Hate

by K. A Knight

  “I’ll buy you lots more leather pants,” I pant, and she laughs breathlessly.

  “Fuck, I love you, Griff. Always, I’ll remind you of it whenever you forget,” she whispers, pulling me closer. I lean against her, the tree holding us both up after that, and my darkest fear surfaces...the one I’ve been trying to outrun.

  “I’m scared I’ll hurt you.”

  “What?” she asks, confused, so I lift my head, meeting her gaze.

  Swallowing hard, I stare into those eyes and in the silence of the woods I reach for her, showing her my deepest, darkest fear. “That man, my dad, you saw him, Vasculo. He hurt my mother, not always physically, but his hate...his drive. He hurt her and he hurt all those women. I’m part of him, his legacy, and blood, baby. What if I hurt you, not...not the way we play, but actually hurt you?” I explain, willing her to understand. “I’m terrified I will...that I’ll become him.”

  She grips my cheeks hard. “Blood doesn’t mean shit, Griff. You have the most strength of anyone I have ever met. If anyone can beat that bastard’s fucked up genes, it’s you. You fight even when others would give up, when you get dark sometimes, lost in that madness. But I’ll always be there to hold you through it, to let you get it out on me. So bring it, baby, hurt me. Give me the best you got, I can handle it. You and me, Griff. Take it all out on me whenever you need to. Whenever you feel scared, angry, or mad. Get me. Fuck me. Kill me. Whatever you need. You can never hurt me too much, haven’t you learned that by now? Maybe that means I’m as fucked up as you, some might say the pain that prick put me through tainted me. I don’t give a fuck, as long as you don’t. So what? We’re crazy, we are angry. Who fucking cares? Being sane is boring anyway. So, to it all, baby...I say bring it.”

  With each word that fear falls away, that man’s words...my father’s words, leaving me. Filled with Dawn, always Dawn. She is my world now, my center, she’s right. She can take whatever I deal out, always could, always will. She will meet me in the dark, just as mad as me. Ready to take me down until I feel better. He might have messed me up, but maybe, just maybe, there was a reason for that.

  I had to suffer.

  I had to become mad, angry, and hateful for her.

  For Dawn...because she is too, and she needs someone in the dark with her. I’ll be it, always. She will never suffer alone again.

  “I love you, Vasculo,” I whisper, unable to say everything in my head, but I shouldn’t have worried because she sees it, knows it, even when I can’t speak the poetic words like her other mates can.

  “I love you too, Griff. Now let’s feed me, huh? I’m starving and for more than just cock.” She grins, making me laugh.

  “Come on. It’s time, no more hiding. We’ve got shit to do,” I declare, and she snickers.

  “I couldn’t have said it better.” She takes my hand and we leave the forest together, my father and my fears left behind where she ripped them free from me, the poison gone even if the effects remain.

  We’ve got shit to do.

  Dawn arrives for food with Griffin, who seems calmer now. He lets her go and she slides in next to me, not even tasting her food as she eats, a yawn splitting her lips. Nos and Lucy are still busy, so it’s just Griffin, Jair, and me. Griffin eats quickly, and with a kiss on her lips, leaves us with her. We are all trying to be considerate, to make an effort. For her.

  “Want to lie down?” I offer when she is finished eating. She looks at Jair who smiles at her.

  “My love, go. I will be by your side tonight, we have the rest of our lives. Right now, Dume needs you. Go,” he murmurs, and leans over to kiss her solidly before going back to eating. How did he know I needed her? That man is an enigma, and an honourable warrior.

  She smiles and grabs my hand. We wander around the house for a while until we find a room with a giant fireplace. I rush upstairs, grab wood, and hurry back, lighting the fire for her before lying down and pulling her into my arms.

  This is what I need, just a reminder. Just her.

  She cuddles against me, the flames dancing over her pale skin clad in nothing but Griffin’s shirt. She wraps a leg around me and sighs in happiness, finding solace in my arms as do I in hers. I don’t always need to feel her desire or feed it, sometimes I just need my mate.

  To remind me why I fight when the pain of my memories gets to be too much. When I feel the chains wrapping around me again and my bull snorts and fights in my head.

  “Will you show me more? Take me away from here for a moment. I always wanted to see the world...wondered what it was like in different eras. Will you show me?” she requests.

  Lifting my head, I look down at her. “A lot of my memories are bad until I met you, Draya.”

  “There must be one,” she whispers. “Please, my bull, today is all about escaping. We all know what’s coming, can feel it bearing down on us. I might never get to do this again.”

  “Anything for you, Draya, you know that,” I murmur, and search my memories for something not tainted by bloodshed and death, or hurt and pain. I blink when I find one I had forgotten about. I had pushed away my past, so angry and hate filled at what happened, that I had suppressed that one night.

  The only night I felt free.

  Alive in the splendour of my home surrounded by my people. And she’s right, I want to share it with her, to have our own secrets, to show her my soul the way she shows me hers. Taking a deep breath, I dive into that memory, opening my mind so she can see it with me.

  The fire roars before me, the gold and amber flames dancing, reaching for the sky within the labyrinth walls. The stone, plant-covered walls curve around where we camp.

  Laughter and talking fills the air as the others dance and drink. Mead and the scent of sex saturates the air and my nostrils. Here, I am free to change and be who I want. With them. My people.

  Tomorrow I will be taken back, returned to my cell. Tonight is my prize for my fifth victory, yet more proof of how powerful my queen is. My people are imprisoned here, yet they don’t see it. Don’t see how she controls the walls coated in magic. The mist directing them back and forcing helpless humans in here to be killed. Her enemies.

  My people are happy, thriving...but kept here like animals. The walkers of the maze, the killers. Yet, they laugh. They mate. They die and live here, never seeming to realise it is wrong. It’s possible I know this because I have left the maze, I can see past the magic, but they cannot.

  Yet every time I am allowed back here, I take it, because it fills me with a sense of kinship, that loneliness fading away from just being in their presence even though I sit apart from them with my back to the maze wall, the palace of my queen visible behind me. Only I sit at this fire. The others before me.

  Together yet apart.

  Until a child breaks from the gathering and heads my way. She’s small, so small, her brown hair brushed back in warrior braids, the lower half of her face covered in a red hand mark. Horns, small ones, protrude from her head, which shows she is a high blood. Only the high blood—descendants of the original monsters of the maze—can change into human form. Or shift features.

  She stops before me, her head tilting adorably, that small arm outstretched towards me with a skin of mead. “You should drink.”

  “Why?” I rumble.

  “You look sad, and whenever they look sad, the drink makes them happy again,” she states matter-of-factly, and thrusts the skin at me again.

  A small smile curves my lips as I accept the skin and draw a long drink. “Can I have some?” she inquires, her voice small but strong. She plops herself down next to me, her feet kicking near the fire. She’s unafraid in my presence...not like the others who look at me with fear and pity.

  “No,” I tell her, and look at the fire, dismissing her. She shouldn’t be around me. I’m a killer.

  “Why?” she questions.

  “You’re too young,” I grumble, and she seems to consider the answer before leaning forward.

  “I’m thirteen to
morrow,” she whispers, and I suck in a breath.

  Thirteen, only three years until she is forced to walk the path...to find her own way in the maze. A barbaric act, but one given to every child of the labyrinth.

  “Still too young,” I tell her, and she sighs, the sound older than her time.

  “My daddy says the same.” She pouts.

  “Where is your dad?” I ask, looking around, but no one pays attention to the child.

  “He left me here, said he heard something in there.” She looks at the dark opening of the maze, fear and wonder in her eyes. “That was two weeks ago, I hope he comes back soon. I can never fall asleep at night without him singing to me,” she murmurs in fear.

  “The screams?” I query, and she nods solemnly.

  “I hear them all the time, they are scary,” she replies sadly.

  The screams of the lost souls, the dying. If her father is out there...he’s responsible for the screams in her nightmares...but two rotations. That’s a long time to be gone. Usually they do one sun turn, not two whole rotations. That means he’s overdue to come back to his baby girl. I hope he is okay.

  “Will you sing to me?” she whispers. “I-I want to sleep.”

  “Child—”

  “Please?” she implores, her big eyes pleading with me, leaving me unable to say no.

  Sighing, I throw back the skin and drain it before wiping my mouth on my arm. Focusing on the moon, I begin to sing. A tale of a pale goddess, the moon, coming to earth. She walks among us, through the maze, and frees us. Breaks the chains of the monsters and releases us, her heart so big that she loves us all. But she has to go home, she has to leave. She returns to the sky without her monsters.

  As my voice croons into the night the girl shifts closer until her head is on my lap, her eyes closed. I don’t move, dare not disturb her as I feel her small body relax. When I look away from her, still singing, I see the others gathered around my fire.

  Their voices slowly join in, tales woven together through time. Tales of sorrow, of love, of hope, and pain. A shared destiny, a shared understanding. And here, next to the flames and before the palace of my oppressor, I find my people.

  They no longer look at me with fear...but with understanding.

  With hope.

  I am one of them, a beast of the labyrinth.

  I pull back from the memory and look at Dawn. “It was the first time I felt at home. I heard they all died when I escaped, whatever was left of them.”

  “Thank you, my bull,” she says, tears in her eyes.

  I wipe them away and kiss her softly. I want my life to be like this forever, and I will learn from the past. I won’t let my hate ruin this, and when I look back, I will remember all the good that came with the bad.

  Because of her.

  Draya, my goddess.

  Our saviour.

  I made a deal. We all had our time with her today apart from Lucy and Nos. Nos agreed to spend time with her tomorrow, and Lucy... well, who knows about him. So tonight, she is mine. All mine. I pull her closer. Dume dropped her off where I had been waiting, laying in the silk, four-poster bed with candles around the room. I prefer them to real lights, as Griffin called them.

  She jumped on the bed and crawled straight into my arms. I turned us and pulled her back to my chest, our legs locked together. This is what I missed most, holding someone when the night dawns and the cool comes. When the dark blocks out the light, I missed holding someone through it, to not be alone when the nightmares rear their ugly heads and those skeletal fingers of death and the souls I have taken reach for me.

  “Jair, do you wish you had longer with your family?”

  I debate her question, not wanting to offer her false information. “Yes and no. I can never forget the time I had with them, it is precious because of everything that happened. Yes, I wish they had a longer life that never had to end that way. But everything happens for a reason. I wish...I wish for a great many things, my love. But wishes are not reality, what happened, happened, and I cannot change that. All I can do is learn from the past and do my best to treasure the time we had together, even if it feels like they existed with and loved another man. They were happy, we were a family. Now that time is over, now my time is with you. I have learned, I have lost, and now I have love again. A love so strong I feel like a new man. I feel all those shadows and grey areas becoming whole again. Why?”

  “For everything that’s coming, I’m afraid. Afraid to lose those I love. I never had much to lose before, just me, and now I’m scared I’m going to regret this. Regret not spending more time with you guys, not finding us a way out that means we don’t have to face what’s to come,” she admits, her voice wrapping around me.

  “That would make you a coward, my love, and you are no coward. You are a general, a leader, a warrior. You head into fights without thoughts for your own safety, but that of victory. Do not change now, you would never run from this. You will always do what you think is right, even if it means the worst. I, for one, will live every second with you like it is our last, never wanting to miss one moment,” I whisper, and drop a kiss on her shoulder, nudging the shirt away until I can place another over her drumming pulse.

  She moans in my arms and then gasps. “Do you need to feed? How long has it been?” She struggles in my arms and I laugh, pulling her closer.

  “My love, I only usually feed once a month, the other was for pleasure. It comes with age, the space between feedings, and your blood...your blood is filled with power. I could probably go a long while, longer than a month. I am fine.”

  She sighs and settles back down, but there is yearning there, a need, one I feel too. To feel love, to lose ourselves for an instant. “My love, do you want me to bite you?”

  She shivers as I croon into her ear, her arse pushing back against my hardening cock. “I want to feel your fangs in me, feel the power passing between us...to feel our connection,” she murmurs huskily.

  Pressing closer at her declaration, I feel my fangs drop and I run them across her neck, making her shiver against me. “I always want you, whatever way I can get you, fangs, cock, emotionally...never doubt that, and to feed on you is an opportunity I will never pass up.”

  “Then feed,” she snaps, making me laugh against her skin.

  “So demanding,” I murmur, as I lick her pulse, the vein throbbing under her pale skin. Dragging my fangs back and forth, I wind her up until she jerks to try and turn around and I strike.

  Burying my fangs in her neck, her blood bursts into my mouth. Heady and addictive, I swallow it. It flows through my body and veins, lighting up every nerve, filling me with her power.

  She moans loudly, pressing back and rubbing herself against my cock, back and forth, back and forth. Reaching over, I grip her neck and pull her closer, releasing my fangs from her neck before slamming them in again, just to let her feel the pleasure and pain of the bite.

  She screams, her body writhing against me, and I groan into the bite, my cock twitching in my pants as I reach my peak as well. All without touching her with anything other than my fangs. The scent of her cream fills the air as she collapses to the bed, breathing heavily.

  Pulling my fangs back, I lick at the bite, cleaning the blood and healing the holes. I cringe at the wet mess in my trousers and drop a kiss on her neck. “Be right back, my love.” I leap from the bed and clean up in the adjoining bathroom and then bring a towel back. Spreading her willing thighs, I clean her up and then get back into bed, pulling her into my arms.

  She giggles. “Damn, that bite is addictive. Next time you can bite me all over.”

  “It’s a promise, my love. I will decorate every inch of your skin with my fangs...including that sweet pussy of yours. You will come so much you won’t be able to move,” I murmur, and she groans.

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.” I laugh.

  She goes quiet for a while, but she isn’t asleep, then suddenly her voice fills the air. “You never told me much ab
out the woman who turned you.”

  I freeze at the memories crowding my head and push them away. “I will, but not now, I’m not ready and you are tired. This wouldn’t be a short conversation. We have our whole lives, my love. Sleep, I will hold you through it. Tomorrow is the start of the rest of our lives. Of a new time. One filled with something so much more than the past ever had to offer.”

  She sighs, her mind brushing against mine filled with such love and understanding, it astounds me. “Goodnight, Jair, love you,” she murmurs sleepily. Her breathing evens out and her body relaxes as I kiss her throat.

  “I love you too, in this life and the next. My undead heart is yours,” I vow.

  My little monster is sound asleep. I told the others to leave her. This time is mine with her anyway, and she needs to rest. She has been through a lot. And her body has too, not to mention the workout her other mates have put her through. I watch her sleep from the chair at the base of the bed.

  She is so beautiful. Her hair is thrown across the pillow, her ruby lips parted in a slight snore, and her lashes creating dark crescents across her cheeks. Her body is bare apart from a t-shirt bunched up around her stomach.

  So beautiful, I can’t bear to look away. We were apart for too long, I felt it. Now she is back and all I want to do is crawl into bed next to her, but she has things she needs to do. Things I have held off for as long as I could, but people are demanding answers and she will want to be part of it.

  I can’t protect her from this, even as much as I wish I could. I can’t protect her from everything, but I can be with her through it. Holding her hand, offering her my support. She will never be alone, that’s what the fates wanted.

  We have a lot to discuss, a lot has happened. But for now, she can sleep. A few more minutes stolen away won’t make a difference. She rolls over and those lashes blink open, her hand coming up to shield her eyes from the sunlight.

  She sits up slowly and spots me, a wide smile gracing those lips. Without speaking, she holds out her hand and I accept it, climbing onto the bed with her. Stolen moments, yes, they can have her later.