Chapter 8 - ELLA
I listened. I didn’t interrupt, didn’t laugh, didn’t argue, because how could I? After everything I’d seen, after living through the impossibility of an alien abduction, after watching a planet get swallowed by a black hole and walking away breathing, after those things… I couldn’t not believe him.
Maybe this Dark Abyss—Nox Eternum, as he called it—was hell. Maybe the Mmuhr’Rhong were demons, born from the void, clawing their way toward the living. The thought made me shiver so hard my teeth almost clicked.
And if this was hell… did that mean there was a devil?
Every culture I’d ever studied had some version of it. The Greeks had Hades, the Norse Hel, and the Egyptians called it Duat. Always a heaven. Always a hell. Always light and dark. Balance.
That word again, the one he kept using over and over. He was telling me his people had once been that balance and had lost their way.
My stomach twisted.
What the hell had I gotten myself into?
I rubbed at my arms, trying to chase away the chill. Why me? Out of all the humans stolen by the Cryons—millions, maybe billions, spread across stars and cages and auction blocks—why me? Why had the Abyss bent to drag me here, now?
I thought of Ed, the moment his hand slipped out of mine, his voice calling my name as the ground shook and split. He was probably gone, just like the others. Ninety-nine people, and I was the only survivor, sitting at a table with a golden war-god who claimed me as his Aelyth.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to demand answers from a universe that wasn’t listening. Instead, I sat there, my hands curling into fists and my throat tightening.
Why me?
And why did some traitorous part of me feel the answer wasn’t random at all?
I cleared my throat; the sound was too loud in the heavy silence. My palms were damp, my heart racing, but I forced the words out anyway.
“Not to be insensitive,” I began, fighting against the growing lump in my throat, “but I still don’t get what my role is in all this. Why me? And…” I swallowed because with every word, every thought, my mouth became drier. “What are you going to do to me?”
The question hung between us like a blade.
Making me think of the pendulum from the Edgar Allan Poe story.
What was it called? How did it go? It didn't matter; my mind was just going haywire, trying to hang onto something, anything, no matter how unimportant.
All so it could avoid dealing with Zaph.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, without warning, an image slammed into my mind—I always had a vivid imagination. A stone altar slick with blood, a body laid across it, pale arms bound, a knife glinting above.
Me.
I jerked back, bile rose in my throat, and my hands trembled.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. And yet, here, in this place where nothing obeyed the rules I’d always believed in, it felt horribly possible.
My stomach churned, and I pressed a hand to my mouth.
“God,” I whispered, “am I just—what? A sacrifice? Some… offering?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the image away, but it clung to me, the weight of it pressing into my chest. When I dared to look up, his black eyes were already on me, burning through the fear I couldn’t hide.
He didn’t laugh. Not out loud. But I could almost feel his chuckle, like it was vibrating in the air between us, warm and sharp and utterly infuriating.
“Do you know what a soulmate is?” he asked.
The words hit me like a slap. My brain scrambled, flipping through every definition I’d ever heard. Of course I knew. Everyone knew—two people who were destined for each other.
Made for each other.
Two people who…
My eyes locked on his, which were black and burning and far too intent. My heart climbed into my throat, hammering so hard it almost choked me. Two people in love. Two people who belonged to each other. Two people who were crazy about each other, by all accounts.
I swallowed; my gaze searched his features desperately for the joke. The smirk. The crack in the mask. Anything to tell me this wasn’t what it sounded like. Nothing. His expression was carved in stone, his aura pulsed faintly gold around the edges, steady as a heartbeat.
My stomach flipped. No. No, no, no. He had to be insane.
That was it. A crazy alien stalker. Like those guys who send women handwritten letters in crayon about how the CIA implanted a chip in their teeth and only true love will stop the invasion of the mole people.
Or like those doomsday preppers who hoard canned beans in a bunker and swear the government is controlling the weather with microwaves.
Only instead of beans, he collected galaxies, and instead of a bunker, he lived inside a black hole. In a palace, my snarky self added.
Another idea hit me, maybe he was like that person in that movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane.
The one where the guy rescues a woman after a car crash and locks her in his basement, swearing the world outside is overrun by aliens.
At first, you’re like, yeah, right, buddy, she’s obviously been kidnapped by a lunatic with a bunker fetish.
That was me now. Sitting across from the lunatic. At least until… my heart plummeted, because in the movie—God help me—in the end, the guy had been telling the truth all along—he was still batshit crazy, but that was beside the point.
What if that was Zapharos, too? What if the crazy wasn’t crazy at all, but reality had twisted so far past what I understood that it only looked insane? That madness had glowing skin, a murder sword, and the unnerving ability to bend physics around his pinky finger.
Great. My soulmate was an immortal, overpowering space lunatic.
Fear made my skin prickle, my pulse rabbit-fast. And as always, when terror tried to choke me, my mouth saved me. “So how come I’m not head over heels in love with you, huh?” I shot back using my sarcasm as my last defense. “Shouldn’t I be swooning by now? Throwing myself at your feet or whatever?”
For the first time since I’d met him, he actually chuckled. Low, warm, and unexpected, the sound curled through me in ways it absolutely should not have.
“You’re not?” he asked, tilting his head, his voice filled with rich mock offense. “You wound me. I’ve been told I’m irresistible.”
The corner of his mouth almost curved, like he was trying on the expression of a man who knew how to tease. But then the shadow rolled back over his face, his eyes sharpened, and his aura shifted.
“Trust me,” he said, the humor gone as quickly as it came, “I’m not happy about it either.”
I blinked. Not the reassurance I was expecting.
Then, slowly, his gaze softened, but his voice turned raspy as though he was pulling words from a place he’d buried deep.
“But you…” He shook his head once, as if annoyed with himself.
“You make me feel things I haven’t felt in eons.
Things I only partly remember from my father’s tales, whispered before the bonds were severed. A warmth. A pull. An ache.”
His jaw tightened, but his voice gentled. “You make me want to protect you. To keep you to myself. To tear down anyone who would dare lay a hand on you.”
The air between us thickened, and my chest tightened right along with it. Why the hell did his words sound so freaking romantic in a stalkerish kind of way? And why was my blood pulsing through my body as if heated by an unknown source?
“I don’t know if it’s the bond,” he admitted, “or if it’s you. But I do know this—” his eyes locked to mine, black and burning, “—I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to keep you.”
My heart thundered. The sarcasm that usually rushed to my lips faltered, drowned out by something else, something hot, dangerous, and far too real.
Something between us sizzled, sharp as static before a lightning strike.
He stared at me, and I stared back, caught in that black gaze that should have repelled me but didn’t.
The golden spots I had noticed earlier seemed to have intensified.
I had no idea what to make of him, or of anything he’d just told me. Soulmates. Balance. Aelyth. Gods and wars and portals and demons clawing at the edge of reality. It was too much, too impossible.
And yet…
Suddenly, I felt it. The attraction I’d been dodging, denying, and smothering beneath sarcasm and fear. It hit me like a tidal wave.
Oh God.
It wasn’t just that he was beautiful, though he was, more beautiful than anyone had a right to be.
It wasn’t only the physical attraction, though every line of his body, every glint of his golden skin, every ripple of his aura screamed danger and desire all at once.
No. What terrified me most was that there was something deeper.
Something dangerous. Something that pulled at me like gravity, whispering that I wanted to know him, truly know him.
To understand the warrior who had been fighting monsters in the dark for eons.
To feel for him, when I had no right to.
A near-hysterical giggle burst out of me, sharp and thin.
Oh God, what the hell was wrong with me?
Because wasn’t this how it started? Stockholm syndrome? Trauma bonding? Falling for your captor, your executioner, your monster, whatever label they gave it?
Or maybe it wasn’t a syndrome at all. Maybe I was just plain crazy.
Because the truth was, he didn’t feel like a demon anymore. He felt like… like a dark knight, standing guard at the gates of hell, his black eyes carrying every war he’d ever fought.
And against every shred of logic I had left, I wanted him.
God help me, I wanted him.
The admission slammed through me like a fist, leaving me breathless and furious with myself.
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t lose it when the Cryons abducted me.
Because alien invasion and abduction? Come on.
That was nightmare fuel, the kind of thing you braced against with every scrap of sanity you had left.
I held on through weeks of captivity, weeks of not knowing what would happen to me, of watching new prisoners appear overnight while others disappeared without a trace, their fate never spoken of, never explained. And still, I refused to break.
But now? Now it had been less than a single day with him, and already I felt my grip slipping. Already, I was ready to lose myself because of him. He was danger incarnate, a creature stitched out of fire and shadow, a being who had just admitted he’d lived through eons of war and death.
I should’ve recoiled. I should’ve prayed harder, fought harder, buried the flicker before it had the chance to spark.
But my body betrayed me, the ache low in my belly, the thrum in my chest, the way my skin still tingled where his fingers had brushed my cheek.
And worse, my heart betrayed me too, whispering that beneath the monster there was something more.
Something broken. Something worth knowing.
No.
No, no, no.
No!
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, anchoring myself in the pain. Whatever madness this bond was, whatever pull the Abyss had woven between us, I would never admit it. Not to him. Not to myself. Not to anyone.
He was Zapharos. Praetor of War. Alien, god, demon, whatever the hell he was. He didn’t get to own me just because fate—or the Abyss—said so.
I lifted my chin, forced the heat in my veins back into ice, and swore silently that I would never let him see how close I already was to falling.
The thought twisted in my gut, too raw, too dangerous, and I shoved it back from the table before it could root any deeper.
My chair scraped against the black stone; the sound was sharp and loud in the strange, pulsing room.
“You won’t have me,” I spat, proud that my voice shook only slightly. “Not now. Not ever.”
The black inside his aura radiated further, but I didn’t wait to see what he’d say. I couldn’t. If I stayed another second, I might falter, might betray just how close I already was to breaking.
Determined, I turned on my heel and stormed out, silk skirts snapping around my legs, the weight of his gaze searing into my back all the way to the door.
I didn’t look back.