Page 54 of A Soul to Keep

He turned to her as he crawled around on all fours. He wanted to free Reia, but he understood he had to fight the Demon first.

“Mine,” Orpheus growled in answer, his jaws opening to show the length and sharpness of his fangs in warning and threat.

How close he’d come to losing Reia was gut-twisting.

When he’d returned to his home after fetching her water, elated with his memories of her from earlier, a pain had pierced his heart when he knew she was gone.

Hurt and rage had caused those invisible squeezing hands to grip his brain within his skull so tightly he’d instantly morphed to his more agitated state right in the middle of his home.

He’d barely been able to shove himself through the door, hearing it groan and creak under pressure as he launched himself outside. Following her scent, the feeling of a hunt, of his hunger being satisfied at the end of it, quickened his long strides.

His want to protect her fell away to the excitement of the chase and the desire to consume flesh and blood. If Orpheus had been the one to catch her, had he found her running, he doubted she would have lived past his tackle filled with swiping claws and snapping fangs.

But her elderberry and rose scent had vanished from the ground when he found only the amulet and dagger she’d taken.

Rage that his prey was taken by another dipped the squishy flesh of his brain while fear that Reia would be gone also clutched his throat.

His mind wasn’t sound. His thoughts were muddled between his want to consume and the returning pressure of wanting to protect, and they tugged on him from both sides.

Orpheus was lost to the chaos within.

His sweet memories of her that he’d never obtained from another offering was the only seam within him that wasn’t allowing his hunger to win. If she had been like the others, he wouldn’t have tried to free her from her cocoon. He would have bitten into her before the arachnid Demon even had the chance to leash a whip around his throat.

She would have been trying to fight for the remaining parts of the corpse as Orpheus fell into hunger, eating while fighting for his meal.

But the fleeting memories of her smile, her eyes on him, and her trinket hanging above his bed, fought the gripping hands within his skull. The taste of her skin, her arousal, made his mouth salivate for that aroma just as much as blood. And her pretty voice saying his name, her laughter, and her moans of pleasure as she came, eased the tension in his muscles.

He hungered, but his want to protect soared when he found her about to be eaten by another.

“The human was in my territory,” she hissed, her lipless face contorting into fury as her mouth opened to reveal her own fangs. “I stay out of your home, Mavka.”

Orpheus backed up to be above Reia while the Demon began to walk backwards up the side of the tree so she could hang from above. It made her backwards body appear upright, and her black hair fell over her shoulders rather than from the top of her head.

“Do not touch!” he roared.

“Oh?” Her three sets of red eyes widened, before she began to give a wheezing snicker. “Is it one of your little playthings?” She crawled over the web-covered canopy above, staying just out of reach of him unless he jumped. He would have if it wasn’t for the fact he could land on top of Reia when he came back down. “How pitiful. How long will it be before you eat this one?”

Agony swirled around his heart as a light whine rattled the bottom of his lungs.

“No,” he demanded.

He didnotwant Reia to end up like the others.

“I can see how much you don’t want to,” she snickered, moving above him until he had to turn around to face her. “It ran from you. Ithatesyou.”

Orpheus growled in answer, his anger spiking, but it was tangled with sadness. She was right. Reia had run away from Orpheus, just like many others.

He’d felt this before, this cold taste of sadness. Orpheus becoming fond of a human only for it to leave because of its disgust in him.Is Reia the same?Would things end up as they did long ago?

“It left you, Mavka.” Her head twisted to look down towards Reia’s face. “I see its memories. It was always planning to leave you.” The Demon turned her grinning face back to Orpheus, its red eyes bowing with nasty humour. “You will not be able to keep it.”

That swirl of sadness took charge, and he was filled with hopelessness like a constant ache in his heart that he’d held for eons. His vision turned to such a deep blue that it made everything appear darker and lonelier, like a veil had been laid over his face.

“It will end up likeher.”

His sight turned down to Reia to find her green eyes were still tear-filled but wide as she stared up at him. Orpheus shuddered as he reached up to the top of his head to dig his claws in. It felt as though his skull was cracking under the pressure of his mind, the Demon reaching into his deepest uncertainties, doubts, and fears.

She will never want me.

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