by Liza James
No. No. No. It can’t be. My heart begins hammering painfully as I work to make sense of what I think is happening. It can’t be Danner, he can’t project. He can’t be the one who slipped into Nathanial’s body.
“God, that I’ll be able to take you like this? You must be fucking thrilled, now you get both Nathanial and me. I can fuck your tight little body as him, but cripple your fucking mind like myself. This is perfection, my sweet girl. I hope you’re ready for chaos.” He lifts my head and smashes it back against the ground as a burning pain explodes through me. I gasp at the sensation and try to scramble out of his hold, but he’s fast. So fast, and in Nathanial’s body? I have absolutely no chance of escaping this.
At first, I want to scream, beg for help. But I remember that the only people that are around is my sister, and the people who have become my family. I can’t jeopardize them, no matter how badly I need help in this instant. But how do I get Danner away and save Nathanial at the same time?
“Get the fuck off of me,” I yell as I kick and try to break away from him. I hate this, watching his wide eyes gleam with a sense of evil I’ve never seen before. I’m staring at the man I just professed my love to and am being destroyed by the same hands. But this isn’t Nathanial, this isn’t my Fated. This is a sick and fucked up imposter.
“Never. You’re coming with me, and I’m going to remind you exactly who you fucking belong to. Punish you for ever running away from me. Do you hear me? You little fucking coward.” His hand comes down across my face in a hard slap, sending my head whipping in the opposite direction. My eyes briefly roll back, and I try to maintain my focus, my breaths so that I can fight and stay present for all of this. I may have trained, I may be stronger than what I was before. I can win in the battle of our dreams, but don’t do so well in the physical world against someone as big and as strong as Nathanial.
“Spread those pretty legs, Stella. Let me see that little cunt I’ve been dreaming about since we last fucked.” He leans back to grip my ankles, but I get a split second to pull my leg back while he misses the grip. As quickly as I can, I shoot my leg forward until it catches his face, busting his nose open as he spills blood across the front of his dress shirt. “You little bitch.”
I roll over and scramble away from him, trying to catch my footing so I can run. But just as I’m about to stand, his fingers wrap around my ankle and he yanks me back to the ground. My hands fly out to catch my fall, but my head still crashes hard as he drags me towards him and climbs over my ass. His knee presses into the small of my back, pushing me down while one of his hands crushes the side of my face. I’m breathing in the dirt, and my own tears and spit are flooding the ground while I struggle against him.
“You want it like this? You like the fight, right? I’ll fucking fight you. Don’t you worry about that,” he says arrogantly. He spits on my face as he rips my denim shorts down my ass, revealing me to him. Before I even realize it, he’s grinding his cock against me, rolling his hips while pinning me in place. He dips his head low and releases his hand from my face so that he can speak to me. “You like it when I hit you. You’ve always been sick. Perfect, but sick.” His hand slaps my cheek painfully, and I know he’s broken skin somewhere because I taste my own blood as it slips into my mouth. I’m having a hard time breathing under his heavy frame, but I can’t even think of that as his hand slides in between my legs, stroking my core with his cold fingers.
“Danner, stop. Please, I’ll go with you. We can do this the right way, a different way. Just, leave Nathanial out of this and I’ll go with you.” I grind the words out as best I can, but my speech is starting to slur and I’m not entirely sure why. I can’t tell if the adrenaline is working through me, or if a more serious injury has emerged from the head trauma.
He laughs, a bitter, crippling sound as I plead with him.
There’s no way out of this, and I suddenly feel like I should have given myself to Danner a lot sooner than I did.
I’m going to kill him.
I’m going to have his blood on my hands, and I’m going to savor every fucking moment of destroying him. I’ll make it painful, tear him apart limb by limb before I even consider giving him death.
After he begs for it.
Even then, I’ll draw it out until he succumbs to drowning in his own blood instead.
Mother fucker slipped into my body like it was his plan all along. He waited until Stella went first, and as I took a step towards my own, he appeared, breaking through the second before I did.
Now I’m watching him attack and attempt to rape my fucking Fated, without any ability to step in at all.
And for that, I’m going to slaughter him. With a smile on my goddamn face.
I’m not sure what to do, and that’s the worst part. My actual nightmare has come to life. These are our games with Lucifer manifested in front of our very eyes. So, I force myself to leave her for a moment and flash to the house, searching for some way to tell the others that Stella needs them. I find Leon on the couch, asleep. I quickly try to interact with the surroundings again but fail. My projected form won’t fucking connect. My heart races and my mind is spiraling with thoughts of getting back to her, of fucking saving her but I need to get someone corporal out there first.
I move upstairs into Luna and Elijah’s room and find them asleep on their bed when an idea crashes into me. I can permeate dreams from my physical form, so ideally, I can do the same in my astral.
I step near Luna and try her mind first, assuming that Elijah’s might be a more difficult break. Luna will listen to anything that involves Stella and she’ll wake Elijah when she realizes what’s happening.
In an instant, I break through her mind—shouting, yelling at her to respond.
“Wake the fuck up, Luna,” I grit out through clenched teeth, feeling her mind stir in her sleep. “Stella needs you.”
She moves again, but I can feel the confusion lining her thoughts as she sleeps. So, I keep pushing, keep yelling knowing I have no time at all for this. Finally, I spit it all out. Shouting for her to wake up and go to the back forest where Danner is trying to kill Stella.
That verbiage, a nightmare for both of them, snaps her subconscious into paying attention and I watch her eyes flutter open in bed.
Come on, come on. Get the fuck out there.
Suddenly, she springs up and slams a hand down on Elijah’s back as she urges him to wake. She jumps out of bed and begins throwing on whatever clothes she finds on the ground, and Elijah does the same.
“What the fuck is going on?” he snaps as he pulls on his shirt and tries to reach for Luna. He grabs her by the arm and pulls her against him, but she’s struggling to catch her breath and voice her words.
“Stella—” she says as she tries to pull away. Elijah grips her face tightly and forces her to stop moving for a second. I loathe the wasted seconds ticking by, I just need someone fucking out there with her.
“Breathe, we’ll fix this. Tell me what happened,” he urges as he strokes a thumb across her cheek.
She takes a long breath and then speaks clearly, “Stella is in trouble. Nathanial came to me in my dream. She’s in the yard, I don’t know what’s happening, but we need to go.”
Elijah nods without another word and the two of them race out of the room. Amelia crashes into them in the hallway on her way downstairs as well. “Something’s wrong—” she says quickly and as they hurry past Leon, she snatches a small book off of one the shelves we pass and throws it at him, waking him up and alerting him to what’s happening.
I don’t follow them. I flash back, getting to my Fated as quickly as possible. Because I’m going to be there, no matter what the fuck happens, I have to be there with her.
I’m crushed beneath him, but now he’s flipped me on my back so that I can look into the eyes that torture me.
The eyes that have loved me.
Have fucked me.
Destroyed me.
Saved me.
He
slaps his hand over my mouth so that I can’t make a sound, but my hands are free and I use them to claw and scratch at his face. I’m not going down without a fight, and I know that Nathanial is probably watching all of this unfold and fuck, I don’t want him to see it. But I’ll be damned if he sees me give up.
He’s working his cock free from his slacks, getting ready to force my legs apart so that he can take what he wants. Like he used to do so long ago, when he was Danner in his own vile and manipulative body.
I hear Luna only seconds before I watch her small figure smash into Nathanial’s side and send him rolling off the top of me. My head whips back and I see Elijah running behind her, with both Amelia and Leon behind him.
The space around us flickers, and I know Elijah and Luna are trying to transform our surroundings. But everything is happening so quickly, and I doubt Elijah wanted Luna to dive headfirst against the enemy.
I try to scramble up so I can tell them what’s happening. I rip my shorts back up legs just as Nathanial rolls over the top of Luna and stands up, yanking her by her hair and dragging her across the forest floor.
Elijah falters for the briefest moment, only because it’s Nathanial and he doesn’t understand what’s happening with his brother. But he clearly doesn’t give a fuck who it is because he storms forward in attack. Nathanial reaches back and whips a blade forward, pressing it sharply into the side of Luna’s throat as his gaze falls heavily on Elijah, halting his steps.
“It’s Danner,” I say quickly, as I climb to my feet and stand. “He slipped into Nathanial’s body when we projected.”
I hear Leon groan from behind us. “Mother fucking idiot.”
“Take a step closer and I slit her fucking throat,” Nathanial’s voice sounds around us and honestly, it’s painful. Because he still sounds like Nathanial, like our family. But it’s not him, and I have to force myself to remember that. Even as all of my fears from Lucifer’s games come hurtling back to my mind, as the tears threaten to spill from my eyes while I watch his hands around my sister.
I’ve been here before. I can push through this, think more logically than what I did then. I shut my eyes for a moment, forcing quick but steady breaths as Elijah’s form tenses in front of me.
“I swear to God, I don’t care who’s fucking body you’re infesting you sick fuck, I will kill you.” Elijah spits on the ground as his eyes dart to Luna’s. Her figure is trembling, but she’s stronger than she was in Lucifer’s game. She holds herself steady, keeping her narrowed eyes on her Fated while she tries to stay calm.
A new terrifying fear envelops me at his words. I understand, but he can’t kill his brother. He can’t kill my Nathanial, I need him. I have to get him back. I need both him and my sister.
Just as I’m working every possible angle through my mind, I feel a small prick of pain in my lower back as a slender hand slides up and around the front of my throat.
“Danner,” Amelia’s cold voice rings out behind me and my heart sinks even further in my chest. The air around us freezes, turning sinister and volatile. She presses a knife against my skin, piercing it just slightly as her grip tightens and she holds me against her frame. “You want Stella? Does she need to be alive? Or dead?”
I tilt my head back to look at her and a flash of defeat fires in me at the sight. Her eyes are red, the same as they were that day she seemingly lost control in the woods. And those slick red trails of blood are slipping down across her cheeks.
“Amelia,” I start, trying to speak quietly as I implore her. “You don’t have to do this. You have a choice, you always have a choice.”
She stabs the knife even further into my back and I cry out at the pain. It’s the first time I hear a sound from Luna and when my eyes fall to her, she’s watching Amelia and me. I look to Elijah, who’s eyes are slowly trailing behind us. I can only assume Leon is coming closer, maybe trying to stop Amelia before this nightmare demolishes us.
“I never have the choice, Stella. Don’t you understand that by now?” she grits the words against my ear as she deliberately sinks the blade into my back.
“No!” Danner’s voice rings out ahead of me, but at the exact same time, Amelia whispers something quietly against my ear. She presses the knife in farther, twisting it inside of my flesh as my knees buckle and I fall to the ground below. Blood spills out of me and coats my stomach, my legs, but she keeps saying the words over and over again in my ear. Forcing me to hear them, to remember them. “Ol, Stella, half-breed of both the Underworld and Arcadia, allar ol cnila de yours g sibsi. Ol darbs de a etharzi c ge congamphlgh ca el.”
Leon must leap towards her from behind, just as Danner releases Luna to run towards me. But Amelia is quicker than both of them and she darts forward, connecting with Nathanial just as she drives the knife through his gut as well.
I scream out, in both my own pain and the idea of losing Nathanial when she turns to look at me. The blood from her eyes coats her skin in wild pools of red, her body fights whatever is clearly taking root inside her mind and Elijah is rushing to gather Luna up in his arms.
“Say it!” Amelia shouts, and I realize she’s referring to the words she chanted in my ear. “Say it now, Stella!”
Leon comes up behind me and pulls me back against him as I try to catch my breath and remember the correct phrasing. Nathanial rears back as he yanks the knife from his stomach and throws his elbow against Amelia’s face, knocking her out entirely as she collides with the ground.
“The bond, initiate the bond, Red! Danner’s spirit can’t remain in his body if you’re bonding Nathanial’s blood.”
Elijah joins us, yelling the words out as well so that I can follow along. Leon whispers them in my ear and the three of us work together to form my own blood bond with Nathanial. I don’t care about the repercussions, I don’t care about ruling a portion of Hell. I care about having Nathanial like I need him—alive and safe and as my other half.
“Ol, Stella half-breed of both the Underworld and Arcadia, allar ol cnila de yours g sibsi.
Ol darbs de a etharzi c ge congamphlgh ca el.”
I stumble over the words, but I quickly catch on just as Nathanial begins crawling to me, his hand presses tightly against his stomach as blood spills through his fingers.
“You fucking bitch, you’re going to pay for this,” he starts, but his head whips back and his lips curl over his teeth in pain.
I keep chanting the phrase, with Leon and Elijah helping me along. My own pain is radiating through my back, but the adrenaline helps keep the agony at bay. I can feel the blood leaving my body, but I can also sense the power of the bond blooming between us.
It’s a chaotic, messy collision of desperation. The two of us injured so badly that our bodies are seeking each other’s essence, the life force that we have to offer. Our blood is being called to the forefront, our Fated bond being given everything it’s been dying for all this time.
Nathanial’s hand grips my ankle as he drags me underneath him and I can tell its still Danner inside of his body. His hand rises to my throat, as Leon shoots forward to attack but I yell out before he connects. “Leave us,” I choke through my tightened windpipe. I try to drag in gulps of air but he’s cutting me off.
I can get to Nathanial, I know I can. I don’t want anyone to interfere at this point, just let me do this on my own now. I know our bond is fusing, so I keep breathing the words out as best I can, saying them over and over and over again while Nathanial’s hand shakes against my throat.
He’s fighting, and he roars out in pain as his hand releases its hold by only a fraction. I lift my own fingers, covered with my own blood to press against the wound on his stomach while I continue speaking. Urging him to return, to take his own form back, to bond with my own and for us to become one.
A new wave of power rips through me. The flames in my chest explode and spiral across my arms and legs. I arch my back off the ground and Nathanial releases my throat completely. His hands fall to the dirt on eith
er side of my face as the blood bond fuses and unifies us solitarily.
I feel everything course through my body as new. The relinquish of Danner’s spirit as Nathanial comes rushing back to the forefront floods my mind in relief. An energizing strength and influence surges through my body as his hand moves to grip the front of my shirt. He wraps it around his fist tightly and for a split second, I sure as hell hope everyone has left us the fuck alone. But my mind is so completely consumed by Nathanial, by the emotions and rising energy that’s taking root that I simply don’t think of it for long.
He releases my shirt and grips my waist tightly, his long fingers spanning across my ribs as he flexes and pulls my body against his. The pain of the injury on my back is diminishing by the second and the easy flow of blood that was spilling from Nathanial has now slowed entirely.
Suddenly, his lips crash against mine in a kiss that crumbles us both. All the control held, the fears of what almost happened disappear into the background as we find each other for what feels like the first time.
It’s a catastrophic downfall, the two of us. We’re darkness and light, a harmonic blend that craves the descent into Hell we’re surrendering to.
This is it, by bonding like this we’ve decided to Fall even further. But I’m not afraid of it, not anymore. Somehow, we’ll make this work because I’m finally completed in a way I didn’t even realize I wanted.
He sits back and grips my waist in order to drag me up and against him. I wrap my legs around his hips as one hand slides around the nape of my neck while we yield to each other. His tongue moves into my mouth as he tastes me, rocking his hips against my core until my pussy is wet and grinding back against him.
“I thought you were gone,” I breathe out in between the hard crashes of our mouths. I realize I don’t know exactly where Danner has gone, but at this moment I don’t care. We’ll find him, together. “I thought that was it.”
