Chapter 31 #3
His eyes softened. “I know. There’s so many akadim here. Akadim who will hurt you. You really do need your weapons to defend yourself.”
I nodded. “I do. I do. Against the others, but not you. I won’t fight you. If you give them back to me, I’ll leave you alone. You know I will. So, can you—can you do that for me?”
“Do that for you? Hmmm.” He looked like he was considering it. Then he smirked. “You know I can do a lot for you, Lyr. Almost anything I want,” he said, his voice suggestive.
“But untying you?” He laughed.
My heart sank.
“No,” he said, “I don’t think either of us want that. Neither of us want you to leave. Because I can smell it on you.” He skimmed my neck with his lips. His fangs sharp against my skin. “I can still smell your arousal.”
His hand slid back down my neck, to my shoulder, moving lower. I burst into tears, a sob wracking through me as I felt his hand slide down my chest, toward my heart. He flattened his palm against it. My stomach twisted painfully, and yet at the same time, heat bloomed between my legs.
Gods.
The terror running through my veins was real, and yet, my body was still reacting on some level like this was just Rhyan. The Rhyan I knew, and loved, and trusted. Not the monster, not the akadim lying on top of me.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my entire body trembling, as his hand pressed harder against me. His elongated fingers touching the upper curves of my breasts, his clawed nails piercing the fabric of my tunic.
No. No.
“Please,” I whispered. “Rhyan, please, don’t.” I looked up at him imploringly. His hand hadn’t moved, he was still holding it against me, but he was wearing a curious expression now. He looked—Gods—he looked almost human.
“It beats so fast,” he said. “Why does it beat so fast?”
“Because—” I started.
His hand slid over my breast, his claws just missing my nipple as he trailed down to my waist. And any humanness in his expression was gone. He was all demon now.
Tears blurred my vision. “Because I’m afraid,” I cried with a painful gasp, “I’m afraid you’re going to hurt me.”
I knew that was a stupid thing to say to an akadim. But I didn’t know what to do. How to react. Normal akadim I knew how to fight. Knew how to kill. But I’d never been tied up by one—never been with one that could talk and reason with me.
And I’d never been with one that was Rhyan. The man who I trusted more than anyone in the world. In the universe. The man, who until this moment, I’d believed with my whole heart would never—could never—hurt me.
Some part of me deep inside, was desperately clinging to the belief that I could appeal to him. Rationally. Like some part of him was still in there, and not lost in the in-between. He still had his accent, and his neatness, and fuck—it was dark and off-putting, but his humor had remained.
But this wasn’t Rhyan. Rhyan would have never laughed at me, or tied me up.
Or touched me without permission.
“Hurt you?” he asked. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I sniffled. “You don’t?”
He tilted his head to the side, his eyes moving up and down my body. “I don’t.”
“You—you won’t hurt me?” I asked, my voice small.
Rhyan laughed. “I said I didn’t want to. Doesn’t mean I won’t. That all depends on you. If you’re a good girl. Or, if you need to be punished.”
“Rhyan, please,” I said desperately. “Listen to me. This isn’t you. This is not who you are or what you’re like. But there’s a way to fix this. I can help you.”
“Help me?” he scoffed. “How do you think you can help me?”
“I can change you back. Bring you back to life. It can be like before.”
“Before?” He shook his head. “Before when I was weak? Before when they took my power from me? No. I don’t want to go back to before.
” He grinned, showing off the full length of his fangs.
He’d been resting his weight mainly on his hands, keeping them on either of my head.
But now his legs pushed mine apart, and he let his weight fall completely on top of mine.
I gasped. He was so heavy, it was hard to breathe.
“I have everything I want here. Power. Control. Strength unlike any I had before. I have an army beneath me, no laws. No Empire to bow down to. And now,” he licked his lips, and pushed his hips into mine, “I have you. I could barely believe it when my scouts told me there was a girl skulking around the mountain. A girl whose hair turned red in the sun. I knew I had to come see for myself. Knew that if it was you, it had to be me who found you. Who claimed you. Because you’re mine. ”
I shook my head. “I am yours. But not like this. Okay. Everything can be different for us,” I said. “We can change things together. So much has happened since you went away. And I’ll be by your side to get through it all. It will be better for you. I’ll make it so. I promise, I swear.”
He laughed again. “A promise from you? Why would I trust you? You’ve broken promises before.”
I promise. I’ll make the pain go away. And I swear on all the Gods, no one else will hurt you. No one else will lay a fucking finger on you. I’m going to take care of you, Rhyan. I swear.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Rhyan. I wanted to save you.”
“Shhhh.” He pressed a long-clawed nail to my lips.
“Forget what happened. It doesn’t matter now.
Because you’re here. And you’re with me.
I’m glad. I should have known you’d find me,” he said.
He’d spoken low, so low and so soft that it almost sounded like him.
Those were his words, Rhyan’s words, and his voice …
if my eyes were closed, I’d think everything was okay—that I’d imagined he’d become akadim.
That his weight was welcome on mine. That I wanted him.
That I wanted this. But then he snarled, “Now you’re here, now we’re together. You can give me everything I want.”
My body went cold. “And what’s that?”
His growled, low in his throat. “You. Always. I want you.” The red of his eyes lit up.
“I’ve been deprived. Starving. You have no idea what it’s like.
The hunger. The need to fuck. And I’ve held back.
Every time. But you’re here with me. Now we can be together.
Forever.” He leaned in, baring his fangs, his eyes on my neck.
“No!” I screamed, and then I bucked and kicked my legs with all I had.
By some miracle, or perhaps Asherah helping me, I pushed him off and he rolled beside me. I immediately turned, trying to get out of the bed with my hands behind my back. My feet touched the floor and I made it three steps before his fingers looped through my ropes and I was slammed back into him.
“Don’t run from an akadim,” he hissed in my ear. “It makes us give chase. And excites,” he pressed against me from behind, “other parts of ourselves.” I bit back a cry, my body shuddering.
“Then again, that is what you wanted, isn’t it? Why you came here? To get fucked by one.”
I felt myself recoil with disgust. “I don’t. I—no. No.”
“Not even if it’s me? Partner.” He pushed into my back and while I’d become aware of his new height and weight, it was suddenly very clear that every part of him had grown substantially.
“No,” I hissed. Godsdamn him. Every time he called me partner, it was like a punch to the gut. I took a breath. “Not even if it’s you.”
“Come on. You must have been missing me all this time the way I missed you.” His hands started to slide up, sharp claws at the end of his nails grazed the undersides of my breasts.
I wriggled just out of his touch. “Rhyan. This isn’t who you are. I know you and you wouldn’t—You wouldn’t do this.”
He whirled me around, hands beneath my underarms, then he lifted me up, my feet dangling helplessly in the air as he licked my face, from my jaw to my forehead.
“Wouldn’t I?” he asked, and slammed me to the floor. My knees collapsed. I was on my ass a second later, scrambling back away from him. “After all we had together, and all the ways I learned how to make your body scream, you think I wouldn’t do the same just because I’m akadim?”
He reared forward, and hauled me back to my feet, one clawed nail ripping down the front of my tunic. The thread popped and my clavicle was exposed.
Fuck. Fuck! I eyed the collar on his neck. The one that bound him, controlled him.
“What about your queen?” I blurted out. “Morgana. I mean …” I gasped, struggling to think, to breathe, as another thread tore. “Maraaka Ereshya. You serve her, don’t you. She made you Arkturion?”
“Yes,” he hissed. “Maraaka.”
“Take me to her then,” I demanded. “She’d want to see me. She’d want to know I’m here! Take me to her. Now! I’m her sister!”
He laughed, and his claws plucked at the threads on my sleeve, until they popped and the sleeve fell, revealing my bare shoulder. “I know who you are, Lyriana. My memories are not affected. I know who you are to my queen.”
“Okay,” I said, angling my shoulder away from him.
My tunic was fast losing its ability to cover me.
He went to work on the threads of my other shoulder.
“Then can I see her?” I looked around, like she might pop up at any second.
Maybe she would if she was nearby. She’d hear me, even if she wasn’t. She’d read my mind.
MORGANA! I screamed internally.
“No,” Rhyan said. “You can’t see her.”
MORGANA! IT’S ME! IT’S LYR! HELP!
Rhyan laughed again. “I know what you’re doing. You’re shouting for her in your mind, aren’t you?”
I just stared. I didn’t know how to answer, how to read him.
In some weird way, this was almost exactly like talking to Rhyan—but then not.
Like when I’d met Auriel. He was so like Rhyan it hurt, but in so many more ways, he wasn’t.
Yet Auriel hadn’t felt cruel—he hadn’t mocked or threatened me.
He was trying to help me. And actual Rhyan—or akadim Rhyan—he was trying to hurt me.