His unmoving stature curved her lethalness; like his name sake, he stole her liveliness. Grimoire was beginning to understand her pernicious obsession with his suppressive nature. The fascination and frustration of having the need to hunt him stripped from her when he was within striking distance made her heart hurt with relief and shivered in anger. He trapped her in a never ending cycle of stalking him. To taste his blood would be divine, but it would never be her fangs piercing his skin; the purpose of testing him was nullified by his absolute detachment.

When Wraith’s eyes, for the first time, focused on her, Grimoire’s chest froze. Her eyes rounded. The thud of heart became cavernous in her ears. The ounce of life brought to the surface, rare and shining, captured her. The path to him opened; she felt dangerously close to succeeding in a hunt. She rocked backwards; their noses parted. Her ears flattened to the side when Wraith referenced her mother. Her eye flitted to the side. Not like mother? Did Grimoire do anything unlike Nakki? The ghost of her mother reminded her softly in a distance memory, “She is different than me. She is capable of getting.”

Chill tingled her spinal muscles. The idea of handling caught things was terrifying. Nakki had taught her the ways of chasing, prodding, and sending. Her father… He’d been the one to show her obtaining, conclusion and summoning. The idea of his gold glare, warning her to finish a hunt, warmed her muscles.

"In an unofficial capacity, I will - whenever your den needs warmth.”

Grimoire would follow Wraith into the dark unknown, but she was unable to conceive Asteraia as a home. The alpha, Aster, hadn’t captured her; Wraith had and he held no ownership of land where she would be require to stay.

Her ears pivoted towards him as his response to her inquiry of his move. The wind blurred between them with snow. His otherworldly comment elicited a low hum of agreement, "Always.” Though, the past pressed uncomfortably close on nights like these. She didn’t question that he sensed the phantoms. After all, he was betwixt the physical and incorporeal; a wraith would undoubtably perceive the paranormal.


Her dark pupils tracked his when his eyes wondered to the meat. His small gesture beckoned her forward and her teeth sunk into deer flesh. As she swallowed, Grimoire watched scarlet bleed into Wraith’s untainted fur. The hairs glinted like ruby. Oh how she desired to see his chest and neck drenched in the crimson life of others; magnificent would a winter day be that’s only taint were red. A fantasy of the personification of purification consumed her… and so when he breathlessly ordered, she wistfully complied,

"Do you know Demons, as they truly are?”

Would he understand the beauty of her design? Was there anyone left who did? Grimoire remembered the devastation of Nakki’s ravings of the distortion of the code; how others misinterpreted the teachings. Her mother knew, entrenched in those beliefs, that to free her daughter’s mind from the confined of strict tradition, that Grimoire must be taught the faith outside Hell - outside the brainwashing the alphas there perfected. It was perhaps her greatest pride in concluding that she, Grimoire, might actually know the answer to her question as holistically as a mortal could.