Chapter 35 Insistent Calling
(Adelaide & The Devil)
These souls should have been enough to sate him. But it wasn’t. Nothing was.
Because the only thing that would satisfy him was her. Not to destroy. Not yet. To see. To touch. To understand the thing that had sunk its teeth into him from the inside out.
Apollo pressed his fists to his temples, breath ragged. “It’s her blood,” he growled to the empty corridor. “It has to be her blood.”
But even as he said it, he knew the truth.
It wasn’t the blood. It was her. Her fire. Her defiance. Her stubborn refusal to break. Her scent. Her taste. Her tears. Her skin. Her.
A low, vicious snarl ripped from his throat. He turned sharply, stalking back toward the palace halls, unable to stop himself. Unable to fight the pull any longer.
He needed to see her. Needed to be near her. Needed to breathe her in again, even if it killed him. Even if every step toward her tightened the invisible chain between them another notch.
He took the first step toward the winding staircase leading back to his private chambers. Then another. Then another.
Drawn like a man under a spell. Driven like a beast toward his chosen mate.
The door he had locked would not hold forever.
And he didn’t want it to.
He climbed the staircase as if dragged by chains. Each step felt heavier than the last, his muscles tight with a tension he hadn’t experienced in centuries. The corridors above glowed with a deeper red than usual, lit from within by the pulsing veins of magic that ran through the palace walls. Shadows peeled off the ceiling to follow him at a distance, feral little things sniffing at the trail of her magic that clung to his skin.
Usually, he barely noticed it. Tonight, the glow seemed to pulse in time with the throb in his arm—his mark reacting to the one he’d placed on the girl.
He despised it. He craved it.
His bare feet hit the polished obsidian floor with soft, echoing thumps. The air grew hotter the closer he got to his chamber door—his magic leaking, rising, twisting, responding to her lingering presence in the room like a compass needle pulled to its true north. Every ward he passed woke briefly, sigils flaring and dimming as if checking, confirming, acknowledging that he was bringing the storm back to its eye.
He stopped just outside the door. His palm hovered over the iron, which still carried the faint heat imprint of her small, desperate hand from earlier.
He inhaled. Her scent drifted to him beneath the door—warm, terrified, alive. His heart kicked hard enough to hurt. The mark on his arm seared in answer, as though the thin barrier of the door offended whatever bond he’d forced into existence.
For a moment—a brief, fleeting moment—he considered turning around. Descending the stairs again. Putting a mile of molten stone between them. Locking himself in the Beast’s chamber until the craving passed.
But the mark pulsed again. Hard. Insistent. Calling him.
He bared his teeth in frustration, pressing his forehead to the iron. “This is a mistake,” he whispered to the silent door. Then he pushed it open.
Adelaide didn’t hear footsteps. What she felt first was heat. A wave of it—thick, heavy, unmistakable—rolling across the floor like breath from the mouth of a furnace. The air tightened, pressing against her skin in a way that made her pulse skip, and her lungs seize. The tiny hairs along her arms rose, the bite at her neck throbbing in synchrony with something just beyond the threshold.
She clutched the fur tighter around her naked body. The iron door groaned. She snapped her head toward it. Smoke curled along the edges as it opened, drifting like the breath of a dragon.
He stepped inside.
Adelaide’s breath fled her lungs.
The man—The Devil—stood framed in the doorway, firelight painting sharp lines across his bare chest. His dark hair was damp with sweat, strands clinging to his forehead. His jaw was clenched hard, a muscle ticking violently. His shoulders rose and fell in slow, controlled breaths, the only visible sign of the storm he was barely keeping leashed beneath his skin.
His tattoo burned with a soft crimson glow, swirling like it was alive beneath his skin. His eyes—gods—his eyes locked onto her instantly. Ember-bright. Wild. Starved. They dragged over her in one searing sweep—fur, throat, the way she pressed herself back from him—cataloguing every inch as if reassuring himself she was still exactly where he’d left her.
He shut the door behind him without looking away from her.
Adelaide pressed her back against the bedpost, swallowing hard. “Stay away from me.” The words scraped out raw, her voice trembling around the remnants of fear and fury. Her fingers dug into the fur so hard her knuckles blanched, the fabric biting into her scraped palms.
He stopped a few steps inside the room. He didn’t advance. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. He just looked at her—like she was a puzzle he hadn’t solved, a threat he hadn’t neutralised, a hunger he couldn’t satiate.
For a moment, neither moved. Silence thickened between them. The flames along the walls seemed to lean in, eager witnesses, their crackle the only sound filling the charged space.
Then his chest rose with a sharp inhale. “You’re afraid.” His voice was a low, rough thing—like gravel dragged over flame. He didn’t ask. He stated it, his tone carrying an edge of something dangerous.
“Of course I am,” she snapped. “You kidnapped me. You bit me. You—” Her voice faltered as she gestured helplessly toward herself, toward the fur, toward her lack of clothing. Heat crawled up her throat, not from the room this time but from humiliation, from the brutal awareness of how exposed she truly was.
He closed his eyes, just for a moment. A pained expression flickered across his features—so fast she thought she imagined it. His hands flexed at his sides as if resisting the urge to reach for something—her, the wall, his own throat.
“I took your dress,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” she hissed. “You did.”
“I needed to clean you.”
“You didn’t.”
His eyes opened. Their gazes collided. The glow in his eyes softened. Barely. Like he was fighting something inside himself, pushing it down with visible effort.
She didn’t care. “What do you want?” she whispered, her voice cracking despite her best effort to steady it. “Why am I here?”
His jaw tightened. He didn’t answer. Instead, he took one slow step toward her.
Her heartbeat slammed against his senses.
Not from desire— from terror. His stomach twisted. He hated it. Hated that he’d caused it. Hated that she curled her fingers into the fur like it was armour. Hated the wounded sound she’d made when the mark pulsed earlier.
She was breakable. Fragile. Flesh-soft. And she looked at him like he was going to devour her whole.