Page 69 of Bargain with the Demon King
His fangs find my throat as I swallow his essence. Sharp pressure, then sweet release as he drinks from me while feeding me himself. My body accepts the change eagerly, desperately, as if it's been waiting for this all along. I feel the bond forming—not chains but threads of gold weaving through my dying body, pulling me back, refusing to let go.
The last thing I feel is his life on my tongue and his teeth in my neck, claiming and saving and changing all at once. The darkness rises, but it doesn't taste of ending.
It tastes of beginning.
It tastes of choice.
And somewhere in the void, I curse Chad's name. Not for his betrayal, but for his mediocrity. Because if he hadn't been so pathetically ordinary, I never would have found something so magnificent. Something worth dying for. Worth living for. Worth choosing even when the choice comes with fangs.
Chapter 23
Adraya
The change starts in my bones.
Each cell splits and reforms with demon essence encoded in its structure. My spine bows off stone as his blood rewrites mortality's limits. I watch black veins web across my skin before fading, leaving me unchanged on the surface but reconstructed beneath. My vision fractures—I see heat bleeding from cooling corpses, watch soul-stones pulse in spectrums that shouldn't exist, glimpse Azzaron's true form beneath his skin.
His blood floods my mouth—copper and ozone, burnt sugar and void. It coats my throat, seeps into tissue, becomes foundation. My heart stops. Restarts. Matches his rhythm.
"What did you do?"
Azzaron crouches over me, neither man nor beast but something between. Ichor drips from claws that took apart five ancient demons in seconds. His chest heaves, and there—burned into ash-pale skin between thousands of soul-marks—a new mark blazes.
A twisted tree of light spreads from his heart across his chest, branches ending in sharp points. The bark pattern matches the throne room's ancient stone, but the leaves pulse twilight—purple-gold-nothing. At its center, where trunk meets heart, a perfect void that swallows light.
I press my palm to my chest, find the matching mark beneath my skin. The same tree, inverted—roots where his has branches. When I breathe, it glows. When he moves, mine answers.
"Gave you my blood. My life. Bound us." His voice splits into octaves that hurt to hear. "You feel what I feel. Live while I live. Die when I die."
The truth of it settles—literal, not metaphor. Our lives tangled at the root. I push up, elbows finding purchase in cooling crimson. The throne room displays his artistry. Kaine frozen in fragments, each piece reflecting my face. Sithara pierced by her own spirals, the angle suggesting she did it herself. Vex quartered with surgical precision, his shadows still twitching. Lady Morinth with my arrow creating a third eye. The unnamed demon still consuming himself from the soul outward, purple marks eating through flesh.
"You killed them all."
"They touched what's mine."
"Yours by choice." I stand, my body obeying with fresh grace that will take time to master. The twilight necklace burns against my throat—no longer foreign but mine, matching our marks exactly. "The only kind that matters."
The connection between us shows itself when I turn my head right—gold filaments pulsing in the air, creating a web of shared existence. His rage at seeing me broken floods through. My satisfaction at their deaths echoes back. His desperate hunger. My vicious need. The emotions amplify between us until origin blurs with echo.
"Come here."
He obeys—the Demon King obeys—crossing the space in a single, soundless glide that ignores the rules of physics. I grab his gore-slick chest, demon ichor making my grip slide until I dig nails in for purchase. Multiple colors paint him in death.When I pull him down, our mouths meet with force that splits my lip.
The kiss holds endings—copper from my blood, char from his nature, violence committed for love. His fangs draw fresh crimson that he swallows with a sound that vibrates through our link. I feel him taste me, and through the bond, I taste myself through his mouth. The feedback loop of shared sensation shorts out my nerves, and my knees give way.
"Mine." We speak together, creating resonance that cracks more soul-stones.
We hit the gore-slick floor hard. His claws shred my dress ruins. My nails carve trenches down his back that seal instantly but leave phantom pain through our connection. Every sensation doubles—my desperate need and his, his pleasure at my touch and mine at touching.
"Here? In all this death?"
"Where better?" His hand finds my throat, careful around the twilight necklace pulsing with our marks. "They died thinking you were nothing. Let their ghosts witness you becoming everything."
He spreads my thighs with hands gone full beast—scaled, massive, ending in claws that could gut worlds but touch me with reverent care. I see him completely—shadow and scale and restrained power, horns that pierce reality. It should terrify. Instead, I bare my teeth in challenge.
"Then claim me properly. Show their ghosts exactly who chose who."
He enters me in one thrust that empties my lungs. The stretch borders on pain—his beast form overwhelming, claiming spaces never touched. Through our link, he feels it too—the burn, the perfect agony of being filled completely. His hips drive forward hard enough to shake the throne. I meet him with equal force, my body adapting, demanding more.
