Before
I growl and pace, my fury and nervousness shaking around inside of me at the image of those rogures in the distance, at Charles’s presence within the keep.
I can’t stay in this room, I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong.
I walk over to the table next to the bed and pick up the new lesia flower there, after Darius replaced the last one. I inhale its scent, trying to calm myself but it doesn’t work. Putting it back in the glass carefully, I look at the door and growl before walking over to it.
I ease my mind and feel for the power inside myself, the power that was gifted to me by a God. Darius cannot keep me in here.
I place a palm on the door, feeling Darius magic locking it tight. I will my power to move to my palm, and the call works. It seeps out of me and to the door, feeling around Darius’s magic, trying to slip through a crack. When I find none, I close my eyes and push harder, forcing more into the wood until a tiny crack in the seal reveals itself. I punch my magic into it, getting beneath and forcing Darius’s magic away from the surface. Sweat beads at the back of my neck, and my arm shakes with trying to stay in control, but I press on.
A small burst of power hits my face like a gentle breeze, and I open my eyes, smiling that I managed to release it. I take a breath and pull down the handle, popping my head out into the hallway. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find, but it’s empty.
Walking out the room and down the hallway with the same feeling of dread laying heavy in my stomach, I open my senses and try to listen out for anything. But all is quiet.
I’m not sure where Charles would be, I’ve only ever been in this wing and the gardens out the back. The rest of the Elites still don’t even know we are here, so we have been secluded to this part of the keep. Turning down another hallway, I hear a door close, a barely-there sound, but I hear it nonetheless.
Who was that?
Freezing for a moment, I wait for anything else. When nothing comes, I creep on light feet toward where I heard the sound. Rounding a corner, I tilt my head when I hear what sounds like shuffling from one of the rooms further down. Swallowing, I take small steps, wondering if one of my pack is in there, and my eagerness at hopefully seeing one of them has me quickening my steps. When a rustle of something reaches my ears, I pause in front of the door.
I reach for the handle when a scent assaults me.
My brows furrow, and my lips peel back. The scent is familiar in a way that I can’t pinpoint. One thing is for sure, it isn’t one of my pack members, and I don’t like it.
A breathy sigh comes next, a pitch to the tone that is female, and my eyes glare holes into the door.
Without thought, I’m pushing the door open. It swings back against the wall with a bang, and the figure in front of me turns, a smile on her all too familiar lips as the strap on the left side of her dress slips down her arm.
As soon as she sees me, she freezes, her eyes wide as mine blink.
“Maize?” I growl, not sure I believe what I’m seeing.
“What the fuck are you doing here?!“ she demands, lifting her palms as her magic comes to it, azure in color.
I look around the room. No one else is in here, and I don’t hear anyone else coming. What is she doing in here? I look down at the dress she’s wearing as rage crashes to the surface. It’s barely a scrap of material, a slit up one side high enough to see she’s not even wearing any underwear. My eyes track up the body of the dress, the dip low at her chest, her boobs barely being held in.
She moves back a step, and my eyes go to the bed. That’s where her underwear went. She has it placed in the center, and I see a damp path there. My back teeth grind as my glare settles back on her.
“What are you doing?” I growl, taking a step into the door. Memories of her being near Kade flowing through me. She hurt him.
“You shouldn’t be here!” she shouts, her magic spinning in a ball wildly. “How did you even get in here?”
“I’m right where I should be.” My hands ball into fists, and I make sure to listen for any other signs of life. In case this is some sort of trap. Why is she in this wing?
“Does Darius know you are here?” she asks, her eyes looking over my shoulder. She smirks. “Oh, isn’t this lovely. I can deliver you to him as a mating gift.”
My mind stutters. “What did you just say?”
“Oh, you poor thing,” she mocks. “You think Darius, the Alpha of the Elites, would continue slumming it with you?” She laughs, the sound cruel. “You are a traitor, he wouldn’t want to see you. Well actually, he would, he would love to whip you some more.” I flinch, but I don’t even feel it, the word mating repeating over and over again. “I watched you, you know,” she says, a smug smile on her lips and I tilt my head at her, but it doesn’t feel like it’s me. It feels like something else is slowly taking over my body. “I think you saw me at one point, tried to follow me to see, but you’re too stupid to look up in the trees.” My mind goes back to the time I asked Josh where the Elites were in the Eridian forest, so sure I saw someone, and I did, her. She frowns. “I feel so bad for my Darius having to put up with you, you were like a wanton whore with him, rubbing yourself on him like the desperate bitch you are,” Maize continues as I feel the warmth of my markings as they appear on my face. Maize raises her hands. “Maybe after I restrain you, tie you to a chair as Darius finally mates with me and makes me fully his…”
His?
I look to the bad, and then back to Maize, the move feels slow, like moving through a slog. The rage inside of me, however, is fast. It’s like a volcano ready to bust, and when Maize’s mouth continues to move, a smirk upon her face. My eyes once more go back to the bed, to her underwear, then to her dress, her words.
“… He will fuck me so good, and you can watch…” I don’t hear anything else, because I’m moving. The thought of this witch touching hm, of Darius fucking her… Does he know she’s here? Does he plan to fuck her on this bed.
That volcano just erupted.
My magic comes to my palms and I send out a ball straight to her. She deflects it with her own, shock flashing across her face before anger overtakes her.
She’s angry? She hasn’t seen anything yet. She was protected behind the Highers’ barrier last time, here, she is out in the open.
Both of her hands push out at me, and I’m sent through the air, caught off guard. My back connects with the wall, and I know it should hurt, but I don’t feel it. I rise to my feet and go at her again as she cackles. A shard formed from ice comes at me next, and I dash to the side of the room, knowing it scraped against the top of my arm. Still I move forward. My magic whirls inside of me, angry and wanting to be let out, and I let it. Strands of my power burst from my body, whipping out of my hands as I reach her and grab her by the throat. she screams, her eyes becoming bloodshot as I squeeze harder and my strands begin to pierce her skin. There is no rhythm to my magic, no control of thought over their placement against her body. All I can see in my head is two bodies on the bed. One of them belonging to me, the other belonging to no one.
Darius belongs to me, and I, him. No one else touches him in that way, has him in that way.
How dare she even utter the words.
A growl I didn’t know I was capable of, rising from my throat as Runa echoes it. Throwing Maize off to the side, I look down at her as I take a step toward, feeling a sting at my side. I look down. An ice shard protrudes just under my ribs, sticking out as my blood leaks around it. I grip it in my hand, my eyes locking with Maize as I pull it out. It’s in the way. She stares at me in horror as my magic is pulled back toward me, and I feel it traveling within me, rushing to the area where I’m hurt.
She casts her hands, and in the next second, she’s on her feet with a blade made of ice.
I move toward her.
“Kade enjoys my company.” She smiles, teeth bloodied. I stop short at that name, my blood that was boiling instantly turning cold. “He’s such a lost pup,” she pouts. “Someone had to take care of him… make him see the error of his ways. Make him scream.”
I’m on her again, ducking under her blade as she swings, and I send us crashing to the floor. I grapple with her blade, my hand coming to her wrist to pin it down. A blast of her power hits me in the stomach, and I cough, blood splattering from my lips. I growl and pin her other wrist, my eyes hard. I try to call my magic to restrain her, but it’s solely focusing on the damage to my side.
“Where is he?” I snarl, squeezing her wrist so hard her bones creak.
She laughs. “At Wolvorn Castle, where else would he be. He needs to be trained properly, under the guidance of the Highers, and me of course.”
“What have you done to him?” She wiggles beneath me, laughing. “Tell me!”
She spits in my face. “Darius will not be happy you are here, and he will not be happy when he sees what you have done to me.” She licks her lips. “He’s going to be ferocious after he captures you, and I will sooth him with my body. I will make sure he is relaxed and where he should have been all along. Inside of me, for the rest of our lives while you are used as the Highers pawn, a brood mare, squatting out babies one after the other. I’ll come and visit you sometimes, bring Kade along. In fact, Kade can also father a child from you one day, it is what is to be expected of him.” I’m going to be sick. “But most of all, I will come and see you when my belly is full with the Alpha of the Elites’s seed. Showing you what you can never have, what I see you desire within those desperate eyes.” I snap my teeth at her and she cackles. “I saw the way you looked at him in Eridian, you poor unlovable fool. You can never be what he needs. No, I shall be the one to sate his thirst, his hunger. I am the only one able to satisfy him, and the Highers know that, so I will have him while you torture yourself with images of me and him together after I make you watch it all.”
I blink.
Then I blink again.
A tinge covers my vision, and I feel my body shaking. Runa growls so deeply that I’m sure it escapes my lips as fear bleeds into Maize’s eyes. “He is not yours to have,” I growl down at her.
She smirks, and I feel her magic once again coming from her hands. Cold instantly hits my palms, then my fingers. So cold that it burns. Ice begins to cover the backs of my hands, and I try to remove them from Maize wrists, but it’s no use, I’m frozen to her. My teeth start chattering, my body shivering as my eyes focus back to her as she speaks.
Her smile is slimy. “Oh but he is mine, Lord Higher has decided, and Darius agreed.”
He agreed? He wouldn’t, he couldn’t have.
My head spins, the pain in my hands now traveling up to the middle of my forearms as the ice spreads. I watch as it reaches the center, covering my markings along that arm. When it covers up the spot in the middle. That’s when I feel something I haven’t felt before.
A wildness. A catalyst.
A savagery that I instantly cater to.
I lunge forward, and my teeth are in her neck in the next second. She screams, and I bite down hard, growling and snarling as her blood spills into my mouth. I rip and shred, carve and slaughter at her neck as she tries to fight me off. I’m vaguely aware of her wiggling frantically beneath me, vaguely aware that the ice she has on my body is now moving along my arms and quickly spreading up to my own neck.
I still don’t stop.
I take a chunk of her shredded flesh and pull back, taking it with me. It falls from my mouth and I go back, just catching Maize’s pain filled face as I go to the other side. My teeth are back in her skin, and this time I maw and bite my way deeper as she screams.
She will not have him.
She will not touch him..
He is mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Not being able to get a hold of the loose skin on her neck anymore, I go for her shoulder, chomping down on anything I can reach. I don’t stop, can’t stop as Runa backs me up within me, growling low in encouragement at the possible threat before us.
In the back of my mind, I know I should stop, ask her about Kade, force her to tell me how I can get him out of there, force her to help me even if I have to torture her to get my answers.
But the thought of her and Darius together, that she is here for that which he agreed to…
My instincts have taken over to get rid of the threat, and I couldn’t wrangle for any control even if I tried.
So I don’t try and control my actions, I wield them.
And I won’t stop until I’m satisfied that the prey I have beneath me stops breathing.
