Chapter 14: Moonlit Interrogation
Draven tore his gaze from Andre’s face, the panic hardening back into command. “Go!” he bellowed to the crowd, his voice cracking like a whip over the silent hall. “Celebrate our claiming at the great fire!”
The dismissal was immediate, a relieved rush of whispers and shuffling feet as the pack obeyed, leaving them alone in the cavernous room now haunted by that fleeting image. Draven’s hand closed around Andre’s upper arm, his grip bruising as he yanked him upright from the dais. He didn’t speak, just hauled him through a hidden arch behind the throne that Andre had never noticed.
It led outside into a walled garden choked with neglected beauty, the air thick with the scent of rotten petals and damp earth. Draven shoved him toward a stone basin filled with rainwater from a cracked gargoyle. “Clean yourself,” he ordered, his voice low and dangerous.
Andre moved on shaky legs, splashing the cold water on his chest and face, washing away the evidence of their public union. The water dripped from his chin, mixing with the blood from Draven’s new bite. Draven watched, his own chest still heaving, the streaks of white on his skin gleaming in the moonlight.
“That wasn’t just a fantasy,” Draven finally said, the words flat and accusing. He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing Andre. “That was a fucking vision. A shared one.” His hand shot out, fingers digging into the fresh bite on Andre’s shoulder. “What did you do?”
“It was just a baby. You were… kissing my head.” Draven stilled his fingers, curled them inward, and Andre whimpered. “A Soulbound vision is a promise,” Draven growled, pulling his fingers free with a wet sound. “Or a threat.”
“What would be the threat in that vision, Draven?” Andre gasped, the rough stone scraping his back. “Me, you, or the baby who had my freckles and your eyes?!”
Draven’s expression shattered. He drove Andre back against the moonlit hedge, thorns biting through the thin linen. “All of it,” he snarled, his breath hot and frantic against Andre’s mouth.
His hand ripped at Andre’s pants, yanking them to his knees. The night air was cold on his skin. “You’re dripping,” Draven hissed, his fingers finding Andre’s cunt already slick and swollen from the ceremony, from the vision.
He plunged two fingers inside without warning, curling them cruelly. Andre cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the distant pack’s celebration. “That soft fucking lie,” Draven growled, working his fingers in a brutal, twisting rhythm.
He scissored them, stretching Andre open on his hand. “You think I could be that? A gentle man?” Draven’s other hand wrapped around Andre’s throat, not squeezing, just holding the threat. “I’m not built for nurseries.”
He withdrew his dripping fingers and shoved his own pants down just enough to free his cock, thick and angrily hard. “I’m built for this,” he spat, notching the head against Andre’s soaked entrance. He slammed in to the hilt in one punishing thrust.
Andre’s sob broke into a gasp, his body stretching to accommodate the sudden, brutal fullness. Draven fucked into him with short, sharp strokes, each one jolting Andre against the unforgiving branches. “That vision is a poison,” Draven gritted out, his hips snapping forward.
Tears tracked through the dirt on Andre’s face. “What part do you hate the most?” he choked out, the words ragged between Draven’s thrusts. Draven stilled, buried deep, a low growl rumbling in his chest.
He leaned in, his lips against Andre’s ear. “The fucking quiet,” he whispered, the word ‘quiet’ sounding like a curse. “The peace in it.” He began moving again, a slower, deeper rhythm that felt like a wound.
“It’s a trap for soft men who’ve never had everything ripped away,” Draven said, his voice raw. His thrusts lost their anger, becoming almost mournful, each one a grim punctuation. “And I will not be caught in it.”
The brutal, mournful rhythm inside him crested into something unavoidable. Andre’s body clenched, a traitorous wave of pleasure wracking him as he came with a shattered cry, his release spilling between their pressed bodies. Draven followed with a final, grinding thrust, spilling his own seed deep with a guttural sound that held no victory.
Andre pushed him away the second he softened, his hands trembling as he yanked his pants up over sticky skin. “Don’t,” he rasped, backing away from Draven’s reaching hand. He turned and ran, the thorns snagging his shirt as he fled the garden’s ruined silence.
He ran until his lungs burned, the pack’s distant fires just a glow against the trees. The riverbank was dark and quiet, the water a black mirror. He collapsed onto the cold, damp earth, his breath coming in ragged, useless gasps.
He curled forward, head to his knees, fighting the vertigo that threatened to blacken the edges of his sight. Slowly, the tightness in his chest eased, replaced by a hollow, ringing calm. He looked up at the moon, its perfect, cold reflection a mockery of the chaos inside him.
Draven’s words were a knife twisting in a wound he hadn’t named. I will not be caught in it. The quiet, the peace, the child. Andre’s hand slid to his own flat stomach. He knew what grew there wasn’t possible, wasn’t natural by any common law.
His bloodline’s ancient magic, a secret he’d unearthed in stolen texts, was now a curse flowering in his own flesh. He could hide it. He could find a way to cut it out. Draven had carved his answer into Andre’s skin tonight. The trek back to the suite was a numb, mechanical journey.
The empty rooms welcomed him with a silence deeper than the forest’s. He should wash the scent of sex and despair from his skin, but his limbs were lead. He crawled under the heavy blankets, the weight a poor substitute for an anchor, and sleep dragged him under like a stone.
The sound of leather straining and buckles clicking pulled him from a shallow, dreamless depth. Gray dawn light sliced through the high windows, illuminating Draven’s bare back as he shrugged into a training tunic. The fresh, parallel bite marks on Andre’s shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat, a visceral echo of the night.
He watched through slitted eyes, the muscle in Draven’s jaw working as he fastened his bracers with sharp, practiced tugs. “The training grounds await,” Draven stated, his voice gravelly and devoid of its usual commanding resonance. He didn’t look at Andre.
He finished dressing, his movements efficient and silent, before pausing at the heavy oak door. “I will return later.” The words hung in the chilled air, an obligation, not a promise. Andre didn’t respond, didn’t move, letting the silence swell between them like a physical barrier.
Draven’s hand flexed on the door handle, the tendons standing rigid beneath his skin. He left without another word, the solid thud of the door closing final. Only then did Andre let out the breath he’d been holding, the ache between his legs a dull, persistent reminder of being filled, of being claimed and then discarded.
The scent of sex and crushed ivy still clung to the sheets. He pushed them back, wincing as he sat up, every muscle protesting. The empty room felt larger, the stone walls pressing in with a cold indifference.
Sunlight now touched the floor where Draven had stood. Andre swung his legs over the side of the bed, his feet meeting the cold stone. He looked down at his own bare torso, at the mottled bruises beginning to bloom like storm clouds on his light caramel skin.
His fingers traced the raised, seeping edges of the new bite. A trophy of possession, a brand of panic. His other hand drifted lower, resting flat on his stomach where a different, secret heat had begun to kindle.
He pushed the heavy blankets aside and stood, ignoring the ache in his muscles. The clean, simple clothes from the previous day lay folded on a chair, and he pulled them on with deliberate movements. The fabric felt coarse against his sensitive skin, a bland contrast to the night’s violence.
He splashed cold water from the basin on his face, the shock clearing the last remnants of bruised sleep from his mind. His reflection in the polished metal showed the new bite, livid and purpling. He touched it once, then turned away.
The main hall was quieter, the stone floors still damp from morning cleaning. A few pack members glanced up from their tasks, their eyes flicking to his neck before darting away. He kept his spine straight, walking toward the smell of food and low conversation.
The communal dining area was alive with the clatter of plates and casual talk. He took a bowl of stew from a long table, his fingers tightening around the warm clay. Finding an empty space at the end of a bench, he sat down quietly.
The chatter around him didn’t stop, but it lowered, punctuated by sideways looks. He ate methodically, the savory broth grounding him. A woman with kind eyes and grey streaks in her hair slid onto the bench opposite him.
“The venison stew is good today,” she said, nodding at his bowl. Her voice was warm, unprompted. Andre met her gaze, finding no mockery there, only a frank curiosity.
“It is,” he agreed, his own voice sounding rough from disuse. “I’m Corrine,” she offered, tearing a piece of bread. “You’re Andre. We watched the claiming.” She said it plainly, a simple fact. “It was… intense.”
Andre’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. “It was,” he said finally, unsure of what else to offer. A younger man with a twisted scar across his knuckles leaned over from the next table, his smile not quite reaching his eyes.
“Saw you take Alpha’s knot in front of the whole pack,” he said, his tone dipping into a leer. “Looked like you enjoyed it, enemy-born.” The air around Andre went static. Corrine’s friendly expression hardened into a warning glare.
Andre set his spoon down carefully, the click against the bowl loud in the sudden quiet. He looked at the scarred man, seeing the challenge there, the testing of boundaries. A slow heat, entirely different from the secret one in his gut, began to burn behind his ribs.
A slow heat, entirely different from the secret one in his gut, began to burn behind his ribs.
"That must be a new scar for your collection, Doran," Andre said, his voice quiet and clear, making every ear at the table twitch toward them. The man, Doran, blinked, his leer faltering. Andre lifted his own hand, flexing it slowly on the tabletop, and deliberately traced the rim of his bowl. "I imagine watching and doing feel very different when you're the one beneath him."
Before Doran could sputter a retort, Corrine let out a sharp bark of laughter. It wasn't mocking, but genuine and full of unexpected warmth, cutting the tension clean. "He’s got your measure already," she said to Doran, shaking her head.
Draven’s man and two companions laughed at their sparring as well, and as the palpable aggression diffused, he enjoyed their company and conversation.
For the next hour, Andre sat, listening to the easy flow of their talk—hunting stories, complaints about gear, a crude joke about a neighboring pack. He interjected, just once, with a dry observation about the stew’s seasoning, which made Corrine grin. The simple camaraderie was foreign and warming; I felt good to meet the people, a genuine thread of belonging weaving through the morning’s sharp-edged humiliation.
The sensation was so unsettlingly pleasant that he didn't notice Doran shifting until the man’s rough hand clapped his back with stinging force, lingering just a moment too long.
That lingering weight forced a foul, vivid image into Andre’s mind, dream-like. He saw himself, later that very day, on his hands and knees in the wood store behind the armory, the scent of pine resin and rust thick in the air. The scar on Doran’s hand was pressed white against the rough planks, his other hand digging into Andre’s bare hip, the dirt and splinters pressing into his knees. Doran’s thick, uncut cock slammed into him from behind, the man panting "thought you only took the Alpha’s knot" with each brutal shove, the slapping sounds wet and frantic.
The vision—sharp, explicit, darkly graphic—vanished as fast as it came. He blinked at his now-empty bowl, the echo of Doran’s phantom voice gritty in his ear. Now uncomfortable, another pull deeper beneath his navel twisted, more insistent this time, laced with a sickening pulse of heat. A warning not of the future, but of the present—the result of Draven’s seed and his own forgotten power taking brutal, undeniable root inside him. His fingers went cold.
His fingers went cold. That wasn’t a fantasy of his own; it was Doran’s, vile and specific, leaching into his mind like sewage. He’d heard the man’s innermost thoughts.
“I need air,” Andre muttered, pushing back from the bench abruptly. The friendly chatter around him warped into a distant buzz. Corrine’s concerned look didn’t register as he shouldered past bodies, seeking the silence of the stone corridors.
He felt off, profoundly violated, a desperate need to cry clogging his throat with nowhere to put it. He had no one to talk to. Striding to his chamber, he shoved a few items—a water skin, an apple, a rolled blanket—into a simple hiking bag.
He slipped out a side gate, the forest’s dense breath swallowing him whole. He walked for hours, the physical strain a blunt counterpoint to the psychic violation. Around 2 p.m., he found a sun-dappled clearing and decided to sit and eat.
He unrolled the wax paper, the smell of cured deli meat hitting him first. His stomach clenched, then revolted. He wretched violently, bile burning his throat as the sandwich tumbled into the grass.
Deli meat was clearly off the menu. He sipped water from his skin instead, then lay back on the blanket, staring up. The clouds were beautiful, sculpted by a warm summer breeze.
Exhaustion, deeper than physical, pulled at his bones. He sipped his juice box and laid back. The breeze whispered through the pines, a lullaby his frayed nerves couldn’t resist.
He dozed off.
He dozed off. He awoke to a star-filled sky, the pine branches silhouetted black against the Milky Way.
Oh shit, he didn’t mean to fall asleep. A clawing panic, sharp and sour, coiled in his gut. It felt anxious, and desperate, unnaturally so.
Then it hit him. Those weren’t his feelings. They were a raw, vibrating echo seeping through the fresh bond.
Fuck, he said, scrambling to his feet. He hastily shoved the blanket into his backpack and hiked back towards the castle, the foreign dread propelling him forward. When he entered the grand foyer, Draven stood before the cold hearth, his back towards him.
The air crackled with a silent, violent tension. Once Andre closed the solid twin oak doors with a soft thud, Draven dismissed the two guards at the far end with a sharp gesture. They melted into the shadows.
Andre didn’t move, his heart hammering against his ribs. Then Draven slowly turned. His emerald eyes were wildfire in the dim light, his face a mask of ravaged control.
“You feel that?” Draven’s voice was a rough scrape. “This fucking… ache?” He crossed the space between them in three swift strides. His hand fisted in Andre’s hair, yanking his head back to expose his throat.
His hand fisted in Andre’s hair, yanking his head back to expose his throat. “Where were you?” Draven’s voice was a guttural rasp, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled deeply against Andre’s skin.
He breathed him in again, a low growl building in his chest. “You smell different,” he snarled, confusion cracking his fury. “I can’t pin it. It’s… greener, deeper.”
Andre’s stomach lurched, the secret heat in his gut pulsing like a hidden star. He kept his mouth a tight, stubborn line. He wasn’t going to share it, not while Draven’s fingers threatened to tear his hair out.
“Fucking answer me!” Draven shook him once, hard.
“I went for a walk,” Andre spat, the lie bland and brittle. “I slept. I threw up my lunch.” Draven’s eyes narrowed, searching his face for a crack.
“You vomited?” His grip loosened a fraction, the new information colliding with his rage. That unexplained, aching dread from the bond had been Andre’s sickness? His other hand came up, not to strike, but to press roughly against Andre’s abdomen.
His other hand came up, not to strike, but to press roughly against Andre’s abdomen.
Andre’s heart raced with premeditated dread. How could he be so stupid to think he could hide his secret, from Draven of all people—maybe he was checking for something else, maybe he wouldn’t be able to tell. Draven’s palm was a brand of heat through the thin fabric of his shirt, his fingers splayed wide as if measuring.
“You feel different here,” Draven murmured, his fury giving way to a predatory focus. His fingers dug in slightly, probing the firmness beneath. He leaned closer, inhaling at the base of Andre’s throat again, his growl deepening into a confused rumble.
“It’s not sickness,” he breathed, the words filled with a dawning, terrible awareness. His emerald eyes locked onto Andre’s, seeing the truth he now scented. “What have you done?”
Andre stayed silent, his jaw clenched. Draven’s hand slid from his abdomen to fist in his shirt, tearing the fabric open with a sharp rip. Buttons scattered across the stone floor like hailstones. He stared at the unmarked skin, his nostrils flaring.
“It’s inside you already,” Draven stated, his voice hollow with shock. “That vision… it wasn’t just a vision.” He grabbed Andre’s face, forcing his head back. “You’re carrying it.”
Without another word, Draven spun him around and bent him over the edge of a heavy oak table. He yanked Andre’s pants down with one brutal pull. His own belt buckle clacked open, a cold, final sound. He drove into him, hard and dry, a punishment and a claiming in one vicious thrust.
Andre cried out, the stretch a burn. “It’s mine,” Draven snarled against his ear, pumping into him with a furious, shallow rhythm. “You put this inside yourself with your magic.” His hand clamped over Andre’s stomach, pressing down as he fucked him deeper. “I can feel it.”
“I can feel it.” The words were a cold, final verdict, his thrusts a brutal punctuation. Andre couldn’t believe the insinuation. He hadn’t impregnated himself with magic.
A raw, blue energy ignited in his chest, searing through the violation. He pushed Draven off of him with a strength that stunned even Draven, sending the Alpha stumbling back onto the stone floor. Andre glowed blue, his skin illuminated from within, tears cutting paths through the eerie light.
He was sobbing, shaking. Draven didn’t trust him, had blamed him for the cursed vision and made it clear that he didn’t want “it”. “Just leave me the fuck alone,” Andre choked out, the words barely audible through his tears.
Draven rose, his expression a storm of fury and shock, reaching for him. Andre couldn’t even look him in the eye. He vanished before Draven’s eyes, the blue light collapsing into a single, blinding point that winked out, leaving behind only the scent of ozone and an empty space where he’d stood.
Draven’s hand closed on empty air. He stared at the spot, his own harsh breathing the only sound in the vast, silent foyer. He growled, a low, ragged sound of pure frustration, and slammed his fist into the heavy oak table, splitting the wood.