Chapter 78 Breached
(Apollo)
He’d stayed away for five days.
Not because he wanted to. Not because he had control. But because he didn’t.
Because every time he tried to shift back into a form she would recognise — a form that wouldn’t send her running from him — his body refused. It twisted. It cracked. It mutated into shapes he hadn’t worn in a millennium. Horns that curled too long, wings that dragged the floor, claws that could split a mountain with one careless thought. Bones ground against one another with a wet, grinding crack, tendons screaming as ancient configurations forced themselves back to the surface like old gods digging out of deep graves.
He had stood outside her chamber more than once, chest pressed to the stone, palms braced above the doorframe as he tried to command himself into stillness. Into sanity. Heat bled from his skin into the wall until the iron bands in the stone glowed faintly, as if the corridor itself wanted to melt around him and be done with his indecision.
He had whispered, Shift. Shift, until his voice had gone raw.
And the only answer had been the bond. Her heartbeat. Her breath. Her emotions. He tasted them all. Anger. Restless, sharp-edged. Confusion. Heavy enough to crush bone. Despair. It soaked into his spine like cold water. And lust — gods, her lust — it flickered through him in agonising waves, every time she remembered his mouth on her, every time she drifted in and out of sleep, and her body warmed for him. it slid along the tether between the, like molten honey down a blade, sweet and corrosive, coating everything it touched with the sweetest sin.
But never, in five days, had he felt hope.
Not until now.
A spark — faint, brittle, unmistakable — hummed through the bond like a chime struck in a silent cathedral.
Hope.
It lanced through him with such violence that Apollo froze mid-step in the hall, claws curling against the obsidian floor until the stone cracked beneath them. His wings twitched once, dragging sparks along the walls. Heat bled from his skin in frantic waves. The torches lining the corridor shrank from him, their flames bending away, gutters of red fire hissing as if scalded by what ran under his skin.
She wasn’t supposed to feel that. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything that he didn’t give her. Confusion. Rage. Lust. That bright, fierce little spark that was hers and hers alone.
Not hope.
Apollo’s breath thickened, rumbling out of his half-shifted chest in a low growl that echoed down the empty corridor. He had the entire palace cleared—every servant, every guard, every lesser demon—and yet somehow, impossibly…
Something had changed in her. Something he had not allowed.
His tail lashed once, a violent snap of molten muscle that sent a shockwave of heat across the doorframes around him. The metal warped. The shadows recoiled. Runes carved into the archways pulsed in startled red, then dimmed like they’d just been slapped.
He felt her again. Not her voice. Not her thoughts. Just the ripple of defiance—the way her heartbeat kicked up, the electric prickle of adrenaline along her skin, the faint tug of a choice she had not been allowed to make.
As if she thought she had an option.
His upper lip curled slowly over his fangs. Someone had put that in her. Someone had been near her. Someone had touched what was his.
A low, dangerous vibration escaped his chest.
He felt her pulse quicken — not with terror, not with hunger — but with light. A light she should not have. A light no one in Hell should dare give her.
Apollo snarled.
He moved.
The ground trembled under each step, stone blistering and cracking in his wake. He was not fully in any shape—his horns long and curved, but not full war-size; his wings jagged, dragging sparks; his hands too large and clawed, his skin split with molten cracks that refused to close. Smoke curled from between his teeth as he walked, the beast in him pacing, snarling, demanding. Every stride sent a shudder through the bones of the palace; the ceiling shed dust like ashfall, and distant chains chimed an uneasy, chiming chorus.
Apollo didn’t remember crossing the palace.
He remembered the doors splintering. He remembered the torches bending away from him. He remembered the walls cracking under the weight of his aura. Demons skulking in far-off halls dropped to their knees without knowing why, clutching their heads as an old, buried terror rolled over the citadel like a storm front.
By the time he reached his chamber door, the bond was a thrumming pulse, like a heartbeat pressed against his spine—hers, frantic and bright.
He didn’t bother with the handle. His palm hit the iron. The entire door tore free of its frame.
BOOM.
The sound shook the top level of the palace.
The iron tore out of its hinges, ripped free of the wall entirely, and flew inward, crashing across the floor in a deafening explosion of metal and stone. The impact sent a wave of blistering heat through the room; the nearest tapestries combusted, blooming into black flame before shrivelling into cinders mid-air.
Adelaide screamed.
A small, terrified, wounded sound that cut through the smoke and fury like a fragile thread, and Apollo surged into the room in a blur of heat and claws.
She was in the far corner. Curled against the wall. Breathing in sharp, panicked gasps. Eyes wide as shattered glass.
And wearing—
He froze.
A dress.
Not the fur she clutched. Not anything he had left her with.
A dark fabric. Thick. Functional. Given to her. It clung to her like night carved into shape, the seams too precise, the fit too exact to be an accident or a conjured scrap.
His body went cold in a way Hellfire never felt.
Someone had been here. Someone had breached his wards. Breached his palace. Breached him.