Chapter Nine: The Whelp

The taste of her still lived in my mouth, metallic and sweet, a brand I could not wash away. The rooftop kiss—no, the rooftop almost-ruin—looped in me like a curse carved into bone. 

Her moans still rang in my ears, guttural and wrecked, the way her hips had ground against mine, slick heat spilling through thin fabric until I nearly lost the leash. I remembered the sharp bite of her nipple under my fingers, the obscene wetness soaking through as she rutted against my thigh, the shameless grind that smeared her heat all over me. 

I remembered the taste of sweat and salt on her throat when I licked where my fangs wanted to pierce. I remembered the way her body begged for more with every frantic twitch, every gasp that broke like prayer against my mouth. 

I remembered the way she nearly broke me open just by moaning, the sound of it louder in my skull than centuries of silence. Her scent had clung to me like sin, sweet and wet, until I wanted to crawl back up the roof and force her to give it to me again. 

Every piece of her stayed under my skin, and every thought turned filthy with the memory of how she had ridden me with nothing but friction and desperation, how close I had come to fucking her into the stone until she forgot her own name.

I replayed it endlessly, every second a fresh knife: how close I had come to tearing her open against the parapet, how violently I had ripped myself back from the edge. My cock had ached for hours, swollen and unsated, the phantom squeeze of her thighs haunting every step. My body did not forgive me. My hunger raged, demanding the sound of her again, demanding the ruin I had denied us both.

And still I reminded myself—if I had not stopped, she would not have survived it. Her heart had already raced to breaking; another breath, another moment, and I would have drained her dry, fed until silence swallowed her, until her body went slack beneath me and never woke. 

The image haunted me: her eyes wide, lips parted in that last sound, my mouth locked to her throat while she went still. That truth was the chain I forced around my own throat, even as the beast in me screamed to be loosed, howling for the ruin I craved and the sweetness that would have left her lifeless in my arms.

So when her door opened and she stepped out, hours later, in something small and shameless, I nearly forgot the century that taught me silence. My breath stalled. My eyes burned. 

She wore her legs bare, shoulders uncovered, mouth painted red as blood, walking into the night like she had never known what it was to be punished for showing skin. In my age, women were bound by cloth and law, hidden under layers. 

To see her like this—choosing it, owning it—was both alien and unbearable. I wanted to drag her back inside, cover her, tear the dress away, and worship every inch at once.

She thought she could leave me behind.

The vow said otherwise.

So I followed.

Through streets that reeked of piss and oil. Past iron beasts choking smoke into the night. Into a den of mortals packed shoulder to shoulder, shouting their joy over music so loud it cracked my skull.

She slipped through it like it was home.

I stayed in the dark, a shadow folded into the corner where the lightbulbs didn’t reach. My senses sharpened, drowning in the press of bodies: sweat, perfume, the tang of spilled beer, the acrid stink of smoke. But beneath it all, steady and bright, was her. Her heartbeat. Her laughter. Her voice cutting through the noise.

She had dressed for battle: short dress, bare legs, mouth painted the color of blood. She leaned against the bar, head tipped back, hair falling free, and I hated every eye that found her.

The boy noticed first.

Barely a man, really. Taller than her, broad-shouldered, with the posture of someone who thought buying drinks counted as conquest. His heartbeat quickened when she smiled at him. He slid into her space, touched her elbow, said something I couldn’t hear over the bass.

She laughed.

My jaw locked.

It was the same laugh she gave herself in the mornings when she turned her music too loud and spun barefoot in the kitchen. But tonight, she offered it to him.

I gripped the edge of a table until the wood cracked under my claws.

She drank what he gave her. Another glass. Then another. Her laugh got sharper, her movements looser. She let him put his hand on her waist. She tilted her head into his mouth when he leaned too close.

She looked at the mirror behind the bar more than she looked at him.

And there I was in the glass: a shadow standing too still, eyes burning. She saw me. Her mouth tightened for a second, then loosened. She drank again. She turned back to him.

And she left with him.

I tracked them through the streets, my steps silent against the pavement. He thought he was leading her, swaggering with his hand on her waist like she already belonged to him, but I heard the truth in her chest. 

Every time his palm slid lower, her heart stuttered—not from desire, but from unease. And still she let it happen. That contradiction nearly broke me. I almost tore him down where he stood, ripped his throat out and painted the stones with his arrogance.

She didn’t stop him. She didn’t send him away. She let herself be guided by a boy who couldn’t even see the predator pacing ten feet behind, a boy so blind he thought lust made him invincible. I burned with hunger and rage both—hunger to replace him, rage that she would rather take his clumsy mouth than risk mine again.

At her door, his hands were already greedy, pawing at her thighs, grabbing at her breasts as if she were spoils of war. She fumbled with the keys, laughing again, but this time it rang thin, brittle. I could smell the sour edge of her fear under the alcohol. My claws dug into my palms until they bled. One step closer and I would have gutted him. One step closer and the night would have ended in carnage.

I stood in the shadow of the building and listened to the hinge scream as she pulled him inside, every muscle in me trembling with the need to follow, to rip him out of her bed and show her what it meant to be claimed by something that understood her sounds. 

And beneath that rage lived a deeper poison: self-hatred. I had been the one to deny her, to pull away when her body begged, to abandon her to this hollow substitute. 

I hated myself for the leash I’d forced into my own mouth, for the mercy that felt like cowardice. I told myself it was for her safety, and still the truth gnawed me raw—that I wanted her ruin, and I had fled from it like a coward.

I followed them to the roof. My place. My cage.

The bed complained under their weight. Sheets rustled, fabric scraping skin. His laugh came muffled through the wall, clumsy, overeager, the bark of a fool who thought rutting made him king.

Her gasp followed. Too sharp. Too thin.

But I knew the difference. That was not the gasp that lived in her chest when she lost herself, not the moan that had nearly undone me on the rooftop. This was the sound of her body humoring a boy, a brittle courtesy.

He touched her wrong. His rhythm faltered, all thrust and no listening. He chased his own finish, not hers. The bed creaked with effort, his weight hammering without skill, while her heart stayed maddeningly steady, untouched.

I pressed my claws into stone until flakes of mortar drifted down like ash.

Then the noise built: his panting, desperate and high, the uneven slap of bodies meeting without music, his muttered curses begging for an ending. He was close. She was not. I could hear it in the stubborn quiet of her pulse. I could smell it in the way her scent stayed restless, unfulfilled.

She moaned once, soft and false, and I almost laughed at the insult. She gave him a counterfeit where she had given me truth.

He groaned, sharp and final, spilling himself in the hollow way mortals do. His weight collapsed with a graceless thud. The bed stilled, exhausted by his uselessness.

And she went silent. Not the silence of peace. Not the silence of rest. The silence of disappointment, sharp and heavy, pressing against the walls until I thought the building itself would groan under it.

The kind of silence that wasn’t peace, wasn’t rest. It was the silence of disappointment. Sheets shifted as she rolled away. Her heartbeat was too quick, not from climax, but from wanting.

I paced the roof like a caged wolf, laughter tearing in my throat. Bitter, broken. Almost wishing she would storm back upstairs, fling the door wide, and demand that I finish what I had begun on the parapet. 

I could have taken her then, given her what the whelp never could. I could have wrung every true sound from her throat until the night itself carried her song. And yet—thank the ashes she did not. 

Because I knew the truth: while I would have pleased her, I would also have killed her. The hunger in me would not have stopped at her cries; it would have gone on drinking until there was nothing left but silence and a body gone slack in my arms.

She had dragged a stranger home to finish what I refused. She had let his hands go where mine had trembled. She had offered him her sounds—

and he couldn’t even make her sing.

The boy slept. His breathing fell into the dumb rhythm of spent mortals. She lay awake beside him, heartbeat unsteady, shifting against the sheets, her body still hungry.

I crouched low, listening closer, drinking in every movement. Her breath caught once, then again, as though she had slid her own hand down her stomach under the covers. My nails cut grooves into the stone. Was she chasing what he had failed to give her? Was she chasing what I had denied her on the roof? The idea seared me raw.

She turned on her side. The springs gave her away. Her breathing quickened, shallow, soft as if ashamed. Then it stopped—unfinished. She had stilled her hand, clenched her fists in the sheets instead. Her need had frightened her, shamed her. The silence that followed was more intimate than any sound could have been.

I leaned over the edge of the roof and whispered into the night, voice raw:

“Only me.”

The city swallowed the words. But the vow burned hotter, and I knew the truth had teeth now.

She could try again. She could bring home a hundred boys. None of them mattered. None of them could give her what I could.

Because her music already belonged to me.

I stayed until dawn smudged the edges of the sky. The boy snored, oblivious. She shifted restlessly, never finding peace. Her body was unsatisfied, her heartbeat stubborn. 

My hunger prowled in circles inside me, furious, clawing at my ribs, demanding her. I wanted to rip the night open and take her, to prove the vow true in blood and in sound. But I held, gnashing my teeth against the dawn. 

When the sun finally crested and I slipped into shadow, the hunger followed, whispering her name into my marrow, a torment I welcomed because it was hers.