Pairing: Blake x Original Character
Rating: M (17+)
Tags: sexual tension, trauma, trauma bonds, childhood abuse mentions, implied medical torture (others), Night Prince Spoilers
Summary: Once prisoners of the same cruel experiments that scarred both their bodies and souls, Blake and Eleanor turn those bonds into the darkest kind of devotion.
Word Count: 2.2k+
ao3 Link | Chapter Two
A/N: So I have some serious brain rot for a certain character from a book trilogy called The Wolf King by Lauren Palphreyman and I'm kind of in love with Blake. I decided to make a quick OC and do a duo chapter of their universe. We will return to our regularly scheduled program soon (I'm almost finished with a few fics). Sorry this isn't Sylus or JJK babes. I hope if you read it, you can enjoy it anyway.
In the shadowed heart of the Southlands, where ancient castles whispered secrets of power and pain, Eleanor of Highmoor ruled as Duchess—a title inherited from a lineage steeped in both nobility and nightmare. As a young woman, she embodied the grace of a highborn lady: warm and congenial on the surface, her sky-blue eyes and soft white curls framing a face that could command a ballroom or vanish into its crowds with equal ease. Yet beneath that polished veneer lay a mind as sharp as a scalpel and as greedy as a lover's grasp. Her father, the infamous Maester of Healing, had twisted his pursuit of knowledge into cruelty, experimenting on innocents in hidden dungeons to unlock the mysteries of their affliction to defeat them in the wicked war waging between werewolves and humans. Eleanor herself had been his unwitting subject when she was a child as a half-wolf herself, her body marked by faint scars that mapped his fatherly “love” across her skin. Those same prison cells, once her nightmarish playground, had been the forge of her unbreakable bond with Blake.
Now, years later, Eleanor had reclaimed her father's legacy, perverting it into justice underneath the very nose of the King both she and Blake despised. She dissected only the wolves Blake delivered, all of them predators who deserved her blade, and recorded her findings that armed him against their enemies. Their partnership was a turbulent dance to the discordant tunes of both trauma and desire, their melody laced with an undeniable chemistry that ignited only in stolen moments they both knew couldn’t last. He brought her monsters to unmake and she gave him truths to wield in turn. And in the quiet hours, when shadows gathered thick in the corners and pulses thrummed hot beneath their skin, they unraveled each other. Blake often brought her gifts on nights like tonight where moonlight sliced brightly through the narrow lancet windows of the reclaimed laboratory.
Tonight was one such night as Eleanor bent over her ledger, quill in hand, using the torch light and moon to guide her through her dissertation. The air smelled of antiseptic herbs, old stone, and the faint metallic tang of instruments that were laid out in perfect rows on sterile tables throughout the spacious room. She was sitting at her workbench, barefoot as always, the hem of her soft ivory gown brushing her ankles. Her white curls were loosely braided over one shoulder tonight, a few rebellious strands framing her face as she bent over the page with undue scrutiny. She was transcribing notes from the last specimen Blake had delivered and her precise, elegant handwriting belied the dark subject matter that lay within.
She didn’t startle when the shadows in the far corner near the door seemed to shimmer, parting like theater curtains to reveal him.
Blake stepped into the light as though the darkness itself had birthed him, but she knew his silent grace was born out of the same necessity as hers had been. He was still tall, lean, and impossibly controlled. His black shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms marked with faint silver scars. Many were from her father’s blades, but some were from battles he wouldn’t trouble her with despite her burning curiosity. Amber eyes fixed on her immediately, unreadable and hungry all at once.
“You’re early,” Eleanor said without looking up, dipping her quill and continuing her line. Her voice was warm, lightly teasing. It was the perfect mask of a gracious duchess. “I haven’t even finished cataloguing your last gift.”
Blake’s mouth curved, just barely. He moved closer, silent, until he stood directly behind her. He was close enough that she could feel the hot press of his natural body heat brushing the bare skin of her arms.
“I don’t like waiting,” he murmured, his voice low and smooth. “And I like it even less when you make me.”
Eleanor paused her writing, letting the quill rest against the ink pot. She turned her head just enough to glance at him sideways, her eyes bright with challenge. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t deliver such…fascinating specimens. They keep me rather occupied.”
His gaze dropped deliberately to the open page to read her neat descriptions of nerve response, pain thresholds, healing rates before flicking back to her face. “You enjoy it too much.”
“I enjoy being thorough,” she corrected softly. “And I enjoy knowing every piece of information I pull from them is another piece I give to you.”
Blake leaned in, one hand settling on the bench beside her hip, caging her in without touching her. Yet. The other lifted, fingers ghosting just above the curve of her neck, tracing the air an inch from her skin as though her warmth drew him in like a magnet. It was obvious he wanted to play a game, and Eleanor was not above indulging the man.
“You give me more than information, little duchess.”
Her breath hitched at the nickname, and the implication of his words. The noise was barely audible, a softer sound than any human would hear, but he heard it. He always heard it.
Eleanor turned fully now, leaning back against the bench so she could look up at him. Their height difference forced her chin to tilt, exposing the pale column of her throat. She didn’t bother hiding the way her pulse fluttered there. She knew Blake could hear the sound of her heart fluttering desperately beneath her skin anyway.
“And what exactly do I give you, Blake?” she asked, her voice edged with wariness and warning. For as much as she cared for Blake, trusting him implicitly was another matter entirely. “Besides meticulously documented ways to destroy your enemies, of course.”
His eyes darkened. Shadows curled lazily from his fingertips in the dim lamp light, dancing along her braid before his fingertips followed in their wake. Eleanor stiffened at the contact, but her gaze was unwavering as she waited for him to choose what answer he desired to present to her.
“You give me the only thing that ever made sense down here,” he said quietly, his voice stripped of its usual lethal silk, raw and almost solemn in the flickering torchlight. “You looked at the monster in chains and didn’t flinch. You stayed even after you learned exactly what your father was doing to me. Even after you saw the blood on my hands and the shadows in my eyes when I came to you with the confession of my sins.”
The words hung between them like a confession he’d never meant to voice aloud.
For a fleeting heartbeat, her carefully crafted mask cracked and Eleanor look startled. Frost flecked eyes glistening with something unguarded and aching bored into his, the soft curve of her mouth trembling before she steadied it. In that instant, the duchess vanished, leaving only the girl who had once wandered those dungeons barefoot; helplessly drawn to the caged wolf no one else dared approach.
Then the mask slid seamlessly back into place, warm and composed, but her voice when it came was quieter than usual, threaded with a quiet ferocity and tenderness both.
“I lingered because I knew what it was to be the experiment,” she said, her voice sounding lighter than the weight that had settled into her soul at the memory. “And because even then…I saw you were not the monster anymore than I. He was.” Her father. Their tormentor, a shared nightmare neither of them could ever truly escape from. Every time they looked in the mirror or at each other, those scars were a constant, bleak reminder of the many sins staining this wretched kingdom.
Blake’s jaw tightened, the sharp line of it casting a deeper shadow across his throat in the flickering torchlight. A low, almost imperceptible tremor ran through him; she felt it in the air before she saw it. He leaned in with agonizing slowness, every inch deliberate, until his lips hovered a breath away from hers; close enough that the cool brush of his exhale ghosted across her mouth. His body's fierce warmth battled the subtle chill that lingered on his skin from the night outside, coiling around her, teasing sensitive flesh beneath the whisper-thin silk of her gown. Amber eyes burned into hers, dark and dilated, heavy with hunger and something far more dangerous: the raw, aching want he usually buried beneath layers of control. His scent flooded her senses, making her lips part on a silent inhale. He lingered there, daring her to close the distance, daring himself not to devour her whole.
“Careful, Eleanor,” he warned, his voice rough and low. “Keep talking like that and I’ll start believing you might actually care.”
She smiled. It was slow and deliberate, the kind of smile that started soft and warm at the center but curled at the edges with unmistakable greed, like a cat finally allowed to toy with the mouse it had been eyeing for hours. Her blue eyes darkened a shade, her wolf shifting behind her gaze. She lowered her lashes just enough to veil the hunger flashing there as the full weight of his words settled between them. She realized, in that heartbeat, exactly what game he was inviting her to play. It was the one where restraint frayed, where sweat slicked bodies and silk tangled together, where neither of them pretended to be civilized anymore. A place where emotions became terribly messy and altogether just as tangled as their limbs.
“Who says I don’t?” she murmured. Her own voice was low and husky now, laced with a challenge that dared him to prove her wrong or to prove her devastatingly right.
She let the silence stretch just long enough for him to feel it. Then she tilted her head. White curls brushed her bare shoulder as she leaned in a fraction closer, close enough that her next breath ghosted across his jaw, knowing that Blake could see the faint flush rising along her throat and betraying how much she wanted the answer to be him and his surrender.
The air between them crackled with sudden tension that had nothing to do with their shared past. One of his hands dared to touch her this time, a single finger sliding along the flush of her collarbone to leave a trail of fire behind. It dipped just beneath the neckline of her gown to trace the edge of a hidden scar, tugging the fabric aside with a gentle pull. Eleanor shivered at the contact, but didn’t pull away.
“You’re playing a game you know you never win,” he growled, amber flashing in his eyes as his wolf bubbled beneath the surface. “You tempt the darkness in me, Eleanor.”
“Is that supposed to frighten me?” she whispered back, rising on her toes until her lips hovered near his ear. “I’ve never been afraid of the dark.”
Blake’s control snapped, his fingers curling around her waist and pulling her flush against him. She felt the hard evidence of what her words did to him, and a soft, pleased sound escaped her throat. He groaned quietly, forehead dropping to hers.
“You’re going to ruin me one day,” he rasped, his hand flexing against the curve of her waist in warning.
Eleanor’s hands slid up his chest, nails dragging lightly over the silk fabric of his black shirt. “Good,” she breathed, arousal coating her words. “I plan to be very thorough about it when that day comes.”
They stayed like that, bodies pressed flush against one another, their breaths mingling in the scant space between their lips. They remained suspended in that single, aching moment, neither of them daring to move; let alone speak. The tension between them had coiled so tight it bordered on a pain so sweet it was a nearly unbearable hurt that thrummed in every shared heartbeat.
His hand wrapped loosely around her wrist, not to restrain her, but to hold. He guided her palm slowly upward and pressed it flat against the frantic thump of his heart beneath warm skin and taut muscle. The gesture was wordless and raw, another silent confession laid bare in the wild rhythm beneath her fingers.
Then, with visible effort, Blake stepped back. The darkness seemed to retreat with him and his control snapped back into place like armor.
“Not tonight,” he said, voice strained like he wanted to do anything but play the detestable role of gentleman. “You have work to finish. And I have another gift to fetch for you.”
Eleanor let her hands fall away slowly, her lips curving into a knowing smile despite the telltale flush of arousal on her cheeks. “Running away, Night Prince?”
“A strategic retreat,” he corrected, his gaze searing into hers. The amber of his wolf was still reflected in his eyes and belying the frayed threads of his control, the color flickering almost ominously against the candlelight. “So that next time, when I don’t stop, you'll have no one to blame but yourself.”
She watched him step back into the darkness, watching as the shadows swallowed him whole until only his voice lingered in the hallway; a soft silken whisper.
“Dream of me, Eleanor.”
The torch flames flickered, but her gaze never left the doorway until she could no longer hear the whisper of his footsteps. Eleanor touched her lips, still tingling from the ghost of his kiss, and turned back to her ledger with a soft, satisfied laugh.
Human with electric powers who gets kidnapped by a sadistic vampire, and falls in love with a vampire prince. And said vampire prince rips off a part of a guy who touched his human (though was a hand and not head, as I've heard, and it happens later on)
The shocker is that I found this book at a library sale not very long before I found Redacted Audio through Vincent and Lovely. At least I think? My sense of time is shit. All I know is it happened sometime between June and August. And I found Vincent at...the end of September?
It's called Once Burned by Jeaniene Frost, and I think it's safe to assume that even if the dude turns out to be your normal romance dude (don't judge a book by its cover and all that, but you start sensing a pattern after reading a lot of shirtless man books) and is just straight up Vlad Tepes, and there's official looks for him on the cover and in the book, my brain is still probably gonna fill his image as Vincent because how common is zappy x chompy? I can't help it, my brain does stuff like that (Milo looking like grown up genderswapped Clawdeen, Sam sorta looking like Abel the Table, etc). I actually might use the art in the books as art reference for Lovely and Vincent at some point. One of them has them surrounded by a lightning storm.
Y'all, I just had to come on here and say that if you are playing The Cursed Heart VIP, OMG, today's chapter😰🥺😭 jlajdkjaklakjdlsjsksjak I am about in tears!!!!
If you are playing regular... keep on going, this story has me obsessed🤪
Without giving too much away, the story only gets BETTER, I understand Kieran so much better... and I love his character so much. There's passion, uncertainty, danger, betrayal.... It is killing me to have to wait a week to see what happens...
If you're not playing, give it a shot, the PB injected "bdsm" bullshit can be avoided if you avoid the fire icons and the story is so worth moving past those parts.
“You’ll never get rid of me, either… No matter which side of the grave we’re on. I’ll haunt you, chase you all around eternity, whatever it takes, but it’s you and me until the stars burn out.”
Been quiet for a while, but I'm back with good news! SHADES OF WICKED, the first Night Rebel novel, is FREE for Amazon Prime members (must be logged into Amazon Prime for this.) Take Ian home for free! He's pierced and ready to go! Lol. #Ad https://amzn.to/2Si0JOC
