Page 59 of Fangs

Ishatter awake with a violent gasp, my eyes flying open as my ribcage stutters and heaves. My trembling fingers claw convulsively into the silk sheets, desperate to anchor a reality that has already dissolved. The phantom weight of him clings to my skin like a second, burning layer. I can still feel the devastating rhythm of his body moving against mine, the impossible fusion of his glacial touch and molten heat searing every nerve ending. My palm flies instinctively to my throat, pressing hard against the pale flesh, searching frantically for the phantom sting of his teeth.

You absolute fool, my inner voice spits, a bitter, self-loathing tyrant sitting in judgment over my ruin. You traded everything for a ghost and then murdered him with your own hands.

I snap my head across the chamber, my frantic gaze scouring the perimeter. The corners are dead. The shadows are inert, obedient pools of blackness that refuse to shift, pulse, or reach for me. Powerless. Empty.

He is gone.

The tears rupture before I can dam them, hot and corrosive. I bury my face in my palms, but they spill relentlessly, soaking my cheeks, matting my hair, saturating the pillows until I am drowning in my own salt.

It was my fault. I shattered the mirror. I splintered the threshold, sealing him away in the agonizing void between dimensions, in the absolute dark of the abyss. Every violent kiss, every possessive grip, every sacred oath of forever—reduced to ash by my own reckless idiocy. A prelude to my ultimate betrayal.

And now I’m left with nothing. Not even the phantom of my monster.

I lie paralyzed, staring blankly at the ornate plaster of the ceiling as the tears dry into sticky, salt-crusted tracks. Pale, clinical sunlight filters cruelly through the lace curtains, utterly indifferent to my ruin. Dust motes drift lazily through the golden beams. Somewhere beyond the stone walls, a bird mocks me with its mindless, endless song.

Logic commands me to rise, to armor myself against the fresh horrors waiting at Cain’s door. But the agony is too absolute. I let my heavy eyelids slide shut, sinking willingly back into the dark, praying the dream will swallow me whole.

Nightmare

Blood-orange smears bleed across the horizon, burning themselves out against the frost-bitten spires of Bloodgrove as another identical day crawls from the ash of the last.

I wake with my face pressed into the cold, damp silk of the pillow, my lungs stuttering through a dry, rattling gasp. My fingers claw instinctively at the emptiness beside me, searching for moonlight hair and violet-blue eyes, that only exist now in the burning wreckage of my own mind.

You killed him, the internal judge spits, cold and merciless, as I force my leaden limbs to untangle from the sheets.

I can’t cry anymore. The wells went dry weeks ago, replaced by a dull, pulsing ache behind my eyes where Cain’s daily compulsions slide through my thoughts like a surgeon’s scalpel. He carves away the jagged edges of my grief, scraping out my memories of Blake with meticulous, sadistic precision, trying to replace the ghost with himself.

By the time the sky hardens into a bruised, ash-gray slate, the daily routine swallows me whole.

Training. In private, locked chambers where Cain stretches my mind, my body, and my resistance across a rack of escalating, depraved disciplines. Every afternoon blurs into a teases-and-tethers cycle of exquisite humiliation—blindfolded navigation through maze-like shadows, whispered degradation that curls my toes, and postures held until my muscles scream for mercy—all designed to break my defiance down to pulp before the sun even dips below the treeline. Meg and Jenny vanish into the early auction wagons without a goodbye, leaving their empty pallets as a silent reminder of what happens to livestock that isn’t chosen.

I’m chosen now. I’m his favorite.

And because the strict laws of the Crimson Order forbid Cain from legally claiming me until the auction block officially opens, he takes his ownership in the dark, carving his claim into my flesh behind bolted doors.

The bruised violet of dusk bleeds into ink-black night by the time he arrives.

He simply commands, and my traitorous, blood-addled body obeys.

“Look at me, pet,” Cain murmurs against my ear, his breath glacial as a winter gale.

Cold, sentient tendrils wrapping tight around my skin, holding me completely helpless while he strips away my nightgown.

No! This is a dream. I glance up. My hands are tied to the wall, but Cain bound my wrists with silk ropes.

My heart hammers a frantic, nauseating rhythm. Fight him! My mind screams, rebelling even as my core floods with traitorous, agonizing heat.

Cain steps between my spread thighs, his obsidian eyes burning with a dark, possessive hunger that eclipses my thoughts. He leans down, sinking his sharp fangs deep into the exact same spot on my throat where Blake once bit me. The pain is exquisite, a hot, searing shock that floods my veins with his thick, metallic venom. He is trying to rewrite me.

‘Drink.’ His telepathic voice commands, sliding into my brain like silk over a razor. Forget the ghost. Take my blood. Let me wash him out.

I swallow greedily, my lips parting against his skin as his venom rushes through me, rewriting my nervous system, blurring the line between who I was and who he is forcing me to become. The terrifying part isn’t that it hurts; it’s that it feels identical. Cain’s heavy, dominant weight pressing down into my mattress mirrors Blake’s phantom form with terrifying precision. His large, cold hands grip my hips, bruising my flesh with the exact same possessive fury.

He is stealing my soul. Every nerve ending catches fire, the friction of his cock driving me toward an obliteration I never asked for, mixing Blake’s memory so thoroughly with Cain’s reality that I can no longer tell where the ghost ends and the master begins.

When we shatter together, my scream is swallowed by the heavy velvet of the curtains.

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