BOUND TO THE AVERNUS FAMILY

Chapter 16: The Thing Abaddon Does at 3 AM

Since my arrival at the Avernus estate two weeks ago, I have been learning to sleep incredibly lightly. It is a specific, terrifying kind of vigilance that I did not consciously choose to implement. My body simply adapted to the environment, rewiring my nervous system to rest like a soldier in a trench.

I register the sudden, violent shift in the room’s air pressure before the bedroom door even opens.

I feel the heavy, unnatural tide of the mist turning in the dark. The ambient oxygen in the room vanishes, replaced by a suffocating, metallic density that tastes like ash at the back of my throat.

Abaddon is here.

He moves in absolute, terrifying silence, but my heightened senses register his freezing, oppressive presence crossing the hardwood floor.

I do not move. I lie perfectly still beneath the heavy blankets, my breathing shallow as the toxic weight of his nightmare-induced mist presses down on my chest.

I wait for him to pull the sheets back. I wait for him to simply take what his failing biology requires.

He doesn't.

Instead, a large, calloused hand rests firmly on my bare shoulder. The touch is deliberate, applying just enough pressure to drag me fully out of the murky depths of sleep.

"Mirana."

His low, flat voice brushes against the dark. I open my eyes.

Abaddon is sitting on the edge of my mattress. The moonlight spilling through the window illuminates the heavy, pulsing black veins crawling up his pale neck and across his broad chest. The nightmare mist is volatile, visibly ravaging his system, requiring immediate, desperate purification.

Yet, he waited for my eyes to open. He waited for my consciousness to fully register his presence.

He does not take the cure while I am completely unconscious. My analytical mind, groggy and slow, snags on this specific protocol. It matters. In the cold, mechanical reality of this curse, the fact that he insists on my waking awareness before he initiates the biological exchange matters profoundly.

"I'm awake," I whisper, my voice rough with sleep.

He doesn't waste another second.

He strips the heavy blankets away and pulls my sleepwear over my head. The cool night air hits my bare skin, followed instantly by the massive, overwhelming heat of his body settling over mine.

The three A.M. session operates on an entirely different register than our clinical morning purifications. It is significantly slower. It is almost completely silent.

He parts my thighs with his large hands, his thumbs pressing deeply into my hip bones. He aligns his heavy, rigid size at my entrance. In the dark, the sheer physical reality of his massive, eight-and-a-half-inch girth feels even more devastating.

He pushes into my soaking p*ssy in one long, incredibly deep glide.

I gasp, my hands automatically rising to grip his broad, heavily muscled shoulders. The stretch is profound, filling my tight core to its absolute physical limit.

Because I am half-asleep, my analytical distance is severely compromised. The clinical cataloguing that usually protects my mind is running significantly slower than my body. I cannot separate the data from the sensation. I cannot analyze the friction; I can only feel the relentless, blistering pleasure of his thick c*ck sliding deep inside me.

"Hold still," Abaddon murmurs, the familiar command vibrating against my throat.

But tonight, the command lacks its usual icy authority. It sounds strained. It sounds like a man actively fighting to keep the terrifying violence of his nightmares from bleeding into his physical actions.

He sets a slow, grinding rhythm. He withdraws almost completely, letting the cool air brush my swollen cl*t, before burying his massive length back inside me with a heavy, seated thrust.

The nightmare mist transfers into my bloodstream. It feels distinctly different from his morning accumulation. It is heavier, darker, coiling at the base of my spine with a frantic, chaotic energy that mirrors whatever horrors he was just forced to dream.

My internal muscles clamp down hard around his thick shaft, instinctively trying to draw the poison out of him faster.

I notice things in the dark that I do not have words for yet. The specific way his forehead rests heavily against my shoulder. The ragged, uneven catch in his usually perfect breathing.

The edge approaches rapidly, the suffocating toxicity colliding with the blinding physical pleasure.

I shatter with a choked, breathless moan. A violent *rgasm rips through my core, my sl*ck walls frantically milking him. Abaddon groans—a raw, guttural sound that he would never allow himself to make in the daylight—and unloads a heavy, scorching flood of c*m deep inside my womb.

The mist processes instantly.

The stark, silver-blue light projects from my wide eyes, cutting through the pitch-black bedroom.

The luminescent glow is stranger here in the absolute dark than it is during the day. It paints the ceiling above the bed in shifting, brilliant waves of silver and blue. I lie flat on my back, my chest heaving, and watch the light project onto the plaster, tracking the long, dancing shadows it casts across the room.

The freezing, oxygen-rich relief washes the heavy nightmare mist completely from my veins.

The glow slowly fades. The room returns to dark, quiet normalcy.

Abaddon withdraws with a soft, wet sound. He stands up from the bed, his breathing leveling out as he pulls his dark trousers back on.

Usually, the session ends with his immediate, silent departure.

Tonight, he doesn't leave.

I pull the tangled sheets over my bare chest, watching him walk toward the velvet chair in the corner of the room. He sits down. He reaches out and clicks on the small brass reading lamp, turning it to its absolute lowest, dimmest setting.

He reaches into the pocket of his slacks and pulls out a small, worn, leather-bound book.

He opens it, crosses one ankle over his knee, and begins to read.

I stare at him from the center of the bed. I am looking at a man who produces lethal, nightmare-induced mist at three in the morning, sitting in my bedroom, reading in the dim light instead of returning to his own quarters.

I do not know what to do with this bizarre, contradictory data.

"What is that?" I ask, my voice breaking the heavy silence.

Abaddon does not look up from the yellowed page. He simply turns his wrist slightly, angling the worn spine of the book toward the dim light of the brass lamp so I can read the faded gold lettering.

Selected Poetry.

My analytical mind completely stalls. He is reading poetry.

"Why?" I ask quietly, pulling my knees up to my chest beneath the blankets. "Why are you reading that?"

He doesn't answer immediately. He reads the rest of the page. Then, he carefully closes the small leather book.

He stands up from the velvet chair. He smooths an invisible crease from his dark trousers, his face an impenetrable, icy mask of absolute control. He walks to the heavy wooden door, his hand resting on the brass knob.

He pauses.

"It slows the production rate," Abaddon says softly, without turning around to look at me.

He opens the door and walks out into the dark hallway, leaving the quiet room behind him.

I lie back against the damp pillows and stare up at the shadowed ceiling.

He reads poetry in the middle of the night to slow his own biological mist production. He uses the cadence of the words to try and stem the toxic tide of a curse that is slowly killing him. He has been doing this, alone in the dark, for seven years.

I stare into the shadows, trying to determine whether that fact is incredibly pathetic, or absolutely extraordinary.

As the residual coolness of his nightmare hums quietly in my veins, I am forced to conclude that it is entirely both.