Chapter 2: The Demon's Claim
The silence after the screams was a living thing, thick and buzzing in Megumi’s ears. The copper-sweet smell of blood coated the inside of her nose, a taste she knew she’d never forget. Sukuna studied her for another long moment, his four eyes cataloging every tremor, every rapid breath that lifted her chest under the ruined white silk.
Then, without a word, he moved. His lower arms slid beneath her knees and back, his upper hands framing her shoulders as he lifted her from the ash-strewn floor. He cradled her against his chest as easily as someone picking up a fallen bird. He was furnace-hot, the heat of him seeping through her thin robe, a shocking contrast to the temple’s chill. He turned, stepping over Naoya’s headless body with a disinterest that was more terrifying than any deliberate cruelty.
He carried her the short distance to the heavy stone altar at the head of the chamber. It was slick with old wax and newer, darker stains.He laid her back against the cold marble. The shock of the temperature on her skin made her gasp.
“Cold,” she murmured, the word escaping before she could stop it.One of his upper hands, the one not pinning her shoulder, paused. He looked from her face to the stone, then back.A slow, considering blink. Then he shrugged, a strangely human gesture. “You’ll warm up.”
With a deliberate, almost ceremonial slowness, he raised his other upper hand.A single, black-nailed claw extended from his index finger. It gleamed in the candlelight.He brought it to the silk binding her wrists. The material parted with a soft sigh, falling away.Her hands were free. They flopped to the cold stone at her sides, numb and tingling.She stared at them, not quite believing it.
“See?” Sukuna’s voice was a low rumble, close to her ear. His breath stirred her hair.“No more cages. No more pathetic men telling you what your body is for.” One of his lower hands smoothed the robe over her thigh, the touch possessive but not yet violent. “It only has one purpose now. Me.”
The mouth on his stomach twisted into a grin, its voice a wet, guttural echo of his own.“Let me taste your fear. And your desire.They’re the same thing, right now. I can smell it on you.”
Megumi’s mind was a fractured pane of glass. One part was screaming, a high-pitched feedback loop of pure terror.Another part, colder and sharper, was observing.He’d killed them all. The men who’d dictated every moment of her life, who’d debated her “optimal breeding age” over supper, who’d prepared her for this moment as if she were a lab specimen. They were gone.Eaten. And this monster, this ancient, hungry thing, was the only being left in her world.He had marked her womb.He said she was his.
His upper hands pressed down on her shoulders, not with crushing force, but with an immovable certainty. She was not going anywhere. His lower hands gathered the hem of her robe, pushing the white fabric up her legs.The cold air hit her bare skin, raising goosebumps. She squeezed her eyes shut.“Don’t,” he purred.“Open them.Watch. This is yours, too.”
His massive form shifted between her thighs, spreading them wider. The scale of him was incomprehensible.Then she felt it—a touch, but not like hands. Something warm and oddly soft traced a line up her inner thigh.Her eyes flew open.He had lowered his head. His tongue, forked and longer than should be possible, flicked out again, a vivid pink against his almost-human skin.It was obscenely careful. It parted her, tasting the skin there, then delved deeper with a slow, exploratory drag.
A bolt of sensation, electric and shameful, shot through her.She cried out, a sharp, truncated sound.It wasn’t pain. It was something else, something her carefully controlled, ritualized life had never prepared her for. Her hips jerked involuntarily.
A deep, approving hum vibrated through him, from his chest into the stone beneath her.The mouth on his abdomen chuckled, a soft, wet sound. “There it is,” it slurred.“Not just fear.The pulse. The slick.”
He continued, his technique agonizingly precise, a parody of tenderness. He was studying her, learning what made her breath hitch, what made her fingers claw at the unyielding altar. Her body was betraying her, responding to the relentless, focused attention despite the horror, despite the blood drying on her cheeks. Tears, hot and shame-filled, leaked from the corners of her eyes, tracking through the spatter there.
One of his upper hands left her shoulder.His thumb, surprisingly gentle, brushed a tear away. “Cry if you want,” he murmured, his voice slightly muffled.“It doesn’t matter. Your body knows what it wants.”
And damn him, he was right. A low, unwanted heat was coiling deep in her belly, a counterpoint to the icy dread. The mark he’d placed there throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She was panting now, her head thrown back against the stone, staring up at the shadowy ceiling of the temple she’d called home. A prison.A cage.Just like he’d said.He shifted again, lifting his head. His lips and chin were glistening. His two sets of eyes were heavy-lidded, the crimson glow subdued to a dark ember.He looked… satisfied. He looked hungry for the next course.“You’re thinking too much,” he said, his voice thick.“Stop. Just feel.”
One lower hand slid fully beneath her, palming her ass to tilt her pelvis up towards him.The other hand guided something at his groin, freed from the loose hakama. Her eyes drifted down, past the grinning stomach-mouth, and her breath stopped.
He wasn’t lying.They were thick, each one a formidable length of flushed, heavy flesh, veins prominent. The sight was so absurdly disproportionate, so impossible, that a hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat and died there.This would kill her.It would literally tear her apart.
He saw the understanding dawn in her wide, green eyes.He saw the fresh wave of terror. He smiled, a real smile that crinkled the corners of his upper eyes.
“The mark,” he said, as if reminding her of a forgotten grocery list.“It’s not just for claiming. It’s for adapting.For surviving. My vessel survives.” He leaned over her, a wall of muscle and heat, his shadow swallowing the candlelight. “You want to live, don’t you, Megumi?”
It wasn’t a threat.It was a question. The first real choice she’d ever been offered.
Her voice, when it came, was a scraped-raw whisper.“Yes.”
“Good,” he said.
And he pressed forward.