Chapter 68 Always careful
Vuk Lasković
The silence in the room had teeth. Sharp ones.
I leaned forward, elbows digging into my knees, staring at Eryx like I could crack his skull open and find the exact moment his mind had shattered. The exact second he’d lost every fucking scrap of reason.
“You’re really not letting go of the incubus?” I asked again. Slower. Giving him one final chance to snatch the words back.
Eryx didn’t blink.
He just nodded—calm, unshakable, almost peaceful. Like a man who’d already kissed goodbye to his entire life and found the taste sweet.
My jaw locked so hard I tasted blood.
“Fine,” I rasped, voice scraped raw. “I’ll grant your wish. But you know the price. You choose: your position… or her.”
“I choose her.”
The answer ripped out before I’d even finished the threat. Instant. Certain. Like slapping me across the face with devotion.
I stared at him, stunned for one stupid heartbeat. Unbelievable.
This cursed, too-beautiful demon had reached inside my most loyal soldier and stolen his goddamn heart clean out of his chest.
A bitter breath hissed through my nose.
“It doesn’t work that way, Eryx. You know it doesn’t.” I leaned closer, voice dropping to gravel. “Everything I gave you—the rank, the authority, the power—the second you walk away for her, the council takes it all back. Every last shred. You’ll be nothing. Stripped bare. Ordinary.”
My eyes bored into his. “You still want her?”
His throat bobbed. No hesitation.
“Yes, Alpha.”
Quiet. Steady. Final.
Something vicious and molten detonated behind my ribs. I wanted to roar. I wanted to drive my fist through the wall until bone showed. I wanted to seize him by the throat and force him to remember who dragged him out of the gutter, who gave him purpose, who forged him into something more than another forgotten stray.
After everything his father bled to build—legacy, name, power—and Eryx was ready to torch it all for her?
Instead I just stared, chest heaving, trying to comprehend how loyalty could hemorrhage so completely.
“Okay,” I said at last, the word flat and hollow. “I guess I just lost my most loyal soldier… because of a—”
I stopped myself.
Out of some last ragged thread of respect, I swallowed the venom rising like bile. I wouldn’t spit on the woman he was ready to die for. Not tonight.
I shoved up from the chair—movement sharp, furious—and crossed to the mini bar. Grabbed the bottle of whiskey I’d been saving for a night that actually deserved joy. Twisted the cap off like I was choking the life from it. Poured two heavy glasses. Carried them back.
Our fingers brushed when I handed him his. He didn’t flinch. Neither did I.
I dropped back into the chair, legs sprawled, glass dangling between my knuckles.
“Tonight,” I said quietly, “don’t see me as your Alpha. Just… see me as a man. Like you. No titles. No rank. Just two broken bastards bleeding over the same kind of wound.”
I threw the whiskey back in one long, searing swallow. It burned. It didn’t help.
Eryx mirrored me—drained his glass without a flicker—then poured again for both of us.
We sat in silence. Just breathing. Just bleeding in the same room.
Then he spoke, voice low and cracked wide open.
“A relative… was killed by an incubus.” He stared into the amber like it held the memory in its depths. “He smiled while he died. Looked almost… relieved.”
He took a slow sip.
“I hated them after that. All of them. Thought depravity lived in their blood—seduction, ruin, corruption. So I became the opposite. Virgin. Rigid. Controlled. The perfect, disciplined Beta for an untouchable Alpha.”
He lifted his glass toward me—a small, sad salute—then drank again.
“Until one night she came to me. In my dreams. Not like the others.” His voice fractured. “She made me beg like a child… I cried for her to keep touching me… Can you even imagine it? Me—strong, unbreakable me—reduced to that?”
A bitter laugh scraped out of him.
“I lost everything I’d built. Every wall. Every rule. Every shred of control. I told myself if I could just break the curse, she’d fade. That I’d be free.”
He shook his head.
“She didn’t fade. She stayed. Unwanted. Relentless. Carved her name into the inside of my skull. And then… when she helped save those pups—covered in blood and ash, still throwing herself between them and danger…”
He looked up at me then—eyes wet, raw, blazing.
“I fell in love with her. Completely. Stupidly. Irreversibly.”
Silence stretched between us like a wound.
“Hard to relate to that,” I muttered, staring at the floor.
Eryx tilted his head.
“What about you… Vuk?” He spoke my name like it was fragile, like he was testing its weight for the first time. “How do you feel about your mate? What does she do to you?”
A short, ugly laugh tore out of me—more breath than sound.
“She makes me feel alive.”
The confession slipped free before I could cage it.
I leaned forward, elbows on my thighs, cradling the glass like it might keep me from coming apart.
“For centuries I walked around hollow. Nothing behind my ribs but cold. Silence. A machine in skin. And then she came.”
My voice dropped to ash.
“She made my heart fucking beat again, Eryx. I felt it—actually felt it—like someone punched through my chest and forced the dead thing back to life.”
I dragged a hand over my face.
“I cried when I finally held her. Ugly, broken, choking sobs—like some abandoned child who’d forgotten what warmth was. I cried because she was real. Mine. After endless black nothing… she walked in and turned every shattered piece inside me into something bright. Something I never deserved.”
I looked up at him, eyes burning.
“She’s my rainbow after centuries of night. And I still don’t know how to keep her without destroying her.”
Another long, heavy silence.
Eryx stared at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
Then he lifted his glass—slow, deliberate.
“To the ones who ruin us,” he said softly.
I clinked my glass against his.
“To the ones worth burning for.”
The whiskey lingered like regret on my tongue long after Eryx left.
I didn’t follow him. Didn’t call him back.
Just sat there in the dim study until the hellfire sconces guttered low and the room grew colder than the snow outside.
Then I stood—slow, heavy—and walked the long corridor to our chambers.
The doors opened before I touched them, as if the fortress itself knew I was coming apart.
Inside, the air was warmer. Softer.
Jasmine drifted in from the balcony I’d planted for her months ago—white blooms heavy with night dew, their scent curling around me like a memory of her laugh.
The lunar coils glowed low and steady, bathing the bed in pale gold.
Maureen lay exactly where I’d left her that morning: white-gold hair fanned across the black silk pillows, skin luminous even in coma-sleep, lips slightly parted like she was only dreaming of waking.
Beautiful. Always so fucking beautiful.
Gold lifted her head from her usual spot at Maureen’s feet. The tiny black cat blinked once—slow, unimpressed—then stretched and resettled, curling her tail tighter around Maureen’s ankle like a living lock.
I gave her a tired nod. “Still on duty, tyrant?”
No answer, of course. Just a flick of one golden eye before she closed it again.
I crossed the room without bothering to shed my coat. Snow melted off my boots in dark puddles on the obsidian floor. I didn’t care.
I reached the bed and dropped to my knees beside it—habit now, ritual.
My hands—still raw from gripping the whiskey glass too hard—hovered over her for a second before I let them settle.
First her hand.
I lifted it gently, brought her knuckles to my lips. Cool skin. Steady pulse.
“I love you,” I whispered against her fingers. The words came easier these days, even if they still tasted like glass. “Even when you’re making me wait like this.”
Then her forehead.
I leaned in, pressed my mouth there—lingering, breathing her in. Moonlight and jasmine and the faint metallic sweetness of lunar blood.
My eyes closed.
For a heartbeat I just stayed like that, forehead to forehead, letting the bond hum between us. Faint. Stubborn. Alive.
Then lower.
I shifted, sliding one arm under her shoulders to cradle her upper body just enough to lift her slightly—careful, always so careful.
The lunar coils shimmered and parted like water, giving me access to her belly.
The swell was fuller now, taut and warm under my palm. Our daughter kicked once—small, fierce, a reminder that life was still fighting inside her even if Maureen couldn’t yet open her eyes.
I lowered my head until my lips brushed the curve.
Soft kiss.
Another.
Slower this time.
Reverent.
“Hello, little flame,” I murmured against her skin. “Your mother’s still resting. But she’s strong. Stronger than me. Stronger than both of us.”
A third kiss—longer, lingering.
“I lost Eryx tonight,” I confessed quietly. “He walked out. Bowed so low I thought he’d never stand again. Chose the incubus over everything—rank, blood, me. I let him go. Had to. But it… it carved something out.”
The coils pulsed once, golden threads tightening briefly around us like a hug.
I rested my cheek against the swell, listening.
Faint heartbeat—two of them now. Hers steady. The baby’s faster, brighter, like a tiny star trying to burn its way free.
“I told him about you,” I continued, voice rough. “How you make my heart beat again after centuries of nothing. How I cried the first time I held you—like some broken thing finally remembering what alive felt like. He listened. Drank with me. Then he left anyway.”
My hand splayed wider over her belly, thumb tracing slow circles.
“I don’t blame him. Not really. Love like that… it doesn’t ask permission. It just takes everything. Same way you took me.”
Another kick—stronger this time.
I smiled despite the ache in my chest. Small. Cracked. Real.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I know. You’re impatient too.”
I stayed there a long time—cheek to her stomach, breathing in time with the two heartbeats under my skin.
Gold purred low, the vibration traveling up through the mattress into my bones.
The jasmine scent thickened as a night breeze slipped through the balcony doors.
Eventually I lifted my head.
Her face was serene in the coil-light.
Silver lashes fanned against pale cheeks.
Lips curved just enough to look like she was smiling in her dreams.
I reached up and brushed a strand of white-gold hair from her temple.
“You’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I told her softly. “Even like this. Especially like this.”
I leaned down one last time—kissed her belly again, slow and deep, pouring every unspoken promise into it.
Then I crawled onto the bed behind her.
Careful.
Always careful.