Page 86 of Marked By Feral Monsters
I look away in shame. "Just make it quick," I mutter.
It's so strange to have a voice. To hear it with my own ears; it's been decades. It sounds all wrong. Unused. Different. I am different. Still, it's a thrill. And I have Nix to thank for that.
I hate that. But I like that he's strong enough to do such things. To bring me back from a shadowy existence, even temporarily. A last hurrah.
He's strong enough to protect Dina. That's what matters.
"Make what quick, exactly?" he muses.
The urge to cry stings my eyes while I resist. In the world I grew up in, men didn't cry. I'm glad that world is gone. It bred people like Greta. Like me, who would do such awful things to the people we love, just so we could hold on to them, no matter the cost.
Dina deserves better. I brace myself and look up. "I'm ready."
Nix smirks. It makes me want to rage. I can't help it, I struggle in my restraints. It was hard enough to watch him fuck my girlfriend. Watching her come is the highlight of my existence, but I was jealous. I wanted to be there with her, with them, the way Dina and I used to be.
Before I got so afraid that she'd leave me.
Nix chuckles, then leans down and, to my surprise, undoes the ties around my legs and ankles.
"What is this?" I ask.
Dina stopped crying. She sits at the edge of the bed watching us. I don't look away from her when I ask Nix, "Please just make it quick. I don't want her to suffer. And I can't… I can't take anymore suffering, either."
Nix moves, blocking my view of Dina, forcing me to meet his gaze. It's fiery. His eyes literally glow. My opposite, in every way. He leans down close. Wraps his hands around my head. And just like before, he feeds me his magic. It's a stream of electricity, and it hums through me. Veins and nerves, sensations I haven't felt in so long. They zap and come alive.
Alive.
"What is this?" I whisper. Impossibly, I feel a tear trail down my cheek. Dina gasps and hops off the bed, but Nix lets go to hold her back before she can reach me.
It's been so long since I couldfeellike this.
I could feel things before. I could feel Dina, the ground beneath me, the solidity of her bed. Lots of things. But there was a constant numbness, too.
"I'm willing to forgive you, little wraith. But on one condition."
I look up, my eyes darting between them. Dina, holding in a sob. Her mouth agape. I look down at my legs, since my arms are still tied behind my back. I'm still a ghost. But not a ghost.
Shimmering, midnight void with a deep purple luminescence. But with more definition. I can almost make out the hair on my legs. I can see the outline of my cock resting between them. Before, I was only aware of these things. I knew I had a form, because that was what I had before I died. I was the shape of a human man. It always stayed with me.
This is different.
"Is this… how is this possible? Nix, can you… can you make him whole again? Oh my god," Dina sobs. "I can see his face. Oh, Eric. Eric, honey, you're—" she sucks in a shuttering breath. "You're so handsome! And I can see your smile."
Instinctively, I try to smile for her. It feels weird. The strain of my lips lifting.
"I can make him whole again. I can control his death. I can control yours too, Dina, should you perish. But if I bring him back, he will belong to me."
He gives me a heavy look. I don't know what that means—to belong to a man like Nix. As if he can read the question on my face, he laughs, and adds, "You will obey me. I don't want your cock, little wraith. At least, not at the moment. And I'm willing to share Dina—"
Dina lets out a strangled sound of outrage. It makes me laugh. God, it feels good to laugh.
"Excuse me, I'm not some toy to be passed around—"
"But you belong to me," he says with finality, cutting her off. And I don't know if he put magic behind those words, but I feel them, deep inside me. A sense of belonging, a kinship.
My body vibrates with the possibilities. I'd do anything to be with Dina. But to leave this existence, to not have to hover between two worlds any longer, not quite alive but not wholly dead and gone, either?
"Anything," I rasp earnestly. "I'll do anything."
