13

The touch of sheets that had millions of threads each caressing his skin, in all places, loud and violent as it scrapped over his flesh—nails through glass. The weight of his body—the clamp of gravity that held him down and forced his lungs to empty. His blood pumping through his veins with each steady thump, so loud that he could hear each gush and seep of liquid through the different parts of him.

He tasted on his tongue, the remains of food that had traces of another—a cook's hands, the bundle of insect feet, the touch of soil. He could smell the scent of millions, noticed the stink of decay from a swamp hundreds of miles away. He could see through the jelly-like substance of his soulmate's eyes, the ligaments that suspended the lenses and then the sticky substance of jolting proteins that darted over blood vessels that pumped oxygen that bubbled.

The understanding, the awareness, it burned in his mind, and he began to shriek, felt insane and needy for something he could not quite understand.

He no longer recognized his mates, felt the bond in all its glorious warmth but could not appreciate it in his biting awareness. And as they approached, he felt a desperate need to dig his teeth into their throat until the warmth was deep in his belly, felt a great hunger for something he didn't understand.

What did he want?

What did he need?

His first victim was an Alpha, an old lady that served. He'd dug his teeth into her throat and almost killed her, blood splattering over his skin. For brief moments that day, the noise of existing had gone quiet. He'd been able to hold his soulmates, kiss Solar on the cheek and promise that everything would be okay.

He was a fey, not a vampire, and yet he wanted he wanted—flesh, bones, sinews, blood.

He was becoming the monsters that consumed and ate all, the monsters that feasted on the dead. The monsters that they threw outside the walls. He made them promise to shoot him in the head just before he truly became the undead.

But his soulmates went into rampage, spent countless sleepless nights trying to solve a problem that could not be fixed. They chained him to a bed, spent billions on an issue that plagued thousands in their city. They fed him blood like a vampire and then flesh when it wasn't enough.

In fitful sleep, he'd heard them sobbing, cursing the world.

Helios was drugged later when flesh no longer did anything for him, forced into the deepest sleep just to keep him from transforming into the monsters they knew. But he didn't know that he was lost in the darkness, in the hunger that ate him from the inside. Starved, it spread, turned into gold veins that propelled across his skin. And the awareness was all he could think of, but inside his tortured mind he saw glimpses of her.

Her writhing in the cage. Her tortured and ruined. Her under his control. And for once in his life, he felt the tiniest sense of guilt.

An open window was all it took for him to break.

The gust of a small breeze, and his tongue tasted nectar. It tasted sweetness. It tasted food. For once in months, the noise had dulled into a soft groan. His mind had slowed into a halt, his body recognized and understood the scent.

The chains that held him wasn't enough to hold him back. Through hazed eyes he saw people that screamed for him to return, familiar people that he didn't really recognize in his stupor. But his nose told him that they were his, drenched in his scent with his bonds burned in their blood. His mouth didn't ache for a bite in their presence, but he turned, and he escaped through the window.

Towards her.

In his drugged, sleepy state, it took him a week to find her. His heart had been ricocheting, pounding in his head but not enough to burn. He would have been quicker if he weren't so heavily pumped with sleeping drugs, and his mind would have been clearer. But instead, he was left in a haze of throbbing pain.

The migraine hurt so much that it blinded him, made his vision spark with trails of light. It flared in his temples, affecting his brain, his way of thinking. He'd been flying like a drunken creature, swerved, fell and then soared. He was aimless but he followed his nose through the sand, storm, rain and lightning.

When he found her, it was all gone, the pain, it was the hunger that returned. A craving that he was familiar with, not the one that he didn't understand—so angry and needy for blood, guts and bone. This one was the one he lived with as fey.

It was an Alpha, the voice told him. She was an Alpha.

They haven't had young Alphas in years. All he knew were the older Alphas, the Alphas that weren't dead from the war, the Alphas that had their scent glands ripped free. And his body warmed, ravenous and famished as it flooded with so much heat that he begged. He was salivating, and he could taste her in the air, could taste just how eager she was for him.

She was a peach, butter-yellow and begging to leak.

The sugary bits of summer that oozed and dripped with sticky juices that flowed down throat in charming pink and white flesh. She was so good that he felt lightheaded from mere scent, the awareness of everywhere had dulled down into a simple plate of sliced peaches, surface chilled from the rain. Then warm, caramelised, and juicy in the centre.

He'd never tasted fruit on an Alpha in his life, they were always something fucking weird like the goddamn aftertaste of rain, or dirt in the forest, the stink of yellow snow. He'd had one that tasted like he was making out with rocks and trees, and for fuck's sake he didn't understand why Omegas seemed to like the scent of inanimate objects and random locations rather than glorious, glorious dessert.

She told him she wanted to run, and he laughed felt incredulous that she dared suggest that notion. But he'd do anything to taste her, and when his lips met hers, he almost died, felt the moan escape his throat and his cock throb, warm and filled with so much need that he was squirting in his clothes, flooding the cave with his caramel, coating her sweet, sweet peach.

It was heaven.