Chapter 15 The most dangerous monster of all
Malach
You smashed a bowl over my head, you little minx.
Then you pressed a piece of broken ceramic to your throat. I could smell the metallic tang of your blood, the sudden spike of fear and adrenaline in your scent. All I wanted was to lick it off, to taste you, to claim the very life you were willing to sacrifice to deny me.
I had to leave the room to create some distance between us before doing something we'd both regret. Or something only I would regret, because I had a sinking feeling you'd enjoy it.
But I understand. It must be hard to be caught between memories you can't remember and your brain that tries to keep you alive. The fear you feel when you look at me is older than you, older than the mountains, and carved into your very soul. You fight it because you don't understand. And I love that about you.
The couch in the other room was cold and unwelcoming. But it was better than the temptation of the bed, of you. I lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds of The Hollow settling down for the night: the distant laughter and the clinking of glasses.
I could hear your breathing, soft and even, from the other room. You were asleep. Finally.
My gaze was fixed on the ceiling. The torc reminded me to restrain myself, repeating the same damn curse that has bound me for millennia. Until she comes to me of her own free will...
Free will. What a fucking joke.
Did a drowning woman have free will when she grabbed the rope thrown to her? Did a starving man have free will when he took the bread? You were drowning in a sea of half-remembered truths, starving for a connection you couldn't name. I was the rope. I was the bread.
And you were going to grab me. Eventually.
I closed my eyes, and the memories came, not of the others, but of the First. The Real One.
Evangeline, not Eva.
The High Priestess of the Moon. Her skin white as starlight, her hair a river of silver. Her eyes, the color of frost on a winter window, saw not a king, but a man.
Me.
Malach, the war-king of the red desert, undefeated, brutal, beloved. I’d led armies across the sands, conquered cities, and broken the backs of my enemies. I’d had everything. Women, wealth, power. It was all ash in my mouth after the vision.
Her.
Standing barefoot on the surface of the Moon, looking down at me like I was a bug pinned to a board. But in her eyes, I saw something else. Not contempt. Curiosity. A flicker of recognition, as if she’d been waiting for me, too.
I’d climbed the sky for that woman. I’d ripped a hole in the fabric of reality with my bare hands, my blood boiling in the void between worlds. And when I finally stood before her, in the silent, silver-dusted landscape of her domain, I did the only thing I could do.
I knelt.
I, a king, knelt at her feet.
And I begged.
I begged for one touch. One look. One crumb of affection from the goddess's chosen. She refused. Her voice was like the chiming of distant stars, beautiful and cold. "My body, my blood, my womb belong to the Goddess alone," she said, her words a wall of ice between us.
I begged again, my pride a forgotten thing. I offered her kingdoms, my life, my soul. She refused again, her expression unreadable.
That’s when the beast in me, the one that had conquered nations, reared its head. I couldn't have her reverence, her respect, or her love. But I would have a taste of her.
I forced the kiss.
It wasn't about passion. It wasn't about lust, it was love and rebellion, a final, desperate act of defiance against a god who had everything and a goddess who had her.
And the punishment…
The Moon herself had screamed. The sky turned red as blood. The Goddess’s wrath was a fire that burned through me, remaking me in an image of pain and fury.
My bones broke and re-formed. My skin stretched and tore. The curse of the wolf was a hot, searing agony that tore through my soul, leaving behind nothing but hunger.
And Evangeline… her punishment was worse.
I watched as the silver light in her eyes dimmed, as the memory of me was erased from her mind like writing in the sand. She was stripped of her immortality, her connection to the Moon severed. She was cast down to Earth, a mortal, sentenced to live and die, over and over, forever tormented by a fear she couldn't name and a love she couldn't remember.
I should feel bad, maybe I did at some point, but five thousand years and a line of dead bodies will take that away from you.
And that’s why I was on this couch in a fucking cave, like a teenager after a breakup, with a hard-on for a girl who would rather cut her own throat than let me touch her.
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair.
I got up and walked to the window, looking out at the forest, the moonlight painting the world in shades of silver and black. My wolf stirred, restless and yearning. He wanted to run, to hunt, to feel the wind in his fur.
But he didn't want to leave, either.
He wanted to stay. To watch over her. To protect her from herself, from the world, from me.
I was a monster. A cursed king. A five-thousand-year-old abomination. But I was also a man in love. And that, I was starting to realize, was the most dangerous monster of all.