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Bragg kicked as he shouted obscenities.

Nathair took his orange-and-red fully flaming soul and flipped it upside down. He hated that other than a few physical scars, his soul looked normal; Nathair wanted it to have the evidence of the cruelty that lingered in his heart.

He grabbed its little feet and pulled in opposite directions. It took Nathair a remarkable amount of power to do what he desired, but when it began, it was seamless. The male’s arrogant roars turned into screams as he began to split in two, from the groin up. Nathair slowed the tearing of his soul and body, wanting to savour the way he wailed into the night.

Blood saturated his ripping leather breeches as he kicked his legs in a poor attempt to escape.

Only when Linh stopped humming to sob, the sight too much, did Nathair quicken the pace. He tore the male in half evenly down the middle and held the two parts of his soul in the palm ofhis hand. The flame blackened into charcoal, not even given the chance to turn white like the other humans who died, and both it and the physical male began to disintegrate.

Bragg’s physical body withered like ash before it, too, disappeared, not leaving a single trace of him in this world, nor the next.

The male was no more.

Nathair looked up when the rain began to die down, and white flickered in his orbs. He’d been hoping it would linger, but it appeared its downpour was harsh, yet fleeting. It would return, butwhenwas not a question he could answer.

Uncoiling from her stake, he brought himself in front of Linh once more. He made sure he was head height with her, with barely an inch parting them. He gave her a moment to decipher what he wanted.

When she didn’t give it, he licked at his maw, and she let out a tired, tearful giggle.

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to the tip of his snout. Nathair healed her of her wounds as she did, giving a gift as she gave one. The cut on her ankle, the nick to her neck, and the bruising on her wrists transferred to his own body.

He’d needed this, to know that this female did hold affection for him. It made the next question he had for her less worrisome.

Reaching forward, Nathair pressed his hand into her chest. He tugged her soul out without needing to dive into her, and let it float between them as a question. She knew what he wanted, what he longed for.

He didn’t have the time to pull her from her trappings. His lungs already ached to take a new breath, and with the rain disappearing, he knew death awaited her. The ground was wet, muddy, and saturated in blood and entrails.Shewas covered in it, and in her own.

She may be able to escape him if he let her down, but she was sure to run into the swarm of Demons that would soon be attracted to this area. She had three choices: face his hunger, face the Demons while she smelt delectable, or become his.

It wasn’t a question of do this or else, but that there was no other path.

Linh sobbed as she kicked her foot forward. She tried to latch onto his side, brushing over his fish frills as she nodded.

“Please,” she rasped. “Please take it. I want you to.”

His heart swelled with elation, making all his wounds flare with agony, but he found it all the sweeter. He lunged and snapped his maw around her soul.

Nathair swallowed – and immediately choked.Fuck. It’s hot.Hotter than any other he’d ever eaten. It was alive. Halfway down, his paranoia clung to his sternum, his stomach rejecting what he craved, and he almost threw it back up.

No! Go down!He turned his head up and used all his swallowing power.

It slid down. Heat met the coolness of his low body temperature, and it spread all throughout. He shuddered in the blissful euphoria of it, his reddened orbs flickering with black. He quaked as it reached his fingers and tail tip in a curling wave that chased his coolness away.

His hunger dissipated, and Nathair let out a relieved, panted groan.

The scents in the air no longer bothered him, didn’t nag him into a craze. He approached his female, hisbride,his little nightingale. When she hooked her feet around his waist, Nathair broke her shackles while being careful not to harm her wrists. Then he lifted her into his arms as she buried her face against the crook of his neck.

“I knew you’d come,” she whispered.

He backed up to give himself room to spin until his tail had formed rings around them. He settled them into a cuddle by bringing them into a ball, blocking out the world and everything beyond just them.

“N-Nathair?”

I’m gravely injured,he thought, wondering if obtaining her soul healed him of his fragments and she could hear him.

She didn’t respond.

It was disappointing that she still couldn’t hear him, but Nathair shrugged. The voices did feel a little softer, though.