❝NOW THE DARK BEGINS TO RISE❞

“I w-w-was r-raped and-d-d b-b-beaten…B-By a b-b-beast. B-By y-y-your b-beast.”

A beat. Frigid winter air threading its chilled claws through his white fur, forcing a shiver from his bones. The distant static of ocean noise in the distance, swallowing the abrupt silence. Kershov tried to swallow and found that the muscles in his throat refused to obey his command. Windows of obsidian glass bore into teary pools of lilac. He spoke in a voice like rusted nails. “No. No.”

Horror consumed every conscious fraction of Kershov’s mind. He wished desperately for numbness, for ice to encase his nerves and rob him of all physical perception; he reached blindly for blankness to overtake his thoughts, for his very life to crash to a screeching halt. If only his heart stopped beating. If only he could dissociate, tear himself from this worthless body and cut all connections to this filthy planet like a surgeon slicing out a tumor. But he could not. Kershov could not escape sickness when he was the disease. And rather than rendering him frozen in the sensory-deprived thrall of shock, his body instead catapulted him toward the hellish terror of unbridled panic—heartbeat slamming wildly against its cage of bone, pulse roaring hard enough to burst his veins, bile sloshing hot and burning in his guts, and it felt as though the blizzard Czar had swallowed a serpent whole, and the massive vile thing was coiled around his insides and constricting with all its unholy strength, and its violent undulations wracked him with torturous agony, and his whole body was cringing forward and folding in on itself and diving toward the ground and no no no this couldn’t be real no she was lying—

“No. I would n-never.” Was that . . . was that a tremor in his tone? Had his tongue tripped over its syllables, like a guilty child scrambling backward from the mess it had made? Kershov could not recall a time when he had sounded so pitifully small to his own ears . . . so defeated, and scared, as if containing himself now would retroactively undo the mistake he’d made. No . . . not a mere mistake. He gagged—a broken, wet sound—haunted gaze focused somewhere between his gigantic forepaws. A sin. The worst kind. Even killing in cold blood was more admirable than—than—

Suddenly the colossal dragga was shoving his muzzle into the girl’s tattered nape, inhaling her scent as if he were drowning and he might filter air through the salt-and-pepper of her coat. The proof would be there—intermingled with her perfume, impossible to deny. If he found his own cologne sewn into her robes—

A wordless, guttural snarl shredded from Ker’s deep chest, serrated at the edges, betraying the very real very overwhelming fear turning him inside out. Yes—fear. Helpless, childish, primal fear, raw as a fresh wound, a pulsating bleeding rupture of fear, and he was smelling Briseis, but his diaphragm wasn’t working right, and as he searched for his scent on hers he felt his lungs collapsing and it was impossible to escape and the corners of his vision were going dark because he couldn’t smell himself, and he couldn’t smell anyone else, but he tasted the acrid tang of semen all around her and her blood stained his snout and she was crying and Bri had no reason—none—to lie to him about this.

Kershov did not cry, though by all means it would have been a natural physical response to the frightening level of stress hormones sizzling in his bloodstream. No tears wobbled in his bottomless orbs, he did not bawl like a lost pup, although . . . an odd, irregular whine keened from between his tightly clenched teeth, the wail of a mortally damaged creature, and when he became aware of it the hideous cacophony only grew in pitch and volume. He realized he was practically ramming his muzzle into Briseis’s bruised shoulder; gagging, the frost-born phantom drew away, unable to even utter an apology. He was shaking brutally. Gasping for air.

“H-how many?” A skinless whisper, dripping with vulnerability. Kershov faced away from the girl, shoulders slumped. “How many times did I . . . did it . . .”

A few seconds, in which the injured sounds crawling from the Alpha’s throat launched back into furious growls. He squared himself, tail lashing, and abruptly snapped downward to crunch his jaws around his own right foreleg. The pain shocked him back into himself—a slap in the face he needed to climb above his self-hatred—and he did not let go until he felt the hardness of bone beneath his fangs. Then he released the limb, panting, muzzle now drenched in crimson to match the freely flowing liquid pouring toward his paw. Two words dropped hard as stones from glinting knives:

“Never again.”

❝NOW THE DARK IS TAKING OVER❞

♛〖 King of Uyaraut ✦ bonded to Athene ✦ father of many ✦ xathira 〗♛