Chapter 15: Tides of Truth
The cold salt spray shocked Andre back into his body. He was on his knees in the wet sand, the dawn light painting the crashing waves in tones of blood and gold. His throat was raw from screaming during the teleport, a magic he didn’t know he possessed. He retched, dry-heaving over the tide’s edge, his abdomen cramping around the new, alien heat nesting deep within him. He sat back on his heels, the frantic pull of the mating bond now a distant, muffled silence.
He had chanted the cloaking spell through clenched teeth as he vanished, a torn page from his mother’s stolen grimoire surfacing from memory. It worked. The silence in his head was deafening. He was utterly, terribly alone. The freedom was a dizzying poison. He stripped off his torn shirt, letting the icy wind bite his skin, and walked into the surf until the water swirled around his thighs.
The numbness was a blessing. He scrubbed at his skin, trying to erase the feel of Draven’s hands, the violation of his distrust. A larger wave knocked him off balance. He went under, the world reduced to roaring green silence. He kicked back to the surface, gasping, salt stinging his eyes. He swam with furious, punishing strokes until his muscles burned and his mind was blank. He dragged himself onto the sand, collapsing as the sun cleared the horizon.
He lay there, shivering, his hand sliding over his flat stomach. The child—his child, a product of his own cursed bloodline—was a secret he now held alone. Draven had called it a curse, a trap. Andre’s breath hitched. A lone seagull cried overhead, the sound like breaking glass. He closed his eyes, the truth settling into his bones with the weight of a stone: he was carrying the very thing his Alpha King feared most, and he was now truly enemy-born once more.
He closed his eyes, the truth settling into his bones with the weight of a stone: he was carrying the very thing his Alpha King feared most, and he was now truly enemy-born once more. A fragment of the stolen prophecy surfaced then, not as words but as a physical pull deep in his gut. It spoke of a wellspring, an energy unlocked only when a fated pair bonded completely. His mating mark throbbed, a phantom echo of Draven’s claim.
Andre dug his fingers into the damp sand. “If our bond opened it for me,” he whispered to the wind, his voice hoarse, “it opened it for him too.” The thought was an electric shock of panic. He focused every frayed nerve, every ounce of his fear, and pictured a sanctuary. He didn’t just imagine a house; he craved the scent of sun-bleached wood and the sound of quiet waves against pilings.
The world blurred, a nauseating lurch of displaced air and light. When his vision cleared, he was standing on a creaking porch. A small, weathered beach house sat behind him, door ajar. He had fucking willed it into existence. He stumbled inside, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs.
The simplicity of the space—a couch, a kitchenette, a bed—felt like a cruel joke. He filled a glass from the tap and drank slowly, the water cold and tasteless. His hand shook. This power was a beacon. Draven would feel it eventually, would track this surge of raw magic to its source. He had time, but not enough.
He had time, but not enough.
At least a week had passed, each sunrise marked by the sharp salt on his tongue and the gnawing pressure in the bond’s muffled silence. Every time Andre would feel Draven drawing near, a psychic vibration through the very wood of the beach house, he would use the spell to block their connection, the ancient syllables tasting like metal and desperation. The rhythm of the ocean became a marker for his rituals of hiding, but it also marked the silent, irrevocable change happening in the quiet of his own body. Standing in the bathroom one morning, steamy air from his shower clinging to the mirror, Andre wiped the fog away and froze. Andre looking the mirror, his once flat stomach started to round out at the bottom, a soft, undeniable curve beneath his navel, distinct and foreign. The air left his lungs in a rush as he pressed a trembling hand there, meeting the firm, impossible swell with a flinch.
He jerked his gaze away, heart pounding, and pulled his shirt down, the thin cotton stretched a new, unmistakable tension. He grabbed a cloth, and was about to clean up the faint fingerprint smudges on the glass, wanting to erase the evidence even from himself, until he felt the tether pulling at him, not the usual distant draw but a sudden, violent yank that took his knees out from under him. He staggered, hitting the sink’s edge, and tried to use his block spell, voice a raw shriek in the tiled room, but as he did he could visibly see it being torn in half like a knife through silk in his mind’s eye, the golden threads of the incantation parting with a soundless, brutal snap. Then he heard Draven’s voice through the bond, it wasn’t sound but an avalanche of will that thundered through every nerve and settled in his bones, the bond it growled: NO.
Then Andre felt the tether pulling closer, monstrously close, a sensory link snapping back into place with the crushing finality of a slamming cell door, and a hundred flashes of forest, speed, and fury echoed through his head: fucking north woods, crashing surf. Fuck Draven was close. He had to be here at the beach, the king tracking not just scent but the electric resonance of their shared god-touched power he’d been hiding all week. Stumbling through the single-room house in a raw panic, heart hammering against his sternum as Andre listened as the footsteps that creaked on his porch stopped, dead silent for a horrible, fateful moment. Splinters screamed and the world cracked inward then the door was ripped off of the frame, thrown wide into the morning with a terrible finality, and morning light framed Draven Blackwood in the wreckage, his chest heaving, his long hair wild with salt and wind, and his emerald eyes burning with a terrifying, profound intensity. He filled the entire doorway, breath ragged like he’d run a thousand miles to get there, his gaze sweeping the small room and fixing instantly on Andre, a predator finally pinning down escaped prey it had been tracking for endless, agonizing miles through not just forest, not just territory, but the far emptier space between severed souls.
The scent of him—cold pine, wolf, and furious sweat—flooded the room, erasing the salt air. His eyes, predatory and gleaming, didn’t search the space; they consumed Andre, stripping him bare to the new, soft curve beneath his thin shirt. Andre took a step back, his spine hitting the edge of the kitchen counter with a jolt that rattled his teeth.
“You think a page from a stolen book could keep me from my own mate?” Draven’s voice was a low, shredded thing, worn raw from the chase. He took one step forward, and the floorboard screamed under his weight.
“It worked for a week,” Andre spat back, the defiance a thin veneer over his trembling.
Draven was on him in the next breath, his large hand splaying across Andre’s stomach, pressing possessively against the firm, rounded proof. Andre gasped, arching away from the contact, but Draven’s other hand fisted in his curls, holding him still. “I felt this,” Draven growled, his thumb stroking the taut skin through the cotton. “Every fucking day it got stronger, a second heartbeat pinging through a bond you kept slamming shut in my face.”
The rough pad of Draven’s thumb dipped beneath the hem of Andre’s shirt, calloused skin scraping over the sensitive swell. Andre’s breath hitched, a traitorous heat pooling low in his gut despite the fear, the rage. “You said it was a curse,” Andre choked out, the words bruised.
“I said a lot of things in that garden,” Draven breathed, his forehead pressing against Andre’s, the fury simmering into something more volatile. His hand slid from Andre’s stomach to his hip, gripping hard enough to bruise. “Words I can taste like ash now.”
He yanked Andre’s threadbare shorts down his thighs with a brutal efficiency, the cotton tearing at the seams. The cool air hit Andre’s skin, and he tried to knee Draven away, a weak, frantic gesture. Draven caught his thigh and shoved it high, hooking Andre’s leg over his own hip, exposing him completely.
“Don’t,” Andre pleaded, but the word dissolved into a sharp gasp as Draven’s fingers, slick with his own spit, pushed inside him without ceremony. They were thick, invading, twisting deep to find him wet and ready. “Fuck you,” Andre sobbed, his body betraying him, clenching around the intrusion.
Draven’s other hand clamped over Andre’s mouth, muffling his cries. “You hid from me,” he snarled, working his fingers in a cruel, rhythmic pulse. “You used your fucking magic to silence our bond.” He scissored his fingers, stretching him, and Andre’s hips jerked. “This cunt doesn’t lie, though. It’s dripping for me right now. Soaking my hand.”
He withdrew his fingers, and Andre shuddered at the sudden emptiness. Draven fumbled with his own pants, his cock springing free, thick and vehement. He pressed the swollen head against Andre’s entrance, a hot, insistent pressure. “You want to talk about curses?” Draven rasped.
Andre’s mind fragmented, a desperate, last-ditch thought surfacing through the fog of need and terror. “But don’t worry, I’m handling it,” he whispered, the words a broken chant against Draven’s palm.
Draven stilled, the predatory focus in his eyes sharpening to a razor’s point. “What do you mean, ‘handling it’?”
Andre met his gaze, a hollow resignation settling in his gut. “No baby equals happy Draven,” he said, the clinical words a shield. “I found a clinic. A human one. I’m handling it.”
For a second, there was only the sound of the ocean and Draven’s arrested breath. Then a snarl tore from his chest, raw and bestial. He drove into Andre in one savage thrust, sheathing himself to the hilt, a punishment and a claim. Andre cried out, the stretch a blinding fire, as Draven leaned in, his lips at Andre’s ear. “You will not,” he stated, each word a law carved in stone. His hips snapped back and slammed home again, a relentless, brutal rhythm. “You will carry my heir. You will keep it safe.” He pistoned into him, the slap of skin echoing in the small room. “Or so help me, Andre, I will chain you to my side until it’s born.”
Andre cried from a terrible mixture of sadness and bruising pleasure as Draven tore into him. “You said all those things, Draven,” his lip quivered, the words ripped out between punishing thrusts. “I don’t want to do this without you, but you rejected me, you rejected us,” Andre said, finally meeting Draven’s burning eyes.
Draven’s rhythm didn’t falter, but his gaze fractured. “How could you blame me for using magic, how could you not believe me?” Andre was crying fully now, his body shaking. “I didn’t hide the baby from you. I found out the morning of the ceremony, and then I had that stupid vision I shared with you somehow.” A particularly deep thrust stole his breath. “I was going to surprise you, but now I’m glad I didn’t.”
The admission seemed to puncture Draven’s fury. His hips slowed, but he didn’t withdraw, remaining buried to the hilt inside Andre’s clenching heat. He was silent for three long, ragged breaths, his expression unreadable. Then, with a roughness that wasn’t quite gentleness, he pulled Andre’s head against his shoulder.
His next thrust was slower, deeper, a grinding roll of his pelvis that made Andre whimper. “You think I’m not scared?” Draven’s voice was a ragged whisper against his ear. “That vision wasn’t just yours, it’s in my head too, twisting everything.” He snapped his hips again, a sharp, possessive punctuation. “I see our child covered in blood that smells like mine every time I fucking close my eyes.”
He began moving again, a relentless, driving pace, but his hand came up to cradle the back of Andre’s head. “This is mine,” Draven growled, his breath hot. “You are mine. This life inside you is mine to protect, even from prophecies.” His movements became less about punishment and more about reclamation, each stroke a violent brand. “You don’t get to run. You don’t get to hide. And you sure as hell don’t get to take this from us.”
His thrusts slowed, becoming something deeper and more terrible than anger. “I thought you didn’t want us,” Andre cried as Draven cradled his face, his thumbs smearing the salt and tears. Draven’s rhythm stuttered, his hips stilling entirely as he remained buried deep inside Andre’s heat.
He searched Andre’s face, his own fierce mask crumbling. “You were going to a clinic?” The question was gravel, torn from his throat. Andre nodded, a miserable jerk of his chin. Draven’s breath left him in a rush, his forehead dropping to Andre’s.
He began to move again, but it was different now—a languid, almost punishingly slow roll of his pelvis, grinding his cock against that tender, weeping spot inside. “Every time you shut the bond,” he whispered, his lips moving against Andre’s temple, “it felt like a knife in my chest.” He snapped his hips, sharp and sudden, making Andre gasp. “You took the future I didn’t know I wanted and tried to burn it.”
His hand slid down between their sweat-slicked bodies, his palm pressing over the small, firm curve of Andre’s stomach. He fucked into him with a renewed, desperate intensity, each drive a silent vow. “This is mine,” Draven snarled, his control shredding. “You are. And I will carve that truth into your skin every damn day if I have to.”
His words hung in the salty air, a raw, possessive oath, and he buried his face in the crook of Andre’s neck, his hips losing their brutal rhythm to a frantic, shallow pounding. His breath was a ragged storm against Andre’s skin, his entire body rigid with the tension of holding back a primal tide. “And I will carve that truth into your skin every damn day if I have to.”
He went still, utterly, the only movement the frantic pulse of him deep inside Andre and the harsh gust of his breath. The silence that followed was thicker than the ocean fog, broken only by the distant cry of a gull. Draven withdrew slowly, his cock slick and glistening, and his hands came up to frame Andre’s face, his thumbs rough against the tear-tracks. “Fuck,” he whispered, the word cracking.
He leaned his forehead against Andre’s, his eyes squeezed shut. “Andre.” The name was a ruin. He swallowed, his throat working. “I’m sorry. For the garden, for the things I said.” His gaze opened, the emerald depths churning with a pain that mirrored the ache in Andre’s body. “My fear… it isn’t an excuse. It guided me, and I hurt you.”
He pressed a desperate kiss to Andre’s mouth, tasting salt and the ghost of his own cruelty. “I was wrong.” His voice was raw, stripped bare. “About the baby, about you. I was so fucking wrong.” He kissed him again, deeper this time, a silent plea for a forgiveness he knew he didn’t yet deserve, his tongue sweeping into Andre’s mouth with a possessive tenderness that felt like a new kind of claiming entirely.
He kissed him again, deeper this time, a silent plea for a forgiveness he knew he didn’t yet deserve, his tongue sweeping into Andre’s mouth with a possessive tenderness that felt like a new kind of claiming entirely. Andre’s resistance, that brittle shell of hurt and fear, shattered under the sheer, devastating weight of that kiss. A broken sound escaped him, part sob, part surrender, and he clutched at Draven’s shoulders, his fingers digging into the hard muscle there.
He pulled back just enough to speak, their lips still brushing. “You shut me out,” Andre whispered, the accusation now a raw wound. Draven’s eyes, dark with a remorse that looked foreign on his face, held his. “I know.” His hand slid from Andre’s face down his neck, over the hammering pulse there, and came to rest again on the firm swell of his stomach. “This is real,” Draven said, voice gruff. “It’s ours.”
Andre’s breath hitched, the last of his anger dissolving into a wave of need so profound it left him dizzy. He arched against Draven, feeling the hard line of his cock, still wet from him, pressing against his thigh. “Draven,” he breathed, the name a prayer. He tipped his head back, baring his throat in a gesture of pure submission that had nothing to do with pack hierarchy and everything to do with the heart. “Please, fuck me. I need you, I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
A low growl vibrated through Draven’s chest. “Please hold me tight and fuck into me, please,” Andre begged, the words tumbling out in a desperate, hungry rush. Draven’s control snapped. He hooked Andre’s leg higher around his hip, lifting him with ease, and turned, pinning him against the wall beside the shattered doorway. The rough wood scraped Andre’s back, a sharp counterpoint to the searing heat of Draven’s body.
He nudged his crown against Andre’s entrance, already slick and throbbing from their first brutal joining. “Look at me,” Draven commanded, and Andre forced his eyes open. Draven pushed in, a slow, inexorable invasion that stretched Andre exquisitely full, and this time there was no cruelty in it, only a devastating, absolute possession. “You feel that?” Draven gritted out, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of his restraint. “That’s me. Always.”
He began to move, a deep, rolling rhythm that punched the air from Andre’s lungs with every thrust. Andre threw his head back against the wall, his cries echoing the gulls outside, as Draven drove into him with a focused, possessive intensity that rewrote every terrible thing said in the moonlit garden. “Fuck, you’re so tight,” Draven groaned, his mouth on Andre’s throat, his hips pistoning. “Take it, take all of me.”
His rhythm stuttered, a ragged gasp punching from his lungs as Andre’s whispered words hit his ear. “I’m going to squeeze the cum from your balls with my hole,” Andre promised, the filth a stark, vibrating contrast to the tears still on his cheeks, and then he sealed the vow with a deep, consuming tongue kiss. Draven groaned into his mouth, his thrusts turning erratic and punishing, the brutal pace fueled by a blinding, possessive need.
He could feel it, the tight, hot clench of Andre’s body actively milking him, a ruthless, delicious suction that threatened to short-circuit his spine. “Fuck, Andre—loosen up, baby, or I’m not gonna last,” he managed to grunt, but Andre just locked his ankles tighter around Draven’s back. “Please, Daddy,” Andre begged against his lips, his own hips meeting each thrust with a desperate slap of skin. “Ruin my hole. Cum in my ass.”
That shattered the last of his control. A raw, guttural sound tore from Draven’s throat as he drove into him one final, deep time, his body locking up, his cock pulsing as he emptied himself inside Andre in hot, endless jets. He collapsed against him, his forehead slick against Andre’s shoulder, his own release still racking through him in diminishing waves.
He shifted, his softening cock slipping from Andre’s body with a wet sound that hung in the quiet room. “My turn,” Andre murmured, his voice hoarse but certain, and he guided them both down to the sun-warmed floorboards. He pushed Draven onto his back, the Alpha allowing it with a look of dazed surrender, his spent body yielding.
Andre straddled him, reaching behind to grip Draven’s shaft, guiding it back to his own slick, used hole. He sank down in one slow, deliberate motion, his ass swallowing Draven’s dick to the hilt, a fresh, breathtaking stretch. A ragged groan tore from Draven’s throat as he watched, utterly claimed.
Andre still hadn’t cum, a tight, furious need coiled in his own gut, and he’d use his mate’s cock to finish the job. He braced his hands on Draven’s chest, finding a brutal, perfect rhythm, bouncing relentlessly on his length. His head was thrown back, tendons cording in his neck, every drive punching a low grunt from his lips.
The slap of skin filled the beach house, a raw counterpoint to the distant ocean. “Fucking use me,” Draven growled, his hands grasping Andre’s hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh. Andre rode him harder, chasing his own end, his body clenching tightly around the thick invasion.
He could feel Draven swelling inside him again, that impossible renewed hardness that only their bond could spark. “You feel that?” Andre panted, his pace becoming erratic, frantic. “I’m gonna milk your cock dry right into my guts.”
A guttural snarl was his only answer as Draven’s hips arched off the floor to meet him, driving deeper. The pressure in Andre’s balls tightened, a white-hot coil about to snap. He fucked himself down on Draven one last, searing time as his orgasm ripped through him, his cum striping Draven’s stomach in violent pulses.
The convulsing grip of Andre’s orgasm triggered Draven’s own, a second, deeper eruption. The sound of Draven’s cum echoing inside him was a wet, obscene promise, and Andre collapsed forward, spent, onto his chest.