Page 52 of These Eternal Bones

Realization In the Form of Horror

Elric

My eyes slip over her warm, tanned flesh, savoring each swell and divot.

These times are my favorite, when her chest rises and falls, measured with her sleep.

Her body is loose; she’s not trying to sit pretty, not laying herself for my gaze.

She’s perfection. My hand twitches to caress her, but I fear my cold fingertips would wake her, so I keep them tucked behind my head.

My sweet Molly has been odd the past few days, jumpy.

Perhaps the magic the selkie showed her had unsettled her.

Although I doubt it would be that, my nose wrinkles at the smell of the ocean mixed with lilac.

Inhaling deeper, my fangs descend. There’s something else, something so faint it could almost be a trick of the mind. Something that shouldn’t be here .

Molly shifts in her sleep, kicking the blankets down around her bared legs, her sleeping gown having risen in the night.

The scent of me still lingers between her thighs.

The lace neckline hugs her defined collarbones before it gives way to champagne colored silk, the slit up her side favoring her maddening hips.

When will it happen?

A death that sticks…

The voice whispers its foul words, never allowing me a moment of peace. It grows more pressing toward the end. Always grating at the remnants of my soul, the ones braided through copper curls and warm smiles.

Any day now.

Maybe today.

Grab her!

My head snaps around the room, taking in the dust swirling in the air, the ebb and flow of candlelight. She’s safe. I repeat it in my mind a dozen times.

Something feels off.

Everything feels off, and I feel off. Disjoined, unnatural, and wrong, a bond rooted in my very being ripped from my chest time and time again. It’s hard to imagine anyone would be quite right after a thing like that.

I sent a vessel to intercept the one from Mertigas as soon as Thalia Dupree sulked back into the woods, glaring and spitting on the land.

My tendrils swarm Molly, the damned things never listen to reason or logic.

My lips quirk as she fends them off, batting at them sleepily.

They calm under her ire but expand. A sea of silken crimson coating her, forming and molding over every inch of her body like an armored blanket.

She doesn’t seem to mind settling onto her back.

Soon enough, her lips part again, her breathing evening out once more .

I couldn’t know if it was the man the dead captain had been content with, but there is no risk worth not taking for her.

None at all. I ordered the humans to question them at length, to slaughter them on sight if needed.

My only regret is that I cannot be there to do it myself.

Sending others to protect what is mine sits like soured blood in my gut, but there is no room for boorish pride when it comes to something as precious as her.

She has given me more than she’ll ever know, but most of all, her forgiveness where I deserved none.

Time and time again, she has loved me, brought me back from the crevices of my mind.

The rustling on the lower floors of the castle tells me morning is well underway.

Her selkie will arrive with her breakfast soon.

A damned smirk fills my lips as I alter my tendrils.

They go happily so long as they are touching her.

Their blanket threads into something smaller, gently easing over her eyes.

I slink down to the edge of the bed, moving silently until I reach her ankle, pressing a chilled kiss on her sweet-smelling flesh. Two more before her breath hitches. “Elric?” she breathes, her eyes covered behind a mask of tendrils.

I don’t respond, continuing my languid pace, planting lingering kisses, licks, and nips up her leg until I can smell her arousal so strongly that I can taste her on my tongue.

Molly whimpers, brushing her core up toward me in an invitation.

My smirk only grows as I shift her gown higher, baring her to me.

Her glistening center and the throbbing of her nub make a growl slip from my throat.

Her answering giggle soothes over my flesh like a warm breeze.

I lower my mouth, blowing gently on her center before planting a featherlight kiss to her clit.

She all but rages when I move past, but my sweet syringa doesn’t have to wait long.

A cry leaves her flushed, parted lips as I sink my fangs into her inner thigh, taking a deep pool of the most heavenly thing on earth.

I could use my tendrils, sure, but my fingers enter her instead.

Molly moans, her back bowing off the bed as she tries to take them deeper, grinding herself down.

I drink from my mate as she fucks herself on my fingers, grinding and rolling her hips with a wanton abandon.

My cock jerks as she finds her release, her arousal leaking down my wrist. I intend not to waste a drop.

Awareness prickles, her blood still covering my lips as I jerk around toward the footsteps leading toward the door. Her breaths are ragged as she shoves my tendril off her eyes. “Elric?”

Tien knocks, and I can’t hide the savage growl that leaves me as I cover her with the discarded blankets. “Come in.”

He appears just outside the bars, always outside.

I am not myself these days; he knows better than to come in.

My oldest friend is not even safe from the type of madness that withers my bones.

My bare chest rises and falls, the only purpose to breathe her in, but as he blips inside, it mixes with him.

Her blood and arousal with the scent of another man make me want to lash out, to eliminate the threat that isn’t there.

He wants her. You can see it in his eyes.

The look on his face makes me still, licking her blood from my lips as a drop of her arousal drips from my fingers to the floor. My eyes track it for a moment, debating lapping that one up too.

“Sir, I need to speak with you privately.”

Immediately, irritation floods the bond from my mate. Never one to hide her displeasure when I keep things from her. She wants to know it all, even if it’s upsetting. I can’t fathom why. That’s what I’m here for.

There isn’t a thing in the world she should worry about. I want all her thoughts on me .

“Go ahead,” I tell him, but give him a look that screams. Speak carefully .

He shifts uneasily, leaning in. It's odd behavior for the older man. “We received word from the old woman that the boat docked…sir.”

Rage and fear slam into me like a gale-force wind.

I can hear my Molly extract herself from behind me.

It takes everything I have not to shove her back down to it, cover her delicate flesh with my own, and snarl like a wild animal.

I adjust my neck instead. “Leave us. I’ll go into town immediately. ”

He nods, blipping from the room after offering my mate a reassuring smile.

“Elric, what’s going on?”

I’m in front of her before she finishes, cupping her flushed cheek in my clean hand, brushing my thumb over her lips. “Nothing, my love, an issue at the marina. I’ll handle it and be back quickly, yes? I was nowhere near done with you.”

She frowns. “C-can I go?”

My jaw clenches, the disappointment in her pretty green eyes worming under my skin.

Her smile is weak, but it’s real as she lifts, kissing me deeply before offering me a little wink. “I’m keeping you to your word that you’ll hurry. I wasn’t done either.”

She’s in danger,

He came for her.

He’s going to kill her!

This is it.

Whatever hits the bond makes her eyes widen, her hand pressing to her chest as her smile falters. “I-I love you.”

“I love you more.” I press my forehead to hers, trying to ward away the needling fear, the worry and rage as the voice pesters from the back of my mind. Nearly stumbling, I rush into our old chambers to dress. Haunting memories of her lifeless bodies displaying in my mind.

No…

No.

“I won’t let her go.” It’s a vow, one spoken to only myself as I blur toward town, feeling like more beast than man.

The forest passes like a whirl, a nasty snarl leaving me as the fox joins my race. “The woods are uneasy today. Keep her close.”

My attention snaps toward him, anger bubbling in my gut, but he pivots, slapping a tree and disappearing with a haze of pine green light.

By the time the town comes into view, my tendrils are unbound from where they were wrapped around my chest and stomach, unable to keep them hidden for the sake of the humans. A woman screams as my footsteps pound the cobblestone, my eyes scanning the dock.

When I jerk into Thalia’s shop, the door rips from its hinges, falling to the ground outside. I grimace at it before scanning the empty front room, inhaling deeply. Every scent here is old, faded. By days, maybe.

She’s not here…nobody is. It’s fresh traces of the Nephilim that deepen my glare.

They’re going after her!

Go to her!

I blur onto the dock, my chest heaving with unnecessary breath as my thoughts muddle into one malevolent breathing entity.

One born from fear and malice. My tendrils snag a remotely familiar man.

His scream cut off as one tendril whips like razor wire around his throat.

So different from the incorrigible soft things they are for our mate.

“The vessel that hailed from Mertigas. Where is it?” I growl.

The man’s eyes are nearly all white, his fear as pungent as the urine leaking down his legs. “I-I…”

He screams as I jerk him inches from my face. “Where?! ”

I barely hear the sobbing and pounding footfalls of the humans running from the town epicenter.

“There isn’t one!” he cries.

The world around me goes still and, for once, the voice is quiet. Deathly so, its omen going unspoken.

“Thalia Dupree. Where is she?”

“I don’t know anyone by that n-name. I-if the legends are to be believed, they died out during the supernatural war.” The supernatural war, that’s what they call it these days.

I barely acknowledge Tien blipping in behind me, only the furthering horror on the man’s face as he sees him. “Check the docks for the ship.”

They died out during the war, he said. That name sounds familiar it always had, when I’d taken the trouble of remembering it. I’d assumed her line was long in the town. Memories, pieces of parchment taken from the coven's stronghold, ledgers from when we built the castle. Dupree…

Realization, in the form of horror, snaps in my mind like a blade.

My tendril tightens, separating the man's head from his body as they both fall to the cobblestone, blood shooting from the stump of his neck. It’s fetid smell mixing with the smell of the port, but I’m already in the woods, a deafening bellow shaking the trees.