He had tasted blood a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes, yet none had ever reached him the way hers did. The moment his lips brushed her skin, he felt the world slightly tilt.
Warmth met him first, and not the simple warmth of living flesh, but something deeper. It was a slow, pulsing heat that rose to greet him as if her very being recognized and accepted him. Initially, he simply wanted to drink from the little wolf Princess but his thoughts went overboard.
Her sighs, the quiet catch of her breath, her trembling moans, and the rapid flutter of her heartbeat beneath his lips—all of it drove him to the edge of madness.
If madness could describe what he felt earlier, then when his fangs sank in and the sweetness spilled over him, driving him to the edge of reason, it was only the beginning of the chaos she stirred within him.
It was not merely the taste of blood. It was the taste of her life, her memories, her longing, her innocence... everything she hid beneath carefully composed silence. Her warmth rushed into him in a quiet wave, almost gentle like stepping into sunlight after centuries underground, and felt it slip down his throat like liquid fire: a light in his dark world.
Her essence was soft, soft in a way that startled him, and made him crave for more. Sweet—not cloying, but pure, as though the sweetness belonged to the person she pretended not to be.
For a fleeting moment, there was unspoken sorrow in it, and the ghost of secrets she kept locked behind those blue eyes. He tasted the remnants of quiet courage, pain, loneliness, naiveness, and something that felt almost like defiance.
His eyes darkened at the thought of the pain she had endured, but the sweetness of her blood blanketed that sensation.
A sigh escaped her lips and his fingers tightened around her waist, not in hunger but in something perilously close to reverence. She was fragile beneath his hands, warm in a way he had nearly forgotten the world could be.
He felt her shiver but not from the pain, but from the strange closeness of the moment, the intimacy of being held by a creature who lived between darkness and hunger… but mostly the way he kneaded her breast.
Everything about her was warm and almost unbelievably soft. The warmth spread through him until he felt it burn behind his ribs and softened the edges of his hunger, numbed the cold that lived in his bones.
For a moment—one stolen, forbidden moment—he felt almost alive again. Her pulse quickened against his lips, a rhythm he could have followed into eternity as he drank slowly, savoring every heartbeat and draw of sweetness.
He could taste her strength blooming beneath the surface, and could feel every subtle emotion she tried so hard to hide which gradually dulled as a sign he drank too much. She was clinging close to unconsciousness from the way her heart beat slowed, but it was almost impossible for him to pull away.
He wanted more.
"P-Please…" Her soft and trembling breath brushed his ear. He felt the faintest sigh escape her, and it nearly shattered whatever restraint he had left.
A faint whisper of sanity reached him through the ravenous pull of her blood. He wanted more, enough to finish her, to end the torment of restraint—but he wouldn't. Not yet.
When he finally withdrew, the world exhaled with him but seemed to sway around her. Her lashes fluttered once, twice—and then she crumpled into his arms, fainting before a word escaped her lips.
He caught her effortlessly, staring at her pale face for a fleeting moment before carrying her towards the bed. Gently laying her onto the soft mattress, careful not to jostle her fragile form, the faint rhythm of her pulse beneath his fingers was enough to steady the storm raging inside him as he draped the covers over her naked form.
Her hair spilled across the pillow like brown silk, and for a fleeting moment, he allowed himself to simply watch in silence and patience, perhaps painfully aware of the line he dared not cross.
The hunger still whispered in a low insistent hum at the edges of his mind, but he pressed it down, grounding himself in the simple fact that she was alive… still alive to feed for another day.
His hands inched to touch that face, to claw that smooth skin until it was marred with painful pleasure, until those lips whispered his name and every breath was for him. Her eyes—oh those heavenly eyes—he'll enjoy draining the life out of them, until it was filled with horror and darkness no angel could save.
And her chest, those inviting swells heaving in a rise and fall motion, drove him utterly insane. To rip off that fragile dress until she was bare for him. What manner of effrontery a material had over his own palms?
He couldn't deny the beauty of her body as much as he hated to think of it. But she was designed in a way that could either ruin him or her, and he concluded on the latter.
Oh, he will ruin her. But not just yet, and he swallowed the sharp ache of desire.
The thought of her awakening, of seeing him here, brought an unfamiliar tightness to his chest. He would wait. He had to. For now, the room held only the quiet weight of her presence and the soft, shallow rise and fall of her chest.
Her taste still lingered on his tongue—sweet, warm, and impossibly alive—clinging to him like the echo of a memory he would never be able to forget.
King Vladimir might think he was a fool to believe the Princess he asked for was the one he took in his carriage. He was either very stupid or very foolish to ridicule the ability of his god, and that alone would be the end of him.
He would've stopped the marriage from proceeding and taken the fated second princess, but didn't. Today proved why he assumed something in her to be special; the purity of her blood. This one… this one seemed perfect for their destruction.
It was either that he planned to test his ability to recognize a disguise or lengthen enough reasons to end their kind. For centuries, werewolves waged war upon themselves and corrupted lands not of their own, and now the dominance would be returned to the hands of death and Hell.
He knew well that King Vladmir thought he was playing a careful game by weaving politics and alliances like a master manipulator but in truth, he had long lost. Whoever this girl was—his daughter, judging from the striking resemblance to him—was his perfect pawn, and she didn't even know it yet.
Perhaps she must've thought it best to play the role of "docile angel" to get on his good side and gain his trust. Cloak her schemes in purity, to wear innocence like perfume, and drift her way into him before the scent wore off; a motive the blind could tell, especially when the disguise had been well planned but nothing perfectly covered for a creature like him.
Except for one thing… one thing that seemed real in the poor soul, and he craved the feel of it until she was nothing but bones like the others; It was her innocence.
Earlier on the carriage when he adjusted her slightly in his arms, her body was unnervingly light. Despite the reprieve from the firmly fastened cloak, her breath remained shallow, very quick to capitulate. Unlike normal werewolves he'd seen, her skin was fair and bright, as though she appeared more human than her kind.
That thought evoked a deep sense of irritation and wrath, but he kept calm, investigating later. There was no way King Vladmir had a human daughter, not of any he had come across one way or the other, and heard of. But one was cursed. He heard of her who had been executed three months ago; the first daughter, Lucrezia Bathory.
The prophecy was clear, even if her father might have twisted it to suit his narrative. She wasn't just any werewolf princess but the one to tip the scales. She would either save her kind… but in his hands, she will destroy them.
One after the other, they would drink their blood and feast on themselves until nothing but bones are left and fed to the hounds. Winter was slow but never failed to come, and he would make it desirably slow until hunger lures Lord Vladimir's—Alpha of Secktom Pack—mouth on his boot and lick the soil he walked upon.
And as far as he was concerned, her destruction would serve a far greater purpose. A welcoming death.
An inaudible cry escaped her lips as she twisted and turned. Even the blind could tell the little wolf Princess was having a nightmare and his lips almost tug in a devilish smug.
Nightmares were his world, and she had merely stepped into it.
It was the kind he'd seen before, and it amused him. Her fear, her terror, her gasp, her dread… everything irked yet enticed him.
He could remain, do this all day until she never thought of another man again, especially after she had the nerve to look at someone else on their wedding day. Even now, he couldn't stop thinking about it; about the quiet exchange of glances yesterday between the next Alpha of Secktom and his little wolf.
Initially, he never planned to feed today, and simply wanted to punish her but in the end, it seemed to backfire against him, leaving him punished instead. Her warmth still lingered in his senses, and for the first time in centuries, he felt the full weight of his own thirst.
Again, he hadn't realized how ravenous he truly was until he drank from her, coursing through him that made the earlier exertions seem almost trivial. Dealing with the spies who had trespassed across his borders, and the creatures that dared to wander into his land had taxed him, not in muscle or blood, but in something far more insidious: willpower, restraint, and the quiet suppression of the predator he was. And yet, with her, that suppression shattered, and he savored the dark euphoria that came with surrendering to hunger, feeling both the thrill and the exhaustion of his own nature.
His tongue raked across his protruding fangs, tasting the sweet remnants of her blood. It ached so badly that for a fleeting moment, he attempted to finish off what he had started.
But that pull always kept him restrained.
For the last time, he watched his little wolf Princess whose breath came in normal inhales instead of the previous ragged gasps. She looked more peaceful while asleep than awake, like an angel drawn to heaven at rest and hell at dawn.
The silence stretched until the bell tolled, indicating another hour. He didn't realize how long he stayed watching her sleep, soothing him in an unsettling way.
And his eyes darkened. Whoever this girl was had slowly begun to destroy him in such a manner that he hadn't realized until now. A single trace of poison could corrupt the veins, and she was that poison.
With one last lingering look, he turned and walked away, yet a part of him knew that no matter how much he walked away, it wouldn't save him.
His naive little wolf was already inside him.