Chapter 40 40- Kael
RANDOM FACT: Kael moves like an animal. He doesn’t know what it means to ‘stop’. It’s an alien word in his head.
———
The way his throat bulges around me. The way his red eyes water instantly, tears spilling down his temples. The way his claws scratch against the shadows holding him, not pushing away but gripping, like he needs something to hold onto or he'll burn.
His mouth is so hot.
So wet.
‘Well done ,' I send into his mind. ‘Fascinating the things you can do with your mouth,’
The praise has a sob escaping his throat and sending a vibration through me that threatens to unravel me.
I pull back, just an inch— just to watch him gasp for air. And to admire the way he is marked and covered in me.
His pheromones are no longer beating that sickly sweet smell. Now, they smell of something else. Like rain and earth. And sex.
“I swear to the goddess,” His lips are swollen and his horns have grown thicker, curling back. “If you don’t fuck my—”
I shove myself back into his throat until I feel him swallow around me, until his nose presses against my pelvis, until his whole body convulses with the effort of taking all of me.
And then I keep doing it.
He’s panicking. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. There’s no thoughts but the fear.
The fear has his cock spilling more precum.
I lean down and take him in.
He chokes right on me but I don’t stop thrusting inside him. My tongue curls around his tip, the strange taste lighting something in my chest that I need.
That I must have.
His throat spasms around my cock, and the sensation rips a growl out of me that I feel more than hear. The shadows holding him tremble.
I take him deeper into my mouth. My tongue presses against the underside of his cock, tracing the vein that pulses there. My shadows slide over his thighs, his stomach, his chest.
He is shaking, then his whole body arches.
The shadow inside his ass begins to press into that sensitive spot harder while I now focus on his tip, sucking my cheek in and sucking harder and harder—
His cum flies all over my cheek instantly, his whole body convulsing as his walls clench around my shadow. It’s sweet and sticky and wet and it feeds me.
It feeds me.
I pull my cock out of him, my whole body tending from how easily it slips out— and the trail of saliva following it while I stare at him.
Riven looks wrecked.
His chest heaves as loud pants pour out of his lips. His red eyes are half-lidded, pupils blown so wide there's almost no color left. His tail— his tail is still wrapped around my thigh, squeezing in pulses that match his heartbeat.
He's staring at me.
Not with hate or rage.
Hunger.
He wants to devour me. To have me as his.
His body again tells me the same thing it has told me from the day I smelled his blood.
I want you.
Take him. He will hurt you first. Feast. Take. Take. Take—
Then I sense it.
Another presence.
It smells like fire. And ash. And I know that scent anywhere.
“Sleep.” The word pours out of my mouth before I can stop it.
The shadows obey before his body does. They coil around Riven’s limbs, his throat, his horns. His red eyes widen, fury igniting in them, but the command is already sinking into his bones.
“No—” He chokes out, fighting it. His tail lashes against my thigh, claws scraping at anything. He should have fallen. His will is fascinating. “Don’t you fucking dare— Kael—”
Sleep.
His body goes slack. His eyes roll back. The fight drains out of him and the shadows catch him before he can fall, cradling him in that strange, possessive way they’ve started to move when he is involved.
I lay him down on the cold floor. His chest still rises and falls. His horns and tail have not gone.
The shadows swarm him.
“Master.” Astoria’s voice calls out in front of me. I look at him, watching as he keeps his face down to the floor. “I have… I have found information on the woman in your memories.”
My wolf stills.
The Hunger is still focused on him. It wants the shadows to dive into his skin. Leave more marks. It claws at the inside of my skull, snarling to stay. To turn back. To sink into Riven’s sleeping body and not emerge until he is ruined in ways that cannot be undone.
But the name…
Eryndra…
“Speak.”
His voice comes out hesitant, but respectful all the same. “I have found texts of her… but I… I fear that there are in the only place that is… prepared to alienate you from entry.”
The Academy.
Where that wolf took him to hide. Where my shadows could not reach. “You also cannot enter.”
I feel him chill. Preparing. “Yes, Master,”
“Then how do you know?”
“I… spoke to a student there. It was all in hopes of finding her. Erydna. I would never— you know that I would never—”
He lies.
That is one thing a familiar cannot hide. A lie. As long as they speak an untruth, the other would know. He has not lied to me in the years that I know him— but I have been asleep for many years. And he has roamed for far longer as well.
Do I trust him?
“What do they want in return for the texts?”
“They want… Riven—”
My shadows instantly clamp around his neck, some swarming around him and bringing him in right in front of me before they clear again and he falls to his feet so we are now facing one another.
“They have taken him once, Astoria,” My voice does not betray the rage I feel. The shadows around Astoria tighten, and I watch his face pale, his lips trembling as he struggles to draw breath. “And now they wish to take him again?”
“Master— please—” His voice is a strangled whisper. "I did not agree— I only came to tell you—”
I release him.
My attention falls back to Riven, my shadows still curled possessively around his sleeping form. His chest rises and falls in slow rhythm. The horns have begun to recede, but the tail remains, twitching.
“The student,” I say slowly. “Who?”
Astoria hesitates. “A… founder’s heir. They swear loyalty to you… and also to your… Omega. All they ask… is that you let him be in the walls for a period in return for the texts. He swears the moment the texts satisfy you, he will let him go,”
The Hunger growls at the thought.
Mine. Forever. Always mine.
“Master,” Astoria’s voice goes even softer. “They might help understand this… woman better, the gaps that you have. And aid with your memory. Is that not why you have kept this Keeper all this time? Because the… acts you shared helped you remember?”
Does it matter now?
I do not like the question.
But I do not dismiss it.
“Leave.”
Astoria obeys.
The moment we are alone, It speaks again, Eat.
Keep.
And I cannot tell which is worse.