by Pam Godwin
I’d never been to Macaria’s room, but I’d paid attention. I knew which passageway she took and which door she slept behind. I sprinted there now, the roar of my heart drowning the sound of my boots.
Choking down distress, I stopped at the last room on the right and gripped the handle. Locked.
Solid wood stood between me and whatever waited on the other side. I raised a hand to knock, my arm shaking violently. Before my fist made contact, a sound muffled through the door. A masculine grunt.
My fangs elongated. No no no! I couldn’t unclench my jaw, and the razored tips pierced my lips. Blood rushed over my tongue. Wet warmth trickled down my chin, and tears smeared my vision.
Another grunt sent my fist against the door. I knocked hard and fast and covered my mouth to stifle a guttural sob, the pressure inside me so unbearable I couldn’t think straight.
My gasping breaths cut off as the door opened.
Salem stood on the threshold, shirtless, pants open and barely hanging on his hips, his face taut and white with shock.
Sharp ringing bludgeoned my ears, and a horrible pained noise tore past my lips. “Why?”
“Dawn.” A choke, thick with regret.
This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.
I pulled my hand away from my mouth, my fingers covered in blood. I needed to see. Locked in tunnel vision and focused on a single goal, I slapped and shoved around him. I had to know.
“No, Dawn. Stop. Listen to me.” He gripped my bicep, halting my movement, but he was too late.
Across the room, Macaria lay nude on the bed, blonde hair fanned over tangled sheets, legs spread, with her hand between her thighs.
I no longer felt the fingers on my arm, couldn’t taste the blood on my lips, couldn’t hear the scratch of his pleading voice.
Everything inside me went silent.
Can’t feel.
Bloodless.
Can’t breathe.
Darkness.
Don’t care.
Empty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I returned to the bedroom in a fog. My feet moved. My lungs cycled air. My heart pumped blood. But I didn’t feel it. I felt nothing.
Baneful whispers ravaged my insides, feeding on the remains of my soul, but I closed off my mind to it. As long as I was numb, it wouldn’t hurt.
In the room, I curled up against the safe that held my bow and dagger and stroked the cold metal. The demon with black hair and silver eyes sat on the floor a few feet away. His discontent flexed in ripples of muscle. His mouth moved, and strong words quaked the air.
Words.
Lies.
Filth.
He’d chased me back to the room and tried to rinse off his filth in the shower, but it was in his blood, his genes. He was his mother’s son.
Tears of disgust pooled in my eyes as I stared at his monolithic bearing, calculating sexual allure, and lethally beautiful features. How naive to have thought he was mine. How despicable that I’d even wanted him at all. He was my tormentor, my ruination, and my greatest enemy.
Wet hair stuck to his sharp brow. Beads of water glistened on his vein-less chest. He was shouting and pointing at my mouth, his face inflamed, but my hearing fell into periodic exhaustion.
“Are…listening…I didn’t…” His voice pulsed in and out. “Can…veins…your fangs…”
I liked the stretches of quiet. Lowering my shoulders to the floor, I curled on my side with knees to my chest. The intermittent silence was strangely peaceful, like a steadying breath before death.
Cold fingers touched my face, breaking my isolated peace. His hands were acid on my skin, his toxicity penetrating my pores and finding its mark in my chest. The horrendous jolt of my heart felt like flesh being torn apart and laid waste.
How was my heart still beating? I would rather die than endure the anguish that gnawed at the edges of my calm. The affliction of his evil wanted to devour me. It wanted to burrow deep inside and make me suffer. I couldn’t let it in.
“Dawn! Snap out of it,” he said, the desperation in his grip jerking my gaze to his. “I can’t see my veins. Can you? And your fangs…” He pulled my lip up, his eyes wild and feverish. “They’re gone.”
I dragged my tongue across my teeth with the energy of a snail. My fangs weren’t there. His chest and neck didn’t glow. Unless seventy-plus hybrids died or fled to the surface, the connection between them and him was severed. Fried to ash like the bond I’d shared with him. If I had any fucks to give, I might’ve contemplated the poetic righteousness in his self-destruction.
“I don’t see your veins,” I said flatly, pulling my face away from his touch. “Did your hybrids die?”
“No, and I don’t care about that. I can’t…” He pushed me to my back and pressed a palm against my breastbone. “I can’t sense our connection.” His breath was shallow, his hand trembling on my chest. “I can’t feel you.”
I stared up at him in cold desolation. “You broke us.”
“No!” He clutched at my hair. “I didn’t—”
“You didn’t stick your dick in that woman?” I rolled to my side and gave him my back.
“Don’t do this,” he commanded loudly and with enough aggression to rattle the ceiling. “You’re not giving up on us.”
I laughed, the sound hollow and crazed, echoing from an empty cavern. “You gave up on us the moment you walked into her room.”
He continued to make noise, spewing desperate hostility, his restless movements vibrating around me. I tuned it all out and focused inward, seeking the solace of numbness. Eventually, I would have to pull myself out of this and face a crucible of violent emotions. But not yet. Right now, I just needed the deadened relief of detachment.
I didn’t mean to breathe, but air passed through my lungs as my body mindlessly did its job. Breathing was painful though, constricted by the steel frame of the corset.
He droned on about how beautiful I looked all dressed up, his voice haunted by remorse. Then my clothes were gone, and I lay on the bed, enveloped by blankets and the scent of the deceit.
Erebus delivered our meals and exchanged whispers with Salem, without a glance in my direction. Salem never left my side. He didn’t stop touching me, didn’t shut up. Maybe all that growling would burn out his voice box. Maybe he’d put himself out of his misery and walk into the sun.
Days came and went. Maybe weeks. The loss of hope for the future held me in a timeless vacuum. I didn’t use my voice or move my limbs. There were eternities when I didn’t open my eyes.
Why couldn’t I move past this? The loss of our connection cut me to the core, but was it worse than a normal broken heart? Maybe my need for him was biological in some way, and its absence had weakened me to the point of near death? I should’ve been pissed and raging, but I had nothing inside me. I had no fight left. So I let him carry me to and from the bathroom, bathe me, brush my teeth, and force nutrients down my throat. At some point, he stopped putting clothes on me.
He could do his penance and look at me with oceans of regret in his eyes. There would be no forgiveness. Not from the lifeless creature I’d become. I was suspended in a permanent state of detachment where I didn’t feel bitterness, suffer pain, or fear death. I also didn’t care enough to devise my own end. It would’ve been too much effort since he never left my side.
He paced around the bed, his hair spiked every which way from constant tugging.
“It’s been ten days. Ten fucking days.” His gaze darted over my body where I lay nude and unresponsive on the mattress. “What can I do, Dawn? What can I say to make this better?”
“Give me back my fangs.” My voice was hoarse with disuse. “So I can rip your throat out.”
He froze beside the bed. Didn’t matter what I said. The fact that I’d said anything put way too much hope on his face.
“I’d give you your fangs if I could.” He propelled toward me, straddling my hips and cupping my face. “Fuck, I’d give you anyth
ing. My vein. My life. Just please come back.”
“Little too late.” I bared my human teeth in a wooden, lifeless smile.
“I’m so sorry.” He rested his forehead against mine, his voice thick with self-loathing. “So fucking sorry. I fucked up, but I’m going to fix this. Just talk to me.”
I’d already given him more words than he deserved, and the urge to buck off his weight grew stronger by the second. But my struggling would excite him. Any sign of life would encourage him.
I closed my eyes and retreated inside myself, where feeling was lost beneath an endless sky of black.
“No.” His fingers slid into my hair, fisting the strands with careful possession. “Come back to me. Fight, Dawn. Please! Yell at me. Hit me. Give me your insults.” His breath grew harsher, fangs bared. “I fucking need you.”
My heart gave a painful thump, striking a spark against our dead connection. My eyes flew open, but I felt nothing more. There wasn’t enough strength or desire to reignite the bond. All the power in the world wouldn’t fuse us back together.
Cold and unmoved, I sank into the mattress and shut out the feeling of his weight on my legs.
“What have I done to you?” He rolled to the edge of the bed and dropped his head in his hands, the taut lines of his back etched in pain and guilt. “What have I done? I never intended this. Never wanted to hurt you. I went to Macaria…”
Her name on his tongue shot a fiery burn through my chest. He continued talking, but I blocked out his voice, fighting to hold back the distress that pushed through my defenses.
He lurched from the bed, arms stiff at his sides as he charged through the room, wearing only a pair of shorts. His hands shot out, demolishing everything in his path. Chairs hit the wall. Stone statues shattered across the floor. Cushions exploded in a blizzard of feathers.
His temper numbed me. It occupied him and put distance between us. I needed that distance.
He glanced at me, his expression lost. Then he switched back to his rage. Roaring past his fangs, he turned to the wall of cabinets and slammed his fist through one of the doors. The first hole of many over the following days.
The shifts in his moods measured the passing of time. Some days, he smothered me in the stench of his grief, stroking my hair, my face, and every inch of my body as he begged for forgiveness.
I felt nothing.
Other days, his desperation vibrated with anger. Anger at himself. Anger at my unresponsiveness. It detonated in more damaged furniture, his knuckles destroyed and bloody. But he always healed.
I didn’t. My soul was rotting, making me weaker, more lethargic. It became harder to pull back from the dead thing I’d become. I didn’t care.
Day by day, his voracious need to repair the irreparable turned more frantic and reckless. His touches grew heavier, bolder, and more intimate. He kissed my slack lips, caressed my chest, nuzzled my thighs.
I was numb.
He put his mouth between my legs and licked me endlessly.
I was empty.
He fit his cheating cock inside my body and rutted. Pressed his mouth to mine. Rubbed my clit. Bit my throat. Demanded I come.
I was dead.
He fucked me repeatedly, twisting himself into a suffering miserable beast. He refused to orgasm without me, and his failure to bring me pleasure brought him to his knees, cursing and moaning his pathetic wretchedness.
I turned away and hated myself for being so cold. I hated myself for regretting my coldness. But I would hate myself more if I forgave him for hurting me so badly.
The room lay in ruins. Every painting and priceless artifact shredded and smashed. Debris scattered the floor. Holes riddled the walls and furniture. He didn’t seem to care, kicking shit out of his way as he paced his usual circuit.
“I have something for you,” he said after Erebus delivered one of our meals. The bed dipped beneath his weight. “Look at me, Dawn.”
I closed my eyes.
His sigh billowed between us, his face inches from mine on the pillow. He put a paper in my hand, and my fingers tightened around it. An envelope. I knew it was a letter from my fathers.
Warmth tingled through my cheeks. Then the numbness returned.
“Open it.” His voice was hushed, reverberating with hope.
I opened my eyes, found the envelope sealed with candle wax. Anything my fathers had written—good news, bad news, declarations of love—was a threat to my carefully constructed walls. If the pain crashed in, it would be the zenith of my ruination. I wouldn’t survive. I wouldn’t want to.
But I had to read it. Had to know they were alive and well.
With a dispassionate breath, I broke the seal and read the letter composed in three different penmanships. The demon watched me obsessively with those traitorous eyes as I skimmed over the tender statements, the soft things, and looked for clues, hidden meanings behind words that might suggest my fathers knew about my situation.
I found nothing. They thought I was in Alberta, believed I was happy, and expected me home in two months.
Folding the letter with unfeeling fingers, I extended it toward a nearby candle. Keeping their warm words would tempt me to read them excessively. Memories of them would consume me. I held the paper in the flame, watched it catch fire, curling the edges and engulfing it in a mesmerizing glow.
The demon ripped it from my hand and stomped it out on the floor. Stepping back, he glared at the charred smears of ashes, his eyes unblinking and bleak. When he lifted his head, all trace of desolation was gone, replaced by the strife and ruthlessness that surged through his vile blood.
“Is that what your mother would’ve done?” He narrowed hard eyes.
No. She’d carried a letter from her dead husband across the world, leaning on his words for strength.
“I’m not my mother,” I said without emotion.
“No, you’re not. Your mother was a fighter.” Words meant to cut like the sharpest blade.
I felt nothing.
“You were a fighter once.” He bent toward me, bracing his arms on the bed beside my head, his tone challenging. “I took that from you. I know I did, and I will never be able to express how regretful I am. But it’s time for you to take it back. It’s time for you to fucking fight.”
Truth dripped from those masculine lips. The same lips that pleasured other women.
A stab of agony splintered my chest. “I want to leave.” I looked him dead in the eye. “Let me go.”
“That’s not fighting!” He straightened, his entire body flexing with frustration. “That’s running.”
“Fighting you gains me nothing.” A nasty smile twisted my mouth. “You have nothing I want. You are nothing.”
He pulled in a sharp breath. “I was scared.”
“You’re dead to me.”
“I went to her room because I was fucking terrified.”
My chest squeezed and I rolled away. “Then carry your pathetic ass back to her.”
In one quick yank, he was in my face, hands in my hair, and bloodshot eyes afire with a thousand tortured emotions. “I love you.”
“No.” Breathing became harder, more painful. “You don’t get to say that.”
He pinned me to the bed with his weight and searched my face. “I love you.”
“You love me so much you fuck other women.” I stared through him with dead eyes, my voice thin and hollow. “How many others are there? No. You know what? I don’t give a fuck.”
“You haven’t listened to anything I’ve said.” He held my head in his hands, stopping me from looking away. “Macaria—”
“Did you put your dick inside her?”
“Listen—”
“Yes or no?”
He looked me in the eye, a damaged, tormented ghost of a gaze. “Yes.”
Everything inside me shut down. He shouted words, but I didn’t hear him, didn’t know how long he carried on. None of it mattered.
Then something strange happened. He put on clo
thes and stepped out of the room. A moment later, he returned, dressed me in trousers and a shirt, and set me in an unbroken chair amid the clutter of wreckage. The door opened behind him.
“I didn’t want to do this.” He leaned over me, blocking my view of whoever stepped into the room. “You’ve given me no choice.”
I stared up at his severe expression and was unimpressed.
Until his hands swept over mine, and he stepped back. I jerked my arms, a useless effort. The motherfucker had tied me to the chair.
My pulse kicked up, and the sudden scent of flowers turned my stomach. “What are you—?”
He shifted to the side, revealing the intruder. Blonde hair. Long curvaceous legs. Fearful blue eyes.
Macaria.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Another manipulation?” I yanked at the rope that tied me to the heavy armchair, my breath arriving hard and fast. “You’re a fucking monster.”
Shoving his lover in my face was low, even for him. But effective. Of all the tricks he’d tried over the past couple weeks, the sight of Macaria was the hammer that struck through my precious detachment, cracking open my chest with an outpouring of pain.
A pale pink dress hugged her hourglass figure and exposed mile-long legs, the fit intended to make a man fantasize about what lay beneath. But the demon didn’t need to fantasize. He’d seen it all, and so had I.
The waves of her golden hair and big doe eyes transported me to that night. Her, spread out and nude on the bed. Him, opening the door with his fly unzipped.
A keening noise escaped my mouth, and his brutal gaze latched on to it.
“Every time I say her name, you withdraw. No more shutting down.” His voice rose to a thundering volume. “We’re doing this right here, right now.”
I looked away, my stomach rolling and turning inside out.
He stirred in my periphery. A shift of air. The speed of sound. When I glanced up, he stood a few feet away, with a fist in her hair and a dagger against her throat.
“Salem?” Her face scrunched up and tears leaked down her cheeks. “Why are you doing this?”
