“Do you know what happened to the last man who dared to strike me?” Leviathan asked softly as he approached. Cullen slid his foot back another step but froze when a nasty snarl rumbled in Leviathan’s chest.
“L-Levi–” A vision took over his mind, making him break off with a sharp gasp.
A man was leaning heavily against a tall pole, his bare arms bound behind his back, blood seeping from deep cuts along his chest and stomach. And his face…his face had been peeled away. Revealed nothing but bone and sinew–
Cullen jerked backwards as the vision vanished, leaving him standing in the scorched wasteland, his hand pressed up against the nearest stone wall as he gasped for air. He wretched at the memory but nothing came up.
Leviathan was smiling.
“Leviathan,” he choked out, hating the way his legs were trembling, threatening to collapse under him. “Leviathan, I–”
“Run.” The word was little more than a whisper on the breeze. Cullen stared at him for another immeasurable moment, his pulse deafeningly loud in his ears, and then he turned and ran into the maze that had been erected around him.
Watching the brat vanish into the stone labyrinth sent something boiling in his blood. Something that pulsed excitement and impatience through him, something that made his cock twitch in anticipation.
Cullen would pay for striking him. He would make sureof it.
And by the end of it, the brat would admit every secret he had tucked away in that precious little head of his.
He ran.
For seconds or minutes or hours; he couldn’t be sure. Gray wall after gray wall blew past him as he bolted down new directions.
No breaks in the rock. No exits. He was sure there was no end to this maze, no escape. He was probably curling himself deeper and deeper into this endless labyrinth and when he finally cornered himself–
I don’t want to die.
The thought pulsed through him, made tears burn at his eyes and spill down his cheeks.
All that time spent being suicidal…all those times he’d told himself it would be better to end it now then to end up…in exactly the situation he was in now. Being chased and cornered like a rabbit by a feral dog. He would be torn apart and eaten and it would all be his own stupid fault. And Walker and Dom and the Diviners would never know exactly what became of him. Would never know that he still missed them and that, despite the bloodlust, he was still himself.
He would die alone in a dark maze and it would take too long and he would suffer and–
He slammed right into a wall as he rounded the next corner, his body half bouncing off of it before his hands came up, pressing against the immovable surface.
Cornered. Cornered and killed. Cornered and eaten.
Just a mouse in a trap…
Strong arms threw themselves around his chest,dragging a terrified scream from him as he was yanked off his feet.
Either Leviathan had masked his presence somehow or Cullen had been too lost in his thoughts to notice his approach. But he was here now, Cullen wrapped tightly in this mock of an embrace, the terror a writhing thing inside of him–
“There are far worse things I could do to you,” a harsh voice hissed in his ear, “than kill you, Cullen.”
He whimpered, squeezing his eyes closed. “Please…”
“Please, what?”
“I…I don’t want to…”
Sharp teeth sank into his neck, dragging a scream from him as his body arched in his hold.
“Levi…” A memory pulsed through him with the word, making him go still in his arms. Leviathan, kneeling before him, his eyes dark with desire and excitement as he asked him to call him by the shortened version of his name. It had been unexpectedly playful. Playful and kind, as if they were a normal couple sharing inside jokes while they were locked away in their bedroom…
The teeth left his throat and the scorched world around them took over his senses again. Fire and brimstone and smoke and Leviathan’s sweet scent wrapped around him, mixing with the air that gagged him.
“L…Levi…” He tried again, his tears continuing to pour, even when his panic changed to something else, his throat throbbing with pain and, somewhere deep inside him, pleasure.
