“Lord Raven, I wasn’t expecting…”
Ant’s sense of time fractured. How many loops? Five? Ten? The vision showed no variation, no escape hatch. Just Ronald’s discovery, his fear, his frozen horror, and then his death. Over and over and over again. Ant’s own sense of awareness began to fragment under the assault.
Focus.He tried to ground himself, to remember his training.You’re Doctor Anthony Channon. You’re conducting a scene reading. This is a vision, not reality. You can break free.
But it was as if his mind had lost track of the way out, and the loop kept dragging him back under.
Ronald at the desk. Footsteps. The door.
“Lord Raven…”
Ant’s breathing became erratic in the physical world - he could feel that much through the thin tether connecting his body to his consciousness. His heart rate spiked. Able was barking, but the sound was distant and muffled, like it was coming from underwater.
The vision reset again.
Claudius’s voice, oh, so pleasant before he went in for the kill. Ronald’s terror. The trance. The feeding.
Ant tried to force himself out, to simply let go of the chair, but his hand wouldn’t obey. His gift held him locked to the scene with the same iron grip that Claudius’s trance had used on Ronald.
Viktor.
The thought was instinctive. Their mate bond was still there, a golden thread connecting them even through the magical chaos. But the wards around the room muffled it, made the connection feel thick and sluggish.
Another loop. Ronald’s pen falling. Claudius leaning in. Edmund’s laughter.
Ant’s consciousness was splintering. The detachment that allowed him to witness trauma without experiencing it was crumbling. He could feel the edges of Ronald’s terror starting to bleed through, could feel the echo of paralysis in his own frozen hand.
Viktor, please.
He pushed the thought through their bond with all his remaining strength, hoping his mate could hear him through the magical noise, through the thick walls of the mental prison the wards had created.
Ronald turned in his chair. Footsteps in the hallway. The door opened.
“Lord Raven, I wasn’t expecting…”
Ant’s consciousness flickered. His sense of self wavered between observer and observed, between his reality as Doctor Anthony Channon conducting a scene reading and Ronald Finch dying at his desk. The loop pulled him under again and again, to the point where he couldn’t tell if the terror coursing through him was memory or present reality.
Viktor. Viktor. Please!
The plea was fainter now. Desperate. His mate bond glowed weakly through the chaos - the only anchor he had left.
Claudius’s fangs. The feeding. The laughter. Reset. Ant felt his mind beginning to break.
Chapter Twelve
Viktor’s fingers dug into the doorframe hard enough to splinter the wood.
Ant knelt beside the chair, one hand twisted in Able’s harness, the other pressed flat against the burgundy cushion. His entire body convulsed in small, violent jerks. Blood streaked from both nostrils down to his chin, dripping onto the collar of Viktor’s shirt that he was wearing. His eyes were open - wide and gray and completely unseeing, pupils blown so large they’d swallowed the iris. Small gasps escaped his throat in an arrhythmic pattern that made Viktor’s heart clench.
Able started to bark - the sharp, frantic sounds echoing off the walls. The dog stayed frozen in position, though, clearly trembling with the effort of holding his training against every instinct telling him to break Ant free.
Viktor’s legs tensed. He knew how that dog felt. Every cell in his body screamed at him to cross the three meters separating them, to rip Ant’s hand away from that cursed chair, to carry him out of the nightmare house and never look back.
Don’t touch him during the reading. You could leave us both vulnerable.
Ant’s voice from last night, calm, logical, and absolutely firm on that one point. But clearly, he hadn’t expected a vision from hell itself, and now he was suffering, and Viktor didn’t know what to do.
His fangs descended. His vision bled red at the edges. The vampire in him wanted to tear the entire wing apart, to rip through the wards and drag his mate to safety. Fuck the consequences. Fuck Ant’s warnings. His mate was hurt, bleeding, and trapped by something and what? Viktor was supposed to just stand by and watch?
