One last breath.
“And you?”
“I became the thing they could fear more than monsters. The memory.” He thrusts, presses in, burrowing, fucking, hunting his release. I work hard to control mine, knowing he hasn’t freed me yet.
“The shadow on the stairs. The face burned into the backs of their eyelids. Not the victim. Not the survivor.” Tremors rack his body. He’s rattling my bones.
Oh, hell, Rory flicking his tongue against my anal ring, Jude tonguing my clit, and fucking my pussy with his fingers. Vincent and Seth both taking my nipples in their mouths, suckling hard. Heat unfurls low within me. The pressure grows.
And Raphael… “I was the reckoning. The nightmare they’d never outrun. Fucking come, Briella.”
Three rapid-fire thrusts and then his hips plow forward, flooding my throat and mouth with his cum. I swallow desperately, needing air. The great rush of air leaving his throat is what sends me over the edge.
I scream around his cock as the orgasm powers through me, sending me soaring and blazing, then crashing and burning withhim, with all of them. My body is still shaking when he pulls out and tucks himself back into his pants.
Vincent releases my wrists, stroking my breast along with Seth. Jude kisses my thigh. Rory takes an ample grip of my ass.
They don’t speak a word as Raphael presses his forehead to mine. “I was born in blood, Briella. But when you look at me, from the first moment you looked up at me…maybe I don’t have to die in it.”
I rise from my knees and fall into his arms, sobbing. It’s more than what just happened. It’s that soul tether. That unshakable bond.
He wasn’t just the reckoning for those kids.
He was the shadow in my dreams.
The darkest one ever to find me there.
A nightmare—but he wasmynightmare.
In my own twisted way, I sought him.
Those green eyes. That silhouette against my bedroom wall. The one I curled my little child self around.
Not because I felt safe—but because I feltalive.
In the white, sterile hollow of Easthaven, I crept into the abyss of my mind, knowing he would always be waiting for me.
Hunting me.
Keepingme.
With the tension relieved from his shoulders, Raphael touches the crest of my messy braid, ensuring the arrowhead pin is secure, concealed.
“And the cap?” I finally ask in a fractured voice. He’s wearing the old one. I’m wearing the new.
“It was his.” He taps it. “Always wore it when he fucked me. After I stabbed him with the arrow, I took it right off his head and wore it while we ended the monster. Two years of my clothes getting filthy from the basement, two years of being his animal, this…” He traces a finger down his vest. “This is what I need.”
I nod, my fingers straying to the ends of his ponytail. “Was your hair always long?”
He shakes his head, the shadows brewing around him. “I shaved it. He could fuck me without gripping my hair to do it.”
No wonder he keeps it long. Long and beautiful.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. He makes space for me, letting me cry here. I hear the heavy breaths of the others. I know how much they are waiting.
Because the time has come.
It’s my turn.
