Chapter 8 Lazriel #3
“Don’t,” I rumbled.
Victor’s gaze flicked to me. “Hmm. You wish him to be spared. This despicable excuse for a wolf? Even now as he insults you with degrading language?”
“You mean, like you did?”
“That was calculated, not my real sentiment toward you. I thought you’d realized that—or that Remnant had conveyed as much to you with how well he knows me.”
“I don’t want this. Leave it be.”
His lips twitched.
And then he wrenched on Jesse’s hair, making him scream as he ripped several clumps out in the process.
“Apologize!” Victor roared in his face.
“Sorry… sorry!” Jesse cried desperately as Victor pulled harder, drawing blood from his scalp. Jeez.
“There. It’s done. Let it go now,” I told him.
And I wanted that fucker out of my sight.
I’d barely even looked at him properly since Victor had dragged him in here.
All that shit with him was in the past. I’d made my peace with it.
I didn’t need or want a fucking reckoning.
Besides, my power here was my peace—in myself and with my loves.
Nothing else mattered. Certainly not some pathetic vengeance or getting-even mentality.
There was just emptiness in that. Fuck all of that.
“It’s done, hmm?” Victor spoke. “As you wish.” He released Jesse suddenly, rose to his feet and stepped back with his hands held up.
What was he playing at? He didn’t back off. Well, not without some manipulative or fucked-up reason.
Jesse staggered to his feet, glaring at me. “Apologize? To you? That was for his benefit. You’re nothing to me! A fucked-up creation that should’ve never been! How fucking dare a thing like you want me? How dare you fucking put that on me?”
In the next second, he lunged at me, shrieking, “I’ll kill you! After all these years, I’ll end that shit you stirred in me—shit I never fucking wanted! I’ll rip your fucking heart out, then it’ll be over!”
I steeled myself.
He was just inches out from me when Victor made a move.
Jesse was lurching in the next second as Victor punched his fist through his back, all the way to his front, making me choke as his heart was torn from his chest from the brutal move.
It landed at my feet with an awful squelch.
“Shit,” I rasped.
Victor tossed Jesse’s now dead body across the room and it ricocheted off the wall with a thud, ending up in a macabre heap.
“It was far from done,” Victor told me. “It never is with bigots like him. Mercy cannot be allowed. It’s much too dangerous. Mercy is for the deserving, the repentant—not those like him.”
“You shouldn’t get to decide that,” I uttered, grimacing and looking away from both the heart and the sight of Jesse’s corpse.
Wind whipped around me, and then moments later, Victor was right in front of me again. “It’s gone,” he told me, tipping my chin up with his index finger. As he guided my gaze to his, I saw in my peripheral vision that the body and the heart were no longer in the room with us.
“Why would you—”
“It was making you uncomfortable.” He looked confounded.
“Your mother may have hid it from you, but she is known to her enemies as decidedly savage and ferociously brutal. Your father is a calculating and ruthless force who strikes fear and dark reverence into the hearts of everyone. Yet you…” He smiled.
“You are gentle. Your battles at Graverun, being known as the Halfblood Hound, seemed to indicate the direct opposite. And then there’s your performance in actual combat with true enemies that I’ve both witnessed and been on the receiving end of…
but those are just survival reactions. Aren’t they?
Your Graverun antics are just playtime. Your actions during true battle are far from relished by you.
You don’t care for it. You wish only for peace and love with just enough ferocity thrown in to satisfy your wolf and vampire. ”
“Stop,” I said, trying to jerk my head away.
But he didn’t release me, so consumed was he with running his fingers through the stubble along my jawline. Kind of like he was in a trance.
And then he murmured, “They are zealots, their beliefs twisted also by notions of power and dominion. It is a rot deeply infecting them all. That cannot simply be cut out, nor cured. It must be terminated in its entirety.”
A chill rolled down my spine.
Those were my dad’s exact words to me a few weeks ago.
He doubled down, quoting yet more from the night my dad had decimated that Puritas recruitment summit.
“I’ve erased madness to protect innocent lives.
Unfortunately, extreme measures are sometimes the only viable options.
Especially when it comes to these sorts of bigots.
There is no reason prevalent amongst them.
And without reason, diplomatic means are impossible. There is only definitive action.”
“Those were Remnant’s words to you, I believe. The night of his massacre that he not only had you bear witness to, but also participate in.”
“How did you—”
“I keep an eye—or ear—on my enemies. And those I covet.”
“I didn’t kill anyone. I wouldn’t just—”
“But you felt guilty, maybe even less than for not being able to do so? Knowing that he had to do it for you instead? The father you’ve craved for so long, whose approval means a great deal to you also?”
I jerked my head to the side.
This time he released me.
But he was still up so close, his eyes fixed on mine so… invasively. “Lazriel, you will not do well in the care of somebody like Rhodric Vallant.”
I jolted. “What? What was that—”
“That? That is his real name.” He shook his head sadly. “You thought you were bonding with your father, developing a relationship with him, but he didn’t even tell you his name. You’re his son, yet you only know him by his alias.”
“I know why he had to keep his identity secret.”
“Yes, his work with The Shadowed. But you’re not just anybody, are you?” He cocked his head to the side. “Or, are you?”
“Shut up,” I seethed.
“Look, maybe you’re not. Maybe he does care for you beyond you being a precious possession to him, beyond using his protection of you to make a point to his enemies and to deepen his dominance over them.
But the fact remains, he will always keep you at a distance.
He has to. His work with The Shadowed demands it. ”
“I’m not alone.”
“Of course not. I’m here. And unlike Rhodric, Velra, Sylas, and Cassius, I will remain.”
I went to speak, to counter his bullshit claims that he was trying to drive into the heart of me, but he clamped his hand down over my mouth.
“Shh… give it time to sink in. Allow my truths to resonate. Award them the deeper thought that they deserve—that you need to allow for your own protection, in fact.”
I grunted against his hand, then tried to speak, my words just coming out muffled, especially as he exerted more pressure.
“Shh, pretty thing. After those traumatic trips down memory lane I had to subject you to in order for you to see the truth and to provide you justice when it came to Harmon, you require relief.”
He suddenly raised a contraption into view.
Shit. My sensory perception, and my ability to see rapid-fire speed was diminishing, so much so that I hadn’t even seen him pick it up from… wherever it’d been.
“This was made for me by Morien exactly to my specifications. All for you.”
I took it in as he continued to clamp his hand down on my mouth.
Four spindled arms extended from a central disk, each ending in a blunt, claw-like curve. In the center, a circular core swirled with shimmering magic—Morien’s infected gray and black.
He released my mouth then pressed it to my chest, the cold metal sending a shudder through me.
It was nothing compared to what happened next as it whirred, the core flaming, before it latched onto the center of my chest between my pecs like some sort of magical magnet.
It didn’t penetrate my skin, it just held there.
“What the fuck is—”
It pulsed—with intense pleasure that resonated throughout my body in a mind-whirling rush.
I choked and tried to buck it off me.
But it was completely useless.
Victor’s eyes lit up as he watched me squirming when those pulses continued on, again and again, until I was twisting in the chains.
“Ungh… why… what…”
“Like I said, you need relief.”
“No… not this… not this kind!”
“Don’t be so hasty.”
“Victor!”
“Mmm… there you go growling my name again.”
“Don’t.”
He grasped my open pants and jerked them all the way down to my ankles.
Then he called his talons and swiped them across my boxers, nicking me a little and making me hiss—especially as he stripped me all the way naked.
I shuddered as his gaze zeroed in on my cock. My cock that was rapidly hardening, because of the forced pleasure of the fucked-up device he’d attached to me.
Dark lust sparked in his eyes as he raised them to mine.
Then he grasped either side of my face and whispered in low, seductive words, “This will ready you for me. This device will continue to provide you pleasure, increasing in intensity. But it can only create pleasure, not fulfill it. I will leave you in peace, allow you some quiet time to absorb all that I’ve said, and by the time I return you will plead with me to grant you the release that will elude you. ”
“Don’t fucking do this.”
“You have rendered it necessary, Lazriel.” He brushed his lips over mine. “That’s okay. You just require guidance. And this will lead you to a realization that will benefit us both beautifully.”
His hands tightened on my face, then he had me choking as he thrust his tongue into my mouth, then took me in a possessive kiss that stole all the breath from my lungs.
When he pulled back I was gasping, wanting to wipe my mouth, but unable to because I was fucking restrained.
“I can’t wait.” He winked. “Until then.”
He spun on his heel, walked to his closet and started dressing, his eyes on me the entire time as I twisted and hissed against the pleasure pulses. He licked his lips as he saw my dick react, and I looked away.
With a whip of wind, he was gone, the door closing, and leaving me hanging with the fucking device tormenting me.
He thought it would make me desperate.
Make me want him.
Especially with all the other shit he’d tossed at me since I’d woken up here.
Psychological torment to sexual torment.
He was escalating.
He thought he was winning.
He thought he was right on the verge.
And he also thought he knew everything about me.
But what he saw was a warped version of the truth, a depraved reality.
He didn’t know all.
And as the pleasure pulses picked up and I started bucking my hips, shame and desperation trying to creep in and fuck with my mind, I stopped myself.
There was a way around it—at least this specific torment.
He was gonna find out just how deficient his understanding of me actually was.
And then he’d be the one getting mind-fucked to hell and back.