Chapter 149 Deal With - Callista's POV

Chapter 149 Deal With - Callista's POV
I knew his voice, even like this, when it was stripped of everything that made it his and layered with something colder, older, and entirely without warmth. His voice, the one that the demon controlled, was like a song played wrong. Every note was in the right place, but the soul of it was gone.

“Riven,” I whispered, my breath almost leaving me.

His name came out steadier than I thought it would. The house was dark and the front door behind me was still open, only letting a little light in from the street. Night air flooded through. 

He was standing in the living room, hanging to the shadows. I could see the shape of him and even from here it didn’t look right. His shoulders were rounded and heaving. As he moved to the side, his eyes caught the light, but it wasn’t red-gold that reflected. It was an eerie gray color that I had no explanation for.

“Something’s changed,” I whispered. “This isn’t my vision.”

“Isn’t it?” He asked, his voice cracking. “Your family is gone. And now there’s just you to deal with. Then I can be free. We all can be.”

“No,” I said, stumbling back a step.

“I’m the Alpha King,” he murmured. “You will obey me.”

I felt the Alpha King’s command, bringing me to my knees. “No, no. You—”

“Ronan is dead,” he bit out. 

It was my vision all over again and this time, I was affected by the command where I wasn’t in the vision. I felt it tug harder, trying to bend me to his will, but I refused.

“No, you can’t do this. You love me,” I whispered, my voice breaking.

“He loves you,” the demon admits. “I know nothing of love. Only destruction, heartache, and hatred.”

Flickers of the vision flooded my memory. I saw the living room covered in blood. My parents were sitting where they were before with Sabine in the chair in the corner. They were all gone. Blood assaulted my senses.

“No, this isn’t real.”

“It will be soon. You can’t save him.”

I blinked furiously. “Yes, I can. The vision hasn’t come to pass. You aren’t going to win.”

“They could already be dead,” he mumbled. “Maybe I left them out back and decided to spice it up.”

“No,” I refused. “You didn’t do it. This is just to toy with me.”

Something tugged in my chest so hard that I buckled. I sat back, a ragged cry escaping my throat.

“Does this look like I’m toying with you? This is your last few moments alive. You’re the only thing standing in my way,” the demon cooed. “Is there anything you want to say to Riven?”

He stepped out the shadows where I could see him clearly. His body was covered in blood. It was so thick that he smelled rancid.

“You killed Ronan. You weren’t—”

“Lying?” He mused. “No.”

He dropped down, crawling on his hands and knees toward me. The Alpha King’s command became so unbearable that I couldn’t move. It was too much pain. Even when he pushed me back, I fell flat while he crawled on top of me.

“Now, what are your last words?”

I looked at his face, at the splattered blood, and his fangs protruding over his bottom lip. Riven, the man I was supposed to be mated to. The Moon Goddess had chosen us to end this, but I wasn’t sure how. 

Tears gathered at the corner of my eyes. “I—”

“Love him,” her voice came again. “Love him through the darkness.”

“Love him through the darkness?” I echoed.

My words caught his attention. 

“What?”

I thought about it for a moment, knowing I didn’t have time to really process it. I had to act now.

“Whatever she told you won’t work,” he breathed. “You’ve been in the way since the beginning. You are a variable we didn’t expect. I hated how you kept reaching through the bond and pulling him back. No more, though. I’ve tolerated it long enough. It was only useful to let him believe there was something to fight for so he grew strong enough for this moment.”

“What?”

He laughed as he gazed down at me. “He fought harder because of you and trained harder. Your dear Riven became more powerful than he would have been otherwise. And now that power belongs to me.”

I shook my head and looked straight into his eyes. “You are right about one thing. You didn’t account for me.”

Without hesitating, I leaned forward, kissing him on the lips. He went completely still. I tasted blood, but I pushed through. 

The demon didn’t know what to do with a kiss or even love. That was what the Moon Goddess meant when she said to love him through the darkness. The demon had been built from grief, rage, and hollowness of someone who had never truly experienced love. 

So, he froze and in that fraction of a second I poured everything I had through the only channel still partially open between us. I felt him underneath it.

Riven was faint, distant, and buried under the demon, but still there. I found the ember and kept chasing it. 

The demon recovered, the kiss changing into something feral and wild. It was so consuming that it stole my breath. The demon was trying to replicate what Riven would do, but was so much rougher and possessive. His hands found my face, holding too hard, and I felt the Alpha King’s command pressing at the edges of my consciousness trying to pin me down again.

I didn’t let him do it.

I pushed back through the contact with everything I had—every piece of love I had been carrying since the first night the bond snapped into place, every morning in the kitchen, every closed fracture, every word he had said to me in the dark of my bedroom while he thought I was sleeping—and I felt the demon flinch from it the way it always flinched from the bond at its strongest.