CHAPTER 16: SIXTEEN

A room stretches around me--vast, regal, and wrong. The walls seem to breathe, dark shadows creeping like veins across them and a thousand candles gutter with flame.

There, at the center of the boudoir is a bed of dark silk spilling over the sides.

I feel his gaze before I see him. Immense. Ancient. Sexual.

Something about being here makes me want to run my fingers along my skin, into my hair and arch my back. My fingers twitch with an irresistible urge to reach for my clothes and rip them to shreds. Climb into that bed and let the otherworldly being sitting on it wrap those chains around me and pull my legs apart.

Something...everything is wrong with this place.

The figure on the bed’s edge sits up slowly, his movements graceful as liquid. His silver hair spills over his naked chest, skin made of fire and stone bare down to his torso. Lines of dark tattoos move down his arms like sorcery. His eyes glow with such hunger, my stomach twists with fear.

It’s him. Again. He’s found my dreams and slipped into it. The Dark King.

"Nice of you to visit, little wolf," he croons. And then, he holds an arm out to me. "Come to me. I smell the lust in you. Let me sate it."

Again, like a puppet with strings, my legs begin taking steps towards him that I have no control over.

"No!" I cry. "No!"

Surprisingly, the thrall snaps free and I stagger back, slamming into a dresser.

The monster cocks his head in the manner that a predator does as it sizes up his prey. For a long time, he remains unmoving.

And suddenly, he is no longer across the room. He is behind

me.

I run forward but he catches me before I ever really take one step. Without even touching me. I feel phantom hands keeping me rooted on the spot, my legs tied together with invisible chain. "What are you doing to me? What do you want from me?" I whisper.

Cold breath ghosted over my ear, his presence so vast it filled every corner of the chamber. "You reek of one touched of the gods. Surely, you must know we own unspeakable abilities. This is one of amongst many."

His fingers catch strands of my hair between fingers. "As to what I want from you... It is you who seeks me, not the other way around. So, tell me," his tongue flicks out and licks my pounding pulse with a grunt of... of approval? "What do you want from me, little wolf? Why do you plague my nights and trample upon my personal time? Does the concept of dying every night entice you so?"

A hand brushes my throat, and my body betrayed me with a sob. "Why are you killing us?"

That hand pauses. "Us?"

"My people."

Another blink and he is standing before me, those devilish eyes locked harshly on mine. I feel tears of blood well up in my eyes again. It hurts--physically hurts--to look him in the eye, but I cannot tear my gaze away.

"My ancestors bore the same misery. Trusting your conniving kind. Ending up with a spear or two in our spines." He flicks his hand in a mock-gesture of dismissal. "The same story, always. Dead mate. Dead children. We all bear tragedy. I am no different."

His words lilt and it takes a moment to grasp the full meaning of his words. "You lost your... mate. And children."

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t nod. He doesn’t react. He just stares at me keenly, as if waiting.

"This is all for...revenge."

Nothing. Just that endless, devouring silence.

I try to feel sorry for him, but it’s been embedded in every child that runs the cobbled streets of Silvermoor, every single pack, every house, that the enemy deceives. They seduce. Anything they can to get into your head, right before they kill you.

"If it is true, then why kill the children in those villages, then? They were innocent. My brothers were innocent. You seek vengeance, but you are no different from those who killed your family. You call us wretches, but you are the wretched one--"

His hand encircles my throat. It isn’t the touch that scares me. It is the gentility in the way his fingers press against the bones in my neck, poised to crush them. "You have a beautiful neck, Ironfang," he murmurs affectionately. "I would be... very careful about what you say next, if you intend to keep it whole."

My body twitches in a feeble attempt to fight back. Tears run down my cheeks. "Why should I? You are going to kill me anyway."

He looks contemplative for about a second. "True," he concedes, voice a low purr that shudders through my bones. "But allow me the courtesy of correcting you before I do."

His grip tightens, cutting off air, making the world shrink to the sound of my strangled gasps.

"I am different." His lips curl into a smile too beautiful to belong to something so monstrous. "I am worse than anything your mind can fathom. And I savor it. The shrieks, the begging, the terror, the silence that comes with death."

His eyes blaze with feverish delight and madness.

"Vengeance?" His laugh is soft yet cruel. "Such a pitiful word. No, this is retribution. This is obeisance. This is sacrifice. To me. To my dead. To the kings before me. And most importantly..." He leans in until his lips brush the shell of my ear, and the words crawl across my soul. "This is for my pleasure."

And I realize as I stare into his eyes that the Dark King isn’t just evil. He is unhinged. And there is nothing that makes a better tyrant than those two things mushed into one being.

"Get... away... from... me," I wheeze.

He grins. "I cannot." His lips brush against mine. Lust and fear ripple through me as real and tangible as anything I’ve ever held. "Because you’re already mine."

His lips slam into mine with a force that rattles us both. I gasp as his tongue plunges into my mouth and slides along mine. My body sizzles with heat and flushes with sensual pleasure.

He is kissing me.

He is killing me.

Softly. Slowly. Draining my life’s essence with every stroke of his velvet tongue expertly against mine. His fangs rip into my bottom lip and that heat explodes inside of me. My thighs clamp together, my knees tremble.

My insides tighten with a need as strong as addiction. And with every second I let the enemy explore my mouth, I die a little more. And I let him do it. I let him kill me. Because even if this is my end, I have never felt more alive in my whole life.

I feel something in me awaken. I feel something beastly inside crack an eye open. And even as the enemy crushes my windpipe, all I want is more. Because his lips are a hill I now wish to die on.

I don’t know which kills me first. The burning inside my body or the pain that erupts as he snaps my neck.