Chapter 35 35. Chapter
Elijah
The sound of running water echoed from the bathroom. It reached me muted and dampened, yet every single drop reverberated inside my skull. Aurora had locked herself in, and she was right to do so. Locks, walls, distance. Those were the only things standing between us and total annihilation.
I stood by the window, staring out at the dark, night-drenched landscape, but reality no longer existed beyond the closed bathroom door. The cold, distant Sovereign who traded ancient seals for weapons was gone. All that remained was the furious, starving vampire, brought to his knees by a warrior woman. The taste of our earlier kiss still burned on my lips like a lethal poison. I had believed that physical force and dominance would smother the compulsion, crush it beneath control. Instead, it had only sharpened it.
I had told her to wash my scent off herself. But as steam began to seep into the air of the room, I realized with sick clarity that bathing was the worst possible thing she could have done. Hot water and steam opened the pores of her skin. Her blood, her blood signature, the one my body had bound itself to so monstrously, now flowed more purely and more intensely than ever under the influence of soap and heat. I no longer smelled only the promise of blood. I smelled the salt and sweetness of living skin, the warmth beneath it. This was no longer provocation.
This was coercion.
My teeth clenched. The hand braced against the window frame began to tremble. With a vampire’s heightened senses, I felt the moment she turned off the water. Her heartbeat accelerated. I knew exactly what she was doing. Reaching for a towel. Preparing to step back into the room.
“Wait.”
My voice was rough, strangled, stripped of command. There was no authority in it. Only desperation.
“Get dressed.”
Either my voice never reached her, or she chose to ignore it.
The bathroom door opened.
In all my centuries, I had never lost control like this. It wasn’t the sight itself that destroyed me, it was the impact. Aurora stepped into the room wrapped in a single thick white towel, the kind that barely reached above her knees. Her wet red hair clung to her shoulders. Her skin was flushed, steaming faintly, pink from the heat. And her scent…
Her scent was like the rarest, most expensive wine ever created.
The towel was not her usual leather harness. This was vulnerability. Her weapons were gone. The daggers that had always meant safety for her were absent. I saw her collarbones, the soft curve of them, damp skin catching the light. And the simple fact of her availability swept away every remaining restraint.
My body moved on its own.
One moment I was at the window. The next, I was in front of her.
The sound caught in my throat. My eyes locked onto a single target. Her neck. The pulse beating beneath her skin.
Aurora saw it. The wild, unrestrained hunger in my eyes. Her face drained of color. Her breathing stopped.
“Elijah…”
I cut her off.
My hand closed around her arm, not gently, but with the force of red fury. My fingers sank into warm, wet skin. I yanked her toward me. The towel loosened for a fraction of a second, then stayed wrapped around her waist by sheer friction and chance.
My chest slammed into her body. Her scent, the heat of her skin, the frantic rhythm of her heart flooded my senses. In that moment, I didn’t want to rule. I didn’t want to dominate. I wanted to forget. The Clan. The High Council. The alliance. Everything.
My mouth crashed into hers immediately, harder, deeper, more violent than before. Anger, fear, denial, all of it burned in the kiss. My tongue demanded ownership, stripped of restraint.
Aurora resisted. Her hands pressed against my chest, trying to push me back, but her strength was nothing against the vampire compulsion driving me forward.
“No,” she said, and there was still the echo of the fight in her voice, but the word died, smothered against my mouth.
It was the second kiss that changed everything.
Her physical defiance shattered in an instant. The Hunter’s discipline collapsed beneath the sheer force of the compulsion pouring from me, from my grip, my movement, my presence.
The hand pressing against my chest fell away.
Slowly, trembling, it rose again.
Her fingers slid into the back of my neck, not with hatred, but with the instinctive need to hold on. Her body, rigid until now, softened almost imperceptibly. A low, broken breath slipped from her throat, and there was no fight in it.
Only surrender.
Her mouth opened beneath the pressure. Her tongue answered mine, not in defiance, but in want. Aurora’s lips moved not to resist, but to invite.
The struggle vanished.
Resistance evaporated.
From hatred, from forced alliance, something far more dangerous was born. A shared, annihilating fire. The towel shifted. I felt the heat of her skin against my chest. The world collapsed inward.
This woman, the Hunter whose blood drove me mad, was yielding.
And that was the most dangerous moment of all.
Because now, it wasn’t just her blood I wanted.
It was her soul.