Chapter 61

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

ZEVANDER

W ith his hand gripped tight to her throat, Zevander slammed Maevyth into the wall and drove himself so deep inside her, she whimpered. Drenched in sweat, he’d fucked her for hours, his body never tiring. The weariness in her eyes and laxity in her muscles told him she was growing weaker by the second. He couldn’t stop, though. Something drove him, urging him to keep going.

A foreign sensation hooked into his veins, feeding him an unbridled craving to ravage her. A vicious and violent need chewing at his mind.

“ You can have everything you want. Go anywhere you want,” the voice came from behind, as if Cadavros stood at his back. Watching him plunder her with greed.

Teeth clenched, Zevander growled, staring back at Maevyth and her sickeningly sweet pouty lips. “I don’t want anything else but her.” Blood pumped furiously in his veins, his appetite amped for an endless night. He drove his hips harder and tipped her head just enough to sink his teeth into her neck. A weak cry escaped her, but Zevander didn’t care. The sound of her mewling voice sent a thrill down his spine. He wanted to devour her. Every fiber of his being called him to finish inside of her, to fill her, and he wouldn’t stop until then.

“ General Loyce robbed you of this pleasure. She made you this way.” His words snaked themselves beneath Zevander’s skin, rousing a savage fury that vibrated his muscles. “Even now you can’t properly enjoy her, can you ?”

Maevyth’s face morphed into the bronze skin and yellow-blonde hair of the woman who’d torn through his nightmares when he was just a boy. She tipped her head back and laughed, her fingers tight in his hair.

“ I love a good hate fuck ,” she said, and Zevander pressed into her throat harder, wanting nothing more than to choke the life out of her. To fill her with the black flame and watch her crumble to ash in his hands.

His body begged to disentangle from her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop himself. An insatiable need to keep going tore through his resistance. The loathing he felt, like an oily black sludge, burned in the pit of his stomach.

“Please wake up,” Maevyth whispered. “Please don’t leave me here alone.” The sound of her voice disarmed him, and Zevander looked around. Shame spiraled through him at the thought of her watching him fuck Loyce. He turned back to the repulsive woman, only to find Maevyth propped against the wall, her head lolling to the side.

Confused, he shook his head, and a dark possession surged through his blood all over again.

He resumed his thrusts, the sweat dripping down their bodies in rivulets. He dragged a wet line with his tongue over the crook of her neck, gathering the salty flavor of her skin.

“ You fuck like a corpse. ” The merging of Maevyth’s voice and General Loyce’s sent a ripple of disgust through him, and he stared back at her, watching Maevyth’s hair fade to blonde. “ Fuck me proper, or there will be punishment after. ”

Eyes screwed shut, he turned away, still driving his hips into her.

“ Harder ,” the merged voices said.

“ Harder .” General Loyce’s voice stood out that time.

Zevander growled and slid his hand to her mouth. “Enough!”

“If you didn’t enjoy what I did to you, then why did you give me your seed?” Loyce taunted.

He slammed her harder into the wall, and the wretched woman laughed, the sound bouncing off his skull in a maddening clamor. There was no climax in sight. No end to the torment.

“Can you hear me, Zevander?” Maevyth asked, her voice severing his thoughts.

He glanced around in search of her.

“ Is she not everything you wanted ?” Cadavros interrupted, and a cold gust brushed across the back of his neck. “ Take her. Make her yours. You can have her this way for eternity. ”

Again, he looked up to find he was thrusting into Maevyth, her eyes shuttered, as if she were completely unconscious.

Yes . Eternity . A darkness clawed at his brain, and Zevander carried her to the bed, throwing her down onto the mattress. Her limp body failed to protest, as he turned her over onto her stomach, and as he lined his tip to her entrance, he paused at the sound of her voice again.

“I’m going to help you.”

He frowned, her voice so angelic and pure, the euphony of it had his stomach knotted in shame. “Maevyth?” Eyes clamped shut, he shook his head, and when he opened them, he raised his hands to find them covered in a shiny black fluid.

He lowered his gaze to her naked form, and the blood across her thighs and at her throat where he’d bitten her before. From the wound, tiny black veins crawled over her pale skin, pulsing like a heartbeat.

A stab of pain pierced his chest, and he stumbled backward, his body cold with shock. “Maevyth?”

Tears sprang to his eyes as he turned her over to find the bite mark at her throat oozing an oily black substance. “No, no, no. What did I do? What the fuck did I do!” He lifted her into his arms, cradling her body. “Wake up, Maevyth.”

A dark chuckle echoed around him, the sound rattling inside his skull. “ As I said, I can take everything away from you. ”

“ Even your favorite toy, ” Loyce added.

He buried his face in Maevyth’s hair, but the delicious scent he craved was no longer there. Only the cold stench of rot and disease burned in his nose. A searing heat blasted across his chest in a flare of black fire. Adrenaline shot through his veins, as he scrambled to hold onto her, while the flame devoured her limp body. “No! No, no, no!” In seconds, she disintegrated in his arms, until all that remained was a small red bloodstone with silver markings caught in his palm.

“No! Maevyth, please. No! ” he roared, the molten fury slinking through his blood like lava.

“Zevander?”

At the sound of her voice, he looked around for her.

“Can you hear me? Come back to me.”

“Where are you? Tell me where you are!”

“Open your eyes, Zevander. Open them!”

His eyes were open, though. They’d been open the whole time.

“Look at me,” she whispered. “Please.”

The violence in him calmed, and the beast tearing through his chest finally stilled. He exhaled a long breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Maevyth stared down at him, their palms pressed against one another.

Her eyes, a glowing silver.