Page 27 of Can't Bite This Feeling
Fuit numquam tuum ut.
She was never yours to keep.
I drop to my knees, breath stolen from my lungs.
The truth settles in like ash on my tongue.
Lucifer didn’t just allow Cassian to take her.
He made meforget her. No, I did that all on my own.
Then I hear her scream…
Chapter 7
Drusilla
I’m in one of the manor’s hidden rooms, tucked behind a door only visible in certain light, when I hear a crash from downstairs.
It echoes like a war drum through the walls of this place Rapha built for me, and for a heartbeat, I don’t move.
This room has become my sanctuary since he left—a small, golden-lit nook lined with puzzle boxes, cracked leather-bound books, and a velvet chaise I now consider mine. I’ve spent entire afternoons here, coaxing a thousand fractured pieces into something whole, while the silence stretched too long between heartbeats.
The last few weeks have been a blur of ache and waiting. But not complete isolation.
When it all became too heavy, when I couldn’t stop seeing the monster Rapha was becoming or dreaming of my father’s cold voice, I told someone. ToldAlice,who didn’t blink. ToldGordy, who offered tea stronger than sin and a comforting silence that felt like safety. I even confessed toVerityandGideon, their concern quiet but real. Verity wanted to curse Lucifer herself.
She also made me come to her baby shower.
At first, I said no. The idea of smiling through cake and ribbon games while my insides were knotted with grief seemed impossible. But Verity—glowing and fiercely kind—handed me a handwritten invitation sealed with gold wax and said, “I want you there, Drusilla. You’re one of us now.”
And so I went.
There were enchanted cupcakes and spellbound onesies and far too many stories about gorgon pregnancies that made me nearly faint. But there was also laughter. Real laughter. The kind that bubbled up unexpectedly and left my cheeks aching.
Somehow, their friendship has taken root in the spaces Rapha has left behind. And I’ve clung to it gratefully, fiercely. But even now, even with their comfort, my chest still aches with the not-knowing.
“Rapha?” I call, hope ringing in my voice as I hear movement again.
No answer.
I rise from the floor, brushing puzzle dust from my lap, my heart beating harder now. “Rapha?” I say again, voice sharper.
He’s back. He has to be.
I step into the hall, the manor stretching around me in shadowed silence, and peer down the staircase.
That’s when I see him.
The figure climbing the stairs is a tall, wrapped in ancient armor stitched together with magic and rot. It’s not Rapha.
My heart stutters.
My blood goes cold.
It’shim.
He moves like a phantom wrapped in a creeping black mist that coils around his decaying form. His skin is gray and cracked like old marble. And his eyes—oh, Gods—are the eyes I’ve tried to forget.
