Chapter 24 24- Cain
RANDOM FACTS: Cain is a thrill seeking sonofabitch.
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“You left him alone?”
The familiar voice stops me in my tracks, my face pulling into a customary grin as I say, “Hi, baby,”
Astoria, the pretty raven boy, looks like he’s only seconds away from throwing up violently at my feet, scowls. “Don’t fucking call me that.”
“Okay.” I take out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket, my eyes roaming over his body. “I saw you watching him. Your boss sent you?”
“I let you stay alive so you can get the information you want and keep him away,” He starts as he moves closer to me. Astoria is a sight to behold.
He's thin— not the thin that makes you worried to break. No. Just… otherworldly. Everything about his appearance feels sharp. His nose, the way his lips form into a sharp heart. The shape of his head, the way he walks like he’s something that walked right out of all the fantasy books I read as a child…
And so deathly pale.
It was the first thing I noticed about him when he walked to me on the day of the party and told me to find Riven.
I never would have given someone else the time of my day. Not when I would rather have spent more time with Aidan, watching his interactions with people, but there he was, something far more interesting than everyone else in this dreadful place.
“Well, I’m grateful for that,” I blow out the smoke, watching his face crease again. It has me chuckling. “What? You don’t know how to smile or you just genuinely don’t participate in it?”
He doesn’t give me an answer. “What did you learn about the omega?”
So serious. “He knows so little of himself, really. He’s a child. Naive and sweet nonetheless. There isn’t really much that I can get out of him. Well, except of course a smile, I think I can make him smile. Would you be telling me if I can make that happen with you?”
Astoria’s lips press into a thinner line, if that’s even possible. The cigarette smoke curls between us, and for a moment, he looks like he’s calculating the most efficient way to remove my lungs from my chest without using his hands.
I wonder how his hands would feel.
Or how they’d taste inside my mouth.
Fuck. I’m horny now.
His eyes move down to my pants. “You are disgusting."
I shrug. “What can I say? I’m an Alpha. It’s in my nature. Wanna see what else is in my nature—?”
He’s suddenly on me, his hands gripping my collar tight as his face stays only an inch away from mine as he snaps, “Do you even have the slightest idea about what could happen to you if they stay together? What would happen to you? To your kind?”
The heat in my blood doesn't cook even an inch.
His hands on my collar, his face that close, the way his breath actually feels against my skin instead of just being a figure of speech.
I could take him down. Easy. He's fast, but I'm bigger. Stronger. Trained by people who'd eat pretty little birdies like him for breakfast.
But that's not what I want.
“What would happen,” I repeat, my voice coming out lower than I intended. “You sound almost worried about me when we both know you’re just jealous your Master has no need for you anymore. Want me to tell you what his pheromones smelled like the second he saw Riven?”
Astoria goes still. Completely, utterly still, like a rabbit that's finally realized the shadow overhead isn't a cloud. His hands are still on my collar, but they're not gripping anymore. Just... resting there. Like he forgot they existed.
And then he vanishes.
Into actual fucking smoke. Just… gone.
I scoff, throwing the cigarette that had been dangling on my lips to the floor and stepping over it before I walk back into the academy.
The guys try to talk to me the second I’m in but I don’t pay anyone else attention until I’m right upstairs, in Aidan’s room and taking off my shirt as I say to his roommates, “Get the fuck out.”
They obey easily even if they’re all Alphas, and Aidan… he slowly rises up from the bed like he’s been expecting this, been expecting me in this state as he rises from his bed, taking his shirt off.
He’s barely out of it before I’m slamming him to the wall, the feel of his skin and muscles only lightening up the fire in my brain as I kiss him.
Aidan doesn’t touch me— he knows not to. Even when I’m grabbing his ass and flipping him around so he’s facing the wall while I pull down his pants and shove myself inside.
He makes a sound against the wall-high and punched out of him, the kind of noise that usually makes me slow down, check in, make sure he's okay.
Tonight it just makes me fuck him harder.
His palms are flat against the cold stone, fingers splayed, and I watch the way his shoulders bunch with every thrust. He's not fighting it. He never fights it.
Just takes whatever I give him and thanks me for it after, like l've done him some kind of favor instead of using his body to forget the look in someone else's eyes.
“Alpha,” He breathes, and the word does something to my hindbrain, makes me grip his hips so hard I'll leave bruises.
Good. Let him have bruises. Let him have something real when I’m so nice to give it.
I think about Astoria's hands on my collar. The way they felt. The way they stopped feeling like a threat and started feeling like something else entirely.
I fuck Aidan harder.
He moans, pushes back against me, and I hate how easy this is. How simple.
You're good, I don't say. You're sweet. You're everything I should want.
The thought makes me angry. Makes me move faster, rougher, until Aidan's breathing is ragged and his knuckles are white against the wall and he's saying my name like a prayer.
When I come, it's such a relieving thing, like the priest time in a long while that I remember how to use my fucking lungs.
I pull out, panting as I watch the sight of my cum slowly flow out of his ass before I fall on his bed, my arms spread as I say, “That was fucking good. Didn’t know how much I needed that, love.”
Aidan Crowheart doesn’t speak for too long. He doesn’t show much emotion except when we’re fucking. It’s the thrill that had kept me here, had me wrapped around his little finger for so long.
Or maybe it was that moment he walked up to me and told me point blank that he saw a vision where I would end up as his husband when we were six years old.
I thought he was a lying piece of shit.
But there we are.
He passes me a cigarette that he lights up, and I take it without looking at him.
The silence settles between us like it always does. It’s comfortable, familiar, the kind of quiet that comes from knowing someone for eighteen years without really knowing them at all.
My Beta. Mine. Always fucking mine.
“Are you gonna tell me what this is about?”
“Not sure if I should, my love.”
“Okay.”
Because Aidan would never ask me too many questions. And I was grateful for that.
But now… with Riven here… I wonder what kind of questions I can ask him in return.