Page 60 of Branded By Shadow
The Butcher
Damon & Cora
The first thing they ate was my name.
One moment, it was a sound in my head, a vibration that meantme. The next, a wet, tearing noise from a thousand throats echoed in the void. The space where my name had existed became just a raw, hollow wound.
This wasn’t a place. It was pure hunger, a black, churning slurry of water and wailing things. Swarming with mindless need, they pulled at me, their claws made of bone, their teeth sharpened on the edges of forgotten memories.
“Meat!” The thought slammed into me, a certainty that was not my own.
“Life!” A mouth full of jagged regrets latched onto the ghost of my shoulder, gnawing.
The cold lived and breathed, an entity that promised an end to the agony of being. It whispered of surrender, of the peace that came with destruction. Here, it had no purpose but the certainty of the next bite. Letting go would be so easy, becoming nothing but their meal.
“Olympian blood!”
A fresh wave of fury crashed over me from the swarm as they tasted something in my essence they craved. Everything dissolved. The memory of a woman’s face, the feeling of my own power, the sound of a child’s first word… All of it was shredded and consumed, leaving only ragged holes behind.
Cora.
The name burned as the only thing left, a single, defiant point of warmth in the annihilating cold. I clung to it as the current of the damned tried to drag me under. They sensed it, that last scrap of love, and descended on it with renewed violence.
Just as the final piece of me began to fray, a hand appeared through the churning chaos. Solid. Warm. I knew that hand. I knew who it belonged to. It had helped me to my feet when I'd tumbled to the floor as a toddler. It had shown me how to fight, how to wield the power of my bloodline.
Father.
His presence changed everything. The shrieking things recoiled from his touch, hissing like water on a forge. My own hand, a tattered memory of flesh and bone, rose from the black water. I didn’t think. I didn’t hope. I just reached.
And grabbed.
The moment my fingers touched his, time broke. The damned hung suspended in the black water. Then, a wave of force flashed outward. The shades burst, a shower of black ichor and splintered bone that dissolved like mist.
The hand hauled me out of the river with no more effort than a man brushing dust from his sleeve.
I collapsed onto a shore of black sand littered with shards of razor-sharp obsidian, gasping for a breath that didn’t exist here. For a moment, nothing felt real. Nothing except the agonizing return of sensation to limbs that should have vanished.
Then, the hollow space in my mind began to fill.Damon.The name slotted back into place, a painful, perfect fit.
It was who I’d been. Who I still was, if I could manage it.
Fragments of a dead past slowly came together, cracking against each other, threatening to shatter me all over again. But amidst the chaos, a memory came through, loud and crisp. “Damon, please…”
It was her. Cora. I could see her so clearly now, the way she’d been that day, in the Omega suite. She’d reached for me with shaking hands, her face flushed, slick running down her thighs. I’d kissed her and claimed her. And then, I had hurt her. So much that I’d needed Cassandra to help me.
“Damon, you were right to call me.” On Cassandra’s lips, my name held the weight of friendship and trust. She stood in the conservatory, watching a pale Cora in concern. She glowed with the fire of House Hestia. Her power had kept Cora safe from the darkness I exuded. From my bond with her.
“The bond is strong, Damon. That’s what worries me.” Helena’s warning echoed in my head, dripping with false, maternal pity. I’d trusted her and placed my mate’s life in her hands... and she had ripped us to pieces.
I opened my eyes, still shaking from the onslaught of memories.
“Father,” I choked out, pushing myself up on trembling arms. “It was Helena. She severed the bond. But why would she—?”
I looked up, ready to see his familiar, spectral face.
But the figure standing over me wasn’t my father. His sheer presence seemed to drink the fading light of the shore. He was solid flesh and primordial shadow, and the power he radiated weighed down on my very soul.
My blood knew him. My soul knew him. This was the source.
