Page 11 of Branded By Shadow
My father’s body blazed with vicious energy, the corruption more evident than ever. “Son, it’s not so simple. Things are changing. This girl... she is the catalyst. The silent war between the Houses is about to turn, and she is at the center of it.”
His right side had merged completely with the realm, no longer even attempting to maintain a human shape. The vortex twisted around him, his form both more solid and more corrupted at its core. He was fighting to hold himself together just to deliver this warning.
“Then I will protect her,” I swore, my own power rising to meet the strain.
“Protecting her is not enough!” he roared, and the vortex expanded violently. The realm latched onto me, furious shadows wrapping around my arm up to the shoulder. “You need to claim her. It has to be soon. She is not yours yet, Damon, but shemustbe!”
The connection between us stuttered, his figure wavering as the realm fought to reclaim him. The boundary thinned, and I felt my own consciousness begin to slip, the cold seeping into my thoughts.
“Father—” I started, trying to anchor him, trying to ask more.
But it was too late. He was gone, consumed by the realm that kept him captive.
The void’s power still clung to me, its bestial grip trying to drag me forward. The pull became overwhelming, but I refused to let anyone and anything defeat me. Not House Hades, and definitely not my own legacy.
I wrenched myself backward, fighting the shades’ grip, my father’s warning still loud and vicious in my ears. My muscles burned with the effort, but with a final surge of strength, I tore myself free. I stumbled backward, collapsing against the chamber wall.
The shadows writhed, reaching for me one last time before retreating into the chasm they’d come from.
I pressed a hand to the bleeding cut on my cheek, the sharp pain a welcome anchor to reality. My skin felt frozen, my legs unsteady. The chamber pulsed around me, ominous shapes shifting across the walls in patterns that hurt to look at.
I backed away from the center where the boundary was thinnest, each step making it easier to breathe. But I couldn’t escape his final warning, echoing in the frozen silence of my mind.
She is not yours yet, Damon, but she must be.
5
Olympian Blood
Cora
The Omega Suite had become my own personal hell.
After Damon left, the heat hit me with an intensity that almost made our earlier confrontation feel like a distant dream. The room spun around me, the colors too bright and lights too harsh.
A fever raged through me, a fire with no fuel that consumed me from the inside out. Every inch of my skin burned with agonizing sensitivity.
“This isn’t possible,” I gasped, clawing at the silk nightgown that had transformed from luxury to torture. “The formula shouldn’t fail this completely.”
Every brush of silk sent shocks of pain and pleasure racing through me, an agonizing feedback loop I couldn’t escape. My body wasn’t my own anymore. It belonged to the heat, to biology, to everything I’d spent years fighting.
The air temperature seemed to fluctuate wildly. One moment, it was suffocatingly hot, the next freezing cold. I took a breath, and my teeth chattered in my skull. I took another and gasped, my lungs burning as if I’d inhaled steam.
Curling onto my side on the floor, I pressed my face against the cool, unyielding marble. My scent invaded my nostrils. It had changed, twisted into something sweeter, headier, almost cloying. Pouring from my pores, it marked me as prey for the Alpha who’d already told me exactly what he planned to do.
My fingers trembled as I struggled to push myself up. A sharp cramp started low in my belly, twisting my insides into knots. My body knew what it wanted, no matter how much my mind screamed in protest. It demanded an Alpha, and not just any Alpha.
My very cells, the building blocks of my being, were crying out for him. I tried to resist the primal need coiling in my gut, but my every frantic heartbeat seemed to whisper his name.Damon.
Some primitive instinct, stronger and older than rational thought, drove me to move. I crawled across the stone toward the scattered bedding, my elbows and knees scraping raw against the cold surface.
An ancient, humiliating compulsion pushed me to gather the pillows and blankets, to arrange them in a circle. To build a nest. “Stop it,” I hissed at myself, my voice cracking. My hands felt like they belonged to someone else as they reached for a silken pillow. “This isn’t you.”
Morning light streamed through the false windows. The artificial glow mimicked natural sunshine, but the brightness reflected off the white surfaces like needles. I squinted against the glare, tears forming at the corners from both pain and humiliation.
My hands shook violently as I positioned the first pillow. A deep biological need demanded I create a safe space for what Damon had promised would happen. The silk sheets slipped through my fevered fingers like water, escaping my grasp no matter how hard I strained. Scraps of my destroyed nightgown littered the ground, evidence of my complete loss of control.
“No, no, no. This can’t be happening,” I sobbed. “I’m Dr. Cora Ellis. I have three degrees. I published in Nature. I’m not... this.”
