Waiting

17

Lucian POV

Amy had served her purpose.

My beast had been fully satiated. I could feel his calm as he settled within me, seemingly content.

For now.

By the time the room fell silent again, the bed was in ruins. The air hung heavy with sweat, perfume, and the fading edge of terror that had belonged wholly to Amy. It lingered in the chamber like the final note of a song no one wanted to claim.

One candle near the far wall had burned low enough to spit wax onto the iron dish beneath it. Shadows climbed the stone like living things.

I glanced toward the bed and confirmed that she did not move.

Nor would she ever again.

Her eyes remained open—blank now, glassy and unseeing, fixed on nothing. Her complexion had already begun to change, the first telltale signs of wax-like, permanent stillness settling into her skin, though a clammy sheen still lingered from the hours I had kept her beneath me.

In that moment, she looked almost unreal. An exquisite porcelain doll emptied from the inside out and abandoned where she had fallen.

Like all the others, I knew I would remember her exactly like this—stilled, spent, emptied of sound.

She had been another moment of distraction.

Nothing more.

Eventually, her name would fade into obscurity. Her features would lose their shape. I would forget the color of her eyes, and she would become nothing more than another vague memory buried beneath centuries of appetite.

In truth, she had meant nothing.

I stood beside the bed, breathing evenly as I flexed one hand to work out the ache buried deep in my palm and wrist. The cramping irritated me. My fingers curled, then spread again, the tendons protesting the strain I had forced through them when I wrapped them around her delicate neck and squeezed.

Gone.

How easily they all failed.

Fragile delicacies always did.

Especially when the beast was allowed out of his cage.

I rolled my neck once, slow and loose, and let my attention drift over the condition of the bed instead.

Pillows had been torn open, their feathers scattered across the floor and tangled in the ruined sheets. The frame had splintered beneath the force of my appetites. Fabric hung in shreds from the mattress, its surface clawed open where my beast had emerged and taken too much of the room with him.

A pity.

“What a remarkable delicacy,” I murmured into the wreckage. “The best I have had in a very long time.”

I almost wished she had survived.

It would have been pleasant to satisfy my needs with her once more.

Almost.

I reached for the crystal bell on the side table and rang it once.

The sound was soft.

Precise.

The door opened almost immediately.

Alex entered with his usual measured silence.

He was tall, composed, and unnervingly still in the way of creatures who had learned perfect obedience. Dark hair framed severe features, and his eyes gave nothing away. He surveyed the room with one sweeping glance and did not flinch—not at the wreckage, not at Amy’s body, not at me.

Good.

I despised servants who performed shock.

Alex served me well because I had broken him long ago. There was no defiance in him now. No hesitation. He stood exactly where I required him to stand, useful and quiet, which was all any creature truly needed to be.

“Dispose of her,” I said, as though discussing spilled wine. “Burn the bedding. Replace everything.”

Alex bowed his head once.

“Yes, my lord.”

I was already turning away before the words fully left his mouth.

I crossed into the adjoining bath chamber and stripped away the last shreds of cloth clinging to my body. After stepping into the walk-in shower, I turned the knob and moved beneath the cascading heat.

Water coursed over my skin, carrying away the remnants of sweat and the lingering trace of Amy.

I closed my eyes.

For one brief moment, I allowed myself to enjoy the silence.

Then the silence sharpened.

My eyes opened.

Something was wrong.

Not in the room.

Not in the fortress.

In the putrid tether that bound me to her.

I stilled beneath the stream of water and reached inward, toward the malignant thread connecting me to Lilith.

Usually, it answered.

Not with warmth.

Not with devotion.

But with presence.

A pulse.

A direction.

A point of resistance at the far end of the bond that told me she still existed somewhere within the realms. Still breathing. Still mine to hunt down whenever the mood pleased me.

Now—

Nothing.

My brow furrowed.

I sharpened my focus and pulled against the bond.

Still nothing.

No location.

No emotional recoil.

No trembling answer like the ones I had felt before when she knew I was coming for her.

Only absence.

The bond had not been severed. I would have felt the violence of that break—the tearing of something ancient and inescapable.

This was different.

Worse.

The tether still existed, but it extended outward into an endless void and disappeared there.

I slowly lifted my face into the falling water, my eyes narrowing.

That was not possible.

Lilith was not dead.

She had no right to die unless it was by my hand and mine alone.

Yet something had reduced her presence to a silence so complete that it could only be deliberate.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

She is mine.

My beast’s annoyance surged through my entire being before I could suppress it, sending a cold shiver beneath my skin.

I remembered exactly where I had last felt her.

Behind the curtain in the hall.

Silent.

Listening.

Furious.

The bond had carried every shred of her jealousy while Amy offered herself to me—the anger, the humiliation, the bitter knowledge that I was giving another female precisely what Lilith had always wanted from me and had repeatedly been denied.

I had enjoyed every moment of it.

I had deliberately kept the bond open, allowing Lilith to feel every movement and every sound. I had dragged out each caress, moan, and entanglement until I could feel the pain of it constricting around her through the tether.

Afterward, I had planned to find her while Amy’s scent still clung to my skin. I would chain her to the rack and make her choke on every detail while I broke her beneath them.

Instead—

Amy had distracted me longer than she should have.

My mouth flattened.

She had cost me time.

Precious time.

I could still remember the triumph I had felt while Lilith’s ego burned behind that curtain and Amy offered herself as a convenient little weapon.

But beneath the falling water, another possibility slid coldly into place.

Amy had not merely distracted me.

She had delayed me.

Held me there long enough for her mistress to run.

Something dark and immediate ignited within my chest.

I needed answers, but the only creature who might have given them to me now lay motionless in my ruined bed.

My head turned slightly toward the bath chamber door, toward the room beyond Alex’s measured silence.

That little fool.

Whether Amy had intended to or not, she had purchased Lilith time, and the price had been her own life.

A sacrifice her mistress would never honor.

During those stolen moments, Lilith had vanished so completely that even our bond now ended in darkness.

My irritation sharpened into something uglier.

I reached into the tether again, more carefully this time, tracing its invisible architecture with the patience of a predator examining a trap.

Nothing.

No pain.

No answer.

No Lilith.

Only that unnerving void.

For the first time that night, genuine anger stirred.

Not because I missed her.

Because something—or someone—had interfered with what belonged to me.

Someone had touched the design of my claim and hidden it beyond my reach.

The realization settled coldly within me.

Lilith had not done this alone.

She was too desperate. Too predictable. Too consumed by survival to create a silence like this herself.

Someone had helped her.

Someone powerful.

And I intended to discover who.

I turned off the water, stepped from the shower, and reached for a towel. Droplets continued to stream down the hard lines of my body.

Across the chamber, the mirror reflected a face untouched by remorse, grief, or any other weakness lesser creatures carried within them.

But my eyes—

My eyes had gone very still.

Behind me, beyond the half-open door, I could hear Alex moving quietly as he stripped the room of evidence.

Efficient.

Good.

I dragged the towel over my shoulders and smiled to myself, though there was no pleasure in it.

Only anticipation for the hunt to come.

Lilith had disappeared into nothing.

Now I wanted to know how.

I dressed without hurry, every movement controlled and exact. By the time I fastened the final button at my wrist, my irritation had transformed into something cleaner.

Focus.

If the tether led only into darkness, I would learn to read that darkness.

If someone had hidden her, that creature had declared itself my enemy.

And if a hand powerful enough to interfere with a celestial mate bond had entered the game—

Perhaps I had finally found an opponent worthy of my full attention.

I reached for the bond once more.

The same absence greeted me.

My breathing slowed.

My shoulders locked.

My hand curled at my side until my nails carved crescents into my palm.

How dare she be silent to me.

How dare anything stand between my will and what I had been granted to control, manipulate, and torment.

There had never been tenderness in our bond. Never anything pure enough to call love.

Even when I had wanted her, I had done so with my teeth in it. The feeling had been filled with appetite, vigor, and the thrill of possession. Even when I obsessed over her, it had been with hunger and the passionate satisfaction of breaking something bright enough to make me feel less empty.

Once, I had believed that feeling was love.

Whatever it had been died on that horrific day.

The hunger remained, but it twisted into hatred. Affection rotted into abhorrence while the passion beneath it survived, sharpened by resentment and made crueler by time.

If anything, hatred had made it more focused.

Cleaner.

More honest.

I did not need her love.

What mattered was simpler.

No one else would possess what had been marked as mine.

No one else would touch what I had ruined.

No one else would hide her from me.

Distance may have made her feel free.

Safe, even.

She was neither.

The tether continued to give me nothing, and that emptiness burrowed deeper beneath my skin with every passing second.

My smile sharpened.

“Run,” I said softly into the silence. “Hide. Borrow power that does not belong to you. When I find you—and I will—you will regret ever believing someone could unlink you from me.”

I reached for the bond one final time and found only that same maddening void.

Then I laughed beneath my breath.

Not because it was amusing.

Because something in this vast existence was finally worthy of my attention.

I crossed the ruined bedroom without hurry, though every nerve beneath my skin had tightened into focus.

Alex continued working in the far corner, stripping the bed of feathers, blood, and evidence with his usual efficient calm.

Good.

I demanded promptness and perfection from those who served me.

I had no further use for the room, so I left my bedchamber and returned to the hallway.

To the place where Lilith had last stood.

The curtain remained motionless against the stone, but the memory of her presence clung to it—the sharp jealousy I had felt while Amy writhed beneath me, the fury she had failed to conceal through our bond.

I approached slowly.

The air still held her.

Faintly.

My hand touched the fabric, and something inside me uncoiled.

Not thought.

Not reason.

Something fouler.

Something older.

I let it rise.

My body widened first, swelling into corruption rather than power. Flesh thickened and bloated, as though rot itself had been poured into the shape of a man and commanded to stand. Coarse hair pushed through my skin in uneven patches. Wings tore from my back in a heavy, dragging unfurl—not elegant, but obscene in their span.

My limbs distorted beneath the pressure of the beast until I was no longer beauty, but ruin wearing the memory of a once-perfect being.

Around me, a restless swarm of black-winged insects spilled from the darkened corners of the hallway, buzzing in answer as though they had waited patiently for me to become honest.

Beelzebub.

My truest appetite.

My most accurate face.

I lowered my head toward the curtain and inhaled.

Lilith.

Yes.

There.

A thread of her scent remained, frayed at the edges but strong enough to follow.

Fear had come first.

Then jealousy.

Then fury as Amy and I began our little game.

I followed the fleeting trace through torchlit corridors, along stone walls, down stairwells, and into the hidden bones of the fortress.

My clawed feet struck the floor in deliberate rhythm while insects seethed around my bloated form in restless spirals.

Her trail wound through the fortress with the desperation of someone running on instinct rather than reason.

Then I found the turn that made me smile.

Her library.

Of course.

I entered without subtlety, my rotting, furred mass nearly filling the doorway as my wings dragged behind me. The chamber still held her deeply—ink, parchment, old leather, candle smoke, and Lilith herself woven through every surface.

She had come here in haste.

Paused.

Thought.

Then fled.

I inhaled again and found the freshest trace.

Deeper into the library.

Between rows of ancient tomes.

Through a hidden corridor near the fortress wall.

Then beyond it entirely.

Interesting.

The night air met me cold as I stepped into the scar left by her shimmer.

Her scent remained.

I followed it across distance, drawn by the final trace of her before the maddening void had swallowed everything.

The trail carried me through darkness, over stone, and past sleeping mortal settlements until the air changed.

Bleach.

Blood.

Antiseptic.

Grief.

And Lilith.

A hospital.

Why would she come here?

I followed her scent inside, down one sterile corridor and then another, until it stopped.

Not weakened.

Ended.

One moment, it remained clear enough to guide me across the threshold of a particular stretch of hall.

Then—

Gone.

Not faded.

Not buried beneath other scents.

Gone.

The same blankness.

The same wall of nothing.

Whatever had cloaked her had done so here.

A low sound rolled from deep within my chest, too rough to be called human and too furious to be mistaken for anything else.

Then another scent reached me.

I froze.

Familiar.

Impossible to mistake.

Arie.

I had not laid eyes upon my brother in centuries, but his scent remained embedded in my oldest memories.

I would have recognized it anywhere.

Under ordinary circumstances, his presence would have meant nothing. He was Death. Hospitals suited his function. He came and went wherever endings gathered.

But this was different.

I drew his scent more deeply into my lungs.

He had not merely passed through.

He had lingered.

Stayed.

Moved throughout the hospital with presence rather than purpose.

If he had come to collect a soul, he would have done what he always did: enter, release, leave.

So why had he remained?

Lilith’s trail had ended here.

Arie’s surrounded the very place where she had vanished.

Could my brother have helped her hide from me?

The possibility sharpened my irritation into suspicion.

I did not know what reason Arie could have for involving himself in Lilith’s escape, but coincidence had never interested me.

Answers did.

So I followed him.

His scent led me through the hospital and out through its exterior doors.

The air beyond them carried salt and the distant pull of the sea.

I kept to the spaces behind the veil of darkness, narrowing the beast beneath my skin only enough for patience to take hold.

The farther I traveled, the stronger the scent of the ocean became.

A beach.

What reason did my brother have to linger at a beach?

Then I saw him.

Arie.

But he was not alone.

A girl sat beside him near the waterline.

Human, certainly.

Yet something else moved quietly beneath the surface of her soul—something I could neither identify nor dismiss.

The fading light cast them in gold and violet shadow. Even from a distance, I could see her smile.

Bright.

Unforced.

Alive.

And her soul—

My gaze fixed upon it.

The light within her was unlike anything a mortal should have carried so easily. It was not fully awakened, perhaps not even understood by her, but there could be no mistaking its presence.

Beautiful.

Unusual.

I watched my brother turn toward her with a stillness I knew too well.

Interest.

Wonder.

Care.

For one immediate, ugly moment, envy moved through me like poison.

Arie.

Of course Arie.

The dutiful one.

The restrained one.

The brother who still knew how to look upon something living as though it mattered.

Had the Celestials finally granted him one?

A mate?

The thought struck me with a bitterness sharp enough to almost become laughter.

No.

He should not be that fortunate.

Not him.

Not after everything.

I watched longer, studying the way he held himself around her. The careful angle of his body. The unfamiliar softness in his attention.

Whatever she was, she mattered to him.

That alone made her dangerous.

And useful.

Then I noticed something else.

Another predator concealed within the darkness.

Farther back along the boardwalk, half-swallowed by shadow, stood a werewolf.

Still.

Too still.

Watching Arie and the girl with the rigid concentration of something already half lost to itself.

That made me pause.

I knew wolves like him.

Not by name.

Not by rank.

By rot.

Some wolves surrendered so completely to their dark nature that the man became the caged creature, buried beneath the instincts of the beast.

Shadow Wolves.

Their darkness did not always announce itself with claws and teeth. Their kind had learned long ago to dress savagery in the shape of a man while feeding every vile impulse beneath the surface.

They were useful creatures.

Easy to guide.

Easy to infect.

Easy to turn.

Especially those already consumed by obsession.

Those who mistook hunger for devotion and possession for love.

This one carried that corruption.

His soul had already begun blackening around the edges, preparing itself to justify whatever it most wanted to do.

I smiled.

Creatures like him did not need to be ruined.

Only encouraged.

Eventually, he would outgrow his usefulness.

But a rabid dog was always easy to put down.

I moved behind him without sound, my presence folding into the darkness just beyond the edge of his awareness.

He did not turn.

He did not see me.

But some primitive part of him felt my approach. I knew it from the way his shoulders locked, the subtle change in his breathing, and the agitation sharpening beneath his skin.

Good.

I leaned close enough for my voice to slip into the seams of his mind.

Not as sound.

As infection.

As suggestion.

As truth he would mistake for his own.

“Look at her.”

His fingers twitched at his sides.

“She is laughing with him.”

The wolf’s posture tightened.

“She lets him sit where you should be.”

I felt the immediate flare within him.

Possession answering possession.

Excellent.

I pressed closer.

“She stepped away from you.”

“She looked at him too easily.”

“She has forgotten herself.”

His pulse quickened.

The darkness inside him opened wider.

I smiled.

“That pretty-faced bastard is taking what belongs to you.”

“And she is allowing it.”

His hands curled.

“She should not have done that in front of you.”

“She should not have smiled at another male that way.”

“She should not have forced you to watch.”

His breathing roughened.

“She likes him.”

The muscles along his shoulders tightened.

“She wants him.”

His body began to expand beneath his clothes, the beast pressing closer to the surface.

Perfect.

“She wants him to touch her.”

His jaw clenched.

“To kiss her.”

The darkness within him surged.

“To take what is yours.”

His fingers curled into fists.

“She is disrespecting you.”

I leaned closer, allowing the words to sink deeper.

“Disrespect should be corrected.”

“Betrayal should be punished.”

“A female who forgets her place should be taught the lesson slowly enough that she never forgets again.”

The wolf did not move.

But the darkness within him answered eagerly.

There you are.

I did not require him to understand my presence consciously.

I only needed the thoughts to settle deeply enough that they began to feel like his own.

Correction.

Possession.

Punishment.

Pain mistaken for devotion.

The oldest poisons.

The easiest.

I leaned close and delivered one final whisper, low and intimate as decay.

“She should learn precisely what her disrespect costs.”

That one he accepted whole.

I felt it descend into him.

Felt the blackness within him welcome it.

Satisfied, I drew back.

Then, very lightly, I reached out and marked him.

Not enough for him to notice.

Only enough to remain.

A brush of claw against the edge of his darkening spirit.

A stain.

A hook.

Something small, foul, and mine, buried beneath the surface where even he would never know it existed.

But I would.

I could find him now.

Track him.

Touch the worsening darkness within him whenever it pleased me.

A useful creature.

A wounded one.

And therefore easy.

The wolf shuddered once, almost imperceptibly, before going still again.

I smiled.

My marks always took.

I left him on the boardwalk, staring at my brother and the luminous mortal beside him, and withdrew into the shadows.

Arie remained near the waterline, unaware.

The girl continued to smile.

The wolf continued to burn.

And somewhere beneath it all, Lilith remained concealed behind that impossible blankness.

Good.

Let them keep their secrets for now.

I had discovered something far more entertaining than emptiness.

Lilith remained somewhere beyond my reach.

Arie had involved himself in matters I did not yet understand.

A luminous little mortal had somehow captured my brother’s attention.

And a half-rotted wolf now carried my mark.

The pieces had begun arranging themselves without my assistance.

All that remained was to decide which one I would break first.

Perhaps this game had finally become interesting enough to deserve me.