Page 36

Story: Bitten By Prophecy

ELIAS

T he crypt’s stone digs into my spine, but I don’t feel it. Not when Kaia’s fists clench in my shirt, her mouth claiming mine with a desperation that leaves my fangs tingling. Blood still smears her collarbone—not hers, never hers—and the iron tang can’t drown out her wild rosemary scent.

She tears herself back an inch, breath ragged. “I’m done running. Every time I bolt, I just— gods , I just end up sprinting into worse hells.” Her thumb swipes the cut on my jaw, a leftover from Ty’s claws. “You’re a disaster magnet.”

“Took a memo, did you?” My voice comes out gravel, half the growl still lodged in my throat from the fight. The moonlight slices through a crack in the ceiling, catching the gold spiraling in her irises. New. That’s new. “Wait—your eyes…”

“Shut up.” She presses her forehead to mine, knuckles white against my chest. “The bond. I feel it now. Not some vague ‘chosen’ bullshit the Order fed me. It’s like… a thread. Tugging here.” Her hand flattens over her sternum. “Tugging you .”

I go rigid. The wolf snarls a warning; the vampire calculates escape routes. Her palms cradle my face, gritty with ash.

“Stop it. Whatever you’re spinning in that broody head—stop.” She nips my lower lip, sharp enough to sting. “I’m choosing this. The moonlight, the blood feud, the whole godsdamn circus. You.”

Our noses bump. Laughter bubbles out of her—raw, disbelieving—as my control snaps. I crush her against the wall, my claws pricking her hips through torn fabric. “You realize,” I murmur into the hollow of her throat, “this makes you a masochist.”

Her teeth find my earlobe. “Says the man who took on six Brood hunters with a broken rib.”

“Seven.”

She laughs again, and the sound unspools something barbed in my chest. The kiss turns slow, deeper, her fingers weaving into my hair to yank loose the tie.

Ebony strands curtain around us, blending with her curls.

Her gasp echoes when my thumb traces the hinge of her jaw, when the wolf in me rumbles approval at her pulse fluttering against my tongue.

The stone floor is merciless, but we don’t reach it. Her legs hook around my waist, her back braced against moss-caked brick. The world contracts to the hitch in her breathing, to the way her swear fracturing into a moan as my claws skate up her ribs.

“Still logical, Draven?” I murmur.

Her nails carve crescents into my shoulders. “Shut up and move.”

We do.

Gold bleeds across her eyes again, luminescent. My own gaze flashes molten—I know it from the way her breath catches. “Elias?—”

“I see it.” My nose grazes hers. “Pretty little liar. Not just human, are you?”

Her smirk falters. “We’ll unpack that later.”

The thread between us pulls taut, humming with something older than reason. Her heartbeat thunders against my tongue where it races at her throat—metallic adrenaline, burnt sugar desperation, the salt-flush of skin I’d crawl through hell to taste.

Later’s a problem for survivors.

We’re fresh out of mercy for tomorrow.

“I’m done running,” she gasps into the ragged space between our mouths. Her words fray at the edges, torn between a vow and a sob. “I’m here. I’m with you. I can’t lose you— When I heard the shots, when they dragged you into that cell?—”

I swallow the rest with a snarl, my fangs catching her lower lip. Not gentle. Not careful. The beast in my ribs claws upward, starved and snarling, but her fingers knot harder in my hair— pull . “You aren’t going to lose me.”

The lie tastes like blood. She knows it. I bite harder.

Her back arches off the rain-slick stone as I drag her shirt up, the damp fabric sticking to her ribs.

My tongue flicks over the peak of her breast—quick, cruel—and she chokes on my name.

The sound unravels me. I bury my face against her, inhaling amber and salt and the ozone-sharp tang of whatever dormant magic thrums beneath her skin. It hums against my teeth. Mine.

“Fuck your gratitude,” she hisses, heels digging into the small of my back as I tear her pants open. The seam splits like parchment. “Just— Elias ?—”

I don’t let her finish. Don’t let myself think. My palm grinds her hipbone into the wall as I shove inside, slick and vicious. Her moan cracks against the vaulted ceiling, echoing down the alley. Let the whole damned city hear. Let them know what survives.

Her nails rake down my spine, drawing blood. I hiss, fangs punching through my gums as her heat clenches around me—a vice of velvet and fire. Every thrust splits the wound in my side wider, but the pain crystallizes into something bright, honed. Ecstasy as a blade. I want it sharper.

“Look at me.” My hand fists in her hair, forcing her gaze to mine. Gold bleeds across her irises again, the same eerie glow as when she’d shattered the chains binding me. Not human. Not entirely. Our hips snap together, wet and filthy.

She swears, thighs trembling.

I laugh, raw and breathless, as her walls flutter.

Her teeth sink into my shoulder. The sting blooms sweet down my spine. I let her.

Burn me. Break me.

As long as ash tastes like her.

The beast and the man in me howl as one when I drive into her. Not gentle—never gentle—but with the jagged precision of a blade finding its sheath. Her back arches off the damp stone wall, nails scoring my ribs. I welcome the burn.

"Louder," I growl against her throat, tasting salt and wildfire. "Let the whole fucking city hear who you belong to."

She does.

Her scream unravels into something between a prayer and a curse, gold-flame eyes reflecting the animal gleam of mine.

Wet heat clenches around me, tighter than any chain that's ever bound me.

I bite down on the claiming mark blooming violet across her shoulder—half vampire hunger, half wolfish need to brand what's mine .

"Elias—"

The way she snarls my name cracks the last vestige of control. Stone crumbles under my palm as I pin her harder, hips snapping in a frantic rhythm. Her legs lock around my waist, pulling me deeper. Too deep. Always too deep with her.

When the tremors take her, I feel it in my bones—that devastating ripple of release.

Her teeth find my collarbone, drawing blood.

The metallic tang floods my mouth as I roar, spilling into her with a violence that leaves us both shaking.

For three heartbeats, maybe four, I forget which scars are hers and which are mine.

Her sweat cools on my chest as she pushes off me. My claws retract with a sting when she traces the half-moon wounds on my hips.

“I need to see my father.”

I snort, picking gravel from her tangled hair. “Brilliant plan. Let’s waltz into Order HQ so your murder-puppeteer dad can practice his crossbow aim.”

“Not the compound.” She sits up, wincing at the scratches I left across her ribs. Her shirt hangs in tattered ribbons. “Safehouse in the Weeping District. Where he interrogates… cases.”

I catch her wrist before she can button what’s left of her pants. The thrum between us pulses hotter.

“You’re hunting him. For vengeance or closure?”

“Both.” She jerks free. Silver glints as she retrieves her boot knife, thumb testing the edge. “He’s been funneling civilians to Brood gulags. Turning dissenters into lab rats instead of corpses. Makes me wonder…”

“If the monster remembers diaper changes?” My talon flicks the blade from her hand. It clatters into shadows. “He’s a zealot with a flamethrower, Kaia. You stick your head in that oven…”

Her knee pins my thigh, all heat and coiled muscle. “I need to hear his reasons. To know if the man who carried me on his shoulders truly died with my uncle.” The gold flecks in her pupils flare—something ancient and feral in that stare.

I mock-gasp. “My little pacifist wants a therapy chat with Colonel Genocide?”

“Piss off.” She smacks my chest, but her knuckles linger over the scar Ty’s claws gave me. “He’s got answers. About Mother.”

Ah.

“You think he knew what you are? What she was?”

“Well, I damn sure know he does now.” Her laugh’s brittle as salt-rot. She snatches her blade back, holds it between us like a truth serum. “You don’t have to come.”

“Because abandoning you in sniper range is something I would do.”

Her grin’s all teeth. “We’ll take the sewers. He’ll never?—”

My fangs graze her throat. “If he so much as blinks wrong…”

She shoves me against the wall, straddling my legs. “Then we’ll give his priests a new sacrament. Now move your carcass. I want recon before sundown.”

The punchline curdles in my throat. I watch her dress in the pale light filtering through crypt vents, buckling straps with military precision. Love and terror taste identical when she pulls her hair into a knot and says, “You smell like a two-for-one massacre special. Rinse off at Pump Seven.”

“Keep orders to your Order.”

She flips me off as she vanishes up the crumbling stairs, golden eyes glinting like struck matches.

I know that look. She's determined, but my gut knows she's not going to like the answer he's going to give her.