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She whispers, “My heart hurts so much.”

I wish I could make it better.“I know.”

Her hand comes to my chest, and she lays her palm on my heart. Her eyes flick up to mine, glassy with emotion and the ocean of tears I know she could cry. “You’re hurting, too.”

I can’t speak, so I just tug her closer. She settles into my chest and together we stand solid in our grief.

The longer we stand like this, the deeper the need to have all of her connected to me burns. My fangs lengthen, aching. My blood burns in my veins.

Persephone’s hands curl in my shirt as she tips her head to the side, offering me her throat. Hot venom drips onto my tongue.

She whispers, “Make it better. Give me something other than the pain in my heart.”

I don’t deny her. I don’t have the power to deny her.

I never have.

Holding her gently, I lick the skin of her throat with my tongue, spreading the venom. She gasps, lovely lips parting. “It burns.”

“Is it too much?” My voice is so rough, struck with longing and pain. It’s an odd combination I am unsure how to cope with.

She nods, breathes. “In a good way. I think I need the pain right now.”

A shudder of longing pulses through my body as I pull her closer, crushing her to me. Desire heats my blood, but she is human and has just given birth. And the desire that pulses inside me isn’t that of a sexual nature, but instead it is a desire of a soul connection. My soul—my entity—aches to sink inside hers.To wrap myself so completely up in her that there is truly no unthreading the strings of fate which weave us.

I don’t hesitate as I lower my lips to the quickening flutter of her pulse in her throat. She inhales sharp and quick. I sink my fangs deep and her breath stutters and stalls. The sensation of sheathing my venom coated fangs deep in the warmth of her skin is akin to thrusting my cock into the warmth of her womb. Waves of pleasure erupt in an overload of sensation.

Her head lolls back on a moan that is both pained and bursting with pleasure. I cradle her head in the palm of my hand, angling her for a deeper invasion.

Blood, sticky and sweet like the nectar that is the source of all life, floods my tongue. I drink deep, so deep. With every swallow, I seal the deal that is the binding of our souls. It is an ancient contract drawn from the essence of the stars. Whispers of her soul taunt the venom which seeks it for its own. A dance of push and pull, of submission and binding takes place in the moments before her soul is bound to the venom I pull from her blood and into my belly.

When I am so full of pleasure,of her, I pull my fangs from her throat on a groan that rips into the folds of time and space and consciousness. The pleasure is more than an orgasm. It crashes in wave after wave through my body and mind and spirit. Pleasure turns me inside out, sewing sense into the pain of loss as I see a glimpse into a future thatmust be.

I don’t think it takes long to come down from my high. My vision sharpens on the tiny woman in my arms. She gasps on the brink of death, chest heaving with breaths that burn.

I steal this selfish moment to glimpse the woman as she will never be again. My tiny human. So soft and vulnerable.

Soalive.

When her eyes flutter closed, the last threads of her life unable to hold them open a moment longer, I shred the flesh ofmy wrist with my fangs and press the wound to her pale pink lips. Blood trickles between her lips onto her tongue.

“Swallow for me, little goddess,” I urge, and sigh in relief when she does.

She swallows once and then again and again. The weakness fades for a strength she has never before possessed as that dance of venom and soul battle again with my own. There is submission and binding between me and her until we are no longer two, but one.

Now, the threads of my life are entirely bound to her life as hers is bound to me. Her suffering will be mine. My pleasure will be hers. Our fate is linked eternally.

She pulls her mouth from my wrist on a moan of pleasure that I feel deep inside me. Wave after wave of it rolls through all of me again and again until I am to overcome to stand. I lay her down where the bodies of our daughters will forever rest, and my heart feels a little less sore as I pull their mother into the circle of my arms. She lays, panted breaths spilling from her bloodstained lips.

And she is no longer human. She is Goddess. Immortal.

She is so incredibly beautiful.

Her eyes tip up to mine and all breath rushes from my lungs. In the galaxy of her eyes flames dance.

“I saw them, Hades.” She breathes. “Did you?”

I nod, but I can’t speak. I’m enraptured by the devastating beauty that is the aweing power of her. Of us.