Chapter 8: Safe and Sound
A deep, pervasive ache was the first thing to register. It bloomed across his shoulders, down the length of his spine, a constellation of sharp twinges and satisfyingly deep throbs in his thighs and backside. JT blinked awake, the rough-hewn ceiling of the cabin coming into focus. He was naked, buried under heavy furs that smelled of musk and cold earth.
Memory returned not in a flood, but in a series of brutal, vivid snapshots.
The ambush. The wet crunch of Ben’s disappearance. Tara’s scream cut short. The towering shadow with eyes of fire. The paralyzing fear. Then… the crushing weight, the searing invasion, the filthy, degrading words hissed against his skin as he was used, bent over the same floor he’d collapsed onto. He’d been a thing last night. A receptacle for ancient rage and savage need. He’d sobbed, he’d pleaded, and then… he’d yielded. Something in the sheer, terrifying totality of it had broken a seal inside him.
And the soreness now was a testament. He felt… emptied. And strangely, profoundly alive.
He sat up sharply, the furs pooling at his waist. The main room of the cabin was dim, lit by the glow of the hearth. And there, moving with a surprising, quiet grace before the fire, was the demon.
Kane.
He wasn’t the roaring beast of last night. The stag-skull seemed less a helmet of terror and more a part of him, etched and ancient. His gray-skinned back, corded with muscle, was to JT as he tended to a black iron skillet. The scent of sizzling fat and wild herbs cut through the cabin’s primal odor.
“The dead rise,” Kane’s voice rumbled, not turning around. It was still that stones-grinding tone, but softer. “You should eat. You’ll need your strength back after the ravishing you took.”
JT’s mouth was dry. He found his voice, rough with disuse. “Yeah. Okay.”
He swung his legs over, wincing as muscles protested. A clean pair of rough-spun pants lay folded on a stool. He pulled them on, the fabric soft against his sensitive skin, and shuffled to the rough-hewn table. Kane placed the skillet before him: seared venison, wild onions, some unfamiliar tubers. It looked simple. It smelled divine.
JT ate greedily, the food grounding him. Kane sat across from him, an impossible bulk on the sturdy bench, watching. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t the threatening quiet of the forest. It was heavy, waiting.
“Last night,” Kane began, the words emerging slowly, as if unused to their shape. “I… owe you an apology.”
JT froze, a piece of meat halfway to his mouth.
“I never intended… that,” Kane continued, his clawed hands resting on the table. “The roughness. The words. Calling you a pathetic little cunt, a bloodline whore.” He spat the phrases as if they were poison. “I let centuries of… feeling. Fester. Your family’s scent on you, it ignited something old and bitter. A need to defile what they’d sent. I used you to scourge a ghost. It was a cruelty. And it was beneath me.”
JT stared. The demon’s eyes, those banked coals, held a genuine, bewildered distress. “I will never treat you like that again,” Kane stated, the promise final as a tomb seal.
JT set his fork down. He looked at his own hands, then back at the creature who had torn his world apart. The truth, unsettling and hot, rose in his throat. “I didn’t hate it.”
Kane went perfectly still. The fire crackled.
“What?”
“The… the intensity of it,” JT said, the words coming faster now. “It was terrifying. It hurt. But it was… real. No pretending. No measuring up. Just… force. I’ve never felt anything that real before.” He felt his face flush, but he held Kane’s gaze. “I didn’t hate the names. And the rest… I didn’t hate it either.”
A low, astonished sound escaped Kane. It wasn’t a growl. It was something else entirely. He leaned back, the bench creaking in protest. “You are a strange little mortal.”
They ate in a new, charged silence. After, they cleaned the plates with melted snow from a bucket. The domesticity of it was absurd. Universe-shattering.
“Why were you trying so hard to prove things to them?” Kane asked later, as they sat by the fire. The question was casual, but it pierced JT’s core.
He told him. About Marcus. The stern, unbeatable statue of a father. The disappointed glances. The lectures about patience, about earning your place. The seething frustration of knowing he’d never be viewed as strong, as capable, unless he did something drastic. “I’m always coming up short,” JT finished, the old bitterness tasting like ash now. “Everything I do is just… not enough.”
Kane nodded slowly, as if recognizing the shape of the story. “I ruled lands,” he said, his voice taking on a distant, echoing quality. “Mountains shook when I walked. Armies broke against my will. I was a god of ruin. And for that… they gave me tributes. Kingdoms would send their most beautiful, their most brave, chained and perfumed, hoping to sate me for a season.” A faint, dark amusement tinged his words. “They would beg to be taken by the beast. To be fucked into oblivion by a god. It was a transaction. Power worshipping power.”
“Why did you stop?” JT asked, mesmerized.
“I grew weary of the taste,” Kane said simply. “The fear was the same. The submission was the same. The screams all blurred together. I desired… a different note. Something not offered out of terror or calculation.” He gestured around the cramped cabin. “So I vanished. I retreated. And as I grew quiet, a particular bloodline of hunters grew bold. They tracked the fading echo of my glory. Your bloodline. They never found this place. But the grudge… remained. Festered. When I caught your scent in my woods, all that old resentment… ignited. I saw your father’s judgment in your eyes before you even knew my name.”
The confession hung between them, weaving their histories into a single, tangled thread. The fire warmed JT’s front. The ache in his body was a dull, pleasant echo.
“You are free to go, Jeremiah Thompson,” Kane said, using his full name, the statement solemn. “The wolves are gone from the ridge. The path to the edge of my territory is clear. I will not hinder you.”
Go back. Back to the outpost. To Tara’s haunted eyes. To his father’s grim, terrified fury. To the lectures, the condescension, the life of forever trying to measure up to a legacy that now seemed small and shrill.
JT looked at the demon. At the arch of the powerful neck, the intelligent, burning eyes, the hands that could shred stone but had just cooked him a meal and apologized.
“The wounds,” JT heard himself say. “From the wolves. They’re still… stiff. Travel would be hard.”
Kane watched him, unblinking. “Then stay until you are healed. You have my word. I will not force myself upon you. What happened last night will not be repeated.”
JT stood up. The firelight played over his bare chest, over the fading scratches. He took a step toward Kane, who remained seated, a monument of still power.
“You might not have to,” JT said, his voice barely above a whisper.
He closed the distance. He placed a hand on Kane’s chest. The skin was like warm granite. He felt the massive heart kick against his palm. He leaned in, his lips finding the harsh plane of the demon’s jaw, just below the bone of the skull.
A shudder went through Kane, a tectonic plate shifting. A clawed hand came up, not to grab, but to cradle the back of JT’s head, the touch impossibly gentle. “Little hunter,” Kane murmured, the grind now a purr. “What are you doing?”
“Something real,” JT breathed, and kissed him.
It was not like before. There was no violence, only a startling, hungry tenderness. Kane’s mouth was surprisingly soft, his tongue tracing JT’s lips before delving inside. The taste was of smoke and wildness. JT moaned into it, his body singing with the memory of pain transformed into a different kind of ache.