Areston thinks he can shield me from his past, but what he doesn't realize is I'm already part of it.
The darkness that haunts him? It's the same one that's been chasing me for years.
I've given him everything-my body, my heart, my soul-and still...
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special note for ghost readers: This chapter is super important (you'll see why) so I'd really appreciate everyone who's reading's feedback on it. I don't want to know if it was "good", "loved it", "nice chapter", or "enjoyed it", I'm requesting y'all to be detailed. It doesn't have to be an essay or a paragraph. A couple of lines should suffice. Try to, it'd help me a lot.
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You shouldn't linger in the darkness. It's where predators lurk. Hiding and waiting to pounce on you, shred you, until there's nothing left but blood. Pool of blood as remnants of your existence.
That enigmatic guy in the exquisite dragon mask had told me.
I was a hollow shell.
Existing. But not living.
The darkness that kept attached as a consequence of my past refused to unshackle from its restraints so I could move on. Not that I wanted to.
Why would I have moved into a future that did not have Areston De L'Aquila in it?
So, I kept existing. Breathing for the sake of existing. Loathing the darkness within.
Until the night outside Devil's Den when I found my benediction. The answer to my tearful prayers.
Benediction came in the form of a predator that treated darkness as its dominion—the same I'd never fallen out of love with and for whom I'd have gladly waited all my life regardless of zero hope.
He seduced me without even touching me.
Casted a spell upon me that night with soulless eyes, his intimidating presence towering over me like a shadow one can never escape. Exhilarating and terrifying me all at once.
He stripped every layer of my defense the very moment. The mere sight of him had ignited a twisted mix of something deep, primal, and terrorizing stirring inside me.
I became his, right then. Utterly and completely. There was no turning back. All the attempts I made to escape him afterwards were my weak pretense and futile attempts to fight the inevitable.
I'd never felt so vulnerable, so exposed, and yet somehow so alive like I hadn't felt in the decade.
He lured me with an illusion of freedom from my self-inflicted dark cage. Only to tempt me to walk into another one—his very own. A cage that was a mirage of freedom. Million times darker. The kind that swallows everything and everyone like those supernova black holes. The kind where my comprehension failed.
I accepted it. I embraced it and him, with all conditions. Fell for him more and more. Harder than ever.
My predator is a beast. A monster. A hero with every aspect of anti-hero perfectly amalgamated to make him who he is.
