Chapter 93 Receding Waves
(Apollo & Adelaide)
The cross slammed into the wall with a jolt that shook loose dust and embers from the ceiling. His wings flared wide for balance. A low, animal snarl broke from his chest, followed by a sound that was almost a plea.
He could feel it building now—unstoppable. A tidal wave he’d held back for too long, dragging everything with it.
No more restraint. No more holding back.
Each movement inside her was a promise he was about to break.
His vision blurred. The room dimmed at the edges. All he saw was her face—eyes glassy, cheeks streaked with tears, lips parted on broken sounds—and all he felt was the way her body still tried to take him, still held him, still burned around him.
“You’re going to kill me,” she whispered.
The words hit him like a thrown blade.
His thrusts stuttered—just for a heartbeat—some thin thread of sanity jerking taut.
“I won’t,” he said again, through gritted teeth. “I won’t.” The last word ended in a deep, reverberating growl.
He dropped his forehead to hers, horns framing her face like a cage of bone. “Hold on,” he rasped. “Just—hold on to me.”
She had nothing else to hold. Her bound hands flexed above her head, arms screaming, fingers reaching for nothing. The growth of his body had pulled her ankles apart. She couldn’t reach them around his waist any longer. So instead, she pulled her knees to her chest. Spreading herself wide and open for him. Planting her feet on the broad expanse of his furry chest gave her something to push against.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough for her body to brace instinctively for the oncoming storm.
Apollo moved again. Dragging himself back at a slow, torturous pace. But with this new position, he could push forward harder and a little deeper.
Adelaide’s whole body arched against the restraints, trembling so hard the wood shuddered.
The bond didn’t just flare.
It exploded.
Fire—hers—flickered to life over her skin, small tongues of gold licking along her shoulders, her collarbone, the mark at her neck. His own flames answered, darker, reaching, twining with hers like two serpents fighting and embracing in the same breath.
Then everything snapped.
Magic detonated.
Light—hot, golden, ancient—shot through her veins and slammed into him with the force of a collapsing star.
It roared out of them in a shockwave that rippled through the chamber, slamming against the walls, rattling the obsidian, setting dormant runes ablaze. The circle beneath the cross flared blindingly bright, then fractured like glass under too much pressure. For a heartbeat, the room looked less like a torture chamber and more like the heart of a dying sun, all molten edges and screaming light.
He heard himself roar—heard her scream—felt the bond rip wide open as if someone had torn a seam in reality and shoved the two of them through it.
Ancient heat flooded his veins, searing away thought, name, self. For a few terrifying heartbeats, he wasn’t Apollo, wasn’t Devil, wasn’t King.
He was just need.
Just fire.
Just the beast, baring its throat to the one thing that could match it.
The flames danced. Her and his. Along her skin, then onto his. Not burning, just caressing. Adoring.
Slowly, the waves receded.
The embers fizzled, and the flames flickered away.
Sound filtered back in—the ragged rasp of their breathing, the creak of abused wood, the distant rumble of Hell shifting in its sleep, disturbed by what they’d unleashed.
His body slumped, exhausted, against hers, horns slowly shrinking inch by inch, paws retracting, wings drooping. The beast’s armour peeled back in fragments, leaving overheated flesh and a too-loud heartbeat in its wake.
He was still inside her. Granted, that piece of him reformed, too; he could still feel her inner walls quivering from overstimulation.
Her forehead leaned against his, sweat-slick skin sliding, breaths colliding in the scant space between them.
For the first time since he’d walked into the room, there was something that almost resembled stillness. The cross no longer sounded defiant; it just breathed with them, a tired witness creaking through the afterglow of catastrophe.
He opened his eyes.
Adelaide’s lashes were clumped with tears and sweat. Her pupils were blown wide, ringed in faint, flickering gold—not human, not entirely. Her lips were bitten and red. Her whole body shook against him, every muscle trembling, caught between collapse and stubborn refusal to completely fall.
The bond lay between them like a stunned animal, quiet for the first time… but not dormant. Never dormant. It felt aware now, watchful, as if some threshold had been crossed and it was deciding what to become.
He swallowed.
“Still alive,” he rasped.
She let out something like a laugh, something like a sob. “Disappointed?” she whispered.
He almost said yes. What came out instead was, “Not yet.”
A thin crack climbed the far wall of the chamber, glowing faintly with embers.
Somewhere deep in Hell, something very old turned over in its grave.
And the Devil, still pinning the last Emberborn woman to a cross made of his own sins, realised that for the first time in centuries, he hadn’t been entirely sure he could stop.
That terrified him.
Almost as much as how much he already wanted to do it again. The knowledge slid under his ribs like a blade: not even his own monstrosity frightened him as much as the idea that this girl, this flame, had become the one thing he could no longer fully command.