hunger, but devotion so consuming it bordered on madness.
Relief and guilt twisted together inside me until I could no longer separate them from the devastating truth pressing down on me.
She had become my greatest weakness. And my greatest violence.
She murmured something incoherent in her sleep, and the sound hollowed me out completely. If I had been capable of sleeping, I would have fallen into it there beside her, wrapped inside the rhythm of her heartbeat and the soft warmth of her breath against my skin.
Mine.
Always mine.
And I would slaughter them all for touching her.