"The darkest pit in hell was worth it."
Malakor's pov
My lungs were burning, but it wasn't the air that scorched them; it was the memory of him. I crashed through the underbrush of the Whispering Pass, my bare feet catching on jagged stones and frozen roots, but I felt nothing. The physical world had become a blur of grey bark and violet shadows.
My mind, however, was a riot of sensory overload. The taste of Athel Thorne was still etched into the roof of my mouth, a collision of cold iron, salt, and a raw, untamed fire that I had never encountered in all my years of curated royal perfection.
What have I done?
The thought looped in my brain like a funeral dirge. I had spent my entire life building a fortress of alchemy and lies to keep the world out, and in a single moment of madness, I had let the most dangerous man in Athelgard breach the walls. And I hadn't just let him in; I had pulled him toward the center of the collapse.
I skidded to a halt in a hollow beneath a weeping willow, its branches draped in hoarfrost like a shroud. I leaned my back against the trunk, my chest heaving, my heart hammering a rhythm that felt less like a pulse and more like a countdown.
I touched my lips, and they were bruised, stinging from the friction of his teeth, but the phantom sensation of his mouth against mine was so potent I could almost see him standing there in the dark again. Athel Thorne. The Iron Wolf. The man who was supposed to be my end.
"It felt like home," I whispered, the words horrifying me the moment they left my lips.
It shouldn't have felt like home. It should have felt like poison. It should have felt like the silver blade he carried a caustic, burning violation. But when our lips met, the three warring beasts inside me, the Wolf, the Vampire, the Succubus, had done something they had never done before: they fell silent. For one heartbeat, the screaming discord of my nature had harmonized into a single, terrifyingly beautiful note of belonging.
The damn mating wolf needs, and the realization made me want to retch. To the Vanes, the concept of a mate was a peasant superstition, a relic of the Old World that had been purged in the name of political purity.
We didn't mate; we brokered.
We didn't bond; we bred for advantage.
There was no denying the golden haze that had filled my vision, the way my very soul had surged toward his as if it were a compass needle finding true north.
My beast was bound to a Thorne, bound to the man who wants to dismantle my family piece by piece. I slid down the trunk of the tree, burying my face in my hands. The violet fire in my eyes was still dimming, the amber returning with a painful, sluggish crawl. I felt exposed, without my cloak, without my alchemical washes; I was a raw nerve in the middle of a thunderstorm. If Kaelan or any of my guards found me like this, the game was over. They wouldn't see a Prince; they would see a freak of nature vibrating with the scent of a rival wolf.
He whimpered; a voice hissed in the back of my head, and the Succubus was stirring again, tasting the memory of Athel's submission. The Iron Wolf broke for you; he wanted to mark you, wanted to claim the abyss.
"Shut up," I hissed at the voice. "He hates me, he told me he'd kill us both."
But I knew Athel Thorne and had seen the look in his eyes right before the silver touched my skin. It wasn't just hatred; it was a mirroring of my own terror, the terror of a man realizing that everything he believed about himself was a lie.
I stood up, forced by a sudden surge of paranoia. I couldn't stay here. The Blackwood was vast, but the Thorne Sentinels were experienced trackers. If Athel was running, he was likely heading back toward his pack, driven by the need to submerge himself in the safety of his iron-clad reality.
I needed to do the opposite and vanish and pushed deeper into the dead zone where the trees were petrified, and the air was thick with the smell of sulfur and ancient stone. This was the territory of the High Vampires, a place where even the King's hunters hesitated to tread. It was the only place I might find enough shadow to hide the glow of my skin.
As I walked, the adrenaline began to fade, replaced by a crushing, hollow ache. I missed him. The bond was already pulling at my gut, a psychic thread that stretched across the miles, thrumming with Athel's lingering rage and confusion. It was like having a hook in my heart, and every step I took away from him felt like I was being disembowelled.
"This is how it ends," I murmured to the frost.
I thought of my father, King Alaric. I thought of the way he looked at me with such pride, a pride built on a foundation of hollow stone. If he knew that his heir had mated with the son of his greatest rival, he wouldn't just execute me; he would erase me from history. He would burn the Citadel to the ground just to sterilize the memory of my taint. What of the Thornes? Athel's father, Garrick, was a man who saw the world in black and white. To him, I was the ultimate prey. If Athel told him...
I found a shallow cave at the base of a jagged cliff and crawled inside, the darkness welcoming me. I curled into a ball, my bare skin shivering against the cold stone. I needed to find a way to sever the connection, to cauterize the bond before it consumed us both. There were old stories, forbidden texts in the royal archives that spoke of the unbinding ritual of blood and ice that could break a mating tie.
But even as the thought formed, my heart recoiled. The Wolf inside me whined, a pathetic, grieving sound.
"You're a fool, Malakor," I told myself, closing my eyes.
Behind my lids, I didn't see the cave. I saw the glade, Athel's slate-grey eyes, wide and wild with a hunger that matched my own, and I felt the rough calluses of his hand against my neck.
I loved it everthing that happened, and the realization hit me with more force than the silver ever could. I loved the way he broke. I loved the way his iron melted, and for one glorious, treasonous moment, I wasn't a Prince or a Hybrid or Master. I was just a living thing being seen for exactly what I was, and I wasn't being hunted.
I was being wanted.
I let out a shaky, broken laugh that turned into a sob. I was the most powerful man in Athelgard, and I was hiding in a hole in the dirt, crying over a man who had promised to murder me. The hunt would continue tomorrow, and the horns would sound, the silver would gleam, and we would be forced back into our roles. I would put on a new cloak, apply a fresh layer of alchemy, and I would smirk at him from across the battlefield, and he would look at me with all the hate he could muster, his jaw set and his eyes cold.
We would both know, and every time our eyes met, we would feel the thread.
I drifted into a fitful sleep; my dreams filled with the scent of ozone and the feeling of a Thorne's hand around my throat. It was the most beautiful nightmare I had ever had, and as I slept, the bond only grew tighter, weaving itself into the very marrow of my bones, waiting for the next time we would collide.
I hoped that it made of a whimper and a much deeper kiss!!