Page 49 of Fated In Forever
Ravok, looming over Evie, that athame poised to carve through her slender neck and I’d lost it. Thrown myself against that opening, tried ripping my way back through the shadows, tried to fight my way back to her, but I’d failed.
Now I was leaving a trail of blood behind me and wondering how many predators lurked in the shadows and how fast I could run, once they caught my scent.
I kept walking, digging the heel of my palm into my aching chest. If I was truly trapped here, my heart shredded apart by this unholy bond, then on the other side, Vicious was suffering in the same way.
I hadn’t saved her at all. I’d sentenced her to a future of pain.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
My blind moment of rage had doomed the one person who mattered most.
And I’d left her alone, facing down a monster. With nothing but her wits and whatever magic she had left. And Viciouswouldfight. I closed my eyes and stopped walking, clawed toes digging into the rough sand for support. She would stand against Ravok, even when she had no chance of winning.
I reached down the bond, straining to find her on the other end, and there…a pulse of life, a heartbeat, as faint as butterfly wings. She was alive. Still alive.
I swayed, trying to get enough air in my lungs to clear my head.
I’d know if she was gone, I reasoned.I’d know. I would feelthat loss to the depths of my soul, and that final stab of pain…that pain would destroy me.
But even as I ruminated over my failings and took in the hellish landscape, something else was happening. Something I fought with every fiber of my being.
It started as a burning in my chest, spreading outward like molten metal flowing through my veins. At first, I thought it was merely the shock of transitioning between realms, the natural consequence of a mortal body being subjected to forces it was never meant to endure. But as the burning intensified, as this realm began to reshape me from the inside out, I realized with growing horror what was truly occurring.
My transformation into Orcus had begun.
I doubled over as the first wave hit me, convulsing as something far more primal began to assert its claim over me. My bones melted and reformed, stretching and thickening to accommodate what I was becoming. The pain was beyond description—not just physical, but soul-rending, as if my very essence was torn apart and rewoven into something else entirely.
My spine arched with a wet, crackling sound as something pushed its way out from the base of my back. I reached behind me with trembling hands and felt the emergence of what could only be a tail—thick, muscular, covered in skin that was warm to the touch. The spiked end lashed involuntarily, and I stumbled forward, trying to maintain my balance when my center of gravity shifted.
“No,” I whispered, though my voice was already changing, becoming deeper, more resonant. “This can't be happening.”
But it was, my skull throbbing with an intensity that brought tears to my eyes, and I pressed my palms against mytemples as I felt the bone beneath beginning to shift and bulge. Two points of agony emerged just above my hairline, growing outward and upward with deliberate, inexorable purpose.
Horns.I was growing motherfucking horns.
I fell to my knees on the obsidian plain, my newly formed tail coiling around me as I fought against the changes overtaking my body. My skin was taking on a darker hue—not quite black, but a deep, dusky gray that blended in with the shadowy light around me.
With the physical transformation came something far worse: the awakening of instincts that were not my own.
Hunger. Not for food, but for dominion over this place, for the darkness itself. These impulses rose within me like an unstoppable tide, threatening to drown out everything I had ever known in a sea of black.
“I won't let this happen,” I gasped, even as my voice continued to deepen and distort. “I won't become what you want me to be.” I raged against the silence, the directionless, lost souls.
The horns were fully formed now, rising from my skull like a crown of bone. My tail had grown longer, more articulated, ending in what felt like a barbed tip. I had become something out of a nightmare, a creature of darkness and malice.
And yet, even as my body transformed, even as ancient instincts whispered seductive promises of power in my mind, something else remained. Something that refused to be corrupted or consumed.
My love for Evangeline.
That revelation cut through the haze of transformation and the pain and the whispered promises of this shadowy realm. I could still feel her, even here. Not physically—theportal had closed, separating us—but in my heart, in my soul, in how I would never forget her. As if what we shared transcended even the boundaries between worlds.
Across time itself.
Because my bond with Evangeline still existed, a fragile chain around my heart, no longer hurting, just…there.
And much like those golden chains, Vicious was my anchor, my tether to everything good I had ever known. And as long as I could still feel her presence like a warm light in the darkness, as long as I knew she lived, I would never be lost.
Somehow, especially now, I found that comforting.
