Chapter 37 37
RANDOM FACTS: Riven is not in the right frame of mind at the moment.
——
The wetness of the ground was the first thing to snap me back to reality. Then it was the darkness I was surrounded by— but I felt numb to all of it, like the feelings in my chest that had bubbled to the surface were suddenly frozen.
Rowan… Rowan was talking to me. He was saying words… telling me to be careful. That he didn’t have time… I—
His gold eyes have me looking up, the runes on his body slowly lighting up as I feel things— his shadows— curling over my body. Feeling me. Sending me. ‘Close to the shadows. Why do you not listen?’
His voice rings through my head like an echo, like something that plans on digging itself through every inch of my brain till I’m crying and begging that I be left alone.
I cannot see him, not with the darkness we’re both covered in but I can sense him. Smell him. His pheromones are trying to offload my senses, choke me in them. It’s too much… but it’s making me feel. It’s giving me a chance not to feel numb. “My… my grandfather—”
His shadows have found my neck. They’re twisting. Turning. ‘He disobeyed me. And now you have done same.’
A mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. I couldn’t find Claire. Everything was happening too fast. Where am I? Is he going to hurt me? What is happening?
No. No. I don’t care. I don’t want to think. The image in my head plays out again. It’s him telling me he loves me, I’m supposed to do something, to find something— but if I find it, then I’ll have to remember how he looked before he…
The shadow around my neck tightens, ice digging into my skin. A gasp falls out of my lips as an emotion flashes through my brain. Pain. Loss of air. Dizzy.
‘No.’ Kael’s voice in my head has it freezing. ‘Feel.’
I want to tell him no, that it is the last thing I want to do. I want to beg him. I will this time. I’d do anything not to feel, but the shadow on my neck squeezes tighter, and tighter.
The burn in my lungs forces everything else out— the numbness, the static, the hollow ache where my grandfather’s face had been.
All of it replaced by the single, screaming need to breathe.
I hear him growling in front of me. He’s smelling me, I know. His hands are so close to my skin, like he wants to rip me apart, like he wishes to pull me into every shadow that breathes with him so he can taste every fear wafting off me. “S-Stop—”
His hand grabs my mouth. His hold is suddenly warm, covering every inch of my skin with a desire I shouldn’t want my body tells me to lean into, to let him do whatever he wants. He’ll stop the feelings burning through my chest threatening to make me scream.
To make me feel.
Blue. I love you so much. Blue. Blue. Blue.
‘Pain. Pleasure, Keeper. It is all the same to me.’ He is still growling, his hand over my mouth. His gaze on me isn’t the same curious one that it’s been all this time. It’s monstrous. It’s cruel. I’m an object. A thing. And he is the one who killed my grandfather. ‘Your pain… you feel so much and you bury. But it is no longer yours to bury. Mine. Tears. Mine. Pain. Mine. You?’
I shake my head. Violent. Desperate.
His hand presses harder.
‘Mine.’ He murmurs, and the shadows move.
Not the slow, tendrils from before.
This one is different as points of cold sinks into my skin all at once. They pour into my mouth, my nose, the corners of my eyes. They slide beneath my clothes. They find every bruise, every ache, every place where my body has ever hurt and they press.
It hurts. It hurts so much. I feel like something is tearing into me, trying to break into every part of me.
My hand flies out. It hits him across the face. His eyes flare, but I don’t stop. I start kicking, trying to shove him away. The shadows cling tighter onto my skin like suctions, like they’re trying to keep me in place.
But I don’t care.
His hand is off my face, both of them grabbing my thighs and suddenly yanking them open and pulling me towards himself as I hear him growl, ‘Do you know why you feel, Keeper? It is for me. Your kind is created to feel so as to satiate me. Nothing more. You matter little in the grandness of my existence.’
“Let me go.” My voice is ragged, and vicious. There are tears on my cheeks that I don’t recall crying and as I look at Kael, claw marks on his face that leak with black blood from him. But I don’t care. I don’t plan to. “I don’t fucking care—”
His shadows slam me back against the ground. My skull connects with something hard and for a moment, the world goes white. Then the pain crashes in, and I hate him for it. I hate him for making me feel anything at all.
Kael looms over me, the claw marks on his face already knitting together, black blood falling onto my chest like rain. His runes are blazing now. Like he’s on fire and he wants me to burn me into ash with him. ‘You are weak. It is why your grandfather died. You cannot protect him. You cannot protect yourself. You need me.’
I scream. It comes out like a snarl, an hiss. It’s feral, animalistic, and the look in his eyes change— from the disgust and hate, it shifts I see instantly as something he knows. Something that he has that I also have.
We are both monsters. I am his. I am his. I am his.
He is on me.
His mouth finds mine but I don’t kiss him back. I’m trying to fight him again but the shadows are now grabbing my hands back ignoring how I’m fighting as his tongue shoves itself into my mouth. Colors burst in my head, flashing like a pill I should not have taken is bursting at the seams of my veins.
Need. Need. Need.
Kael growls into my mouth. The sound vibrates through my chest, through my teeth, through the hollow place that is me hoping he would fill me up.
I bite him.
Hard.
His blood floods my tongue and for a moment, an overwhelming whirl of emotions slam through my body. Everything that thinking about my grandfather is not— pleasure. Overwhelming pleasure that threatens to send me spiraling over the edge.
I can feel his blood swimming down my throat, cascading like liquid fire— but it all feels so good. So hot and so wrong and so—
“Ahhhhh,” My whole body lights up, sparks burning in every nerve as I feel him inside me. It’s not the first or second time, but my body acts as if he’s starved of him for too long. Like a horny, hungry dog waiting for its master.
‘You are wet. And you refuse me. Where is your defiance? Where is your rage?’
Right here, I think. Right here. But then all of a sudden, he’s pulling me upwards, his hands lifting me with ease and suddenly slamming me back down onto his dick.
It shoves itself so deep inside me that I almost taste him right in my mouth. For a moment I think he’s going to rip my apart, he’s going to break me, I can’t take it, I absolutely won’t take it—
Then I feel his hand on my hair and he yanks me back with such hate that my cock hardens, precum already pooling out from the tip as I hear him hiss right next to my neck, ‘There you are.’