The man’s hands shake against my shoulders, pressing down as if he can anchor himself through sheer force of will. And apparently the word "no" loses all meaning when your body no longer belongs to you.
The silver-haired man above me—Grogan, whispers some part of me that should not know his name and should not have its own voice—seems to fight against the same invisible tide dragging us both under.
I watch the battle play across his face: jaw clenched, tendons straining in his neck, eyes squeezed shut so tightly the skin around them turns white.
"Stop," he growls, though I cannot tell if he speaks to me or himself. "We have to stop this."
I want to agree with him. The rational part of my mind screams that this is wrong.
That I am lying beneath, clutching to and grinding like some cat in heat against a stranger. That everything about this moment defies every principle I have spent eighteen years cultivating.
But the strange heat coiling through my chest and polling low in my belly does not care about reason. It pulses outward in waves that make my skin feel too tight, too sensitive, desperate for contact I never asked for.
His eyes open, and the anguish in them nearly breaks through the haze consuming me. Pale gray irises swim with guilt, perhaps, or the particular devastation of a man watching himself fail a test he has passed a thousand times before.
"You don't understand what this is." His voice cracks on the words. "What I am. If we don't stop…"
My fingers thread through his silver hair before I can stop them. Pulling him closer when every thought in my head demands I push him away.
The scar on my collarbone burns hotter, and I gasp at the sensation.
"I've resisted this my entire life." The confession spills from him in fragments. "Decades of watching others fall, of believing I was strong enough. And now a human girl I've never met is destroying everything I built with nothing but her heartbeat?"
Human girl.
The words register dimly through the fever consuming my thoughts.
He says them like they mean something specific. Like the distinction matters in ways I should understand but cannot grasp through the fog of compulsion.
"I didn't ask for any of that either," I whisper back.
"No. You didn't.” His laugh holds no humor, only the bitter edge of surrender. “And that makes what's about to happen so much fucking worse."
The compulsion strips away every hesitation I have ever hidden behind. My hips rise to meet his, clumsy and desperate, seeking more friction I do not fully understand.
I have imagined this moment in the abstract, late nights alone with nothing but curiosity and closed doors. But imagination offers no roadmap for the reality of another hot and solid body pressed against mine.
"Please…" I breathe, and the word carries the weight of a prayer I do not know how to finish.
My hands slide down his shoulders, his chest, mapping territory I have no experience navigating.
I know what I want. The ache between my thighs makes that devastatingly clear. But the mechanics of getting there elude me, and my body can only beg in the language of arched spines and parted lips.
He reads every fumbling signal with the fluency of decades. His hand finds the tie of my robe, and the silk falls away like water leaving me fully naked.
Cool night air kisses my bare skin for only a moment before his warmth replaces it, his mouth trailing fire down the column of my throat.
"Alright," he whispers against my collarbone. "I’ll take care of that."
Then his hands guide my thighs apart with a gentleness that contradicts the hunger in his eyes. When he finally settles between them, the pressure is foreign and overwhelming and exactly what the compulsion demands.
I cry out at the first stretch of him entering me—pain and pleasure braided so tightly together I cannot separate one from the other.
"Breathe," he commands, his voice rough with restraint that costs him visibly. "Look at me and breathe."
I obey because I have no other choice. My eyes lock onto his, pale gray drowning in silver, and he begins to move with a rhythm my body recognizes even though my mind does not.
Each thrust pushes the wrongness further from my thoughts, replacing it with sensation that builds and builds like a wave gathering strength far from shore.
My nails rake down his back. My legs wrap tighter around his hips, urging him deeper, faster, desperate for a destination I can feel approaching but cannot name. He groans against my throat, as if a lifetime of control shattering with every sound I pull from him.
"I can't…" The words tear from me, half-sob, half-moan. "I don't know what's happening to me."
"Let go," he breathes into my ear, and the permission undoes me entirely.
His mouth drags from my throat to the curve where my neck meets my shoulder, and I feel his teeth graze the sensitive skin there.
A growl rumbles through his chest—low, possessive, utterly inhuman—and some primal part of me tilts my head to give him better access. An invitation I do not consciously extend.
His fangs sink into my flesh without warning, and the pain is exquisite, white-hot and somehow exactly right. I scream, but the sound twists into a moan halfway through as pleasure floods the wound.
The pressure in my chest crests at the same moment my body does, and when the wave finally breaks, something physical shifts deep inside me.
The sensation is unmistakable: a distinct click, like a lock sliding into place. The connection that forms carries the weight of permanence, of irreversibility, of a door that will never open again no matter how hard I pound against it.
I know this with bone-deep certainty even though no one has told me.
Some truths do not require explanation.
Grogan gasps above me, one hand flying to clutch his own chest. His eyes widen with shock that bleeds quickly into horror.
"No," he breathes. "No, that wasn't supposed to—"
My vision tunnels before he can finish.
Darkness rushes in from the edges of my sight, swallowing the forest and the fog and the man still hovering over me. The completion of something overwhelms my nervous system entirely, and I lose consciousness mid-breath.
In the darkness that follows, I do not simply dream of the silver-haired man.
Four other faces materialize with disturbing clarity, emerging from the void like photographs developing in reverse.
Auburn hair frames features twisted in a permanent sneer, cruel green eyes cataloging my every weakness. Then a massive man with a horrific scar across his throat appears next, and despite his terrifying appearance, his dark eyes hold a gentleness.
The next is ice-blue eyes that do not blink while studying me with clinical precision, analyzing me like data rather than a person. And finally, sun-streaked golden curls frame a charming smile that fails to reach the haunted emptiness behind it.
Each face brings a tug in my chest—not as strong as the connection to Grogan, but present and waiting.
Who are you? I try to ask, but the dream offers no answers.
I wake screaming. The sound tears from my throat before my eyes fully open, and I jolt upright so quickly that the rough wooden walls around me spin.
This is not the forest. This is not cold ground and fog and some fucked-up sacrifice practise. A fire crackles nearby, casting dancing shadows across an unfamiliar cabin that smells of pine and homemade food.
Someone has changed my clothes.
The red silk is gone and in its place is a man's flannel shirt that reaches my knees, soft from washing and too large by half. My body aches in unfamiliar ways—muscles I did not know existed protesting every small movement.
The connection in my chest pulses steadily now, a second heartbeat that was not there twenty-four hours ago.
What the hell happened to me?
But a further questions along with a new scream dies in my throat as a door opens.
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