Chapter 28 His Chosen
(The Devil)
He gathered her more firmly in his arms. Her head fell against his shoulder, breath ghosting weakly against his collarbone. Her fingers twitched once, then went still.
The sight of her limp body did something strange to him— something sharp, something vicious.
He had not felt protective in centuries. He despised the sensation. But it did not go away. It rooted itself in him, stubborn as mountain stone, reshaping the way he weighed every choice that came next.
He moved through the forest silently, her body heavy against his chest. His hands—still smeared with her blood—shifted her carefully, cradling her in a way that made his teeth grit in irritation. He was being gentle. He was being careful. He didn’t remember the last time he was either of those things. The last mortal he had carried, he remembered, had dangled from his claws like a broken doll; this one he adjusted when her head lolled, dragging it back to rest more comfortably against his shoulder before he could stop himself.
The forest reacted to him differently now. Branches curled away. Roots withdrew into the soil. Mist slithered between trees like wary serpents. It was as though the land recognised that the Devil no longer walked alone—he carried something volatile, sacred, dangerous. Old wards, carved into stones and half-swallowed by moss, sparked dimly as he passed, their failing protections sensing her presence and trying—futilely—to respond.
Roots and stones scraped at his bare feet, but he barely felt them. The Beast prowled beneath his skin, restless, furious, wanting to tear back out and finish what he’d begun.
But the male—this form—held. Barely. His human jaw clenched against an inhuman snarl, bones aching with the effort of keeping the two halves of himself from splitting apart entirely.
The forest felt different with her unconscious in his arms. Colder. Quieter. More dangerous. Something kept brushing against his senses— a crackle of magic he had not tasted in decades, simmering just out of reach.
It came from the girl. He didn’t understand that either. What was she? What had she awakened in him? Every time he tried to pin it down—witch, curse, relic, mistake—the answer slid away, leaving only the stubborn impression of chosen, though by whom he could not yet say.
He shifted her weight. Her dress slipped, the tear in the fabric revealing more of the bruise forming along her ribs.
His jaw tightened. She’d fought him so fiercely that she’d injured herself. The dark bloom beneath her skin traced the memory of their struggle, a constellation of impact and refusal scattered across bone.
His fingers brushed the bruise without thinking, tracing the faint outline.
She made a soft sound— half whimper, half exhale. Not fear. Pain.
His chest constricted at the sound, an unfamiliar knot forming beneath his ribs. He forced his hand away. He could not be gentle. He could not be concerned. He could not be ruled by this— whatever it was.
She was prey. His chosen.
He should have left her blood on the forest floor. Instead, he was carrying her. And worse— Some dark, unbearable part of him liked the weight of her. The warmth. The trust of her unconscious form against him. The way her body instinctively curled toward his heat, even as every story she’d ever been told would have warned her away.
He growled under his breath, furious at himself for the thought. A faint glow touched the eastern sky— barely bright, barely rising.
But it was enough. Dawn was minutes away.
His muscles tensed. The Pact, old and unbreakable, whispered at the edges of his consciousness:
When the sun rises, the girl becomes untouchable. Unclaimable. Unreachable.
If any part of him wanted to pretend he didn’t care— The sharp spike of hatred at the thought proved otherwise. The idea of that thin line of sunlight severing the bond still forming between their marks made his breathing turn jagged, his fingers lock more tightly around her.
He moved faster. Branches whipped against his bare skin. Twigs snapped underfoot. The stream flashed silver briefly as he vaulted over it, never breaking pace. The world narrowed to a series of thresholds—the last tree line, the final dip of earth before the veil, the distance between her pulse and the coming light.
The girl stirred faintly in his arms, her eyelashes fluttering as if she might wake.
“No,” he growled softly.
He didn’t want her awake yet. Not like this. Not until he understood what the hell she had done to him. He needed her docile, breathing, quiet—if she met his gaze now, with this much raw power snapping between their marks, he wasn’t sure which of them would flinch first.
She murmured something— a broken, slurred sound— and turned her face into his chest.
Her delicate lips brushed along his skin. The motion nearly stopped him in his tracks. Something warm and unwanted twisted in the centre of his being— something protective, dangerous, impossible. His heart gave a painful, dissonant lurch, as if trying to remember how to beat for something other than himself.
He crushed it ruthlessly. He had to reach the veil before dawn. The forest thinned. The air changed. The shadows grew deeper, richer, tinged with the smell of fire and brimstone.
The mouth of his realm opened. A swirling crack of darkness— the entrance to Hell, the place no mortal woman returned from unchanged. Beyond the tear, black stone and ember-lit skies flickered in and out of view, the distant wails of bound souls rising like a warped choir to greet their king.
Her hair brushed his arm as he shifted her closer. His mark flared. Her bite mark glowed brighter. The connection between them pulled tight— hot, insistent, thrumming with something he feared to name. The very fabric of the veil puckered around their joined magic, reacting not as it would to a victim being dragged through, but as if two keys were being pressed into a lock at the same time.
He stepped through the veil just as the first sliver of sunlight crested the tree line. The forest vanished behind him. The underworld swallowed them both. And with that step, the Devil—king of the damned, master of the hunt, breaker of mortals—felt something he had not felt since the world was young:
He felt fate close around his throat. It wrapped cold, invisible fingers there, not choking yet, merely reminding him that for once, he was not the only hand on the reins of what came next.
And for the first time in hundreds of years, he felt like he had lost control. The paradox of it tore through him—terror and exhilaration in equal measure—as the gates of his realm sealed behind them with a sound like a verdict being spoken in a language only old gods and devils still understood.