41. Chapter Forty-One - The Truth #2
There were no questions. Just the quiet strength of his body wrapped around mine, his fingers threading through my hand with a certainty that made my chest ache painfully.
Every time my thoughts drifted toward the photos, toward the blood, the carved words, and the mangled bodies burned into my head, his grip tightened slightly, a silent pulse of pressure reminding me to stay anchored to him instead.
He took me away from the school, away from the whispers already crawling up my spine like insects.
He drove us back to his estate with the kind of terrifying focus that made it feel as though the entire world had narrowed down to one singular purpose: getting me somewhere safe before he lost whatever thin restraint he still possessed.
The pavilion sat tucked into the farthest edge of the property beneath the soft shadows of autumn trees, hidden away from the rest of the estate like a secret too sacred to expose.
Warm strands of light glowed overhead, casting golden halos across pale stone while faux leaves curled around the columns, their amber and burnt-orange colors catching the light like embers suspended in air.
It looked unreal.
Like something stolen from Olympus itself and lowered carefully into the mortal world.
A shrine built for a sinner like me.
He gestured for me to sit, and I lowered myself slowly onto the plush circular bench.
Warmth bloomed beneath me almost immediately, heat spreading through the cushions and into my hips and thighs, easing the tension from my body inch by inch.
I leaned back against the softness and let the stillness drape over me like some heavy, expensive cloak.
The grief didn’t disappear.
But around Culver, it softened into something bearable. Like a nightmare remembered in daylight… still horrifying, still real, but less capable of swallowing me whole while he stood beside me.
A small, brittle giggle slipped from my throat, half-strangled beneath the weight pressing against my chest. The warmth beneath me, the golden lights overhead, the man standing in front of me…
It all felt impossibly surreal beside the horror of the morning.
I looked at him, my eyes distant but softened by something far more dangerous than comfort.
“I guess,” I murmured quietly, curling my fingers into the heated cushion beneath me, “we needa talk about it.”
He inhaled deeply, like he’d been waiting for the words to finally take shape. Then he lowered himself in front of me, kneeling with a terrifying sort of discipline that made my breath hitch sharply in my throat.
His eyes never left mine as his knees touched the ground. And suddenly I was above him.
Like some goddess seated in a shrine while something ancient bowed at her feet.
He reached for me carefully, almost reverently, like he genuinely believed I might shatter if he moved too quickly.
“Okay,” he said softly, his voice calm enough to disguise the violence humming beneath it. “Tell me what troubles you.”
“You know what I’m talking about,” I whispered, my voice catching as my fingers slid through his dark hair.
Even now, after everything he’d done, the reality of him still didn’t fully register in my mind.
That he was real, that I was touching him, that the terrifying thing between us still existed after blood had already been spilled for me. “Don’t make me drag it outta you.”
His arms circled my waist slowly as he pulled himself closer, settling between my legs with the kind of inevitability that made my pulse stutter. Like my body was somewhere he belonged. Somewhere he intended to remain, either for the final time or forever.
The thought tightened painfully inside my chest.
“You want me to speak it aloud?” he asked quietly, his eyes darkening with something I couldn’t fully name. Hunger, devotion, or violence. They all bled together inside him until they became indistinguishable.
“I want the truth,” I said, steadier than I felt. “Did you have to do it? Kill them?”
The question lingered thickly between us.
I’d only seen the photos for a second, barely more than a flash over Sienna’s shoulder before she’d yanked her phone away in horror, but it had been enough.
More than enough.
The images were burned permanently behind my eyes now: limbs twisted at impossible angles, bodies sprawled like discarded dolls, flesh mutilated with grotesque purpose.
But worse than the violence itself was the intention behind it.
The message was carved into skin. The dismembered pieces were taped carefully back onto their foreheads like some ritualistic display.
And sitting here with Culver kneeling between my legs, staring at me like I was the only thing tethering him to sanity, I realized with sickening clarity that it had been personal.
Their dicks had been severed and then reattached.
Even now, the thought made my stomach churn violently.
Culver hadn’t simply killed them.
He had unmade them.
Reduced them down to the ugliest, most pathetic pieces of themselves and displayed the remains like a warning carved out of rage itself. Their bodies hadn’t just been murdered. They had been transformed into a statement.
It should have repulsed me completely. It did. And yet—
“Yes,” he said simply, lifting one hand to cup my cheek. The same hand that had coaxed pleasure out of me with unbearable patience now rested against my skin after tearing human bodies apart without hesitation. “They had to pay with their lives for what they tried to do to you.”
I leaned into his touch, like it was the only thing that seemed right. The hand should have felt monstrous against my skin. It should have made revulsion claw through me.
Instead, it soothed something raw and panicked inside my chest, quieting the terror that had been screaming through my body since that night.
I searched his face desperately for some fracture beneath the surface. A flicker of guilt, doubt, or regret.
There was nothing. Only terrible serenity.
The kind carried by gods and monsters alike. The certainty that his violence had been righteous.
I knew I should have been afraid of him. I should have pulled away, screamed at him, and hurled every ugly word I possessed straight into his face. I should have recoiled from the blood staining his soul.
But I didn’t. Because I wanted him too much.
Even now, with the corpses of my enemies practically lingering between us, I still wanted him.
The pull between us had become something primal and deeply wrong in ways I didn’t even have language for, and somehow that only made it feel more real.
His presence steadied me. His voice quieted the chaos in my mind.
His eyes pinned every shattered thought back into place until breathing felt possible again.
“But did you really have to?” I asked softly, the words barely making it past the knot tightening in my throat.
Even while saying it, I already knew the answer.
He didn't need to do anything. He could have walked away. He could have left their sins to rot beneath the weight of time and human consequence. He didn’t need to hunt them down. Didn’t need to touch them.
But he had wanted to. He wanted to kill them.
Maybe it was the vampire in him. The ancient thing beneath the human exterior, the part of him I was still wrapping my head around. I didn’t understand him at all, but I knew I wanted every aspect of him. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
I thought of Rupert and the way he looked at people sometimes, like they were insects crawling beneath his shoes. Things to toy with. Things to discard.
And Culver…
Culver had always looked at the world around him with quiet disdain, with a superiority he rarely bothered to hide.
Except when it came to me. I was different.
I was his match. His bond. His equal. But only because gods had decided it long before either of us had any choice in the matter.
And if it hadn’t… Would he have ever looked at me twice? I didn’t know.
All I knew was that despite the fear tightening low in my stomach, despite the blood and the violence and the moral line cracking open beneath my feet, I still wanted him.
He shook his head slowly, emerald eyes dimming like storm clouds swallowing moonlight.
“I very much wanted it,” he admitted without apology. “I vowed that night, when I carried your limp body in my arms, that I would enact revenge. That they would hear your name as the last word they ever knew.”
My name.
The idea hit me with enough force to leave me dizzy, my stomach twisting painfully as heat crawled beneath my skin in a way that made panic and guilt blur together. It wasn’t just what he’d done.
It was how far he’d gone without hesitation. The devotion buried beneath the violence.
I wrapped my arms around myself and pulled back slightly, trying to breathe around the tightness in my chest.
“I don’t even know how to accept that,” I admitted, my voice cracking as I looked away from him.
“I get that you have a completely different perspective, but I can’t understand it.
” I swallowed hard. “What am I supposed to expect from you in the future? Is that what vampires do when they feed? Kill?”
He didn’t bristle. He didn’t argue. He only reached for me, his fingers sliding slowly into my hair like a tide smoothing rough sand back into place.
Somewhere along the way, the touch had become my anchor without me realizing it.
The simple feeling of his hand buried in my hair unraveled the storms twisting inside me, pulling me back from the edge whenever everything else threatened to spin apart.