Chapter 529: Guttural
What came next?
Ah. Yes.
After the bolts, then came the rags. He kept a stack of them under the sink, clean and folded, waiting for nights like this.
He wet them one by one into the cold basin, wringing them out until they were damp but not dripping, and began to stuff them into the gaps. Under and along the gaps of the door. Along the edges of the window frame.
The scent of clean cotton and cold water filled the small space, and he breathed it in like a man starving for air that wasn’t tainted.
The ventilation grates were harder to reach. He had to stand on the edge of the bathtub, one hand braced against the tiled wall, the other pressing damp rags into the narrow slats just beneath the ceiling.
He worked in silence, his jaw tight and his breath shallow. If he could just seal everything... if he could just keep the scent out, her scent, that cloying, lilting, sweet, sweet heat that seeped through the walls and under the doors and into the lungs of the monster inside him—
But some of it would still leak through.
It always did.
His enhanced senses, the gift of his wolf blood, were a curse on nights like this. No matter how many rags he stuffed, no matter how many bolts he locked, he could still smell her.
Faint. Pleading. Wanting. Waiting.
The bathtub was the last step. He poured the ice cold northern water all the way, watching the water sloshed into the porcelain basin with something that might have been relief or might have been despair.
The cold was the point. The cold was the only thing that helped, even a little.
He didn’t want to strip. It felt like the last barrier to him. He just stepped into the freezing water fully clothed.
The shock of it stole his breath. His muscles seized. His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. But he didn’t climb out.
He sank deeper, letting the cold envelop him, letting it numb his skin and slow his pulse and dull the edge of the desperate, traitorous heat that was already beginning to stir in his blood.
He closed his eyes. The water lapped against his chest. The rags held the scent at bay. The bolts held the door. And Arkai waited for the night to end.
But at the end of the night, he would still fall into a rut.
Because of his own sister.
"Arkai?"
The voice slid through the gaps in the door like smoke, curling into the cold bathroom air and wrapping around his throat.
He knew that voice. He had heard it everyday, had listened to it laugh and sing and call his name with sisterly affection.
"A-are you there...?"
Disgust ran up and down his spine like a colony of ants, cold and skittering.
Why? This was his sister. His stepsister, yes, but still his sister.
He should be disgusted, right? The feeling was right, it was proper, the feeling was what any decent man would feel when his own kin came to him in the grip of heat.
But was disgust even allowed? Could he be disgusted and still love her as a brother should?
He did still love her. Beneath the revulsion, beneath the cold water, behind the bolted locks and the desperate, methodical rituals of escape, he still loved her.
She was his sister. His family. And family was supposed to be sacred.
But it should be disgust. It must be disgust. That was the right feeling, right? Please, he was right to be disgusted, right?
Knock, knock, knock.
The sound was soft at first. Almost gentle. Three taps of her knuckles against the bathroom door, light enough to be mistaken for an accident. But he knew better.
"Arkai... I... I can’t take it anymore..." Her voice cracked on the last word, trembling, enticing. "It hurts so much... You don’t understand how much it hurts... My body... My body is burning up from the inside..."
"In my belly... it’s... hot... Please dig into my womb and stroke it, squeeze my belly as you dig into it with your... it’s so... so... so unbearable..."
"My back... this shiver in my back... mmm..."
He pressed his palms against the bottom of the tub, feeling the cold porcelain anchor him.
"Please, stepbrother... I need you... I need you so badly it’s driving me mad..." A soft, shuddering moan slipped through the door, and he heard her body slump against the wood. "I’ve tried... I’ve tried everything... Nothing helps... Only you... I just know only you will..."
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The pounding shook the door in its frame. The bolt locks rattled. The damp rags trembled in their gaps. And still her voice came through, impossibly clear, impossibly cloying.
Arkai dipped his head beneath the water. The cold closed over him like a grave. The world went muffled and dark, the sounds of the night reduced entirely. He stayed there, suspended in the silence, his lungs beginning to burn.
But why—why was her voice still as clear as bells?
"Your cock, brother... please... Just you... cock... cock... cock... in my pussy—"
The water should have drowned it out. The water should have given him peace. But he could still hear her, as though she were speaking directly into his skull, her words bypassing his ears entirely and etching themselves into his brain.
"Please—"
"Please, stepbrother... I love you..."
"If you don’t come out, I’ll kill her."
Arkai’s eyes snapped open beneath the water. Bubbles streamed from his lips. His young body went rigid, every muscle locking at once, the cold of the bath suddenly insignificant against the ice that flooded his veins.
That voice, however lilting and sweet, had just said—
"I’ll kill her."
Kill... her...?
He couldn’t move. The cold had seeped into his bones, and the voice had seeped into his soul, and he was suspended there in the darkness, a boy pretending to be a man, a brother pretending he didn’t know what his sister had become.
"Kill him too?"
Her laugh drifted through the door.
"Do you just want to hear me kill them all and hide there forever?"
Then, he heard it.
Grrrr...
It was low and guttural, vibrating through the wood like a purr.
Growls.
Her hungry growls.