Chapter 6 Darius
DARIUS
When I wake, the first thing I feel is the heat.
Not the warmth of firelight or morning sun creeping past the curtains, but something more primal and unwelcome, a heat that coils beneath the skin like a fever brewing from the inside out, thick and cloying, filling my throat with the taste of smoke and metal.
The second thing I feel is pain. Not sharp, not immediate, but slow and deliberate, like a warning carved into flesh.
I sit up, dragging stiff muscles with me, and glance down to see the source.
Four deep red lines rake down the right side of my chest, raw and inflamed, arching just beneath the edge of my ribcage, the edges already beginning to clot but still angry, like open mouths refusing to close.
They’re not the result of a nightmare. I’ve had those before—violent, vicious, and endless—but they never left evidence behind. These are real. These are deliberate. These are from me.
The beast clawed its way out last night, not completely, but enough to mark the skin like a signature it couldn’t resist leaving behind.
I exhale slowly, dragging a hand through my hair as I swing my legs over the end of the bed and rest my elbows on my knees, trying to breathe past the pressure in my chest. It’s heavier than it was yesterday, thicker than it’s been in years, like the air itself is denser now, weighted with a scent I can’t get away from no matter how tightly I seal the doors.
Tessa Monroe.
Her name pulses like a heartbeat in the back of my skull, a constant rhythm I can’t shake no matter how far I retreat into the cold, no matter how many layers of steel I wrap around myself.
She’s in this house, moving through it like she belongs here, her scent lingering in the halls long after she’s gone, clinging to the bannisters, the drapes, even the damn bookshelves as though she’s been written into the walls.
I try not to think about her. I try not to remember the way she looked when I turned around and saw her standing in the doorway with breakfast in her hands, startled but not afraid, soft but not fragile, her mouth opening like she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words.
I try not to remember the way her eyes fell to my chest and lingered—not with horror, but with something closer to. .. understanding.
I try. But I fail.
Because no matter how hard I fight it, some part of me is already watching her from a distance, always. In silence. In shadows.
I tell myself it’s for safety. That it’s necessary. That if I know where she is, I can keep the beast on a tighter leash. That awareness will make me cautious, disciplined, restrained.
But that’s not the truth, not the full one.
The truth is that I watch her because I want to. Because I can’t help it. Something about her—the softness in her step, the quiet steadiness in her voice, the way she touches everything like it might bruise but still deserves to be held—draws me in like gravity, slow and steady and unstoppable.
And that is precisely why I must keep my distance.
I stand, muscles aching as I walk to the tall, distorted mirror that hangs like a relic in the far corner of the room.
The glass, warped from age and cold, reflects a version of me I barely recognize.
My chest, raw and marred. My shoulders tense with restraint.
My eyes, faintly gold even in this light, flickering with the hunger I’ve tried so long to suppress.
This is what’s left of me, one of the last founders of The Crimson Pact.
A pact made to prevent this exact descent, to hold us accountable when our instincts threatened to swallow us whole.
I remember the day we carved our vows into the ritual stone, the four of us standing together as if unity alone could keep the beast at bay.
We thought we were making history, but all we did was delay the inevitable.
I built this place. I buried myself in it. But the cracks are showing now. And I’m not sure how much longer the walls will hold.
I turn away from the mirror, dragging on a clean shirt despite the sting as fabric brushes against the scratches. They’ll heal fast, as everything on me does, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt. In fact, they remind me exactly how close I am to slipping.
I move to the window, drawing back the curtain just enough to see out. The sky is gray, the kind of heavy, low-hanging gray that promises snow without offering the decency of beauty. The garden below is half-frozen, the ground stiff and brittle.
And she’s there.
Kneeling by the fountain in a too-thin coat, brushing snow from the lip of the stone like she’s searching for life beneath the frost. She’s so focused, so present, so... human. But not in the way that makes her fragile. She is not delicate.
She is grounded.
And that's a problem.
Because grounded women don’t run. Grounded women don’t flinch.
Grounded women stay. And when they stay, they see. And when they see what I really am—what I’ve buried, what I’ve lost, what I can’t ever give—they bleed.
Even Rafe would have known better.
He’d have sensed it coming the moment she stepped onto the property.
He’d have laughed, probably, and called me an idiot for letting it get this far.
Then he would’ve said something crude about claiming her and tearing the problem apart before it could become complicated.
But underneath all that violence, he would’ve understood.
Because Rafe never pretended to be better than the beast inside him.
He wore it like armor and dared the world to challenge him.
I envy that.
But if I stop pretending, if I stop restraining, if I let it in even a little—what happens to her?
What happened to Isolde?
I close my eyes and inhale, but it’s a mistake. Her scent drifts in again, soft and clinging, stirring the hunger like an ember fanned in the dark.
I curse under my breath and step back, slamming the window shut, locking the latch, as if it will help. It doesn’t. The wolf is already pacing, already remembering the shape of her.
And I’m starting to remember what it felt like to want without control.
That’s when it happens—quick, unplanned, instinctive.
I find myself in the old training chamber two floors below, where the air is colder, the light scarce, and the stone walls remember everything. I train until I’m gasping, until the muscles in my back threaten to snap, until the fire in my blood quiets into something I can contain.
I bury the hunger under exhaustion. Under discipline. Under guilt. It’s the entire reason she was even brought here. Decades of burying have taken its toll on me, mentally and physically. I thought the right concoction of medicine might bring me some relief.
Instead I’ve brought my own undoing right into my mansion. Under contract. With no way to safely send her home for months.
So I’ll have to bury it even harder. Because if I don’t, she’s the one who’ll pay for it.