Chapter 33
Ethan
Dawn approached when Odis finally convinced me to return.
I couldn’t help the gnawing feeling as Erebus gnashed his teeth.
I’d wanted to be a man, and not a beast last night.
It was hard, but I heard her plea. I stayed out, and spent the night with Odis.
If I had marked her earlier—if I had claimed her soul and twisted it with mine—I would have felt it.
I would have known something was wrong, felt her through the bond. She’d have linked me.
We’d both needed air, but as we stepped into the penthouse, the silence wasn’t peaceful; it was a silent attack of arousal and another man’s lust.
Kill. Mutilate. Slaughter, the voices screamed.
A growl slammed against my ribs, claws extending as the scent of the man who dared burned our nostrils.
I stopped by the living room. Every lungful was a toxic blend: my mate’s arousal with the scent of another Alpha.
The ache in my chest was suffocating; it felt like cold fingers had reached inside and held my heart in a vice grip.
Fury took over and each step was a thunderclap against the silence, a promise of the execution to follow. I’ll kill him.
Erebus demanded blood as I lunged down the hall. My boots thundered against the silence. But the scent of copper slashed through my fury. I faltered, the world tilting as the thick, metallic tang filled my mouth. Fury didn’t just bend into fear—it was swallowed by it.
I’d wanted to keep her safe, and someone had taken that from us in our own home.
Years of building a fortress, just for someone to sneak past the Enforcers, into my sanctuary.
The signs had been there: lilies, tea. Marking her territory was a distraction—she’d opened the door.
For the second time in my life, I felt fear.
I needed to see her, to know she was okay, but if she wasn’t?
We were hunting. The hallway narrowed, bleeding into a blurred tunnel of red.
“Wildflower?” I called out. My voice sounded small in the vastness of the penthouse, the faltering tremor of a plea.
There was no answer. I moved toward our room, my boots heavy. Every instinct I possessed told me to turn back. A growl tore from my lips as I closed the gap in a single stride.
We shoved the door open.
The light from the hallway splashed across the floor, losing itself when it met the sun, illuminating the wreckage. The bed was a ruin. The silk sheets were tangled and soaked. Wet patches that made my heart bleed. And in the center of it was my mate.
Her hair was a tangled halo against the pillows, and her skin was mapped with more violence. The marks on her neck had doubled, hickeys covered bruises; purple bloomed on her exposed thighs.
She was naked, but all we could think about was whether she still breathed.
We needed to know she was alive.
“Mate!” The roar that left my throat wasn’t human.
I lunged for the bed, my knees hitting the mattress with a force that made the frame groan.
I reached for her, my hands hovering over her skin.
I was terrified she’d shatter if I touched her, that the truth was more than I could handle.
A cry filled the room, mine, as I promised to find the one responsible for sneaking past my Enforcers and claiming what was mine.
She stirred. Her lashes fluttered, heavy. She blinked against the light, looking around the room blearily as her small nose twitched, sniffing the air. The world froze as her eyes opened and she looked at me with a soft smile on her lips.
“Ethan,” she whispered, her voice cracking, oblivious of my world crumbling.
Then, she tried to move. She winced, her face contorting in pain, and she looked down at herself. Her eyes widened as she took in the blood, the fresh prints on her skin. Her smile faded, her brows knitting, as absolute horror dawned.
“No, no, no.” She looked at me, her brown eyes round. “It wasn’t you.”
Shane. And wolfsbane.
He’d used her love for me as a weapon—to take what wasn’t his.
A low, vibrating thrum started in my chest—a sound that tore the humanity from my soul and replaced it with a beast. In this moment, logic died.
The man died with it. The thin veil of Ethan—the civilized King who negotiated and waited—shredded, fed to the furnace of Erebus’s hunger.
He receded. I didn’t want to comfort her; I needed to consume her.
I wanted to peel the flesh he’d touched from her body, and replace it with mine—the monster who’d come to claim her soul.
She reached for my hand, the touch electric.
“He touched you.”
Claim, mate, claim, the voices screeched.
“Ethan, please,” she sobbed, trying to pull the ruined sheets over her body.
“We know,” we rasped, our hands curling into claws that tore deep furrows into the bedpost. Our spine revolted, a sickening sequence of cracks that sounded like wood splintering.
Brown fur erupted through our skin, a violent birth, as human skin stretched to its breaking point.
The shirt gave way with a pathetic rip, baring shoulders that had doubled in breadth.
Below, the transformation was just as ruthless—a thick, heavy dark weapon of instinct, thick with blood pumping toward our groin.
We weren’t human anymore; we were the beast she’d summoned, two-legged god of fur, muscle, and rage.
Adea’s breath hitched, a scream dying in her throat as she watched the man she loved come apart.
As she witnessed the birth of something long thought extinct.
Her eyes, wide and fear-struck, tracked the ripples of brown fur and the predatory elongation of our jaw.
She didn’t recoil; her entire body shuddered, her spine curling into the mattress as our overwhelming power pressed the air from her lungs.
“Wh-what are you?” she rasped, her head tilted back to look at me. Her hands clawed at the bed sheets before they found the coarse, thick fur of our hand. She didn’t pull away, her pupils blown wide with a terror that was slowly drowned by fascination.
Her voice was small against the growing roar within us, only feeding the beast. We wanted him dead—needed to erase every trace of his touch from her skin. Every mark was a blasphemy against our throne, a thief clawing after the treasure of her skin, a body that was forged for us alone.
The voices weren’t yelling anymore; they were chanting. An ancient command, RECLAIM. PURGE THE STENCH. STAMP YOUR NAME IN HER BLOOD.
We stared down at her, our muzzle inches from her throat, watching the pulse jump in her neck. The man was gone. There was only the hunger.
WASH HIM AWAY. MARK HER. MINE.
We moved over her, our massive weight pinning her into the mattress.
The man we’d held onto vanished the moment we saw the fresh marks on her body.
She’d been the only one who could quell the voices, but now, they rose up, louder than her pleas.
We grabbed the sheets, tearing them from her body in one violent motion.
We needed to see every inch of skin he’d dared to touch.
We wouldn’t stop until we covered them with our own.
Her body had been desecrated. His hands had left his purple signatures.
The caramel cream of her skin was marred by the rot of his scent, her breasts covered in his vile, stolen kisses, her thighs slick with his seed.
The last of our humanity screamed in agony at the sight before it was drowned in the black tide of Erebus.
“Ethan?” she gasped, her hands coming up to our chest, fingers curling into fur. She wasn’t pushing us away. “Are you in there?”
We positioned ourselves between her legs, our cock heavy, knot throbbing.
“We are Erebus,” we growled as we entered her in one brutal, merciless thrust. Her channel was tight, a desperate plea for the weight of us to wash him away.
Wetness oozed from her and we snarled against her neck, canines piercing flesh as we reclaimed what was ours.
Adea let out a blood-curdling scream, her back arching off the bed as our powerful thighs drove us home.
We didn’t slow; we were mad, driven by the image of him inside her, his lips on what was ours.
We slammed into her again and again, her body spasming around us in a frantic, steady pulse of surrender, the heat of her climax radiating down our cock to our knot was electric.
We wouldn’t stop until we’d pumped her full of our seed and removed every trace of him.
Our claws sank into flesh, leaving marks that would overwrite his forever.
We released her neck, and bit again, and again—on her shoulder, her breast. We didn’t want to kiss her, we wanted to mark her as ours, brand ourselves on every inch of her flesh.
Her hands came up, cupping our maw as we held back from licking her—refusing to let it heal.
Straightening to our knees, we lifted her, her fingers curling into our fur as we bottomed out.
We hit the mouth of her womb—the final sanctuary.
Adea let out a choked, breathless sob as we stretched her to her limit, our knot beginning to crown against her bruised core.
Her head fell forward against our chest, her tears soaking in our fur.
She was a tight, bruising pressure that told both our bodies there was nowhere left for us to go.
We had occupied every inch of her, claimed all we could.
But it still wasn’t enough.
We drove into her as she held on for dear life, tethering us through the storm of our rage.
We held her to our chest as we sat back against the bedframe, our claws hooking into the mattress for leverage.
We used her for our pleasure, moving her atop us before dropping her down.
Again and again, she took every inch. Our knot pulsed, a gorged weight that demanded entry into our mate.
She cried out, our name bouncing off the walls as we forced our knot in.
Her fingers slid down our chest and biceps, trembling as they tangled in our fur, but we would never drop her. She was our world, the start and end of all things. The only light in this tunnel of rage—our salvation.
“Ours,” we growled, into her ear, teeth grazing the lobe. “Every orgasm, every breath, every inch of you belongs to us.”
“Yours, yours, yours,” she moaned, her voice a broken vow as she milked our cock, her internal walls squeezing our knot in a desperate plea.
We lifted our hips again, driving deeper this time, chasing something the first release hadn’t touched.
Adea whimpered as our knot swelled a second time, thicker than before.
This was worse—better. A relentless pressure that left no room in her to hold anything but us.
We pushed, a slow, unforgiving movement that forced her to take it.
A low guttural sound tore from our throat—the deepest satisfaction at being buried this far inside her.
Her walls squeezing tightly even as the head of our knot finally breached her cervix, Adea’s entire body went rigid.
Her eyes rolled back, her fingers digging into the fur of our forearms as we seated the bulb of our cock where it belonged.
The squelch of her pussy swallowing us whole was perfect. The lock was absolute. The penthouse, the betrayal, the world outside—it all ceased to exist. There was only the searing, wet heat of the tie.
The knot was already a gorged, throbbing weight, but it swelled further.
She whimpered at the expansion that forced her to claim every bit of the monster.
We withdrew within her, before bottoming out again, grounding us together as the first wave of release tore from our lungs.
We filled her until she was overflowing, erasing him with our touch; drowning out the rot.
Her body shuddered against us, but as we continued pulsing inside her, it still wasn’t enough. Reclaiming her didn’t break the fever. It fanned the flames.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered. She nuzzled her cheek against us. Our grip tightened as her words caused our heart to ache. Her hands slid down our arms, holding onto us with desperation.
As the knot slowly receded, we didn’t pull away. Every time our eyes swept over her skin, we saw what we’d missed, what still needed to be covered.
“Again,” we growled, the word vibrating through our fur-covered chest and into her skin.
We flipped her over, seating her on us as we gripped her thighs and spread them. She was shaking, her breath coming out in needy pants. She reached back, her fingers curling into the fur of our thighs—a silent plea.
We lifted her and entered her again, our grip marking her skin, claws piercing her flesh. She slumped against our chest as we thrust into her.
“Whose are you, Mate?” we barked.
“Yours,” she whined, her hands coming up behind her and gripping our neck. “Take it back. Don’t leave any trace of him.”
We weren’t gentle. We didn’t do it the way we thought we’d take our mate.
We bit into her flesh and she cried out again.
Her head dipping to the side, giving us better access as we pushed her down until she took our knot again.
She squeezed us, begging for our seed. We fucked her, bouncing her on our cock, sliding our knot in and out of her.
The metallic tang of her blood filled our mouth as our knot swelled again.
We released her, dragging our tongue up the fresh wound, the skin beneath our heat beginning to glow with our union. The brand that called her ours.
White flared behind our eyes. We stilled, one moment suspended in time, an impossible second where even the voices quieted, where everything fell away and there was only her.
The bond didn’t just snap; it fused to her.
The storm lifted—a gold chain locking our soul to hers.
We felt the glow of the mark against our tongue—a searing heat that screamed we’d been blessed.
We’d incinerated his touch. She was ours, bound by blood, her approval given, the Lycan line accepted.
We thrust into her, stilling as we came again. The knot expanded, locking her as a hot flood gushed from our length. We held her there, our chest against her spine, our sweat and scent mingling.
We released her thighs. Her limbs fell limp, and our arms wrapped around her to hold her upright. Our knot kept her from moving. Her head lolled back against our shoulder. She turned, her head dropping back, brown eyes on our face. We saw her exhaustion; the toll. Her pupils dilated.
“This is who we are,” we said, our voice dropping low. “This is your mate—the monster who will never let you go.”
She was heavy with us, and we were satisfied. The knot kept us locked longer, and her eyes rolled back, her body falling lax as she fell into oblivion. The voices were quiet now. The ancestors satisfied. But the man—the part of us that remained human—wept.
We’d failed. Again.
We didn’t care about the blood. We didn’t care about the ruin. We only cared that she was ours.
“Sleep, Wildflower,” we whispered into her hair. “You’re safe now.”