When my consciousness returned with a sharp coldness, like a freezing morning in the forest, I felt like a ruin amidst the mangled sheets of the bed.
My body was covered in the ashes left behind by the savage fire of the night.
I, Vespera, wrapped the sheets tighter around me, as if those pieces of fabric could protect me from Varg's gaze or from my own reality.
But they couldn't.
When my gaze fell upon the bed, between my legs, I felt my heart skip a beat. There was a riot of color on the white silk sheets.
The fresh, bright red of my own innocence had mingled with the transparent, shimmering silver heat of Varg's massive, scarred body—a heat that carried the raw power of an Alpha. It was as if the hard, protective shell of an oyster had been violently pried open by a savage hand.
The precious pearl I had guarded for years, the one I had allowed no one to touch, had been crushed in Varg's dark palms, its dust scattered into the dirt. That pearl was no longer smooth and radiant; it had been shattered into a thousand pieces by Varg's hunger for possession.
Down my legs, toward my knees, I could still feel Varg's burning, dense warmth. It was as if his invisible hands were still over me, as if his ghost were biting and grazing my skin every second.
A knot formed in my throat; my ribcage tightened as if I were being crushed under those heavy marbles once again. The first sob sliced through the deathly silence of the room like a shard of glass.
I began to cry. But this wasn't just a cry of pain; it was the silent dirge for the glittering girl who had once remained human—the funeral of that delicate pearl.
My tears slid down my cheeks and dripped onto that mixture of blood and silver on the sheet.
Varg's wetness on my legs, the way he had claimed me like a monster without even looking at me, kept replaying in my mind. Like an object... like a freak. I lay there in the center of the bed, exposed like a shattered oyster.
Varg was still by the window. His naked, colossal back shimmered with the faint crimson glow remaining from the hearth.
When he heard the sound of my weeping, I saw his broad shoulders tense. He was an Alpha; there was no room for tears, weakness, or sentimentality in his harsh laws. But as my sobs echoed against those stone walls, I could feel his rigid shell cracking.
To him, even my crying was a crime.
"Stop crying, you freak." Varg said.
His voice was stripped of the cursed fury of the night, but it remained as heavy as a sledgehammer. He still didn't turn around; it was as if seeing my broken state would drown him in his own darkness.
"You asked for nothing but pain and darkness from me. I gave you exactly what you wanted."
"It hurts, Varg..." I sobbed, clutching the sheet harder against my chest.
"Not just my body... You shattered the most precious part of me with your own hands."
Varg turned slowly. The ember-fire in his eyes had been replaced by a deep, silent, and almost mournful well. When his gaze touched the stains on my legs, a strange twitch crossed his face. He took a step toward the bed.
He gripped the edge of the mattress with those rough, killer hands.
"That girl was already dead," he whispered, his voice this time filled with a danger that bordered on tenderness.
"She died the moment she took her first step away from me, the moment she entered that mine. I only saved you from that ghost who dreamt empty dreams. You are what is in my arms now. You are mine. This blood, this silver... it is your debt to this land. Your debt to your Alpha."
I reached out and touched the wetness on the bed. My fingertips were stained with silver. This was my new identity; I was no longer a radiant pearl, but a cloud of dark dust shaped in the hands of a monster.
The fire in my heart grew even larger. My weeping intensified; because I both hated this monster and wanted to drown in the dark waters winding down my legs—to remain locked in his room forever.
Varg sat on the bed and did something I never expected. He placed those rough hands on my tear-streaked, wet face. He wiped a tear with his thumb; his touch was as harsh as a whip, yet as possessive as it was protective.
"Cry!" he growled, bringing his face close to mine.
"Let all your dreams flow out of this room with your tears. But when you are finished, when you open those eyes, you will see only me before you. Only this house, only these snows... and only my darkness."
The lost pride of an unmarked Omega... the impossible dreams of a young girl who had experienced her first time, feeling like she was swallowing shards of glass caught in her throat...
And the salty, bloody waters left behind by a shattered oyster...
This was all I had left.