Chapter 36 Say My Name
(Adelaide & The Devil)
He forced his feet to stop moving. If he got too close— if he breathed her in— if he touched her again, he didn’t trust himself to stop. The Beast prowled just beneath his skin, pacing, throwing itself against bone, whispering 'take, take, take' against every rational thought.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he muttered.
She blinked, confusion flickering in her eyes. “Then leave,” she whispered.
His hands curled into fists. “I can’t.”
Her grip on the fur tightened. “Why?”
He swallowed. The truth burned his throat. “I don’t know.”
But he did know. He knew too well. It was her blood. Her fire. Her spark. Her bite mark was calling to him. His mark answering. A bond was forming— unnatural, unwanted, irreversible. He could feel it every time he exhaled, and his magic didn’t quite return to him, lingering instead in the space between their bodies like invisible threads.
Her fear spiked again. He felt it like a slap.
And his mark pulsed in response— painful, urgent, demanding.
His breath shook. Control slipped another inch. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he managed, though the words tasted like lies and promises and madness all at once. “Not now.”
She edged back, bumping into the bed. “You bit me.”
He closed his eyes again. “I know.”
“You took my clothes.”
“I know.”
“You’re a monster.”
“I know that too.”
Her voice wavered. “Then why are you here?”
He opened his eyes. And he told her the truth. “Because I can’t stay away.”
Her blood ran cold.
He said it like a confession— like he hated himself for speaking it— and yet like he couldn’t keep it in another second. The air between them seemed to thicken, her next breath snagging on the shape of his admission.
He took another step toward her.
She shrank back.
He stopped instantly. Not because she commanded him— but because some invisible leash inside him yanked tight when her fear spiked.
His breath left him in a rough exhale. “I can feel you,” he said quietly.
Her stomach dropped. “What does that mean?”
His eyes dropped to her neck— to the bite-mark, to the place he’d claimed her.
His throat bobbed. “It means,” he said slowly, voice shaking with something feral and restrained, “that every time your heart races— I feel it.”
Her breath stilled.
“And when you’re afraid— it burns.”
He pressed a hand to his own chest, fingers digging into his skin like he wanted to tear something out.
“And right now…” his voice broke, “it’s burning so damn much I can barely stand.” The admission came out between clenched teeth, his shoulders bowing for the barest second under a weight she couldn’t see.
Adelaide’s heart stuttered painfully.
Her lips parted— but no sound came out. This was wrong. It was all wrong. The Devil was not supposed to feel her fear. He was supposed to feed on it.
He looked at her with all the hunger he’d tried to crush, all the violence he’d inflicted on the tortured souls, all the wanting he couldn’t bury— and still didn’t move another inch toward her.
Because her fear held him in place. Because something in him answered it. Because something ancient was binding them in ways she did not understand.
She swallowed, throat tightening. “What… what are you going to do to me?”
His answer was immediate. “I don’t know.”
His voice trembled. “But for the first time in a thousand years…” his eyes softened, broke, burned all at once, “I’m trying not to touch you.”
Adelaide let out a sharp, disbelieving scoff. It came out thinner than she’d intended, more brittle than biting.
“You’re the Devil,” she snapped, though the tremor in her voice betrayed her. “Why would you care about anything I feel? Why would you care about me?”
His reaction was instant. A slow inhale. A pulse of heat across the room. A flicker of something dark and dangerous in his eyes.
He stepped closer—just one controlled, agonising step—and the air tightened like a held breath.
“I shouldn’t,” he said quietly. “I know I shouldn’t.” His gaze dropped to her mouth.
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “And for the record…” his voice lowered, roughened, “…I like the way you say it.”
“Say what?” she whispered.
“‘Devil.’” The word rolled off his tongue like a caress. “Coming from your mouth, it sounds… different.” Less like a curse, more like a title. More like it belonged to him alone.
Her pulse lurched.
He noticed. Of course he did.
But then his eyes hardened with intention, a new kind of intensity anchoring inside them—one that felt almost frightening in its certainty.
“But you will not call me that,” he said.
Her brow knotted. “Then what am I supposed to call you?”
For the first time since entering the room, his expression shifted—just slightly.
A sliver of vulnerability hidden beneath iron. “My name.” He let it hang there.
She swallowed. “And what… is that?”
He exhaled slowly, as though saying it cost him something.
“Apollo.”
The name crashed through the space between them—ancient and powerful, wrong and beautiful all at once. It didn’t fit the stories. It didn’t fit the monster. It sounded like sun and light and things that had no place in this realm of ash—and yet, somehow, it settled over him like it had been forged for his mouth alone.
Adelaide stared at him.
Apollo.
The Devil had a name.
And now he had given it to her. The air around them seemed to tighten in response, as if the realm itself had just heard a secret it wasn’t meant to know. Somewhere deep inside her chest, under the throbbing ache of the bite, something answered to it—soft, reluctant, and fate-laced.