HAUNTED BY HIM

Chapter Three – The Ghost Who Touched Me

My boots were soaked through by the time I reached the main square.

Or what should have been a square.

In daylight, maybe this had been a plaza—shops, benches, fountains. Now it was a corpse of a place, stripped of sound and color. A broken clock tower leaned precariously over the cracked tiles, frozen at midnight. The fountain at the center was filled not with water but with a tar-black liquid that writhed faintly, as though something underneath was struggling to crawl free.

I wrapped my jacket tighter around me, but the cold wasn’t in the air—it was in me. The kind of chill that grew in bone marrow, the kind no fabric could stop.

I hadn’t seen Kaelen since he’d vanished into smoke. That should have been a relief. But the silence of the city felt different now. Thicker. Heavier.

Like the pause before thunder.

I told myself to keep moving. I’d find a way out. Every trap had an exit, and I had clawed my way out of worse cages before.

That was when I heard it.

A scraping sound.

Low, guttural. Metal against stone.

I froze. My breath caught. The sound came again, closer.

From the shadows between two half-collapsed buildings, something crawled into the faint red glow of the streetlamps.

Not human.

Its body was bent, too long in the limbs, skin stretched taut over bones. Its mouth hung open, rows of jagged teeth clicking against each other in a rhythm that raised the hairs along my arms. Its eyes were nothing but pits of black hunger.

Another shape slithered out behind it. Then another.

Three. Four.

Their movements were jerky, unnatural, like puppets dragged on broken strings. The scraping came from their nails, curved and black, leaving trails of sparks when they dragged them against the pavement.

My chest tightened. My body screamed at me to run—but the street curved back into itself. There was nowhere to go.

The first creature’s head snapped toward me, neck cracking. It let out a sound halfway between a hiss and a growl, and then it charged.

“s**t—”

I bolted left, boots slipping across the slick pavement. The creatures followed, their shrieks piercing the night, echoing so loudly I couldn’t tell how many there were anymore. My breath tore from my throat, my lungs burning.

I stumbled into another alley, only to find it blocked by a wall of twisted brick. Dead end.

The first creature lunged, its claws slashing toward my face. I ducked, the swipe cutting through the air with a whistle. Its stench—rotting meat and burned metal—hit me full in the nose.

I grabbed a broken pipe from the ground and swung. The metal connected with a sickening crunch against its skull. The thing screeched but didn’t fall. It only reeled back, jaws snapping harder.

The others closed in, their claws sparking against the walls, their mouths dripping that same tar-black substance that filled the fountain.

My grip on the pipe shook. My chest heaved. I’d fought men before. Monsters of flesh and blood. But this? These weren’t men. They weren’t even alive.

One of them leapt.

And then the world ripped open.

The shadows split with a violent crack, spilling silver light like lightning across the alley. The creatures shrieked, twisting, as Kaelen stepped forward out of the wall.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t have to.

His mere presence made the air split, the pavement shiver. The creatures hissed at him, backing away—but too late. His hand sliced through the air, and the nearest one was wrenched upward, slammed against the wall by an invisible force. It screeched, thrashing, but his silver gaze burned, and the thing dissolved into smoke with a wail that made my ears bleed.

Another lunged at him. He caught it by the throat mid-air. His fingers—those cold, cruel fingers—sank into its skin, and the creature shriveled, collapsing to ash before it even hit the ground.

Two more fled down the alley, shrieking into the dark.

Silence fell.

The silver glow dimmed.

And Kaelen stood there, tall and terrible, a predator carved of shadow and hunger. His black hair fell into his face, his chest rising with calm, unhurried breaths.

My heart hammered as I backed against the wall, pipe still clutched tight.

He turned to me. His silver eyes locked on mine, burning brighter than the neon lamps.

“You’re welcome,” he murmured.

I glared at him, breath ragged. “Don’t—don’t pretend you saved me.”

His smile curled slow and merciless. “No. I didn’t.”

He stepped closer, shadows clinging to his shoulders like a cloak.

“I don’t save,” Kaelen said softly, his voice brushing over me like a caress and a threat all at once. “I take. I destroy. And those creatures dared to touch what isn’t theirs.”

He tilted his head, eyes flicking down the line of my throat where his phantom handprint still burned, unseen.

“You,” he whispered, his voice reverent and cruel, “are mine.”

Heat flooded my face—anger, fear, something darker. I swung the pipe, hard, aiming for his head.

But the metal never landed.

His hand shot up, catching the swing mid-arc, fingers curling around the pipe as though it weighed nothing. His other hand slid over mine, pressing it down, his cold touch biting into my skin.

My pulse raced. My breath came in sharp, furious gasps.

“I am not yours,” I spat, though the words shook. “I will never be yours.”

Kaelen leaned in, close enough that the icy air around him seeped into my lungs, suffocating me. His mouth brushed my ear, not quite touching, but so close every nerve screamed.

“You already are,” he murmured.

The pipe clattered from my numb fingers.

I hated him. God, I hated him.

But when his silver eyes devoured me whole, when his presence filled every corner of this cursed city, part of me knew the truth I refused to speak.

I had never been free. Not really. Not since the moment I stepped into this place.

And maybe—not since long before that.

Chapter summary:-

Selene faces the horrors lurking in the cursed city—feral, otherworldly creatures hungry for her flesh. But just when survival seems impossible, Kaelen reappears in a blaze of terrifying power. He destroys the monsters with ease, not to save her, but because he refuses to let anything else touch what he already claims as his. Selene resists him with every breath, but Kaelen makes one thing brutally clear: she belongs to him, whether she accepts it or not.