I will absolutely put forth my most diligent efforts to tag anything overly graphic, be it violence or sensuality. Please be wary of the tags and submit that this is probably not a good place for the juvenile or the squeamish to play.
I wish I had time to sleep my burnout off before trying to write this, but I just can't help gushing ☆
Thank you SO MUCH for granting my wishes and giving me my fix ♡ It's been far too long since I've had these babes in my life 😩
I could not be happier with giving you full creative freedom because I feel the entire Blood Ties Johnnei relationship is LITERALLY here in these images; the loveable goofs & a human's struggle to impress a demon princess, the secret love affairs behind closed doors, the deep obsession that grew into delusion and eventually consumed ya boi--- I'm DELIGHTED!
One of my favourite things about your art has always been the great care and detail you put into EVERYTHING you do. You remember the little things, and they always come out in your works.
I can literally hear the quiet, ominous "You are my sunshine... my only... sunshine..." as the little lion encroaches on the memories 🥹♡
oh nuuuo Mr. Kole~ don't stawb me pwease you don't even hold that dagger the correct wayyy 🥺🗡️🩸
A nice informative 'old man' from @blood-bonded 's Bonded series you should absolutely give a read if you love vampires that turn out to be just blood mages but they are still cool <3
I debated posting about this because I know it will be controversial and because I myself have complex feelings about it, but to quote an intrepid intergalactic explorer: we can talk about this.
A discord fic club recently advertised they would be reading one of my fics. I was actually really excited about this! Hopefully new people get to enjoy a thing I worked hard to make for them, and I was really looking forward to hearing what they thought about it.
Except the advertised date came and went with silence on the actual fic, so I assumed that it got canceled or something.
But, no, it didn’t - I heard later that the group had in fact read my fic and apparently loved it. Quietly. To themselves.
And, like, look — I’m trying to write this with a minimum amount of snark, because on one hand I’m a fic reader too and I firmly believe that people have a right to enjoy fic however they wish. As I writer, I also don’t think I’m entitled to comments, but like 90% of writing fic for me is to be part of a community, and being a part of a community means commenting on fics so that there are more fic and the community continues.
On the other hand, as a writer, I have to be honest — hearing that people specifically scheduled time to read a fic I wrote and then loved it while not sharing any of their thoughts with me? That doesn’t make me feel good. I feel like it should, but it doesn’t. It makes me feel like my fic is just content to be consumed without regard to the effort that went into making it.
The fic in question? I worked on it on and off for literal years. It had to be betaed. It had to be formatted to be posted to AO3 properly, I had to work on the meta bits to properly tag and warn people.
All of that is work, and the only thing I ask for (and any fic author, really) is engagement and encouragement from the people reading the fic.
This isn’t snark or bitterness to say that if the trend is going to be people talking amongst themselves about my fic in a group chat with total silence to me as the author, then I don’t see the point in going through all the effort to post fic publicly. I’ll just send it to my own group chat. If that’s the community now, then that’s where I’ll go. I’ll hate it, honestly, but like. If that’s the deal, that’s the deal.
Anyway, I’m clearly in my feelings about this. I really am truly glad people liked my work. But this really bummed me out.
Life went from bad to worse the night Kenshi Takahashi stormed the Arai manor at his Taira forefather’s command. As a war dog unleashed in reckoning of a centuries-long grudge between covens, his mission was simple :: return with their princess’ head.
Even before Kenshi knew she was everything he resented, it was an easy sell. She made it so easy.
With more and more Ao3 authors restricting their works to the archive (due to AI scraping), they're going to be losing guest interaction. And probably generally feeling down because. You know. AI is stealing their hard work.
So! Now is a great time to stop by your favorite authors/stories and drop them some comments! They really appreciate it!
also put in a request for an ao3 account if you don't have one! an account will let you make bookmarks of your favorite fics, store a reading history of fics you read while logged in, set a profile picture, all sorts of goodies :)
"here's the immensely time consuming 100K word novel-length passion project I'm working on between my real life job and family! It eats up hundreds of hours of my one and only life, causes me emotional harm, and I gain basically nothing from it! Also I put it on the internet for free so anyone can read if they want. Hope you love it!" :)
fanfic writers are so fucking awesome man. they write novel length fics that are sometimes even better than some published bestselling books written by professional writers. like fanfic writers are professional writers to me and they gift us their masterpieces for free. they give us something we can look forward to after a long day. something from which we can seek comfort when life is hard. something that can be our own little getaway. in a world of capitalism, despite everything, they give us all of these for free. like holy fuck. shout out to every fanfic writer. I wish all fanfic writers a very ‘I love you with all my heart and soul. I thank you from the bottom of my heart’
The Caged is a vampire’s wonderland, a deviously notorious playground for the eternally damned to indulge in every conceivable vice known to man. Then, some depravities were beyond most modern mortals’ comprehension. It didn’t make them any less welcome in this place.
To John Carlton, the only way to cope with enslavement was to dissociate from his skewed reality. It couldn’t be real. Vampires? An exceptionally talented team of makeup artists. The otherworldly magics? Smoke and mirrors.
All he needed now was for someone to yell ‘Cut!’ so he could shake it off and get on with his miserable life as intended.
Well, if you're looking for a distraction and like vampire things, I have a solution I would like to propose ::
Bʅσσԃ Tιҽʂ
Unfortunately, this solution is for sad adults, not sad children, as the story contains mature content that is otherwise not recommended for youth exposure 🔞
It's kind of quirky, a little bloody, sort of sexy sometimes—-
I borrowed Johnny Cage and Kenshi Takahashi from MK1 because I think they're neat, so I suppose that makes this an MK1 Alternate Universe fanfic. I didn't expect the project to blow up quite so huge, so... there really isn't a lot of MK reference left, but I will offer it to the community anyway~
'ᴋᴀʏ, ʙʏᴇ.
ꜰᴇᴇʟ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ 💙
"::-ɪ'ᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇᴍ-::"
✶⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⊷❍⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷✶
Life went from bad to worse the night Kenshi Takahashi stormed the Arai manor at his Taira forefather’s command. As a war dog unleashed in reckoning of a century’s-long grudge between covens, his mission was simple :: return with their princess’ head.
Even before Kenshi knew she was everything he resented, it was an easy sell. She made it so easy.
It was the cool tickle of night’s final breath before dawn overcame it that stirred Neirah in her sheets. She felt a disturbance alter the room’s ambiance with a faint sense of foreboding and immediately tossed into her bedmate’s absence.
Finally, she’d felt secure enough to rest her weary soul, falling into a peaceful meditation, only to have it interrupted by the faintest adjustment.
When she shared her bed with Johnny, he hardly ever stirred, typically worn out by their lovemaking and each whim she commanded he tended to. His heat never left her side or gaps in the sheets where she longed for his return. Then, in the safety of his arms, her heart was permitted the rest it longed for.
This man warming her bedside tonight was not so venerating.
Neirah lifted her eyes, meeting the moonlight that framed Kenshi’s silhouette on the bed’s edge. She didn’t need to peek to comprehend that his mind was back to being noisy. It never stopped, and it appeared as though it might nag him to abandon her quarters after finally bleeding her from his system.
When she reached, it was anticipating connecting with his hunched shoulders while they trembled. She wasn’t startled by his shivering, even long after the adrenaline faded and the night grew still. She would have felt more surprised if his skin lacked the haunting chill as he recounted the evening’s events, lost to the euphoric haze washing over him when his passions grew consuming.
Despite the momentary affront, his startled gasp and sudden stillness soon eased with his body’s tension. Neirah smoothed her fingers straight up his trapezius muscle and folded them over the tissue that blended with his neck. It was a comforting enough embrace that he continued to quake even after she’d absorbed his distress.
It was the purest surrender to exhibit such vulnerability without moderation. This was the trust they cultivated.
“You have regrets?” she gently prompted.
“Distant ones,” he muttered. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
Neirah closed the distance between them, smothering his reverse with her supple embrace. She wove her hands around his torso, combing the flat expanse across his chest. Then, she murmured her careful inquisition against his nape.
“I don’t want to intrude.”
Kenshi appreciated the subtlety as he swallowed his culpability. “I didn’t mean for this to get so out of hand.”
He didn’t need to turn and pat down the bedding or see the handprints smeared across the headboard. The room reeked of blood after the gory debacle. He’d spent too long touch-starved for liberation, an unshackled spectacle of raging emotions he’d locked deep inside, fearing the repercussions of indulging their appetite.
They’d rushed forth too passionately to mask, and she’d endured. Not… everyone had been so lucky.
“I’d only bitten once,” he quietly confessed. “Before all this started, I’d gone almost my whole life without attacking an innocent.”
“An impressive feat,” her tender tone filled with genuine admiration, far from the scathing tenor she’d previously used to berate him, “especially for one of primordial descent.”
But his slackened posture and downtrodden expression spoke impending volumes. He wasn’t so proud.
“She… died four days later before turning.” Kenshi’s next deep breath shuddered as he filled his chest beneath Neirah’s arms, a haunting sensation crawling beneath his skin as traces of her warmth escaped him. “I didn’t know… how to help her.”
Neirah’s heavy lashes fluttered across her disenchanted gaze with remorse. When his hand lifted, reaching absently toward his breast like his heart needed assurance, she captured it. She drew his fingers between hers, encasing his palm over his pectoral.
What he’d meant to tell her that night was that there was no one else any longer. He’d lost them before making it to her door. Taira blood had become elitist, unforgiving and not forthcoming with aid for ‘accidents’ or the like, and those ideals had forsaken the only bond Kenshi had forged.
“It was an unintentional bite?”
His attention wavered.
“I couldn’t-” Kenshi’s brow furrowed with disdain as he recalled how the inescapable sensations overcame his passion. “It was like you said. When I don’t feed-”
“Shh, you don’t have to substantiate me.” She pressed a hard kiss to his temple with a pained grimace. She knew the shamed admittance was on the tip of his tongue. You were right. I can’t escape it. This wasn’t the time nor place for I told you sos. “Tell me what you need me to hear.”
“It was too heavy,” he bit. “I couldn’t stop.”
He wriggled his touch beneath Neirah’s hands, and when her fingers fluttered to release his restless paw, he captured a couple of her digits to hold in place. “She trusted me to hold her, and I betrayed her instead.”
“Passion is intoxicating for our kind,” she reasoned. “Ecstasy surges with life energy, and we can feel it more acutely than any other creature.”
“Suchin was… the only one who knew- who accepted what I was.”
Kenshi exhaled through protracted canines that reacted to his emotional turmoil.
“I understand the voices now,” he quietly confessed. “I can hear the restless dead, the ones who left regrets behind.” He swung into his peripherals to absorb the reassurance of Neirah’s calm, azure glow. “In the end, she never came to me.”
“You sought her council regularly?”
A faint smile finally brightened Kenshi’s face with reminiscence as he lightly scoffed. “It was more like… a place of refuge,” he confessed, “but that didn’t make her any less a voice of reason.” The light in his expression didn’t last as he replayed their final moments together. “She tried to convince me not to kill you.”
Neirah withdrew her arms around him, giving him space to breathe. “So, your hesitation when you attacked me that night?”
His hand flopped limply into his lap after losing her support. “She believed there were more humans who would reach for me than turn me away… and more vampires who would take their hands than send them to slaughter.”
Behind him, Neirah slowly lifted her fingers toward her naked breast, where she carried the scars of his assault. “She sounds wise.”
Kenshi stood and turned to lock their gazes with a pleading look, lifting his hand to meet hers. He lowered his gaze toward her lips and smoothed his thumb across the blemish he’d inflicted upon her the day they’d met.
Anguish deepened the intensity of his remorseful leer. “I hate how much of her I see in you.”
“You lost her recently.” Neirah draped lethargic fingers across his wrist as he combed the scar framing the underside of her breast. His attention seemed divided, and she stole an airy peck to assure him that was okay. “You carried that defeat to my door.”
“It’s still with me.”
He closed his eyes and touched his brow to hers, reeling in the sensations of proximity, a freedom he’d never tasted. But he couldn’t relish it the way he’d always dreamt, knowing how much suffering, fear, and hate had brought them to this point.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It isn’t your fault.” He backed away, squeezing the mark he’d engrained on her spirit with unkind hands. At the same time, his tenderness apologized for the scars he’d left on her heart with unkind words. “It was the monster in me that killed her.”
“That’s why we must be who we are.” She embraced his face and lifted his attention toward her sincerity. “You can’t hide from this.”
“That’s why I’m telling you now.”
Neirah’s brow knitted with sadness as she absorbed his unguarded thoughts.
“I lost her… because I couldn’t ask for help.” His touch slowly fell from her ribs. “Don’t make my mistakes. If he can still be saved-”
“Johnny?” She practically gasped his name, astounded that Kenshi had drawn that conversation back from the shadows so soon. “It isn’t as simple-”
“Before I found you tonight, I told him.” Kenshi didn’t know what he expected when the words rushed off his tongue so fluidly that he feared they’d puddled on the sheets between them. “I told him about his divine blood.”
The news seemed to stun her, giving him time to prattle a justification. “I wanted you to hear it from me. That’s why I found you, why he was looking for you all day.”
At this point, Kenshi expected her palm to rip across his cheek or to meet her screams. Nothing unsettled him like her silence.
“I didn’t mean to. I was angry and afraid- Neirah, I never meant to hurt you. That guy is probably the closest thing I’ve ever had to a… friend.”
He shuddered and launched his pleading expression toward her with a heavy heart. “I lost Suchin because I was angry and afraid, but we can still save him. Please… Let me help you.”
The silence between them extended, and he nearly choked on the next swallow that congested his airway. “…say something.”
Finally, Neirah broke her hush. “What did you really tell him?”
He stiffened.
“You, who barely knew yourself. What could you have possibly said to enlighten him?”
“I…” Kenshi struggled to recall. “I snapped back at him about being a descendant of gods.”
She sighed and softly shook her head. “You didn’t tell him anything more than what he already knew in his heart,” she surrendered. “I’ve had my suspicions that he would figure it out for himself eventually. He’s a clever boy when he sets his mind to task.”
“You’re… not mad?”
“I’m tired,” she murmured. “Vampire bodies are eternal, so we don’t take ill like humans would. Unfortunately, our spirits are not immune to the drag of the centuries if strained. My soul… is weary.”
“Is that why your powers are weakening?”
“As someone who has suffered similar soul sickness, I’m not surprised you arrived at this conclusion.” She didn’t dignify his enlightenment with a sure response. “Even if my heart is in tatters watching my angel’s light fade, there is the matter of this war on our doorstep. I cannot look away from an evil that threatens the safety of my people.”
“They’re not all evil.”
“Of course not.”
Kenshi didn’t retaliate. He just stared back into her passionate cerulean gaze, wondering if they were talking about the same war… the same evil. He wished he could see the fire, the reflective passion that filled her tone. But, as he was, all eyes glazed over with no distinction between iris and sclera. They appeared ghastly and pale.
…lifeless even in eternity.
“We’re beyond choosing sides,” she breathed. “For my people, I walk the path of least bloodshed.”
An anguished crease rutted Kenshi’s brow as he pressed crushing lips to her throat, profoundly inhaling her truth.
“I would be delighted if you’d walk it with me,” she wheezed.
The war inside and the one encroaching over the distant horizon were not so different. The only way for a half-blooded vampire to survive beneath the Taira’s talons was to serve and obey. His benefactors did not give those with impure blood respect. They had to earn it, and his defect would betray that leniency.
The hunter would become prey—
Taira protected their own, but not for the sake of vampirekind. They would subjugate other clans for disagreeing, and they would kill. They would mercilessly slaughter if it meant defending their honour as the prevailing species. They had raised Kenshi as a weapon, but in his heart, he was a shield.
He couldn’t condone the suffering of the innocent for a chance they might reach an amicable resolution.
“You’re not beyond saving,” she whispered, goading him with gentle fingers milking his roots in beckoning. “You can have peace in this life.”
“Don’t give up on them.”
Neirah winced as his cinching grip constricted, pinching her scalp. Not only did she wilt by his command, but when he joined her on the mattress, she permitted him to lay her beneath his mounting approach.
He smoothed his second hand down her side toward her hip, sinking his thumb into the joint to bear his frustration. “Not everyone wants what he wants,” he assured her. “I have to believe that.”
Her subtle promise rang in his ears as he parted his teeth, breathing the vow against her racing pulse. “…I can save them.”
Neirah’s eyes fluttered shut as his jaw locked pensively around her neck, squeezing until the jagged implements burst through her skin. She whimpered at the initial impact.
She’d had the world handed to her, feeling caged within her lacklustre existence, which was a princess’ sorry excuse for being miserable. But Kenshi had beat the odds of survival to claw his way into an acceptable rank within his clan.
He knew hunger and desperation. He knew the pain of loss and the agony of yearning for something more for not just him but the countless others that had come before and would follow.
His blood ties would rather see him as arrogant, with an air of supremacy in each command, but that didn’t hold sway over his humanity. Given the surrender imploring Neirah’s help to save his demonic kin, he couldn’t hide behind his mortal blood this time.
Neirah could answer the plea of a commendable warrior, blood-damned or otherwise, as an advocate of indiscriminate liberation.
“I believe you,” she breathed, her glassy gaze inattentively skimming the upturned room around them. Their resonance was concord in chaos, as she’d foreseen the night they met, and the missing piece to a foothold in the war to come.
Before her thoughts could meander into distraction, Kenshi’s hand was on her jaw, tipping it toward his active devouring. Her hair clotted beneath the spill of her blood as his fingers ruffled her roots, his tongue saturated with her coppery flavour.
Withholding that deliverance from him may have been merciful, but she couldn’t fathom another way to reach this point without the taste.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
Neirah blinked her vision clear and alertly matched his sobriety as he backed away from their kiss.
“You were right,” he whispered, “and if I’d listened earlier… maybe things would have been different between us.”
She offered a charming smile and touched his bloody face. “We’re both to blame and will be responsible for what’s to come.”
After carefully propping herself beneath his possession, she met his fixed leer warmly. She captured his hand and drew his palm tight to her tender croon. “Should I consider this a binding allegiance, Hunter?”
“Yes,” he volleyed without hesitation. He flexed his fist beneath Neirah’s scrutiny, causing the tendons and veins beneath to lurch with energy. “I’m ready now.”
“Ceremony has been lost on our acts of desperation, but the exchange holds.”
She closed her eyes and sank protracted canines into his wrist deeply enough that he grunted and flinched as if he might tear away. He bore the pain with gritted teeth and an intense scowl, flexing his fingers to flood the incisions as she drank him in.
“Kenshi-”
He jolted when she opened her eyes and offered him a fond beam, sliding her family’s crest from her thumb. She lined it with his hand’s middle finger before realizing it would be too small. Instead, she graced his ring finger with its golden crest, a designation he knew three others nearby held.
He had joined their ranks for war.
“You now serve the Arai,” she whispered, gentle eyes skimming his fixed features as she rolled her thumb across the bulky crest, “and I serve you.”
“You said it yourself,” he reminded her, caressing her neck as she curled into his touch, “we’ll go together.”
He made a fist, feeling the hug of her sincerity around his finger, straining against its vow. “But for this to work,” he muttered, “I need to trust you.”
Nervous eyes crawled toward his over her tight lips, knowing beyond a doubt what came next. She should have known better than to think they would get away with a passionate evening warmed beneath a blanket of pretty promises.
“Tell me the truth,” he whispered, “about Johnny.”
Her hesitation was telling and enough to cast anxiety over each of Kenshi’s agitated nerves.
“I get a little more each time, but you’re still hiding something.” Caring fingers touched her temple, carefully stroking her hair behind her ear as his perplexed expression chased her fleeing gaze. “Share it… so it doesn’t hold you back when the time comes to decide.”
“I should have been more careful,” she gushed. “I knew he possessed divine blood from the start-”
“What. does it. mean?”
His unblinking stare pierced her with unyielding intensity until she finally shifted her eyes into her peripherals to meet his fixation. She searched his face, meeting his gaze without hesitation in a way only one other had ever dared.
“Neirah… what is he?”
“A cataclysm,” she hardly uttered with a faint coo.
One slow blink relieved the burning in Kenshi’s luminous eyes as he let her words burrow under his skin, skittering around like insects until he inclined to scrape them free.
“We were all born of the same magic.” Even Kenshi could perceive the tremor in Neirah’s lips when she spoke as bravely as her heart could muster. “The Divine, gods… They influenced the very magic thick in your warlock’s blood.”
She filled her lungs with the shuddering respire. “We, vampires, were cursed by The Fallen’s spells, an outcast god with tyrannical aims.”
“He’s gone,” Kenshi hissed, the admittance rapping on his temples with unbearable force. “You said it yourself. He-”
“Their will cannot be undone,” he hardly caught her breathing into the still night. “If that magic takes hold of his heart, I will lose him.”
The scrunch of Neirah’s face was indication enough that her spirit wept. Meanwhile, Kenshi wanted to reach down his throat and wring his heart to stop it from hammering so relentlessly against his sternum.
To think, all Kenshi knew of this wretched creature, this Fallen, currently slumbered beneath the breast of his quirky comrade.
His friend.
Johnny didn’t possess a drop of Divine blood; what he nurtured was appalling, so far from the song in Neirah’s voice each time she called for her angel. The knot inside him, growling with aggravated influence and scraping toward freedom, was a seed of The Fallen, a vengeful god that sought nothing short of humanity’s annihilation.
Kenshi had watched it consume him.
Kenshi didn’t realize he was hyperventilating until Neirah cupped his cheeks, apologetically guiding him into her salty peck. She appeared repentant and offered her condolences for sharing the burden.
“H-how-?” Kenshi drew his lips tight together and swallowed the bile that threatened to lurch up his larynx. “-how can you know?”
“You ask me that question when you suspected him long before this reveal.” Mousy paws picked at her clothing, slowly redressing her nude torso as she spoke. “He feels uncomfortable around my mother’s strong, primordial presence. Festers around powerful allies.”
She returned his wild-eyed gaze with a lethargic vacancy as she crawled from his lap. “The family shrine… and other sacred domains.”
Kenshi lurched, combating the need to heave. It was just a question, an innocent query about a woman’s heart.
“It’s been angrier than usual,” she distantly mused, “since the threat of war-”
“You’re saying it’s my fault?”
The impact of Kenshi’s incited retaliation caused Neirah to quiver, and a chill raced up her spine when he barked at her reverse. After hesitating, she slowly turned to face his insult.
“No,” she breathed. “It’s my fault. I fell in love with The Fallen’s incarnation, and I smothered him under the delusion that I could cage that seed, nurturing it in ways that, when it finally bloomed, it would be beautiful.”
He heard her sniffle as he raked his fingers through his hair and clutched his throbbing skull.
“There is power in submission,” she cautioned him. “You coveted my surrender. Now, my burden is lessened.”
“They say there’s power in knowledge, too, so why do I feel like I just got hit by a truck?”
As her pouty lower lip trembled, Kenshi lowered his gaze and gently wove his fingertips around hers with idle fascination.
“Is it… already too late?”
“Kole reports that the change in his blood yielded no sharper decline than the last.” She folded her fingers over his and clenched her grip. “With no standard, it’s hard to distinguish when the final surge will overcome him.”
“Can you see it?” He tilted his curious gaze to meet hers. “The darkness?”
Neirah shook her head, but before she could escape him, Kenshi secured his hold on her digits and kept her from fleeing. When their eyes met again, he’d stabilized his breathing, his features softer as they met her sorrows.
“What’re we going to do?”
Neirah felt the flutter of inspiration overcome her momentarily as her expression warmed with fondness. She knew he referred to the big reveal regarding Johnny’s apocalyptic origins, but she didn’t have the capacity to entertain him just then.
The twenty questions would have to continue later for this curious Taira.
“Tomorrow is another day,” she muttered. “Find me there.”
Kenshi nodded, sharply swallowing as he released her and let the reeling sensations drop into the pit of his belly. “Will he be there too?”
She didn’t answer, causing Kenshi to shake his head.
“You’ll keep it from him. Even now that he thinks he’s descended from gods?”
“We’re all born of the same magic-”
“But not the same evil!” he argued, flashing teeth as a condemning sign of fright. “You told me innocence isn’t bred, but he is innocent. And if he’s been carrying this as long as you say, he was born fighting a losing battle.”
“I appreciate your counsel,” she murmured, meditating on his passion, “but my heart is resolute.”
Kenshi threw his legs over her bedside and pushed his fingers through his hair, clawing at his scalp as a chill rushed across his perspiring skin. He’d asked, and she delivered.
“What are the chances… that… there’ll be anything left of him when it happens?”
Her dramatic pauses were starting to try Kenshi’s patience.
“Slight enough that I have sunk my fingers so deeply into the memory that his trace will linger beneath my nails for years to come.”
Kenshi felt sick and not the vampire kind like Neirah had suggested. His soul was fine, and he knew exactly where he stood on the matter. This was the good old-fashioned human kind of gonna hurl.
“That’s the real reason you tried to protect him,” he bleakly muttered. “You fell in love with his humanity. When that thing inside him takes over… he’ll be a monster just like the rest of us.”
Neirah flashed his reverse a hurt stare when she felt the impact of his bitterness pierce her heart.
“When it’s all said and done, I’ll be the bad guy.” He milled strained teeth and hissed through a rancorous grimace.
Neirah shifted against the pillowtop, nearing until the heat of their skin collided. “That wasn’t my intention-”
The instant he felt her close in, he climbed to his feet and located his clothes. “Sorry. I know monogamy is a pretty human thing.” He leered at her momentarily before redressing. “The more civilized part of me’s gonna walk that one off.”
Neirah no more than lowered her empty fingers and nodded. “…of course.”
Kenshi stopped between adorning layers, fidgety hands stalling as he scrutinized her leniency. “You’re not afraid I’ll tell him what you just told me?”
Neirah no more than overturned the sheets and tucked herself in. “No.”
Kenshi lingered longer than anticipated again, rebooting, absorbing her certainty.
“When you’re ready to trust me… you’ll realize I did the best I could.” She shuffled, fluffing her pillow slightly and hoisting the comforter toward her ear to banish the room’s haunting chill. “Because just like my angel knows me more intimately than any other, only I had a chance at saving him. My failures will not be indicative of my willingness to try.”
As Neirah snuggled into the dampness growing in the centre of her pillow, waiting to hear Kenshi abandon her to her sorrows, she thought she heard him scoff. Then, his heavy palm fell on the back of her head as he knelt by her bedside and rested his murmuring lips against her shoulder blade.
“Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the reason you feel like you’re not ready to be queen is because you’re afraid to make the wrong call?”
Neirah gasped, whirling with a look of hurt even as he met her disbelief with a stoic frown.
“Suchin knew she would die the instant my teeth broke her skin, but she didn’t push me away.” He gently returned his hand to the back of her head and drew her into the tender kiss that landed on her eyes. “She held on to me until her last breath.”
Neirah’s frantically fluttering lashes tickled his lips as she struggled to match his gaze, shivering beneath the sheets. He could tell she wasn’t used to someone being there to watch her fall apart, an intimacy she’d unintentionally confessed she hadn’t shared with another.
“She was a fighter,” he whispered fondly, picking her tousled hair from her soggy face. “So is Johnny.”
He knew she was afraid. He didn’t need the blaring confession to fill his head when he peeked at her thoughts, but it didn’t change his mind.
“I can see it, that darkness inside him. Let me be your eyes while you find your voice.” His gentle gaze wandered when her fingers crept out from beneath the bedsheets to apprehend his fingers, kissing them before she retracted them into her nest. “It will mean more if you decide for yourself.”
“But you would force my hand if I choose to hide?”
“You won’t.”
Neirah balked at his surety, and he smiled.
“Because a true queen knows that it’s her duty to protect her kingdom,” he assured her, “and in this case, saving your people means saving the man you love.”
She wasn’t brave enough to lift her eyes again, but he could sense her shame. She’d never deceived Kenshi into the delusion that she laid with him for any other reason than to scratch an itch, so he didn’t take it personally.
“Don’t make my mistakes,” he pleaded. “The woman I loved would run me through on my own blade if I let you give up like I did.”
He lifted sad eyes but didn’t think to relax them closed when her tender kiss met his mouth.
“She was lucky to have loved you,” Neirah sputtered on parting, “if only for a time. I’m certain it was beautiful.”
“I told you I had nothing left for you.”
“I understood.”
“I lied,” he muttered, gently gliding his fingers along her neck to cradle her against his fond confession. It was then that he felt the still-open lesions of his assault lingering on her unhealed skin. At any other time, she would have quickly repaired her injuries, reviving her flawless complexion.
This time, she delayed.
“Your neck,” he gasped. “You’re-”
“I’m tired,” she finished with a gentle sigh, slowly plucking his touch from the condemning reality.
Although frustrated that his vision wouldn’t deliver him the truth she would rather conceal, Kenshi retracted his touch. “Then, maybe I should go.” Reluctance made his fingertips feel heavy and intensified his slight grimace. “So you can rest.”
“Humans sleep to heal,” she calmly assured him. “Monsters sleep to forget the pain they’ve caused.”
Neirah crept forward to steadily cup his face as she returned him to her kiss. This time, Kenshi relaxed, embracing the proximity. A slight furrow knitted his brow with a longing to stay by her side, but he had to escape her potent proximity, if just for a while.
“Goodnight,” he surrendered upon parting. “I’ll find you tomorrow.”
