Chapter 10: Possessed by Golden Fire
The psychic echo of Bernadine’s revelation—the spell isn’t Father’s, it’s a parasitic spy—collided with Andre’s shattered accusation. “You knew,” Andre whispered, the golden light throbbing beneath his skin like a second, diseased heartbeat. Draven saw Kael’s stunned disbelief from the doorway, but his focus narrowed to the fracture in Andre’s eyes. “I didn’t,” Draven said, the truth a blade in his own throat. “But my father did.” He took a single step forward, his own hidden power coiling tight. The entity within Andre flared, his voice layering into that cold, guttural rasp. “Liar. You hide your true power. We will carve it from you.”
Bernadine’s warning screamed in his mind: It’s watching through him. You must overwrite the spell with a stronger claim. Blood magic.
Blood magic. The only way to burn out a parasitic spell was to flood its host with a power it couldn’t contain. Draven’s emerald glow intensified, a corona of raw alpha energy that made the air crackle. He saw the golden light in Andre’s eyes pulse hungrily in response.
“My pack, my parents, knowledge of who I am all gone,” Andre sobbed, his voice breaking over the words. “All because of you.” The entity within him drank his despair, making his radiance swell until his brown irises were consumed by a blazing, solar gold. “You don’t love me. You only wanted to use me for my powers to strengthen yours.”
“Andre, listen to me—” Draven tried, his voice low.
“Liar. Liar. Liar.” The word was a cracked mantra, each repetition making Andre’s body shudder, the golden light flaring brighter. Pleasure or pain didn’t matter to the thing inside him; it fed on the extreme state, the raw emotional charge. Draven understood the battle now. He had to claim, utterly and violently, what the spell sought to steal.
“Ahhh, there it is,” Andre’s voice manifested, a sinister dark layer over his own. His sun-blazed eyes fixed on Draven’s glowing chest. “Once I rip it from you, dear, then I’ll take it from him.” Draven could handle many threats, but a promise to eviscerate his soulbound warranted death. He moved.
He moved. Draven’s charge was a blur of primal intent, but Andre wasn’t there anymore. Andre flicked his wrist with a casual, terrifying grace, and an invisible force slammed into Draven’s chest, lifting him off his feet and throwing him across the chamber. He crashed into the stone wall with a sickening crunch, the impact shuddering through the ancient rock as debris rained down on his shoulders. “Holy fuck,” Kael breathed from the doorway, frozen in place. Draven pushed himself up, tasting blood, his mind reeling.
He knew now, with a cold, surgical clarity, that he would have to utilize his blood magic. The thought of channeling that savage, annihilating power through Andre, his soulbound, terrified him more than any enemy. His hidden trauma surfaced in a gut-punch memory: his mother’s screaming reassurance as his own emerald tendrils, wild and uncontrolled, shredded through their attackers and then her. Bernadine’s voice infiltrated his mind, a sharp psychic scream.
“Draven!” He looked up, gritting his teeth against the pain. Andre was smiling at him, a cold, placid expression that didn’t belong on his face. The entity had used their fractured bond to pull at his deepest wound, to make him hesitate. Then Andre lifted his hand again, and Draven was hurled through the air a second time, his body smashing into the heavy oak dresser, splintering it.
He wasn’t focused then, lost in the echo of his mother’s last scream. But he was now. Pushing himself up from the wreckage, Draven outstretched his hands, and they ignited with a virulent, swirling green energy. His feet left the floor, his body levitating in the center of the room as power crackled around him like a storm. “You want my heart?” Draven snarled, his voice echoing with a deeper, older resonance. “Then come and fucking take it.” He focused the energy into a crackling lance and fired it not at Andre, but at the space between them, where it burst into a cascade of binding, emerald chains.
The emerald chains snapped through the air with a sound like shattering crystal, wrapping around Andre’s glowing form with a vicious, living grip. The entity within him hissed, a sound of static and tearing metal, as it attempted to absorb the raw alpha power, to drink it in and turn it into more golden light. Instead, the chains latched onto the parasitic energy itself, binding it in a searing, sizzling cage of Draven’s will.
Andre’s body convulsed, arching against the bindings as he fought like a fish caught on a line, his muscles straining until cords stood out in his neck. “Let me go!” the layered voice shrieked, but the emerald light tightened its hold, pulsing with Draven’s relentless focus. Draven slowly approached the struggling figure and squatted before him, his emerald eyes burning like cold fire in the darkened room.
“If you want my heart,” Draven growled, his voice low and terrible, “you’ll have to fucking take it.” Andre thrashed wildly, a raw, animal sound of frustration tearing from his throat, but the chains held fast, their light eating into the gold. Then, with a final, spiteful hiss, the oppressive golden light seemed to retract, coiling inward like a snake retreating into its hole.
“Draven?” The voice was thin, shattered, drenched in real terror. Andre’s own brown eyes swam back into focus, wide and desperate as they met Draven’s. “Please,” Andre begged, tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt on his cheeks, his body slumping against the chains, “let me go, I’m… I’m so scared.” That broken voice pulled at something deep in Draven’s chest, a physical ache behind his ribs.
Draven stared into those eyes, his own glowing with a fierce, protective azure where his mate-mark should be. “I know you’re scared,” he whispered, the words raw. “I would be too if I knew I was going to die.” He leaned closer, his next words a blade of pure truth. “My soulbound glows blue, Andre. Not gold. Liar!”
“Now!” Draven screamed the command, his voice echoing off the stone. From the doorway, Kael and Bernadine stepped forward, their voices rising with Draven’s in a single, guttural chant. The spell they recited was a thing of ancient power, a unraveling weave meant to loosen the compulsion’s threads from Andre’s mind. It wouldn’t remove everything; the deep, parasitic roots required a more primal exchange.
That final severing, Draven knew, would only happen with a blood exchange during a true soul claim. The real one, this time.
The bindings dissolved into a fine, shimmering dust that smelled of ozone and crushed sage. Andre collapsed onto the cold stone floor of the cave, his entire body shaking as he gulped down great lungfuls of the damp, mineral-tinged air. Draven’s sudden spell of teleportation to the cave left him vulnerable.
Andre blinked his eyes, looking around the odd cave, his back pushing against the cave wall. He was hyperventilating. “What’s going on?” Andre stammered as he saw Draven standing a few feet away from him. His Beta, and a woman stood further away. Draven could feel that Andre’s fear and confusion was real. Draven approached him and squatted down. He explained everything that happened, to him. Andre nodded, silently. “So it’s gone?” he asked. “Not quite,” Draven said, staring at Andre’s lips for a second longer than what seemed appropriate in the circumstances. Andre eagerly awaited Draven’s response. He noticed the Beta and woman from earlier dismiss themselves.
“The binding spell locked it away in a part of your mind you can’t access,” Draven said, his voice a low rasp that echoed slightly in the cavern. “But it’s still attached, feeding on the bond.” He watched Andre process this, the fear sharpening into something harder. “To kill it, I have to fully anchor us. For real.” Andre’s eyes flicked down to the space between them, understanding dawning with a flush that crept up his neck. “Oh,” he breathed, the sound swallowed by the silent watchers in the rocky walls around them.
“Oh,” he breathed, the sound swallowed by the silent watchers in the rocky walls around them. Draven didn’t ask. He moved, closing the gap between them in one fluid stride, his hands cradling Andre’s face. His kiss was a claim, deep and searching, a sealing of a vow written in skin and shared breath. When he pulled back, his thumbs stroked the tears from Andre’s cheeks.
“It hurts you,” Andre whispered, feeling the entity stir like a trapped scorpion in his mind. Draven’s mouth found his again, biting his lower lip until he gasped. “Let it try,” Draven growled against his lips. He pulled Andre to his feet and backed him against the cool cave wall, his hands already working open the laces of Andre’s trousers. The rough stone scraped his bare shoulders.
Andre’s breath hitched as Draven’s large, calloused hand wrapped around his hardening cock, giving it a firm, possessive stroke. “You’re mine,” Draven stated, his voice leaving no room for argument as he spat into his palm and slicked himself. “Every part.” He hooked Andre’s leg over his hip, aligning their bodies, and pushed inside with a single, devastating thrust that stole the air from Andre’s lungs.
Andre cried out, his head thumping back against the stone, his fingers scrambling for purchase on Draven’s shoulders. “Fuck, Draven,” he choked out, as Draven began to move, a deep, relentless rhythm that punched the breath from him with every snap of hips. “Umm in here,” Andre whispered, feeling the entity recoil at the overwhelming, physical reality of Draven’s possession.
“Yes,” Draven said, absolute and low, his emerald eyes blazing in the cave’s dim light. He drove into him harder, each powerful thrust a physical incantation against the spell. “You’re glowing green,” Andre stared transfixed at the shimmering aura surrounding Draven’s skin—he wondered if that’s how he appeared in Draven’s mind. Draven was a god compared to him. He was just ok.
“You’re everything,” Draven gritted out, his pace turning brutal, his cock ramming into that perfect, desperate spot inside Andre again and again. The green light intensified, weaving around them, tendrils of power seeking the golden poison lodged in Andre’s soul. Andre could feel it, the parasitic spell thrashing, dissolving under the sheer force of Draven’s claiming.
A scream built in his throat, part pleasure, part excruciating release, as the last golden threads snapped. The world went white.
Then the white faded, and inside him, everything finally quieted. Draven kept thrusting into him, as he chanted the spell to expel the last of the spell from his mate, tether. Draven’s low, guttural words were not spoken but resonated directly through the clenching heat of Andre’s body, each syllable a vibration that scorched away the final, clinging remnants of the gold. Then Andre’s beautiful brown eyes were back, clear and deep, reflecting only Draven’s emerald fire. Draven kissed him deeply, swallowing Andre's gasp, tasting salt and something sweeter, something free.
Andre was very vocal now, no more reservations now that their tethers could bind, without any doubt. "I need you to fuck me, to claim me, make me yours Draven, please," he begged, the words ragged and raw against Draven’s mouth. Then Andre glowed blue. A soft, cerulean light radiated from his skin, from the very mark Draven had placed upon him. Draven hiked up Andre’s legs over his shoulders; he weighed like a feather in his grasp.
"And he took his mate's ass like a savage alpha," Draven panted, his rhythm becoming a punishing, piston-like drive that shoved Andre up the rough stone wall. Draven smiles at Andre’s request. His neediness made Draven's cock harder, throbbing almost painfully with every brutal slide into that tight, welcoming heat. He could feel the new, untarnished bond snapping into place, a living wire of pure power connecting his soul directly to Andre's, and his wolf howled in triumph.
Draven was an alpha who had been denied a real bond with his soul bound for too long. Now his wolf was at the forefront, a primal force of absolute possession, and he would take his mate’s soul and bind it to his. Playtime was over.
Playtime was over. Draven’s control snapped, replaced by a consuming need to imprint himself so deeply that nothing foreign could ever take root again. He slammed Andre back against the wall, the impact shuddering through both their bodies, and drove into him with a raw, piston-like rhythm that stole the breath from Andre’s lungs. “Fuck my greedy hole, please, harder,” Andre begged, his voice shredded and wet with tears.
The intensity of the energy and the raw fuck were making everything more intense. Andre was screaming and sobbing now with every thrust as Draven fucked directly onto his prostate, each brutal impact sending electric jolts of blinding pleasure up his spine. Draven was punishing his hole for making him need it so badly, for housing that venom, for being so perfectly tight around his cock. “Oh god, Draven, I feel it coming from my ass,” Andre gasped, his body trembling violently on Draven’s cock. “You’re going to make me cum everywhere.”
“Then cum,” Draven growled, his own breath ragged, his hips a relentless machine. He talked him through it, his voice a rough scrape against Andre’s ear. “Let it go. Shoot all over your stomach for me, show me.” Andre’s orgasm ripped through him like a seismic event, a convulsive, screaming release that painted his abdomen in thick, hot stripes. Draven felt Andre’s channel clench and spasm around him, a vicious, milking pressure that dragged his own climax from the base of his spine.
Draven felt Andre’s channel clench and spasm around him, a vicious, milking pressure that dragged his own climax from the base of his spine. His release was a hot, pulsing flood that filled Andre completely, a final, physical claim to seal the soul-deep one. As his own orgasm began to fade, he saw the last flicker of gold in Andre’s wide, tear-bright eyes, the parasitic thing desperately trying to re-anchor itself in their shared pleasure.
He lowered his head to the juncture of Andre’s shoulder, where the mate-mark had always been faint. His teeth sharpened to wicked points against the sweat-slicked skin. Andre’s breath hitched, a ragged inhale of understanding and surrender. “Do it,” Andre whispered, his voice raw and certain.
Then Draven bit down.
Both men screamed, the intensity a raw, shared thing that vibrated through the stone around them. Draven kept his hips pistoning, fucking his seed deeper into Andre as the taste of copper and power exploded on his tongue. Their tongues fucked each other’s mouths, muffling their moans into something wet and primal, and then they were fucking again, raw and unhinged. This wasn’t about pleasure; it was about annihilation of every lie, every spell, every space between them.
Andre’s body arched, convulsing around Draven’s driving cock as the bond exploded into place. The cave filled with a brilliant, blinding cerulean light that erupted from their joined bodies. It wasn't just Andre glowing now; Draven's own emerald aura was woven through it, two powers finally braiding into one unforgotten thread.
The cavern light dimmed to a throbbing afterglow, painting their sweat-slicked skin in echoes of blue and green. Andre gasped into the humid air, his body still convulsing around Draven’s spent cock, the new bond a live wire singing in his veins. He felt everything—Draven’s rasping breath, the wild hammer of his heart, the profound, shuddering relief that the gold was gone.
A different resolve, sharp and clear, cut through his own exhaustion. Draven had marked him, claimed him, saved him. But the bond had to go both ways. Andre’s hands, which had been braced against the rough stone, came up to clutch Draven’s heaving shoulders. He tipped his head forward, his mouth finding the hard curve of Draven’s shoulder, the taste of salt and wilderness flooding his senses. “My turn,” Andre whispered, the words raw against Draven’s skin.
Draven went very still, a low, curious rumble vibrating in his chest. Andre didn’t hesitate. He opened his mouth and sank his human teeth into the dense muscle of Draven’s shoulder, biting down with all the frantic, desperate strength he possessed. The skin broke, hot copper bloomed on his tongue, and Draven roared, a sound of pure shock and blinding pleasure.
He fucked into Andre harder, his cock swelling again inside him, as Andre drank the essence of him, claiming the Alpha King as his own.