u/That1StoryGuy

I am not a saint. I would not even classify myself as a fair man. I look out for myself first. Money and power sit at the front of every decision I make. Those two things are the only religion I have ever practiced with any real devotion. Everything else is noise.

I have a code. I do not harm women. I do not touch kids. That line is not negotiable. Grown men who owe me money are a different species. A man who takes my money and then decides he does not have to give it back has volunteered for whatever punishment I think he deserves. I have broken jaws over five figures. I have left men pissing blood over six. I collect. That is the whole job description.

John had been a decent client for a while. Used my tables, used my markers, paid on time. Then he sat down at my last private game and lost more than his ass. Tried to buy back in with a watch, a chain, the shirt off his back. Walked out in only boxers. I gave him time because our earlier business had been clean. Time ran out. Three missed payments. Tonight was the night I made an example so the rest of the city remembered how this works.

Tommy and I found them in a shit-hole hotel on the far end of the Strip, the kind of place that smells like old carpet, cheap perfume, and people who have already lost. We did not knock. The door gave on the second kick.

John was on the bed in a stained undershirt. The girl was standing near the window like she had been waiting for the next bad thing to arrive. We put hands on him immediately. Tommy had him by the throat. I had him by the hair. He started begging before we even asked the question. The usual script. Please. I need time. I can get it. Just an extension.

We told him the same thing we tell every man who thinks time is free. Next week or you stop breathing. He offered everything in his wallet plus whatever we wanted from the room. Then he offered something we had not expected.

He offered her.

She was standing in the corner in a dress that looked painted on, heels that made her legs look long, tits that had clearly been purchased, and an ass that moved when she breathed. She had to be a Vegas girl looking for a sugar daddy. She looked at me, then at Tommy, then back at John. Disappointed, maybe. Not surprised. Not screaming. Like this particular flavor of betrayal was not new.

My code said not to hurt women. But she was not being dragged. She stepped forward like she had already done the math.

“My name is Chloe,” she said. Voice steady. “You can have me all night. However you want. Just give us three weeks to find the money.”

Tommy looked at me. I looked at her. Leaving empty-handed would have been stupid. Taking what was being offered was business with a better ending. We agreed.

John tried to slide toward the door, muttering about giving us privacy. Tommy shoved him into the chair next to the bed hard enough that the cheap wood creaked. “You move, I break your legs. You watch. That’s the deal now.”

John knew the chair was his prison for the night. He sat. His mouth was a thin line. His eyes kept sliding to her and then away.

Chloe walked closer. “I’m ready to deliver payment.”

We did not undress her gently. Tommy grabbed one strap. I grabbed the other. The dress tore down the middle with a sound like cheap fabric giving up. It fell around her heels in pieces. No bra. No panties. Just skin and a little gold locket resting in the hollow of her throat. The body underneath was the kind men ruin their lives over. Heavy tits with tight nipples already hard from the air or the attention. A narrow waist that flared into hips built to take impact. An ass that jiggled when she shifted her weight. Shaved smooth between her legs, pussy already glistening.

We put hands on her like we were inventorying product. I squeezed her tits, thumbs dragging over her nipples until they stiffened further. Tommy grabbed two handfuls of ass and spread her just to watch her react. She didn't flinch. She arched into it. We groped every inch. Tits, ass, the wet heat between her thighs. Fingers sliding through her slit just to confirm she was already soaked. She made a small sound when I pinched her clit. Not protest. Acknowledgment.

We shoved her to her knees.

When we dropped our pants her eyes went wide in a way that looked practiced and still honest.

“Wow. It’s been so long since I’ve had a real cock. These are actually big enough to satisfy me.”

John made a noise in the chair. We ignored it.

I took her by the hair and pulled her face to my cock. “I want your lipstick stains all over my cock and balls.”

She kissed the head first. Soft. Then she opened and took me in slow, lips stretching, tongue working the underside while her hand wrapped Tommy and started stroking him. Pretty. Too pretty. I was not here for a loving blowjob.

I tightened my grip in her hair and pushed. She gagged once, then her throat opened like she had been trained for it. I fed her every inch until her nose was in my pubic hair and her throat was convulsing around me. Held her there. Pulled back. Slammed in again. Throat-fucking her while Tommy watched her drool run down her chin onto her tits. She did not fight the rhythm. She relaxed into it and took it.

She switched without being told. Pulled off me with a wet gasp and swallowed Tommy to the root while her hand kept working me, spit-slick and tight. Then back to me. Then his balls in her mouth while she jerked both of us. Alternating like a pro. Only coming off to suck and lick and mouth our sacs, leaving lipstick and spit everywhere I had asked for.

We pulled out our phones. She saw the cameras and moaned for them. Louder. Filthier. “Fuck my throat. Use me. Record it. Let him watch what a real cock does.”

John’s face had gone red. He had bitten his bottom lip hard enough that I could see the indent. He also had a raging hard-on tenting his boxers. Jealousy and arousal fighting in the same body. I wanted him to sit in that exact feeling.

She pulled off with a string of spit connecting her lips to Tommy’s cock.

“Please fuck me. Teach my boyfriend what happens when you screw over real men.”

We threw her on the bed. I did not ease in. I lined up and slammed into her pussy in one stroke. She was soaked and still tight enough that the first thrust punched a sound out of her that Tommy immediately cut short by stuffing his cock back into her mouth. He must not have gotten enough of that throat, because he used it even harder. I started pounding. Hard, deep, the kind of pace that makes the bed frame complain. Every time my hips met her ass it jiggled. I could not leave it alone. I cracked my palm across one cheek, then the other. Sharp smacks that left pink blooms. She moaned around Tommy’s cock every time.

We switched without talking. Tommy pulled out of her mouth. She gasped air and immediately started begging again.

“My ass. Claim my ass too.”

Tommy and I looked at each other and grinned.

I pulled out of her pussy, slick and throbbing, and pressed the head of my cock against her asshole. She pushed back onto it. I worked in slow only because the first few inches needed it. Then I seated myself to the hilt in her ass. Tight. Hot. She made a broken sound that was half pain and half hunger. Tommy slid under her, lined up with her empty pussy, and shoved in.

She was full. Stuffed in both holes. Double-penetrated and moaning like the cameras were paying her by the decibel. We found a rhythm. I fucked her ass. He fucked her pussy. The two of us moving her between us, using her body as the thing that connected the debt to the payment. Her tits swung. The locket bounced against her sternum.

I caught the chain and lifted the locket in front of her face while we kept pounding.

“Who gave this to you?”

“John did,” she panted. “He said it was a symbol of our love.”

We did not slow down.

“The same guy who offered you up as payment?”

She nodded. Could barely speak. “Yes.”

I looked at John. He had his bottom lip between his teeth again. The bulge in his boxers had not gone down. He was watching the woman he had called his get ruined in both holes and his body had already picked a side.

We fucked her without mercy. I felt her ass clench and flutter around me when she came the first time. Then again when Tommy ground against her clit. Then again, messy and loud, when we both bottomed out at the same time and held. She had five or six orgasms punched out of her while we ravaged her. She shook. She drooled. She kept screaming yes and harder and please don’t stop.

When we were ready we pulled out, flipped her onto her back, and stroked off over her. I came across her tits and the locket. Tommy painted her stomach and the underside of her breasts. White ropes landing on gold. The little symbol of love dripping.

I unclasped the locket, pulled it off her neck, and tossed it at John’s chest.

“Hold onto that until we’re done.”

Chloe was still breathing hard, legs open, holes used and shining, cum cooling on her skin. She looked at me like the night was not over.

“Now,” I said, already getting hard again, “let’s start round two of the payment.”

We did not give her time to pretend this was still a negotiation.

Tommy grabbed her ankles and dragged her to the edge of the mattress. I stepped between her thighs and pushed back into her ass because it was still loose and slick from the first round and I wanted it tighter around me after she had already taken a load’s worth of stretching. She hissed and then moaned when I bottomed out. Tommy climbed up, straddled her chest, and fed his cock between her tits, pinning them together with his hands so he could fuck the valley while she tried to lick the head on every upstroke.

John made a sound like he had been kicked. We did not look at him except to make sure he was still in the chair.

I fucked her ass in long, punishing strokes. The kind that make the whole bed shift. Her hole clung and then gave, clung and then gave. I reached around and rubbed her clit with two fingers, not gentle, just pressure and speed until she came again with her ass spasming around my cock. Tommy used that moment to shove past her lips and down her throat again. She took it. Gagging, slobbering, eyes watering, still pushing her hips back onto me like she was afraid we would stop.

We switched positions again. We put her on all fours facing John so he had to watch her face while we used her from behind, one in her pussy, one waiting to switch into her ass. She looked at him while she got fucked. She did not look away. She said his name once, not as a plea, just as a fact, and then she told us to go harder.

By the time we were close again she was a mess. Hair wrecked. Makeup ruined. Lipstick smeared down her chin and onto her tits. Ass red from slaps. Pussy and ass both used and dripping. We pulled out and came on her face this time. I painted her lips and cheeks. Tommy added to it. She opened her mouth and caught what she could, then swallowed and licked what she could reach.

I picked the locket up off John’s lap where it had fallen and dropped it on her cum-covered chest.

“Three weeks,” I said. “You find every dollar. If you don’t, we come back and the payment structure changes.”

Chloe wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked at John like she was seeing the size of the hole he had dug for both of them.

Tommy and I pulled our pants up. We left her on the bed and him in the chair with the locket sitting in the mess we had made..

With one last glance at her, we closed the door behind us and left.

The smoke hit me first.

It rolled over the golden fields like a living thing, thick and black and tasting of ash and roasted grain. I had been turning the last of the season’s wheat with the pitchfork when the first scream cut through the afternoon. Not a single scream. A chorus. High and short and then gone, swallowed by the crackle of fire and the rhythmic thunder of boots.

I dropped the pitchfork. The wooden handle struck the packed earth with a dull sound that seemed too small for what was happening. My hands stayed open in the air for a second, empty, before I forced them down to my sides. The fields around my family’s old barn were already catching. Flames raced through the dry stalks in hungry orange ribbons, and the heat pressed against my face like a living hand.

They came through the smoke in a wedge.

Not dozens. Not hundreds. A small army, maybe forty or fifty women, moving with the cold precision of something that had done this a hundred times before. Their armor was a patchwork of leather, fur, and hammered iron, but every piece sat like it belonged. No clanking. No wasted motion. They flowed between the burning houses the way water finds the easiest path, and wherever they passed, men died.

I watched from the edge of my own field, half-hidden by the barn’s shadow, and understood very quickly that running was death and fighting was death. The ones who bolted were hunted. A woman would peel off from the main body, spear or axe in hand, and simply outpace the panicked farmer or the boy who thought the woods might save him. The kill was always clean. A single stroke. Sometimes the head left the shoulders. Sometimes the body folded around the blade like wet cloth. They did not gloat. They did not speak. They simply returned to the formation and kept moving.

The ones who fought lasted longer, but only by heartbeats.

Four of the village men—strong ones, men who had swung scythes and axes their whole lives—saw the two leaders at the front and decided that was their chance. I knew them. Tomas the cooper’s son. Old Mikael who still had most of his teeth. The twins who worked the mill. They charged with whatever they had: a wood-axe, a spear that had been a pitchfork an hour ago, a knife, a length of chain.

The shorter of the two leaders met them first.

She was blonde, long hair the color of new wheat bound back in a thick braid that still managed to whip when she moved. Her eyes were a furious, clear blue that seemed to catch the firelight and throw it back sharper. A single dark tattoo marked the inside of her left forearm—something angular and sharp, like a rune that had been cut rather than drawn. Her armor was mostly leather and fur, close-fitting, built for speed. The long sword in her hand was already wet.

She did not wait for them to reach her.

She stepped into the first swing, turned her shoulders, and the blade took Tomas across the throat so cleanly that his head stayed on for half a step before the blood came. It sprayed in a bright arc across the packed dirt. She was already past him. The second man—Mikael—tried to bring the wood-axe down. She caught the haft with her free hand, twisted, and drove the point of her sword up under his ribs. The sound was wet and soft. He folded around the steel, mouth open, and she shoved him off the blade with her boot without ever looking at his face.

The twins came together. One high, one low.

The taller woman was already moving.

She was immense. Not fat. Not soft. Built like something the mountain itself had decided to shape into a person. Shoulders that could have carried a yoke of oxen. Arms corded with muscle that shifted under patches of heavy iron plate connected by thick leather straps. Her brown hair was pulled into a single long braid that hung down her back like a rope. The circlet on her brow was iron or steel, simple, with small wings sweeping back from the temples. Her eyes were the opposite of the blonde’s—light golden brown, almost soft, almost kind—and that softness made the rest of her more terrifying.

She did not draw the battle-axe from her back. She simply lifted the round shield and drove forward.

The first twin hit the shield and bounced. The force of it knocked him three full steps backward into his brother. The brown-haired woman followed without pause. With one more massive shove of the shield both men were on the ground. The axe came free then, a single-handed swing that looked almost casual. The blade took the first twin across the collarbone and kept going. Bone and meat parted. Blood fountained. The second twin tried to rise and the shield edge came down on the side of his head with a sound like a melon dropped from a height. He stopped moving.

It was over before I finished blinking.

The blonde wiped her sword on a scrap of cloak that had belonged to one of the dead men. The brown-haired woman stood over the bodies for a moment, breathing steady, eyes already scanning for the next threat. I saw the way she angled her body—always slightly between the blonde and the rest of the village. Protecting. Claiming space.

They kept coming.

House after house. Field after field. The fire followed them like a second army. Smoke turned the sky the color of old bruises. I could smell blood now, thick and coppery, mixed with the sweet-sick scent of burning wheat and the sharper stink of men who had voided their bowels in the last second of life. Screams rose and were cut short. Sometimes there was only the wet chop of an axe or the meaty thud of a mace.

Every so often the leaders would stop.

A man would be standing still in the middle of the road or in the doorway of a half-burned house, hands empty, eyes wide, doing nothing. Not running. Not raising a weapon. The blonde would walk up to him, sword still drawn, and speak in a voice too low for me to hear. Sometimes the man would answer. Sometimes he would simply stare. Then the brown-haired woman would look him over the way a farrier looks at a horse—measuring bone and muscle and something deeper. Most of those men still died. A quick stroke across the throat or a thrust under the sternum. But twice I saw the brown-haired woman make a small, precise gesture with her left hand—two fingers drawn across her own collarbone, then pointed at the man. Other women from the army would move in, bind his wrists with leather thongs, and lead him away toward the rear of the column.

I recognized both of them.

The first was the smith’s apprentice. Short, almost squat, with forearms thick as oak roots and hands that looked like they had been shaped by the hammers he swung every day. The second was the traveling hunter who sold game between the villages. Lean, long-limbed, eyes that had seen a lot of different hunts, but none like this. He had chosen the wrong day to stop in our little valley.

They were led away without ceremony. The rest of the army kept killing.

I do not know how long I stood there. Time had become something thick and slow, measured only by the advance of the fire and the steady approach of the wedge. My family’s barn was the last structure at the edge of the village. Beyond it the fields stretched toward the river and the low hills. There was nowhere left to go that would not be seen. Nowhere left that would not end with a spear in my back.

They reached me when the sun was a red smear behind the smoke.

The blonde saw me first. Her blue eyes narrowed with something that looked almost like irritation. She stopped ten paces away, sword still loose in her hand, and the rest of the army halted behind her like a single creature.

“We have another one with enough intelligence not to run or fight,” she said. Her voice carried an edge, sharp as the blade she carried. “What’s your name, boy?”

I swallowed. The smoke had dried my throat to dust. I forced the word out anyway.

“Erik.”

She tilted her head. The braid shifted across her shoulder. “Do you know who we are, boy?”

I looked between them. The blonde with her raging blue eyes and the single dark mark on her arm. The brown-haired giant with the winged circlet and the soft eyes that did not belong on a body built for war. I had heard the stories. Everyone had. Whispered around fires after the children were asleep. Stories of the Sisters who came out of the northern passes when the harvests were good and the southern kingdoms were fat.

“I’ve heard rumors,” I said. My voice stayed steady only because I made it. “Are you the Sisters of Atherra?”

The brown-haired woman studied me. Her gaze moved from my face to my shoulders, my hands, the simple tunic and the dirt under my nails. She gave a single, slow nod.

The blonde scoffed. A short, sharp sound. “What gave us away?”

I chose each word carefully. Insulting them would be the last thing I ever did.

“I heard that you come to villages that feed your enemy kingdoms. You raid what you can. You burn the fields so the harvest never reaches their tables. You take any woman who wants to join or has the skills you need. And most men… most men don’t survive long enough to tell the tale of seeing you.”

The blonde’s mouth curved into a wicked little grin. There was no warmth in it. Only sharp amusement and something colder underneath.

“That’s right. Most men do something stupid. They run. They fight. They beg. And by our law we have to kill them.” She glanced back at the silent ranks of women behind her. “Somehow you’re still here.”

She raised her voice without turning fully away from me.

“Does anyone want to claim this farmer?”

Silence answered her. Boots shifted on the packed earth. Armor creaked. No one stepped forward. No one spoke.

I looked at the brown-haired woman. Something moved behind those soft light-brown eyes. Conflict. A flicker of something warmer than the fire around us. She did not look away from me.

The blonde’s grin faded. She turned back to me and raised her sword fully. The tip came up until it pointed at the hollow of my throat.

“Since no one claimed you,” she said, and the edge in her voice had become a blade of its own, “by our laws your life is forfeit.”

I did not close my eyes. I wanted to. Every part of me wanted to look away from the steel and the blue eyes and the certain death walking toward me. But I kept them open. The heat of the burning fields pressed against my back. The smell of blood and smoke filled my nose. My heart slammed against my ribs hard enough that I thought the blonde might hear it.

She took one step.

Then the brown-haired woman moved.

She stepped between us in a single stride that covered the distance like it cost her nothing. The shield came up, not raised in threat, but simply present—an iron wall between the sword and my chest. The blonde stopped so abruptly that the tip of her blade almost touched the rim of the shield.

For a moment no one breathed.

I watched the blonde’s face change. Confusion first—raw and open. Then something that looked like hurt, sharp and personal. And finally, pure, undiluted jealousy that burned hotter than the fields behind me. Her blue eyes locked on the taller woman and did not leave.

The brown-haired woman did not look at her. She looked at me. Then she raised her left hand and made the same precise gesture I had seen twice before—two fingers drawn slowly across her collarbone, then pointed at my chest.

Her voice, when it came, was low and steady and carried the weight of something older than either of them.

“By the law of my mothers,” she said, “I Freyja claim Erik as my candidate.”

Chapter 35- The beginning or the end?

We kept falling.

The dark of the pit stretched longer than expected. Wind howled past my ears hard enough to make them ring. The demon thrashed beside me, wings beating in broken, useless spasms. The membranes were torn from the battle and the long drag across the old roads; every desperate flap only sent it spinning harder. The chain still linked us. Varak’s knife remained buried in its chest. Black ichor streamed upward in reverse ribbons as we plummeted.

I closed my eyes.

I thought of her.

I let myself picture the life we might have had if the world had been kinder. A small house somewhere quiet—maybe Kentucky, maybe Tennessee, somewhere the land was peaceful. A porch with two chairs. Raven’s boots by the door. Her leather jacket hanging next to mine. A couple of little troublemakers running through the yard with her same dark hair and the same sharp tongue that could cut a man in half or make him laugh until he cried. I could almost hear myself teaching them how to ride a little dirt bike the way I’d learned. Raven leaning against the fence watching, arms crossed, that mean little smirk on her face that said she was proud even if she would never say it out loud.

I sighed into the rushing dark.

Too bad I was probably going to die here.

My eyes snapped open as we punched through the bottom of the pit's bottleneck.

Hell opened up beneath us.

The Pit was not a single place. It was a wound in the world, vast beyond anything the living mind was meant to hold. At the exact center rose a dead tree so massive its trunk could have swallowed entire cities. The bark was black and split, weeping a slow tar that never dried. Its roots—thick as highways—spread outward in every direction, carving the land into seven distinct territories like the spokes of a broken wheel.

I could see all of them at once.

The first was Vulcara, the fire lands Ashreiver had come from. Rivers of molten rock carved glowing paths through black stone. Lakes of lava boiled and spat. Damned souls moved through the heat in endless lines, some chained together, some dragging carts of glowing ore, their skin constantly blistering and regenerating only to blister again. The air itself shimmered with heat that reached even this high.

Next to it stretched a desert that never stopped moving. A permanent windstorm scoured the dunes, the sand so fine it looked like smoke. The wind howled with the voices of the damned trapped inside it. I could see figures stumbling through the storm, skin flayed by the constant blast, eyes gone, mouths open in silent screams. Some of them were being used as living windbreaks or anchors by larger, more powerful damned that rode the storm like kings.

The third territory was the Wastelands—Widow’s home. Swamps of green-black acid stretched as far as the eye could see. Toxic clouds hung low and heavy, glowing with a sickly yellow light. Pools of venom steamed. Twisted trees grew sideways out of the muck, their branches hung with the dissolving remains of things that had tried to climb them.

The fourth territory was a frozen hell of black ice and endless night. Glaciers the color of bruises rose in jagged towers. Damned souls stood frozen mid-scream inside the ice, only their eyes still moving. Others were forced to chip at the glaciers with tools that broke as fast as they worked, their own frostbitten limbs snapping off and being left behind as new ones slowly grew back so the labor could continue.

The fifth was a living landscape of flesh. Hills of muscle pulsed. Rivers of blood ran thick and slow. Forests of bone and sinew swayed without wind. Damned souls here were not merely slaves—they were raw material. I watched larger shapes harvest them, peeling skin, harvesting organs, stitching the pieces into new and worse shapes that immediately began screaming.

The sixth territory was pure darkness given form. No light escaped it. Only the faint outlines of movement could be seen—shapes that might once have been human crawling on hands and knees, or dragging themselves with arms that had grown too long. The darkness itself seemed to feed on them, slowly unmaking memory and identity until nothing remained but hunger.

The seventh was odd in the since that it didn't look threatening like the others. It looked like a regular meadow. But there was no sign of damned souls or any movement what so ever.

Widow’s voice came soft and tired in my head.

I never wanted to come back here. But at least I’m not alone this time.

I smiled despite the falling dark and the wind tearing at my face.

“Yeah. I’m glad I’m not alone either.”

My bike body won’t survive the fall, she said. But I’ll still be with you. You need to jump when we get closer to the ground. Aim for a pool of acid. Our bond will protect you. Now—jump.

I swallowed hard.

“Goodbye, Widow. I hope to see you again.”

I let go of the handlebars and threw myself sideways into open air.

I hit the demon mid-fall, arms locking around its damaged torso. The impact spun us both. I ripped Varak’s knife free of its chest in a spray of black ichor that the wind immediately tore away. Then I started stabbing. Over and over. The blade punched into the same wound, then into the neck, the shoulder, the ribs. Every thrust produced a fresh gout of smoking black blood. The demon screamed and clawed at me with its one still-working arm, but the damage was too much and it was to weak. We spun and fell together, locked in a final, ugly embrace.

The ground rushed up.

We hit a wide pool of green-black acid in the Wastelands with a sound like a wet explosion.

The burning was immediate—but it was only an irritation, a deep hot itch rather than the agony it should have been. The bond with Widow was already doing its work. My clothes began to dissolve almost at once, leather and fabric melting away in hissing patches until I was left bare in the acid. I kicked hard, swimming upward through the thick, stinging liquid, and dragged myself onto the muddy shore of the pool.

I collapsed onto my hands and knees, coughing, naked, every muscle shaking.

In the pool the demon thrashed and screamed as the acid did what the battle had started. Flesh melted in long, dripping sheets. One wing dissolved completely. The remaining arm clawed at the surface, trying to pull the rest of its body up. For a moment I thought it might actually make it.

Then it hauled only its torso and one arm onto the bank and collapsed beside me, black blood and acid mixing in the mud.

I forced myself up on legs that barely held.

I stood over it.

The demon looked up at me with one remaining molten eye. There was pure hate in it.

I bent down, wrapped my fingers around the half-dissolved hilt of Varak’s knife, and began to cut.

The heart was still beating when I found it—black, too large, and wrong in every way. I carved it free with slow, deliberate strokes. The demon’s remaining arm twitched and tried to stop me, but there was no strength left. When the heart came free in a final rush of ichor, I threw it onto the ground and stomped it under my heel until it was nothing but black paste mixed with mud and acid.

Only then did I let myself fall.

I passed out right there beside the pure evil thing I had just finished killing.

I was surprised to wake up.

I had been certain something in this place would finish me while I was unconscious. Instead I opened my eyes to an old man standing over me. Salt-and-pepper beard. Ice-blue eyes that looked like they had seen every version of the end of the world and gotten bored with all of them.

“You did well, boy,” he said. His voice was rough and calm at the same time. “In all my years fighting these things, I’ve never successfully killed a demon.”

I stared up at him, still half-convinced I was dead.

“Who are you?”

He gave a small, crooked smile.

“I’ve been called many things over the years. The Angel of Death. The Grim Reaper. But you can call me Gore. Like the rest of our crew.”

My eyes widened.

This was Varak’s teacher. The man who had found him and Grave. The one who had taught them about the Pit and the metal and the bonds. He looked no older than Varak had been, even though the years should have made that impossible.

Most of the questions stacked up behind my teeth, but only one made it out.

“How did you find me? This place is huge… and it’s not exactly full of living souls.”

Gore pointed past me.

"She showed me where to find you"

I turned.

My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it hurt.

She looked different. The shape was humanoid, but nothing about her was human. Dark leathery skin stretched over a frame supported by plates of black chitin. Her eyes held a deep red hue that glowed faintly in the toxic light of the Wastelands. Fangs like a snake’s sat behind a sly little smirk that was pure Widow. She stood a few feet away, completely at ease in the place that had once owned her.

I didn’t care that we were both naked.

I pushed myself up and ran to her, wrapping my arms around that strange, strong body. The bond flared hot and bright in my blood the second we touched—recognition, relief, something that felt almost like joy after so much death.

“Widow! You’re okay!”

She laughed, the sound still carrying that dry, slightly dangerous edge I had come to know so well on the road.

“I can move freely in Hell,” she said. “But this place isn’t kind. Especially not for living souls. We need to get you home.”

I held on tighter for a second longer, then forced myself to let go.

Around us the Wastelands steamed and hissed. In the distance the great dead tree still stood at the center of everything, its roots dividing the seven territories like the scars of an old, unfinished war. Somewhere far above, on the other side of the bottleneck and the Crossroads and the living world, Raven was waiting—or searching, or grieving, or all three at once.

Gore watched us both with those impossible blue eyes.

“There’s a long way back,” he said simply. “Its dangerous and the Pit doesn’t like letting go of what it gets."

I looked at Widow’s new form, at the old man who should not still be alive, at the toxic sky of the territory that had once tried to unmake her.

I thought back to Raven’s face the moment I ordered Whisper to take her to safety. The way she had screamed my name. The promise I had broken to keep her alive.

I could imagine the moment she opened her saddle bag and found the ring I left for her. Imagining that lit a fire in me. I have to make it back to her. No matter what.

"What's the plan?"

-The end of book 1

To everyone who read Raven The Reaper,

Thank you.

Whether you followed every chapter as it came out, binge-read it in one sitting, left quiet comments, or simply read in silence — I’m grateful you gave Raven your time. Writing that story meant a lot to me, and knowing people actually sat with it, felt something from it, and stayed until the end is more than I ever expected.

I’m not rushing into a Book 2 just yet. Right now my focus is working on Sisters of Atherra and finishing the sequel to The Princess Protector. Once that’s done, I do plan to return to this world — but it will take time. Realistically, you’re looking at eight months to a year before any continuation starts taking shape. I want to do it right, not just fast.

Until then, thank you again for reading. It truly means more than I can put into words.

— J.T Fieldmen

I still remember the night everything changed. Not the way most people remember their twenty-first birthdays—blurry photos, cheap shots, someone vomiting in a bathroom—but the way a man remembers the exact moment the ground under his feet turned to soft, dangerous sand. I was twenty-one. Samantha and Jessica were twenty-one. We had been raised like siblings, closer than most blood relatives ever manage, and until that night I had never once looked at either of them the way a man looks at a woman he wants romantically.

My mother never had brothers or sisters. Jennifer filled that empty space so completely that by the time they were both pregnant they had already decided their children would grow up as one family. They timed it deliberately. I came first by a week. Then the twins. Identical. Blonde hair that caught light like spun gold, big green eyes the color of jade. I called Jennifer “Aunt Jenny.” We called the girls my cousins, but the word never felt right. They were simply Sam and Jess. My sisters in every way that mattered.

We fought the way siblings fight. We shared secrets the way siblings share secrets. They played endless pranks because they could switch places and no one—not even their own mother—could tell them apart when they decided to be cruel. Same clothes. Same laugh. Same way of finishing each other’s sentences. I loved them. I protected them. I never once felt anything romantic. Aunt Jenny and my mother used to exchange looks when the three of us were together, soft hopeful looks, as if they already saw some future wedding. I never saw it. They were my little sisters. That was the entire story.

Until the night we turned twenty-one.

The party was at a friend’s house in the hills, the kind of place where the music was too loud and the liquor was whatever anyone had brought. We did shots of everything. Tequila. Whiskey. Something blue that burned like cleaning fluid. I kept half an eye on the twins the way I always did. Jessica was fine—dancing with a couple of guys, laughing, holding her own. Samantha was not. She was a lightweight and tonight she was drowning. Stumbling. Slurring. I watched her try to stand and nearly go down, and something protective and familiar kicked in.

I got her downstairs. Away from the noise. Tried to put coffee in her hands. She started talking the way drunk people talk when the walls finally come down. Jake had broken up with her. That afternoon. Right before the party. The details poured out of her in messy, wet sentences—how he said she was too much, how he said he needed space, how she had been stupid enough to love him. I knew it was Samantha the moment she said his name. Jessica never would have spoken about a boyfriend like that. Jessica kept her wounds quieter.

I told her he was an idiot. That everything would look different in the morning. I meant it the way a big brother means it. I got both girls home. Jessica hugged me, wished us both a happy birthday in that soft twin-voice they shared, and went straight to bed. Samantha would not let go of my arm. She begged. She did not want to be alone. Not tonight. Not after Jake. I caved the way I always caved for them. It was not the first time I had slept over. Their house had always been half mine. Something felt different the second I lay down beside her, but I told myself it was the alcohol and the late hour.

I fell asleep with her curled against my chest.

I woke less than an hour later to heat and wet pressure around my cock.

The sheet was tented. Samantha was not beside me. She was under the covers, between my legs, and her mouth was already working. Slow, deliberate, the kind of suction that makes a man’s spine arch before his brain catches up. I made a sound that was half groan, half panic.

“Sammy—what are you—”

She giggled around me. The vibration shot straight through my balls.

“Oh, Jake, don’t act like you don’t know.” Her voice was thick, syrupy with drink. “You’re so hard for me tonight. I knew you’d satisfy me for my birthday.”

Jake. She thought I was him. In the dark, half-asleep, still drunk, she had crawled under the covers and taken what she needed from the body she thought belonged to the man who had just left her. My hips jerked. Her tongue dragged up the underside of my cock and then she took me deeper, cheeks hollowing, soft wet sounds filling the quiet room. I should have stopped her. I should have sat up, pulled her off, explained. Instead I moaned her name again, broken.

“Sammy—”

Something in the sound of it cut through the fog. She froze. Pulled off with a soft wet pop. The sheet flew back. She was naked. Completely. She must have stripped out of her party clothes sometime after I fell asleep. In the dim light from the hallway her body was all soft curves and pale skin, D-cup breasts heavy and full, nipples tight from the cool air. She stared at my face. Recognition hit her like a slap.

“Wait. Only one person calls me Sammy…”

She scrambled backward, yanking the sheet up to cover herself, eyes huge and wet.

“What are you doing in bed with me?”

I told her the truth. That she had begged me to stay. That she had not wanted to be alone. The tears came fast after that. Big, ugly sobs that shook her shoulders. She kept saying she was sorry, that she didn’t remember, that all she could hold onto was Jake walking away. I reached for her without thinking. She threw herself into my arms the way she had when we were kids and something had hurt too much. Her bare skin pressed against my chest. Her face buried in my neck.

“You’re the only one who’s always been good to me,” she whispered. “I love you.”

I said it back. Automatically. The way a brother says it. The way I had said it a thousand times before.

Then something happened I never expected.

She kissed me.

Not a soft sister-kiss. Not gratitude. Open-mouthed, desperate, the kind of kiss that tastes like salt and leftover liquor and need. I felt the exact second my body decided not to push her away. Her tongue slid against mine and something in my chest unlocked so hard it hurt. I gripped the sheet she was still clutching and dragged it off the bed. It hit the floor in a soft pile. Then there was only her.

I spent the next hour learning the woman I had never allowed myself to see.

Her breasts filled my hands perfectly—soft, heavy, the nipples tightening the moment my thumbs brushed them. I sucked one into my mouth and she arched, a broken little sound catching in her throat. I kissed down the center of her stomach, over the slight curve of her belly, until I reached the inside of her thigh. There it was. The small birthmark I had never noticed before, a faint brown freckle the size of a fingertip. I pressed my mouth to it and then kissed higher. She was already soaked. I dragged my tongue through her folds and she gasped my name like it was the only word she still remembered.

I found her clit with the flat of my tongue and worked it the way I would later learn she needed: slow circles, then firmer pressure, then the lightest scrape of teeth. She was sensitive there. Almost painfully so. Every time I focused on that small swollen bud her thighs trembled around my head and her hands fisted in my hair. I kept her there on the edge until she was begging, voice cracked and wet.

“Please—please fuck me—”

I rose over her. Looked into those green eyes that had always been so familiar and now looked completely new.

“Are you sure? This is a line we can’t go back from.”

She nodded. No hesitation. Only a soft, shattered honesty.

“I know you’d never hurt me. Please… I just want to feel something that isn’t him.”

I kissed her as I slowly pushed inside.

She was tight. Almost painfully tight. The head of my cock stretched her open and she made a small pained sound against my mouth before it melted into a moan. I went slow. Inch by inch. Feeling every ripple of her walls as they adjusted. When I was fully seated she was breathing in short, shaky bursts, eyes locked on mine.

“I like making my partner happy,” she whispered. “Use me however you like. Jake used my ass a few times.

I smiled. Maybe we should start slow. I want… I want to make passionate love to you.”

.

I started thrusting in long, deep strokes, watching her face the entire time. Those green eyes never left mine. Hypnotic. I could see every flicker of pleasure, every little wince when I went too deep, every soft parting of her lips when I dragged over the spot inside her that made her thighs shake. I angled my hips and found it deliberately. The noise she made was pure broken want. I lost control after that. I fucked her harder, driving into that same place over and over until she came with a sharp cry, body locking up around me, pussy fluttering and squeezing so tight I almost followed her.

I wanted to watch her. I rolled us so she was on top. She blushed immediately, shy in a way that made my cock throb inside her.

“I feel so exposed like this.”

“That’s the point,” I told her. “I want to see you.”

She started moving. Tentative at first—small rolls of her hips, hands braced on my chest like she was afraid of falling. Her breasts swayed with every motion. The birthmark on her inner thigh was visible every time she rose up. I gripped her hips and helped her find a rhythm. When she finally started bouncing—really riding me, taking what she needed—the shyness cracked open into something hungrier. She threw her head back. Blonde hair stuck to her damp neck. Soft broken sounds spilled out of her every time she sank down.

“I’m close,” I warned her.

She looked down at me, eyes glassy, cheeks flushed.

“Mom… she put us on birth control when we were teenagers. It’s okay. You can—”

That was all I needed. I came hard, flooding her, hips jerking up as she kept riding me through it. She followed a second later, collapsing forward onto my chest, still pulsing around my cock. We stayed like that, sweaty and tangled, until her breathing evened out. Right before she drifted off she murmured against my collarbone.

“I want to keep doing this. Just us. No one else has to know.”

Then she was asleep again. Soft. Trusting. Completely mine for that one stolen hour.

When I woke the second time the bed was empty. Sunlight was already leaking through the curtains. I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and walked toward the kitchen, still half-hard, still smelling like her.

She was leaning over the counter in tiny sleep shorts and a thin tank top, scrolling on her phone. Blonde hair messy. The curve of her ass perfect under the thin fabric. I came up behind her the way a man does when he already knows she belongs to him. I kissed the side of her neck. Whispered that last night had been perfect. My hands slid under the hem of the shorts, pushed the fabric aside, and I sank into her in one smooth thrust.

She felt different.

Tight in a new way. The angle of her hips. The way her body reacted—less immediate surrender, more startled tension. I looked down to where we were joined. The birthmark was gone. In its place, low on the inside of her thigh, was a small black butterfly tattoo.

Samantha walked into the kitchen barefoot, wearing one of my old t-shirts, hair still tangled from sleep. She stopped dead. Her green eyes—identical, unmistakable—moved from my face to her sister’s face to the place where my cock was still buried inside Jessica.

“Jess…?” Samantha’s voice was small. Confused.

Jessica did not pull away. She stayed bent over the counter, breathing hard, looking back over her shoulder at both of us with an expression I had never seen on either of them before. Something dark and curious and already half-decided.

I was still inside her.

And for the first time in twenty-one years, I could finally tell them apart.

Chapter 34- Broken Promises

The chain never stopped screaming.

Black Pit metal scraped and clanked against old road as we dragged the thrashing demon behind us. Every mile closer to the Crossroads made it more desperate. Its remaining free wing beat against the ground in frantic, uneven flaps, kicking up clouds of gray-black ash. Claws that still had some strength left gouged deep furrows in the road, trying to slow us down, trying to dig in and refuse the inevitable. Black ichor poured steadily from the wound where Varak’s knife was still buried in its chest, the modified blade locked in place by the chain we had wrapped around the hilt. The runes along the metal glowed brighter the closer we got to the Pit, as if the metal itself could smell home and was hungry for it.

The demon’s voice rose above the roar of our engines, layered and broken, full of hatred and something that almost sounded like fear.

“Your leader is already rotting,” it hissed, the words wet and distorted. “Varak died the same way his brother did—screaming, burning, useless. You’ll join them soon enough. Both of you. Your little Reaper bitch will watch you die first. I’ll make sure of it.”

I felt the words hit me like physical blows. Every mention of Varak’s name made the tears start again, hot and stinging against the wind. I could still see Vesper on her knees in the street, cradling him while Ashreiver’s engine went silent. The image refused to leave.

Then Widow spoke.

Her voice was quieter than I had ever heard it—small, dry, and full of a grief so old it felt like it had been sitting in the dark for decades.

I don’t remember this demon… because it made me wreck before the fight even began. That's why you had to fix me.

The words settled into my mind like cold ash.

The last thing I remember is Grave and me riding to a job. He had to fight this thing with only the power I had previously channeled to him. If I had been awake… if I hadn’t been forced into silence… he might have won.

I could feel the guilt radiating off her like heat. The twisted human spirit that had survived the Wastelands of the Pit, was mourning the man who had given her a second chance.

I tightened my grip on the handlebars and spoke back to her through the bond, voice rough in my own head.

“It’s okay. We’re ending this. Right now. For him. For Varak. For every single one of them.”

Widow’s engine growled deeper beneath me, the vibration traveling up through my bones like a promise.

The demon thrashed harder as the old roads began to slope toward the Crossroads. One of its arms finally tore free of the wrapping chains with a wet, ripping sound of flesh and metal. The free hand immediately started clawing at the remaining bindings, trying to unwind itself.

I didn’t hesitate.

I drew the spider-gripped revolver with my left hand, keeping the right locked on the throttle, and started taking shots. The acid rounds slammed into the demon’s exposed shoulder and side. Each impact produced a violent hiss as the supernatural acid bit deep. Flesh bubbled and blackened. Thick ropes of melting tissue and ichor slid off its body in steaming chunks. The demon howled—a high, broken sound of pure agony—but it never stopped fighting the chains. Every time the acid ate a new hole, it only seemed to make the creature more frantic.

I glanced over at Raven.

Her face was a mask of grief and fury. Tears had cut clean tracks through the ash and blood on her cheeks, but behind the pain there was something else—something sharp and almost hungry. Vengeance for Grave. Vengeance for Varak. The same fire that had kept her alive through six months of hell as a teenager was burning in her eyes again. She met my gaze for half a second and nodded once. We were of the same mind.

We hit the Crossroads at full speed.

The massive circle of black glass opened before us, roads branching off in every direction converging in one spot. The air pressure dropped. The sky above the center of the circle began to crack. The mouth of the Pit started to open with a low, grinding roar, ash cascading downward in thick gray waterfalls as the veil between worlds tore.

The demon let out a loud, desperate wail the moment the Pit’s breath touched it.

Damned souls answered the call.

They poured out of the opening mouth in a writhing flood—twisted bodies of rotting flesh, glowing eyes, extra limbs, mouths full of too many teeth. They hit the glass of the Crossroads and immediately surged toward the chains, clawing and pulling and trying to unbind their master. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. They swarmed the demon, hands and claws working frantically at the Pit-metal links.

We couldn’t let them succeed.

Raven and I opened fire at the same time.

Acid and venom turned the nearest damned souls into screaming, melting wreckage. Bodies dissolved into black sludge that hissed against the glass. Others seized and collapsed as the venom locked their corrupted nervous systems into endless agony. Raven’s shotgun roared in rapid succession, each blast vaporizing clusters of them. We circled the thrashing demon, engines screaming, cutting down everything that tried to free it. The glass under our tires became slick with ichor and dissolving flesh. The air filled with the wet sounds of things dying.

We tried our best but they were able to disconnect the chain from our bikes.

The demon could barely hold itself up anymore.

Black blood poured from a dozen wounds. One wing hung useless. The knife jutted from its chest, the chain still wrapped tight around the hilt like a noose. It looked between us and the open mouth of the Pit. It knew that if it didn't escape us now it was good as dead. So it made its choice.

It lunged.

Even exhausted and bound, the demon still had enough strength to hurl itself toward the edge. It looked back over its shoulder one last time, molten gold eyes locking onto us.

“We will meet again. I'll escape again and come for your head!”

Then everything went wrong at once.

A fresh wave of damned souls slammed into Raven’s side, overwhelming her for a critical second. She was forced to break formation, shotgun roaring as she tried to clear space. I saw the moment the numbers started to win. She was still fighting, still killing, but they were surrounding her, pulling at her bike, trying to drag her down.

I looked at her across the chaos.

I mouthed the words.

I love you.

Then I did the one thing I had sworn to myself I would never do.

I drew a full breath and yelled her name with every ounce of power I had left in my lungs and my bond.

“WHISPER!”

The shy, careful voice that had only recently begun speaking to me answered instantly inside my head.

I didn’t give her a choice.

“I command you—get Raven to safety. Now.”

Whisp didn’t argue.

Dark Mirage activated in a stuttering blur of black and silver. Raven’s bike and Raven herself were yanked sideways across the glass in a streak of impossible speed, the damned souls around her left grasping at empty air. She was pulled hard toward the nearest branching road—the closest exit that would take her back to the living world.

Raven’s scream cut through everything.

“NOMAD!”

She was fighting the forced movement, trying to turn back, trying to reach me. Tears streamed down her face. Her voice cracked open with pure panic and heartbreak.

“Stay with me! We stick together! You promised—you promised you would never leave me!”

I choked on the sob that tried to tear its way out of my chest. My vision blurred. Every part of me wanted to turn around, to follow her, to keep the promise I had made in that cabin in Alaska when I told her I would never leave. But the demon was at the edge of the Pit and about to escape. If it made it back down there alive, it would heal. It would come back. It would keep killing everything and everyone I loved.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Even if it cost me everything.

I looked down at the black tank between my knees, at the runes that pulsed with the same crimson light as the chain.

“Are you ready to end this?”

Widow’s engine answered with a raw, screaming roar that vibrated through my entire body.

"Let’s make it die screaming."

I swallowed hard against the grief rising in my throat.

“Thank you for choosing me.”

I twisted the throttle all the way open.

Widow launched forward like she had been waiting her entire existence for this exact moment. We hit the demon at full speed. The impact was bone-shaking. The demon’s arms flailed. Its wings beat once in a final, useless attempt to stay on the glass.

Then we were over the edge.

The black mouth of the Pit swallowed us whole.

Wind and ash and darkness rushed past in a vertical freefall. The demon’s scream rose into a pure, unbroken howl of rage and terror as gravity took us. Widow’s engine never stopped roaring. The runes on her tank burned so bright they painted the falling dark in crimson light.

The last thing I saw before the void closed over us completely was the shrinking circle of the Crossroads above—and somewhere beyond it, the road Raven had been forced to take.

Then there was only the long, screaming fall into the dark.

Chapter 33- Dragged Back To Hell

The battle didn’t pause for anyone.

Gunfire still cracked and roared across the ruined town as Varak closed the last stretch of distance toward the commander. Bullets tore past him in angry streaks. The high-ranking officer emptied his sidearm at point-blank range, muzzle flashes lighting his cold face. Every shot missed. Not by much—some grazed the air so close that the heat of the rounds could be felt—but none found their mark. The commander’s expression never changed. He simply kept firing until the slide locked back on an empty magazine. He tossed the useless weapon aside without looking at it.

Varak killed his engine and swung off Ashreiver in one fluid motion. He stood face to face with the thing wearing a general’s uniform, boots planted in blood-soaked pavement, unflinching. The two of them stared at each other across a few feet of scorched ground while the chaos of the fight swirled around them.

The commander’s mouth cracked into a wide, unnatural grin.

“Neither your teacher nor your brother could stop me,” it said, voice layered with something deeper and older than any human throat should produce. “What makes you think that you can?”

Varak’s expression twisted.

I had seen a lot of scary shit in the last two years—demons, melting flesh, hell itself—but nothing compared to the look that settled over Varak’s face in that moment. It was pure, world-ending anger. The kind of rage that didn’t burn hot so much as it froze everything around it. A cold, absolute fury that settled in the bones and refused to leave. Looking at him sent the coldest chill I had ever felt racing down my spine.

“Was it you?” Varak’s voice was low, almost quiet, yet it carried over the gunfire like a blade.

The commander laughed. The sound was wet and wrong.

“His soul was tough and rotten. He died trying to stop me the last time I escaped.”

Raven’s voice ripped through the air beside me, raw and furious. “I’ll make sure you die in agony for that, you piece of shit!”

Varak didn’t wait for the thing to finish speaking.

He cracked it across the face with a punch that sounded like a sledge hammer hitting concrete. The commander’s head snapped sideways. Black ichor sprayed from its mouth. Then the two of them were on each other—fists, elbows, knees, pure brutal violence. The thing was strong. Impossibly strong. Every time Varak landed a blow, the impact should have shattered bone, yet the commander only staggered and came back harder. Varak was beyond caring. He was pure, focused fury, and he would be damned if he lost this fight.

The longer they traded blows, the more the commander’s human form began to peel away.

It started with the eyes. The cold blue irises flooded with molten gold, pupils stretching into vertical slits that burned with internal fire. Then the horns pushed through the skin of its forehead with wet, cracking sounds—thick, black, curved blades of bone tearing free of flesh and uniform alike. Claws erupted from its fingertips next, lengthening and thickening until each one was a curved sickle. Lastly the wings. The back of the uniform split open in a spray of black blood as two massive, leathery wings ripped free, unfurling with a wet snap that sent a wave of hot, sulfurous air across the battlefield.

When the remaining soldiers finally saw what their commander had become, every gun turned toward it.

They learned the hard way that gunfire meant nothing.

Bullets sparked harmlessly off its hide or simply vanished into the dense muscle without effect. The demon laughed—a deep, rolling sound of pure contempt—and then it began to move.

“You ruined my plan to cause a second cold war,” it snarled, voice now fully demonic, layered with the sound of grinding stone and burning air. “If I could get nukes to drop, my Lord would have slipped through the Veil. You and your little crew will pay the cost.”

It tore into the nearest soldiers like they were made of paper.

Claws raked through body armor and flesh in single sweeps, sending arcs of bright red blood into the air. One soldier was lifted and torn in half at the waist; both pieces hit the ground still twitching. Another was set ablaze by a casual swipe of a burning claws and ran screaming until he collapsed into a blackened, smoking heap. The demon didn’t stop at the military. It turned on the Reapers as well, cutting through our line with the same casual, horrific efficiency. I watched two of our own go down in seconds—one with his throat opened, the other crushed under a single stomp that left only a wet red smear where his chest cavity was.

Varak was already back on Ashreiver.

He kicked the bike into a screaming charge and chased the demon as it reaped carnage across the battlefield, leaving a trail of broken bodies and burning vehicles in its wake. The fire from Ashreiver’s exhaust flared bright, trailing like a comet’s tail as Varak closed the distance again.

“Raven! Nomad!” Varak’s voice cut through the chaos like a whip. “Get ready! Follow the plan no matter what!”

We didn’t hesitate.

Raven and I poured everything we had into our bonds. I felt Widow’s acid and venom surge through my veins until my arms shook and my vision edged with black. Raven’s Dark Mirage speed flared around her in stuttering afterimages as she pushed Whisp harder than she ever had. The speed and punch through of her bullets significantly increased. Our strain was immediate and brutal. My lungs burned. My heart felt like it was trying to hammer its way out of my chest. We fired everything we had—acid rounds that melted through the demon’s hide in shallow, smoking patches, venom that made its muscles seize and spasm for precious seconds, wind and sound from Vesper and Rock slamming into it from the flanks. We were trying to wear it down, to slow it, to give Varak the opening he needed.

It worked. Barely.

The demon was breathing harder now, black ichor dripping from the wounds we had managed to open. It still moved with terrifying speed, but the edges of its power were starting to fray.

Then it locked onto Varak.

It made a point of killing more of our members while forcing him to watch. One Reaper was dragged screaming into the air and torn apart between clawed hands. Another was set on fire and left to burn while the demon stared straight at Varak the entire time, as if daring him to look away.

Varak didn’t use his gun this time.

He drew only his Reaper knife—the same black-metal blade every one of us carried, but modified. A large circle of darker metal had been forged into the hilt, etched with runes that glowed faintly with the same crimson light as the tanks on our bikes. He closed the distance on Ashreiver, leapt from the moving bike, and met the demon in a flurry of steel and claws.

Varak actually managed to cut it.

Shallow swipes at first—black ichor welling up from thin lines across the demon’s arms and chest—but real damage. The modified knife bit where normal steel and even most Pit metal had failed. The demon snarled in genuine pain for the first time.

Then everything changed.

The demon’s claws finally found purchase. It clamped one massive hand around Varak’s throat and the other around his arm, yanking him off his feet. Varak’s boots left the ground. The demon opened its mouth wide—jaws unhinging farther than any human skull should allow—and breathed a torrent of pure hellfire directly onto him.

The world went silent for what seemed to be an eternity.

White-hot flames engulfed Varak completely, so bright that for a second I couldn’t see anything but the shape of him inside the inferno. The heat washed over us even from a distance, scorching the air and making the nearest rubble glow.

Then we heard it.

A madman’s laugh rising from inside the flames.

“That won’t work a second time!” Varak’s voice roared out of the fire, half-choked but full of savage triumph. “Thanks to Ashreiver, your fire is as harmful as a god damn bug bite!”

The demon’s expression finally changed.

For the first time since the fight began, real surprise—and then fear—flickered across its twisted features.

Varak drove the knife upward with everything he had left.

The blade sank deep into the demon’s chest, just left of center. Black ichor sprayed across Varak’s face and arms in thick, smoking ropes. The demon howled—a sound that rattled windows still standing three blocks away—and immediately started clawing at him in a frenzy. Claws raked across Varak’s chest, opening deep, parallel gashes that poured bright red blood down his torso. Another swipe caught the side of his face, splitting skin from temple to jaw. Varak’s grip on the knife never loosened, even as the demon tore into him. To add insult to injury Varak twisted the knife that was still lodged in its chest.

Finally the demon was able to fling him away.

Varak hit the ground hard and didn’t get up. His chest rose and fell in shallow, wet gasps. Blood soaked the pavement beneath him in a spreading pool.

Vesper lost it.

A raw, broken scream tore out of her throat. She tried to charge straight at the demon, eyes wild, power already building around her in a visible storm of wind. Three of our remaining members had to block her path and physically hold her back—arms locked around her waist and shoulders—because every one of them knew she would die if she went in with her emotions that high.

The demon turned toward the rest of us.

It was clearly exhausted and injured now. Black ichor poured from the knife still buried in its chest. Its wings hung lower. Its breathing was ragged. But it was still standing, and it was still coming.

I forced the fear down into a cold, hard place in my gut. I was about to step forward when I saw movement behind the demon.

Varak.

Somehow he was on his feet again.

He launched himself forward with the last of his strength and clamped his massive arms around the demon from behind, pinning its arms tight against its sides. The demon thrashed and roared, but Varak’s grip was iron. Blood poured from his wounds with every movement, but he held on.

“Raven! Nomad! Now!”

We didn’t hesitate.

I yanked the heavy coil of pit-metal chain from my saddlebag—the same black, rune-etched metal as our tanks and weapons—and kicked Widow into a hard charge. Raven was right beside me. We closed the distance in seconds. I looped the chain around the hilt of the knife still protruding from the demon’s chest, locking it in place. Then Raven and I began to circle, wrapping the chain tighter and tighter around the thrashing, roaring creature. Every loop tightened the noose of Pit metal. The demon’s struggles grew weaker as the metal bit into its flesh and the runes began to glow with hungry crimson light.

Varak’s arms finally slipped.

He collapsed to the ground in a heap of blood and burned leather, eyes still open, still watching us finish the job.

His voice was barely more than a wet whisper, but it carried.

“Drag that thing back to hell… and kill it.”

I felt the tears start as we hooked the chains to our bikes and kicked them to life.

We rode hard for the nearest old road that would take us to the Crossroads, the heavy chain dragging the thrashing, bound demon behind us. It screamed and fought the entire way, claws scraping uselessly against the unbreakable Pit metal, wings beating against the ground and sending up sprays of black blood and dirt. The chain held. The runes burned brighter with every second.

When I finally looked back, I ignored the demon completely.

My eyes locked on the distant figures still in the ruined town.

Vesper was on her knees in the middle of the street, cradling Varak’s upper body against her chest. Her cornrow braids were soaked with his blood. She was speaking to him—I couldn’t hear the words over the engines and the wind, but I could see her lips moving, see the way her hands cupped the side of his ruined face. Varak’s mouth moved once in answer. Just a few seconds. That was all they had.

Then Ashreiver’s engine died.

The deep, powerful roar that had been the constant heartbeat of the Reapers for as long as anyone could remember simply… stopped. The bike settled onto its kickstand as if its rider had simply parked it for the night. But I knew.

In my heart, in the place where the bond with Widow lived, I knew.

Varak was gone.

The tears came harder then, hot and unstoppable, blurring the road ahead as Raven and I dragged the last of the demon’s power toward the only place that could truly end it. The wind whipped the salt from my eyes. The chain clanked and scraped behind us. The demon still screamed.

But all I could hear was the sudden, terrible silence where Ashreiver’s engine used to be.

It was Christmas break, 2015. I was nineteen, and the whole trip already felt like a slow-motion car crash. Dad had married Tori less than a year earlier, and this was supposed to be our first real family holiday together—visiting my aunt and uncle in that little mountain town. Tori loved Christmas more than anyone I’d ever met. She’d spent weeks planning gifts, baking, decorating. Every other day she’d turn those huge blue eyes on me and ask, “So what did you get me, huh? Come on, give me a hint.” I kept telling her it was a surprise, smiling like I had something perfect tucked away. The truth was I hadn’t found anything before we left. I was hoping the town near my aunt’s place would have the right thing. Something special. Something that would make her light up.

Instead the drive turned into a nightmare. Dad got us lost twice. Tori sat in the passenger seat in those tight black yoga pants that hugged every curve of her ass like they were painted on, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, those impossible blue eyes flashing every time she told him to pull over and let her drive. They fought the whole way—quiet, vicious little arguments that filled the car with tension. I sat in the back pretending to sleep, but my eyes kept drifting to the way her ass shifted against the seat, the way the fabric stretched across it. I’d been staring at that ass for months. Wondering. Fantasizing in the guilty dark of my room. And now here we were, the three of us trapped together while they tore into each other.

By the time we reached the rental house, everyone was done. A few sharp words at the door—Dad calling her dramatic, Tori telling him he was impossible—and then we all went straight to our rooms. I lay on the narrow bed in the dark, listening to the old house creak, the distant sound of them moving around next door. Eventually it went quiet. I must have drifted off.

I don't know what, but something woke me up hours later. A low, rhythmic sound.The rental was old and without soundproofing. Unlike the house we’d left behind. I cracked my door and peered down the hallway. Their bedroom door was open, light spilling across the floor.

What I saw stopped me cold.

Tori was completely naked, bent over the edge of the bed, her perfect body arched like she was offering herself to the world. That ass—the one I’d stared at every single day in those tight pants—was high in the air, round and firm and flawless, cheeks spread just enough that I could see everything. Her brown hair hung forward, her back curved deep, and she was wiggling, pushing back, begging without words. Dad was behind her, naked, gripping her hips hard as he slammed into her pussy with angry, punishing strokes. The wet slap of skin on skin filled the room.

“You’re such a slut after a fight,” Dad growled, leaning over her back. “You must love being hate-fucked.”

Tori moaned like a porn star, loud and shameless, pushing back to meet every thrust. “Yes—harder—fuck me—”

Then she turned her head, those big blue eyes looking back at him, desperate and shining. “Are you going to give me the Christmas present I’ve been asking you for since we started dating?”

Dad’s rhythm stuttered. “No.”

“A real man would,” she said, voice thick with need and challenge.

That lit the fuse. He fucked her harder, the bed creaking, her ass rippling with every impact. “Anal is disgusting. I wouldn’t fuck your ass for money.”

Tori didn’t flinch. “My ex was a real man. He claimed every one of my holes. He knew exactly how good it felt to be buried inside my ass…”

The fight exploded. Voices rose. Accusations flew. Dad suddenly pulled out mid-thrust, his cock wet and angry in the light. “I’m going for a drive to clear my head.” He grabbed his clothes and stormed out. The front door slammed a minute later. The car started. Tires crunched on gravel. Then silence.

Tori stayed where she was for a moment—naked, bent over, breathing hard, clearly frustrated and aching. She pushed herself up slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand drifting between her legs like she couldn’t help it. I stood frozen in the hallway, my cock throbbing so hard it hurt, tenting my boxers obscenely. I’d been stroking myself without even realizing while I watched. This was so fucked up. My dad’s wife. My stepmom. The woman who baked cookies and asked about my Christmas gift with those bright blue eyes. And now she was naked and needy and alone, and all I could think about was the way she’d begged for a cock in her ass.

I should have gone back to bed. I should have jerked off in my room and pretended none of this happened. But something dark and hungry had taken over. My feet moved on their own. I pushed the door open wider and stepped inside, my rock-hard cock in my hand, stroking slowly as I approached.

Tori gasped when she saw me. “What the fuck?”

Her big blue eyes went wide, flicking straight down to my cock and back up. It was bigger than Dad’s—noticeably longer, thicker, the head already slick with precum. She stared for a second too long.

“Did you see everything?” she asked, voice shaky.

I nodded. “Yeah. And I heard what you wanted as a present.”

She tried to laugh it off, reaching for a sheet to cover herself. “You… you misheard. It’s not—”

But her eyes kept dropping to my cock. Lingering. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. She sighed, shoulders slumping in defeat and relief all at once. “Okay. Fine. I prefer anal. Your dad’s scared of it. He thinks it’s disgusting. Won’t even try.”

I stepped closer, my cock bobbing heavy between us. “I’m new to it… but I’m willing to try.”

She bit her lip hard, conflict and raw need warring across her beautiful face. She glanced at the doorway, listening. The risk was electric in the air—Dad could come back any minute. Her eyes met mine again, and something broke.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I need it. But we have to hurry. Before your father comes home.”

She dropped to her knees right there on the bedroom floor, bringing her face level with my cock. Her hands came up, one wrapping around the base, the other trying to close around the shaft and failing. “Damn…” she breathed, almost reverent. “Where’d you get this monster? It’s at least four inches bigger than your father’s… and so much thicker.”

I shrugged, breath already ragged. She spit into her palm and started stroking me with both hands, twisting, working the length. “Damn it, boy… I almost need two hands just to hold it.”

My laugh cracked into a groan as she leaned in and dragged her tongue slowly up the underside from base to tip, tasting me. Then her lips parted and she took the head into her hot mouth. The sight of those big blue eyes looking up at me while her lips stretched obscenely wide around my thick cock was something I’d never forget. She sucked hard, tongue swirling, working more of me in with every bob of her head. Spit ran down my shaft in thick strings, dripping onto her tits, coating everything. She gagged when I hit the back of her throat but didn’t pull back—she pushed forward, taking more, eyes watering but locked on mine. It was the sloppiest, wettest, most desperate blowjob of my life. She coated every inch, making my cock glisten and drip with her saliva, moaning around it like she loved the taste.

After long minutes she pulled off with a wet, obscene pop, spit connecting her swollen lips to my cock in long strands. “There,” she panted. “Now it’s ready.”

She turned fast, climbing back onto the bed and positioning herself exactly like before—bent over the edge, ass high, reaching back with both hands to spread her cheeks wide. Her tight little pink asshole winked at me, already slightly relaxed from earlier play and her own fingers. Below it her pussy was soaked, lips puffy and glistening.

I moved in behind her, heart hammering. I wanted to make this good for her. I ran two fingers through her wet pussy, gathering her slickness, then pressed one against her asshole and pushed inside. She let out a long, whiny, needy moan that went straight to my cock.

“Please,” she begged, pushing back. “Don’t tease me. I’ve been waiting almost two years for a real cock in my ass again.”

“But we need to loosen you up,” I said, working the finger deeper, feeling how tight she still was.

She gave a breathless little laugh, rocking on my finger. “I use toys… it should be fine. Just fuck me. Please. I need it.”

I pulled my finger free, gripped my spit-slick cock, and lined the fat head up against her tight ring. I pushed. Resistance. I pushed harder. The head popped inside with a sudden give, and Tori let out a sound I’d never heard from anyone—half moan, half wail, pure overwhelming pleasure. Her whole body shuddered. I kept pushing, slow and steady, watching her asshole stretch obscenely around my thick shaft, inch after inch disappearing into that tight heat. She was gripping me like a fist, hot and velvet and perfect.

When I finally bottomed out, balls pressed against her soaked pussy, she was already shaking. I leaned over her back, chest to her spine, and whispered right against her ear as I started to move.

“Merry Christmas, Mommy.”

The words hit her like a lightning strike. Her body locked up, ass clamping down viciously around my cock, and then she was squirting—hard, powerful jets of clear fluid gushing from her pussy onto the bed, soaking the sheets beneath us. Her moan turned into a broken scream of ecstasy. She came from nothing but the penetration and those few filthy words.

I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I pulled back and thrust in again, starting a deep, steady rhythm. Her moans dissolved into babbling, desperate cries. “Oh my god—fuck—it’s so big—filling me—stretching me—deeper—you’re in my stomach—thank you—thank you so much—”

She was trembling so hard her arms gave out. Her upper body collapsed onto the mattress while her ass stayed up, presented for me. I had to grip her hips with both hands, fingers digging into the firm flesh, holding her steady as I fucked her harder. Each thrust made her perfect ass ripple and bounce. The wet, filthy sound of my cock sliding in and out of her stretched asshole mixed with the slap of my balls against her dripping pussy and her constant stream of broken moans.

I picked up the pace, pounding into her with long, powerful strokes. The taboo thrill burned through me like fire—this was my stepmom, the woman my dad had just stormed out on, the one who’d been begging him for anal for years, and now she was taking every inch of my cock like she was starving for it. The risk that Dad could walk through that door any second only made me harder, made my thrusts rougher.

Tori kept thanking me between gasps, her voice hoarse. “Thank you—thank you—oh god you’re so deep—better than him—so much bigger—you're a real man—use my ass—please don’t stop—”

I reached around and rubbed her clit in tight circles while I fucked her. She exploded again, another gush of squirt soaking my hand and the bed, her asshole spasming and rippling around my cock so tight I had to fight to keep moving. Her legs were jelly. I was basically holding her up now, using her ass like a toy while she shook and came and thanked me over and over.

I felt my own orgasm building fast—the insane tightness, the heat, the sight of her perfect body wrecked and shaking beneath me, the knowledge of exactly how wrong this was. My balls tightened. My cock swelled inside her.

With a final series of deep, brutal thrusts I buried myself to the hilt and came. Thick, heavy ropes of cum erupted from me in powerful pulses, flooding deep into her ass. I kept thrusting through it, pumping every drop I had into her, filling her bowels until it started leaking out around my shaft in creamy white rivulets that ran down over her pussy. She moaned weakly, body still twitching with aftershocks as I emptied myself completely inside her.

I stayed buried for a long moment, savoring the way her ass kept gently milking me, the wet heat, the sight of her stretched hole wrapped around the base of my cock. Then I slowly pulled out. Her asshole gaped for a second before trying to close, a thick bubble of my cum pushing out and trickling down between her legs.

I gave that perfect ass a sharp, satisfying smack. The sound cracked through the room.

“That was your present from me to you,” I said, voice rough. “Merry Christmas, Tori.”

Chapter 32- The battlefield

The explosion hit like the world was ending.

A deafening BOOM tore through the woods, followed by a rapid chain of loud bangs that shook the ground beneath our tires. Trees swayed violently from the shockwaves, trunks cracking like gunshots before several toppled with thunderous crashes, branches and leaves raining down. Fire erupted from the blast site in a hungry orange roar, spreading fast through the dry underbrush and up the trunks. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky, choking the air with the acrid stench of burning wood, melting rubber, and something far worse—perhaps scorched flesh or chemicals from whatever had detonated.

We didn’t have time to process. Raven and I scrambled, yanking our pants up, guns ready, hearts still hammering from the interrupted moment on her bike. We kicked our bikes to life. The engines snarled through the growing inferno. We tore out of the woods at full throttle, dodging falling trees and leaping over burning logs as flames chased us, heat licking at our backs and smoke stinging our eyes and lungs. Widow roared beneath me, her power humming in my veins like liquid fire ready to be unleashed.

We burst from the tree line into the town on the other side—and hell had already arrived.

The once-quiet Alaskan town was a slaughterhouse. Buildings lay in rubble: walls collapsed into jagged piles of brick and twisted rebar, roofs caved in like crushed skulls, windows shattered into glittering hazards on the pavement. Bodies littered the streets in grotesque heaps. Soldiers in camouflage lay twisted with gaping bullet wounds or blast injuries—chests ripped open, limbs missing or mangled, blood pooling in dark, sticky rivers around them. Civilians were mixed in: a mother and child sprawled near a shattered storefront, the woman’s dress soaked red; an older man slumped against a wall with half his face gone from shrapnel. The air reeked of cordite, burning flesh, smoke, and coppery blood. Moans and screams mixed with the ongoing chatter of automatic gunfire from further ahead, where a fierce firefight still raged—muzzle flashes stabbing through the haze, explosions rocking what remained of the structures.

We slowed, weaving through the carnage, when the rumble of dozens of motorcycle engines grew louder from behind. The rest of the Reapers were catching up fast, Varak and Vesper at the head of the pack on their powerful bikes. They pulled alongside and in front, forming a formidable line.

Varak’s voice boomed over the din, his face grim, the burn scar on his chest visible where his jacket was open. He scratched at it absently as he spoke.

“This is just the beginning of what is to come if the demon is allowed to stay! Some of us might not make it out of this. We’re going to be fighting people—our own countrymen, soldiers just following orders or influenced by that thing. If you’re conflicted, if this is too much, leave now. No one will blame you. Take a second and look at your friends around you. We do this for each other. For the ones we’ve already lost and the ones we still have.”

The group quieted for a moment, engines idling, everyone looking around at their brothers and sisters in the gang.

I turned to Raven, who was right beside me. Our eyes met deeply amid the smoke and distant gunfire. In that gaze passed everything: my rescue from the side of the road, the brutal training, the nights tangled together, the love that had grown fierce and unbreakable. I leaned over as much as I could on the bike, pulling her into a deep, desperate kiss. Our lips crashed together, tongues sliding with urgent hunger, tasting of smoke, adrenaline, and the raw need to hold onto each other in the middle of this nightmare. Her eyes closed as she kissed me back with equal fire, one hand gripping my jacket like she could anchor us both.

While her eyes were closed, I reached into my pocket with my free hand, pulled out the small black box, and carefully dropped the ring inside into her saddlebag on the side of her bike. It was a simple silver band—nothing flashy, but it meant everything. A promise. A future if we survived this.

When we broke the kiss, she opened her eyes, and before I could speak she said it first, her voice low but fierce over the roar of engines and distant explosions: “I love you.”

My chest tightened. “I love you too, Raven. More than anything in this fucked-up world.”

Varak’s voice cut through again, his fingers still scratching the burn scar. “The damn thing is close. I can feel it in my bones. Follow me!”

He revved his bike hard and led the charge straight into the firefight.

We rode deep into the hellscape. Both sides—U.S. forces and the opposing soldiers—paused for a split second as this small army of bikers roared in between or straight through their lines. Confusion rippled visibly: heads turned, guns dipped slightly, eyes wide at the sight of leather-clad riders on thundering machines cutting through the battlefield like they owned the apocalypse.

The break in the shooting lasted barely a heartbeat. Then the gunfire resumed with vicious intensity. Bullets zipped and whined past us, some pinging off bike frames or kicking up sprays of dirt and rubble. A few soldiers on both sides swung their weapons toward the Reapers.

That’s when the powers hit.

Vesper, riding near the front, channeled through her bike. A massive, visible gust of wind exploded outward from her position—a rippling wall of force that slammed into a cluster of soldiers on the left flank. Men were lifted clean off their feet like ragdolls, tumbling end over end through the air. Guns flew from their hands. Bodies crashed into vehicles, walls, and each other with bone-crunching impacts. Some hit hard enough to break limbs—the sickening crack audible even over the chaos. Others slammed into the ground or debris, groaning or going limp, weapons scattered, formation shattered.

On the right, Rock revved Banshee and triggered the sound cannon. A deep, building hum exploded into a devastating sonic wave—a visible ripple of distorted air that punched forward like a physical hammer. Soldiers clutched their ears as blood immediately trickled from them. Many dropped to their knees, screaming in agony from ruptured eardrums, some vomiting violently from the disorienting pressure. Others collapsed outright, bodies convulsing or going still, weapons forgotten as the wave wrecked their balance and inner ears. A few vehicles shook on their suspensions from the force.

The Reapers pushed forward relentlessly through the gap. But it came at a cost. Stray bullets found marks amid the resumed fire.

One Reaper we’d ridden with—Jax, a wiry guy with a quick laugh—took a round to the shoulder. Blood sprayed in a bright arc from the exit wound, soaking his jacket and running down his arm. He yelled but gripped the handlebars tighter, his bike wobbling once before he steadied it, teeth gritted as he kept riding through the pain.

Another, Lena, a fierce rider who’d become a friend over the last two years, caught one in the thigh. The bullet punched through, blood soaking her pants fast and dripping onto the road. She hissed sharply but didn’t slow, the bike roaring as she powered forward, blood running down her leg.

Then the moment that broke everything.

Hank—a big, loyal guy we’d teamed up with on multiple jobs, the kind who always had your back and laughed the loudest after a rough ride—took a full burst from an automatic weapon to the chest. The bullets stitched across his vest in a brutal line. Blood exploded outward in a mist, soaking everything. His eyes went wide with shock and agony, a wet gurgling sound escaping as he slumped forward on his bike. The machine wobbled violently, then crashed hard, sparks flying as metal scraped pavement. Hank tumbled off in a heap of leather and spreading blood, his body twitching once before going still, eyes staring at nothing. He didn’t get up.

Something inside me snapped.

These were supposed to be fellow Americans—soldiers, maybe just following orders or twisted by the demon’s influence. I hadn’t wanted to use Widow’s full power on them. Acid that would melt flesh from bone in screaming agony. Venom that would lock muscles in torturous spasms while nerves burned. But seeing Hank fall—seeing other Reapers hit and bleeding, seeing brothers and sisters I’d fought beside for two years cut down in the streets—I couldn’t hold back anymore.

The restraint shattered. The gloves came off.

I drew the spider-gripped revolver and started firing with purpose. The acid-laced shots streaked out in rapid succession as we rode.

A tank rumbled into view ahead, its heavy cannon swiveling toward our line. I aimed and fired. The acid projectile slammed into the turret. Steel hissed violently, bubbling and melting like hot wax under a blowtorch. The acid spread laterally in glowing, corrosive waves, eating outward across the armor plates. Thick sheets of metal sloughed off in steaming, dripping globs, exposing the inner mechanisms and wiring beneath. The tank’s structure weakened rapidly—it sagged, turret slumping as the acid consumed the hull from multiple angles. Ammo cooked off in secondary explosions that rocked the dissolving wreck, but the vehicle was already collapsing inward, reduced to a bubbling puddle of molten slag, twisted aluminum, and black smoke. What remained of the crew had no escape as the acid ate everything it touched.

A helicopter swooped low overhead, rotors chopping the smoke, its door guns blazing. I fired again. The acid hit the fuselage near the rotor hub. Aluminum and steel melted on contact, holes blooming and spreading sideways like a living rot. The rotor assembly seized and tore free as its mounts dissolved, the blades spinning wildly before the entire craft shuddered, listed, and crashed in a dissolving heap of melting metal and exploding fuel. The acid continued eating even as flames erupted, turning the wreckage into a smoking crater of liquefied alloy.

The acid didn’t just pierce—it consumed. Steel and aluminum offered no resistance, the supernatural venom spreading sideways until entire vehicles were reduced to bubbling, steaming nothing. The power felt different now—controlled, channeled through the strengthened bond from two years of training. It no longer burned me from the inside the way it once had. It felt like an extension of my rage.

We rode through the chaos like demons ourselves—bikes weaving between rubble piles and fallen bodies, engines roaring over screams and gunfire. Explosions rocked the area as grenades or RPGs went off nearby, shrapnel pinging off metal and flesh. The air was a nightmare of smoke, the copper smell of blood, burning flesh, and gunpowder. We pushed relentlessly toward the U.S. commander’s position—a fortified spot with sandbags, vehicles, and a makeshift command post where the high-ranking officer was directing the fight.

As we closed in, Varak’s voice roared above everything: “I found you, ya bastard!”

The man turned. He was exactly as described—a very high-ranking officer, stars and insignia marking him as one of the president’s top generals. Cold eyes stared back without a flicker of emotion, his expression like carved stone, completely unbothered by the apocalypse around him. There was a wrongness to him—a faint, unnatural shadow or aura that clung to his form, hinting at the demon’s influence or the contract that had brought it here.

His troops immediately surged forward to protect him, forming a tight defensive line, weapons raised and firing.

Varak turned to the rest of us, voice cutting like a blade through the noise.

“Handle the troops! I’ll pull the demon out!”

The battle surged to a new level of fury as we engaged the protective force head-on, while Varak pushed straight toward the commander and whatever horror waited with him. Bullets flew thicker. Powers flared brighter. The Reapers fought like the family we were—bleeding, raging, refusing to break—for each other, for the ones who had already fallen, and for the world that would burn if we failed.

Chapter 31- Whisper

The crossroads felt different this time.

Over the last two years I had learned the rhythm of the Pit. It opened every season — four times a year — like some sick cosmic clock. Each time it cracked open, damned souls poured out in greater numbers, and each time we lost people. Some died. Most just… left. They got tired of the fear, tired of watching friends get torn apart or dragged into the dark. I understood. I really did.

But as long as Raven was still riding, I was riding too.

When the Pit was closed, the crossroads were almost peaceful. The lost souls that lingered along the edges weren’t as feral. They still tried to tempt us — flashing illusions of safety, of home, of everything we’d lost — but their voices were quieter now. Less desperate. There were fewer of them too. Like even the broken things in the Ashlands were holding their breath, waiting for whatever was coming next.

Raven and I rode side by side through the gray-black sand, Widow purring beneath me like she was finally starting to trust the rhythm we’d built together. Every mile we covered, I felt the bond settle deeper into my bones. The acid in my veins didn’t burn as viciously anymore. It felt… natural. Like it belonged there.

By the time we reached the meeting point, most of the crew was already there.

It was a smaller gathering than usual. Maybe thirty riders instead of the fifty or sixty we used to have. But every single one of them looked ready for war. Ammo belts. Extra revolvers. Shotguns strapped across backs. Some had even brought heavier hardware — things that looked like they’d been pulled straight off military trucks. We looked less like a motorcycle club and more like a small, pissed-off army that had decided the end of the world was personal.

Varak and Vesper stood in the center of the loose circle, smoking and talking with a few of the older members. Rock was off to the side, perched on Banshee’s seat like he didn’t have a care in the world. He had his electric guitar out — the one he’d somehow wired to run off the bike’s own power — and was lazily picking out a slow, bluesy riff that didn’t match the tension in the air at all.

Over the last two years I’d ridden with Rock a handful of times. You wouldn’t guess it from the Mohawk, the rings, or the way he screamed lyrics into the wind like he was trying to outrun the devil himself, but the man was scary smart. Harvard. That was where he’d been before everything went sideways. He never gave me the full story — just said something happened, he did time, and after that the system made damn sure he couldn’t get back on his feet. So he stopped trying to play by their rules. He threw himself into the only two things that ever made him feel free: music and motorcycles.

“That dude lives for the things that make him happy and free." He told me once, half-drunk around a campfire. “That living for what the heart wants is the smartest thing in the world, man. Everything else is just chains. He would rather willingly jump into the pit before giving up on what he wants.”

I believed him. Weirdly I understood what he meant because I'm still chasing someone that means the world to me. How could I ever give that up?

It was summer in Alaska. No snow. The air was cool but not freezing, and the long daylight hours made everything feel strangely exposed. I looked over at Raven. She was leaning against her bike, arms crossed, watching the group with that sharp, calculating stare she got when she was already planning ten moves ahead. I gave her a look — the one that said remember what we did last time we were up here? — and she answered with the exact same expression, only filthier. A silent promise of trouble later. The best kind.

We walked over to Varak and Vesper. Vesper spotted us first and gave Raven a quick, tight hug before pulling back and offering us both cigarettes from her pack. We took them. Old habits.

“What’s the situation?” Raven asked, lighting up.

Varak exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Military’s blocking most of the roads leading toward the border. Checkpoints everywhere. They’re not letting civilians through without serious paperwork, and even then they’re turning a lot of people around.”

He looked at me.

“You confident in your bond with Widow?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Feels solid now.”

Varak gave a small grin. "Good job kid after this job you're officially one of the five."

Vesper turned to Raven. “What about you? You been able to get your girl to open up more?”

Raven shook her head, looking faintly frustrated. “No. She’s still really shy. She talks to me a little when we’re alone, but… our bond feels stagnant. Like she’s holding something back.”

Vesper smiled — that bright, genuine smile she rarely showed in public. “She already has a powerful bond with you, Raven. It’ll grow. Some of them just take longer to trust.”

Varak crushed his cigarette under his boot.

“Our job right now is simple. Pair up. Ride the perimeter. Look for any signs of the demon or increased damned soul activity. I’ve got a gut feeling this whole Russia-America bullshit is connected. That thing didn’t come all the way out here just to hide.”

We broke into groups.

Raven and I took the western edge, riding through small towns that had gone from quiet Alaskan outposts to something that looked like a war zone in waiting. Military vehicles everywhere — Humvees, troop transports, even a couple of tanks sitting on flatbeds. Planes roared overhead in constant patrols. The locals looked scared. We kept our distance, but I could feel eyes on us every time we passed a checkpoint. A couple of soldiers even raised their rifles when we rode by, like they weren’t sure if we were friendlies or something else.

We rode for hours.

Eventually Raven gave me that look again.

The one that said she was done waiting.

We pulled off the main road, following a narrow dirt track until we were far enough from civilization that no one would stumble across us, but close enough that we could still hear the distant rumble of military convoys. Raven killed her engine first. The second her bike was off, she swung her leg over and bent over the seat, ass up, looking back at me with pure feral hunger in her eyes.

She wiggled her hips.

“Hurry up, puppy.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.

I killed Widow’s engine and was on her in seconds. I peeled her leather pants down just far enough to expose that perfect, pale ass and the black thong already soaked between her thighs. I dragged two fingers through her folds and groaned when I felt how wet she was.

“Fuck, Raven…”

She pushed back against my hand. “Less talking. More fucking.”

I licked her juices off my fingers — sweet and sharp and unmistakably her — then freed my cock and ran the thick head up and down her slick pussy, coating myself. She was dripping. I pushed in with one long, smooth thrust and we both moaned.

I fucked her hard and fast, one hand gripping her hip, the other braced on the bike seat beside her. The metal was warm from the ride. Her moans were loud and shameless, echoing off the trees. Every time I bottomed out she made this little broken sound that went straight to my spine.

Then something shifted.

A voice spoke directly into my head.

It wasn’t Widow.

This voice was small. Shy. Young-sounding, like a girl who wasn’t used to speaking out loud.

“It’s rude to have a three-way without asking.”

I froze mid-thrust.

Raven made a frustrated noise and pushed back against me. “Don’t stop—”

“Did you say something?” I asked, voice rough.

She looked back at me, confused. “No?”

The voice came again, still hesitant.

“No… I did.”

I looked down at the bike under Raven’s bare ass. At the matte-black tank etched with the same runes as my own revolvers. My eyes went wide.

I had to physically force myself to pull out of Raven before I lost it completely.

Raven twisted around, eyes flashing with irritation and confusion. “I’m not done yet.”

“Babe,” I managed, still breathing hard, “your bike doesn’t like us fucking on her.”

Raven blinked. Then blinked again.

“That’s unheard of. Bikes don’t talk to anyone but their bonded.”

She stared at me for a second longer… then her grin slowly returned, growing bigger and wickeder by the second.

“That’s good progress,” she said, voice low and pleased. She arched her back further over the seat, presenting herself again. “Let’s continue the conversation while you please me.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice.

I slid back inside her with a groan. She was even wetter now. I started fucking her again — slower this time, deeper — while the shy voice in my head spoke once more.

“This girl… I couldn’t give her my full power because she’s like me. She never knew how to fully trust another person. That was until recently. I wanted to thank you for that.”

Raven moaned as I hit that perfect spot inside her, but she still managed to talk.

“You hearing her clearly?” she asked, voice breathless.

“Yeah,” I grunted. “She’s… quiet.”

Raven laughed softly, the sound turning into a moan when I thrust harder. “Took you long enough to warm up to him, Whisp.”

There was a long pause. Then the voice — small, almost embarrassed — answered.

“I don’t typically share my name with just anyone… because my name carries power. The more people know it, the less power I have to channel to you. But… I think it’s okay now. All of reality was created from a whisper in pure nothingness. A single whispered sentence wove the entire tapestry of fate and reality. Let there be light."

"My power is that I can manipulate the weave by giving it specific commands. I can’t do much — just little things — but it’s enough. If people find out my power they might want me to rewrite parts of their lives and that's not how it works. I hear everyone that addresses me and I need intense focus to manipulate the weave. The voices are so loud I can't ignore them. I can barely carry on a conversation with two people let alone an entire group. That’s why no one other than Raven knew my name until now.”

I kept moving inside Raven, my rhythm steady and deep, one hand sliding up her back to grip her shoulder while the other stayed braced on the bike. The new information hit me like a freight train.

“Raven is able to use that speed because I was manipulating the thread of the weave that directly affected her,” Whisp continued, her voice still shy but gaining a little confidence now that she was speaking. “I can’t truly read the weave. I can only see my own thread and Raven’s since we’re bonded. But in time… Raven and I will be able to have two or more manipulations going at once.”

I was in shock.

The power this being held was staggering. Manipulating reality itself, even in small ways. Creating speed out of nothing. And she’d been holding back all this time because Raven hadn’t grown enough to withstand her power. Now that she fully trusted me, Whisp was willing to channel a little more of her power.

Raven’s pussy clenched around me as she came again, moaning my name in that broken, beautiful way she only did when it was real. I kept moving through it, drawing it out for her while my mind reeled.

Whisp’s voice softened even further.

“It’s been a long time since I experienced anything like the love you two have for each other. My name is… Whisper. But Raven calls me Whisp. Thank you for loving her like she deserves. You’re the reason she’ll continue to get stronger.”

I repeated it out loud without thinking.

“Whisper.”

Raven’s head turned, eyes wide and shining with something I didn’t see often — pure, unguarded happiness.

“This is the most I've heard you talk in a long time,” she said to the bike, voice warm and teasing even while I was still buried inside her. “Are you ready to increase our bond further now?”

Whisp’s answer was quiet but certain.

“Yes.”

I fucked Raven harder after that.

We were both close — her third orgasm building fast, mine right on the edge — when the world exploded.

A massive BOOM rolled across the landscape, followed by the rapid crack-crack-crack of automatic gunfire. Distant at first, but getting closer. We both froze.

Raven’s head snapped up.

“Shit.”

I was already pulling out, yanking my pants up as she fixed her own. We both turned toward the sound, hearts pounding for an entirely different reason now.

Whatever had been hiding in that military base…

It was moving.

Chapter 30- Training and Bonds

The training started the moment we got back to Louisiana.

Varak didn’t ease me in. He threw me straight into the deep end and watched to see if I’d drown.

“Most of the time the bond grows naturally,” he told me on the first day, standing in the middle of an abandoned junkyard while the sun beat down on rusted car husks. “But a person’s body can only withstand a small amount of power channeled from the bond before it starts tearing itself apart. Widow’s venom and acid are no joke. They’ll eat you from the inside if you push too hard too fast.”

He made me ride Widow until my arms shook and my vision blurred, then made me shoot the revolvers until my hands blistered and the acid burned through my veins like liquid fire. Every time I pulled the trigger on the spider-gripped gun, I felt the venom surge up my arm, hot and vicious, before it exploded out the barrel in a spray that melted through steel drums and left glowing, hissing holes in the ground.

“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” he said. “First time I channeled Ashreiver’s fire around my bike, I thought I was being burned alive by that demon all over again. But the bond protects you. The more you use it, the more your body adapts. The flames stop hurting. The acid stops burning. You just have to survive the process.”

Vesper took over the speed and timing training. She had me running drills on foot and on the bike until my lungs burned and my legs felt like they were going to snap. She taught me how to read the moment — the exact second a damned soul was about to lunge, or when a lost soul’s illusion was about to break. She was merciless. If I was half a second slow, she’d sweep my legs and put me on my back in the dirt with a knife to my throat.

“Speed without precision gets you killed,” she said, offering me a hand up. You need both.”

Raven’s lessons were the most intimate and the most brutal. Every time I fired one of the pistols, she made me describe exactly what I felt — the burn in my veins, the way the acid or venom seemed to want to be released. She’d have me shoot until my arms trembled, then she’d press her body against mine from behind, hands guiding my wrists, and whisper in my ear.

“Feel it. Don’t fight it. Let it flow through you. Widow chose you. She wants you to use her.”

At night, when the others were gone, I'd ride Widow for hours. We talked about everything. I asked her about Grave — why she chose him, what he was like.

“Grave saved my soul from the Pit,” Widow told me one night as we rode along a deserted highway, the wind whipping past us. Her voice was a low, dry hiss in my mind. “Twisted souls can claw their way up to the surface like damned souls, but we can’t leave the Crossroads without being bound to something from the Pit. Grave gave me that option. He pulled me out of the filth and offered me a chance to ride instead of rot.”

I asked if she remembered much of her time as a living human.

“Flashes,” she admitted. “Moments. A face here, a scream there. Nothing whole. The Pit doesn’t let you keep your past. It takes everything and leaves you hungry.”

When I asked about the demon — why it had recognized her name and spoken with fear — she was quiet for a long time.

“I’m not positive,” she finally said. “Demons rule the Pit. They know things most creatures down there don’t. But if I had to guess… it’s from the Wastelands territory.”

“Wastelands?”

She sighed, the sound echoing in my skull.

“You’ve heard of the seven circles of hell?”

I nodded.

“The idea is close, but not quite right. There are seven territories in the Pit, each ruled by a high demon. The first is Vulcara — where Ashreiver was twisted. It’s the closest thing to the traditional depictions of hell. Fire. Lava. Endless burning. I’m from the third territory. The Wastelands. It’s full of poison, acid, venom, and noxious fumes that never clear. All seven territories are connected, but they’re also at eternal war. The damned souls in each territory are working toward one goal: creating enough corruption on Earth to fracture the veil and release their high demon into the living world. They believe whichever high demon gets out first will rule everything… and the souls that supported the winner will spend eternity feasting on human souls without limit.”

I felt sick.

“I didn’t realize how bad it was,” I admitted.

Widow’s voice was grim.

“It’s worse than you think. The longer the Pit stays fractured, the more demons slip through. And once one of the high demons walks the Earth… there’s no putting it back.”

We kept riding. We kept talking. Months passed.

Varak pushed my body harder every week. I learned to channel more of Widow’s power without my veins feeling like they were going to burst. Vesper drilled me on speed and timing until I could draw and fire in the space between heartbeats. Raven had me shoot until the acid felt like an extension of my own rage instead of something foreign and deadly.

When they finally said my training was complete, I went straight to the tattoo parlor and had the raven half-sleeve finished. The artist shaded it in deep blacks and blood reds, the bird’s wings spread wide like it was leading the figure on the road forward into darkness. It felt right. Like a promise.

We went back to work.

Raven and I took jobs together — small ones at first, then bigger. We hunted damned souls across the old roads, and every night we came home to each other. We loved each other like the world was ending, because we both knew it probably was. Every moment we weren’t fighting, we were tangled together — in bed, in the shower, on the couch, against the wall of whatever shitty motel we were staying in. She would ride me like she owned me. I held her like she was the only real thing left in a world full of monsters.

Two years passed like that.

Two years of blood and fire and laughter and the kind of sex that left us both shaking and laughing afterward. Two years of her waking up in my arms and me waking up in hers. Two years of her calling me “puppy” with that wicked grin and me calling her “my bad girl” when I was buried inside her and she was moaning my name like a prayer.

I wasn’t a traditional man. I didn’t have a speech planned. But I had a question burning a hole in my chest and a small black box in my jacket pocket.

I was going to ask her at the diner.

The same shitty little roadside place where she’d scraped me off the highway two and a half years ago. It felt right. It felt like us.

We were sitting in our usual booth. She was wearing her leather jacket open over a black tank top. Her hair was down, messy from the ride, and she was laughing at something I’d said — that real, bright laugh she only let out when she felt safe.

I was just about to slide out of the booth and get down on one knee when the old TV in the corner crackled to life with an emergency alert.

The volume was low, but the words on the screen were big enough to read from across the room.

ALERT: CONFLICT BETWEEN RUSSIA AND AMERICA HAS BOILED OVER. DEFENSES AND SOLDIERS ARE BEING DEPLOYED TO ALASKA AS A PRECAUTION.

The diner went quiet.

Raven’s laughter died in her throat.

She looked at me across the table, and for a second I saw every version of her at once — the terrified girl who’d lost everything at fifteen, the hardened Reaper who’d dragged me out of hell, the woman who’d let me love her even though it scared her more than any demon ever could.

She reached across the table and took my hand.

“I hope you’re ready, puppy,” she said softly. “I think it’s time.”

I didn’t hesitate.

I leaned across the table, grabbed the back of her neck, and kissed her like it might be the last time. She kissed me back just as hard, her tongue sliding against mine, her free hand fisting in my shirt like she was afraid I’d disappear.

When we broke apart, her eyes were shining.

“Let’s hit the road,” she said.

We left the diner without finishing our food. The black box stayed in my pocket.

Widow roared to life beneath me as Raven kicked her own bike into gear beside me. The northern lights were long gone, replaced by the endless dark of a world that was about to burn.

We didn’t know what was waiting for us in Alaska.

But we were going anyway.

Together.

Chapter 29 - Soft Side

The fire had burned down to glowing embers, leaving the cabin bathed in soft orange light and deep shadows. I lay on the narrow couch with Raven curled in front of me, my chest pressed to her back, one arm draped over her waist. She was spooning Vesper, who slept facing the back of the couch. Vesper looked… peaceful. Truly peaceful for the first time since I’d met her. Her face was relaxed, lips slightly parted, the usual sharp edge of her second-in-command persona gone. She looked younger. Softer. Like the weight she carried every day had finally slipped off her shoulders for a few hours.

I was still half-asleep when I felt soft, loving strokes along my thigh. Gentle fingers tracing slow circles, moving higher until they brushed against my cock, which was already thickening from morning wood and the warmth of Raven’s body pressed against mine.

My eyes opened.

Raven was looking back at me over her shoulder, her black-lined eyes soft in the low light. She pressed one finger to her lips.

“Shhh,” she whispered, barely audible. “Don’t wake Vesper. I’m happy to see her like this. Relaxed. Happy. She’s needed this kind of connection for a while.”

Her fingers continued their slow, teasing strokes along my shaft, coaxing me fully hard with lazy, affectionate touches.

“Her last partner was a limp-dick loser,” she continued quietly, voice barely more than breath against my ear. “Even though she cared about him, he got scared during a dangerous job and left her to die. Never came back to the Reapers after that. That’s why she still rides most of her missions with Varak. She doesn’t trust many people to have her back anymore.”

Raven’s hand wrapped around me properly now, stroking with slow, firm pressure.

“I knew she needed this,” she murmured. “And I knew you wouldn’t hurt her. So I let it happen.”

She shifted her hips back against me, pressing her ass into my lap. The tiny black thong she wore had ridden up, the thin strip of fabric disappearing between her cheeks. She reached down between her legs and pulled it aside.

“Now I want my turn,” she whispered. “Keep it slow. Vesper needs her rest, and I don’t need any extra pain right now.”

I nodded, heart hammering.

I reached down and guided myself to her entrance. She was already wet — slick and warm from the night before and the slow build of our bodies pressed together. I pushed forward slowly, inch by careful inch, until I was buried deep inside her. Raven let out a soft, shaky breath and reached back to rest her hand on my hip, guiding the rhythm.

We moved together in slow, lazy strokes. Barely rocking the couch. Deep, unhurried thrusts that let me feel every inch of her. I kept one arm wrapped around her waist, my hand splayed over her bruised stomach, holding her gently. My other hand rested on her hip, thumb stroking the black tramp stamp just above where we were joined.

Raven turned her head enough to look at me, our faces inches apart. Her eyes were dark and vulnerable in a way I had never seen before.

“Nomad…” she whispered, voice trembling slightly. “About what you said last night…”

She swallowed hard.

“I love you too. But it scares the shit out of me. Almost everyone I love dies.”

I kissed the back of her neck, slow and reverent, while I continued the lazy, deep rhythm inside her.

“I’ll never leave you,” I murmured against her skin. “I don’t want you to hurt because of me.”

She let out a shaky breath, pushing back against me to take me deeper.

“Good,” she whispered. “Because I expect us to wake up like this for years to come.”

I had to suppress a groan at her words. She turned her head and kissed me to muffle the sound, her tongue sliding slow and deep into my mouth as we moved together. It was the most intimate sex we had ever had — no roughness, no domination, just slow, deep connection while the fire crackled and Vesper slept peacefully in front of us.

We came together.

Raven’s walls fluttered and clenched around me as she buried her face in the pillow to stay quiet. I followed seconds later, pulsing deep inside her in long, thick waves, my face pressed into the back of her neck as I tried not to make a sound.

We lay there afterward, still joined, breathing together.

Then Vesper’s voice broke the silence — low, amused, and very much awake.

“Did you two have fun?”

Raven immediately stiffened, face flushing bright red.

“You were supposed to be asleep,” she muttered, embarrassed.

Vesper rolled over to face us, grinning wide. “I didn’t want to ruin the lovebirds’ moment. But I rarely get to see Raven’s soft side. Its so cute.”

Raven looked mortified. Vesper just laughed softly and reached over to ruffle her best friend’s hair.

“I’m happy you found the right person,” she said, voice genuine. Then she looked at me, eyes dragging slowly down my body where it was still pressed against Raven’s back. “And after last night… honestly? I’m kinda jealous of you. Strong. Kind. Loyal. And you can fuck like a goddamn machine.” She smirked. “He’s a keeper, Raven.”

Raven laughed, still slightly red but recovering her attitude.

“You still need to find your own man. This one’s mine.” She paused, then added with a wicked little grin, “If you’re lucky, I might lend him out to you when you’re super pent up.”

Vesper ran one finger slowly down my bare chest, eyes sparkling.

“I’m still pent up…” she said, voice dropping into something lower and needier. “How about a quickie before Varak gets back?”

Raven laughed. “You’re trying to take full advantage of me not being able to use him properly right now.”

Before Vesper could answer, we all heard it — the deep, unmistakable roar of a motorcycle engine growing closer through the snow.

Vesper’s entire demeanor changed in an instant. She sat up fast.

“That’s Ashreaver.”

She was already moving, grabbing clothes and pulling winter gear from the duffel bag. Raven sat up too, wincing at her bruises as she reached for her own clothes.

Vesper looked at me sharply.

“Hurry up, Nomad, Varak is very protective over me. The last guy who got caught in bed with me… Varak broke every bone in his body.”

I scrambled off the couch, heart racing. I frantically searched the cabin for my boxers, which the girls had thrown somewhere last night. Raven and Vesper were already half-dressed and laughing at me as I tore through the small space.

“I liked it better when you go commando,” Raven teased, pulling on her leather pants.

“This isn’t funny,” I hissed, yanking on my jeans. “I don’t want him finding them in some random spot.”

I had just pulled my jeans up when I spotted the boxers — draped across a lampshade on the far side of the room. I grabbed them and shoved them into my bag just as the front door flew open.

Varak stood in the doorway, snow dusting his shoulders, looking concerned.

Vesper was already dressed and moving toward him.

“What happened?” she asked. “Did you find the demon?”

Varak stepped inside and closed the door behind him. His storm-cloud eyes were grim.

“I was able to trace its path,” he said. “It ended at a old military base. The kind of place most people don’t even know exists.”

He swallowed hard.

“That means whoever made the contract with it was powerful. High up in the chain of command of our nation. We won't be able to get in there. We'll have to wait for an opening and hope that when it moves on with whatever its plan is, we can stop it.”

Raven pulled her jacket on, wincing. “How long could that take?”

Varak shook his head. “Days. Months. Years. It’s hard to say. All I know is that we need to be prepared.”

His eyes landed on me.

“We’re going to need Widow’s full power,” he said. “It’s time to amp up your training, Nomad. Starting now.”

Chapter 28- Just A Taste Of Love

The three of us sat close on the couch, the air thick with the scent of weed, woodsmoke, and the faint mineral tang still clinging to our skin from the hot spring. Raven’s story hung heavy between us. I stared at the flames, stunned into silence.

I had thought my childhood was rough. The beatings. The fear. The nights I spent hiding under my bed while my stepfather screamed and my mother did nothing. But what these two women had survived… six months of hell at the hands of monsters wearing human skin. Being sold. Beaten. Broken. Watching other kids disappear. Fighting every single day just to stay alive.

I couldn’t imagine it.

Without thinking, I lifted my arms and wrapped one around each of them, pulling them gently into my sides. Raven’s bare breast pressed against my ribs. Vesper’s warm brown skin slid against my other side. I held them both, careful of Raven’s bruises, and just… held them.

The women giggled.

“Aww, look at him,” Vesper teased, her bubbly voice returning. “Trying to comfort the big bad Reapers like we’re delicate little flowers.”

Raven let out a soft, mean little laugh against my shoulder. “Cute. Real cute, puppy.”

But neither of them pulled away. Instead, they melted into the hug. Vesper tucked her face into the crook of my neck. Raven rested her head against my chest, her black hair spilling across my skin. For a long moment, we just sat there, breathing together.

Then Raven tilted her head up. Her lips brushed my ear, voice low and warm.

“I’m so happy I decided to pick up that stray puppy off the side of the road.”

A shiver ran straight down my spine. My arms tightened around them both.

I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“God, I love you, Raven.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them. Raw. Honest. Too big for the small cabin.

Vesper’s head snapped up, eyes wide with genuine shock. She stared at me like I’d just grown a second head.

Raven went very still against my chest.

Then she moved.

She leaned in and pressed a slow kiss to my jaw, right below my ear. Another one followed, lower, her pierced lip dragging across my skin. She only stopped to whisper. "Promise you won't leave me now."

"I promise."

Vesper’s shock melted into a massive smile. The bubbly energy returned full force.

“Aww,” she cooed, voice sweet and teasing. “You’re not going to share your love with me too?”

Raven pulled back just enough to flash that wicked, dangerous grin I knew so well.

“You can have a little taste,” she said, voice low and possessive. “But he’s mine. If you need constant attention, go get your own probate.”

Vesper pouted dramatically for half a second, then sighed.

“Fine. Just a taste.”

She leaned in from the other side.

Two pairs of lips found my neck at the same time.

Raven kissed and nipped along my left side, her tongue hot and teasing. Vesper attacked the right with soft, open-mouthed kisses that quickly turned hungry. I groaned, head falling back against the couch as their mouths worked over my throat, my jaw, the sensitive spot just beneath my ear. My cock, already surged back to full, aching thickness.

They kissed me like they were competing.

Raven claimed my mouth first, her tongue sliding deep, demanding. Vesper didn’t wait her turn — she turned my head and stole a kiss of her own the second Raven pulled back. Both women wanted to dominate the kiss, tongues exploring, teeth nipping, lips brushing. I never complained. I just opened for them, letting them take what they wanted.

At one point they even kissed each other — slow, deep, right in front of my face. Their tongues slid together, wet and filthy, while I watched, cock throbbing painfully against my stomach.

Raven finally broke the kiss and pushed me flat onto my back on the couch. She pointed one black-nailed finger right in my face, eyes blazing.

“Don’t expect this to happen again,” she warned, voice rough. “I can’t ride you the way I like with these injuries. So Vesper’s riding tonight.”

Before I could answer, both women moved at once.

They ripped my boxers down my legs and tossed them somewhere across the cabin. My cock sprang free, thick and heavy, the head already glistening with pre-cum.

Vesper giggled as she looked down at me.

“Aww, look at his reaction,” she said, voice bright and teasing. “He’s still so sensitive from the hot springs.” She reached down and gently petted my cock with two fingers, like she was soothing an overexcited pet. “It’s okay, big guy. I’m going to make sure you feel better real soon.”

She swung one long leg over my hips and mounted me.

I watched, transfixed, as she reached between us and lined the thick head of my cock up with her entrance. She was already wet — slick and hot. She sank down slowly, inch by inch, and moaned loud and shameless as my head pushed past her tight entrance.

“Fuck,” she gasped, eyes fluttering. “Why’s it so fucking thick?”

Raven laughed from beside us, already shifting her position.

“You like it?”

Vesper nodded frantically, biting her lip as she took more of me. “God, yes.”

“Enjoy yourself for now,” Raven said, voice mean and sweet at the same time. “Because when I’m better, you won’t be getting a turn.”

I watched the obscene contrast of my pale cock disappearing into Vesper’s warm brown pussy. She was tight — incredibly tight — and every inch felt like it was squeezing me in a velvet fist. When she finally bottomed out, sitting fully on my lap, we both groaned.

I leaned up and sucked one of her perky dark nipples into my mouth, tongue flicking over the stiff peak. Vesper moaned louder, her hips jerking. Then she gently pushed me back flat onto the couch.

“Stay down,” she ordered, voice breathless but commanding. Her hands planted on my chest as she started to ride.

She picked up speed fast — rolling her hips, bouncing on my cock with wet, filthy sounds filling the cabin. Every time she dropped down, I felt myself hit something deep inside her that made her whole body shudder.

“Raven undersold how good you feel,” Vesper panted, nails digging into my chest.

Raven just chuckled darkly from beside us.

“He has an amazing mouth too.”

A wicked lightbulb went off behind Vesper’s eyes.

Raven didn’t waste time. She stood, hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her tiny red shorts and black thong, and shoved them down her long legs. The bruises across her stomach and ribs looked even worse in the firelight, but she didn’t seem to care. She climbed onto the couch, swung one leg over my head, and lowered herself onto my face.

She sat carefully — mindful of her injuries — but the command in her voice was absolute.

“Eat.”

I didn’t hesitate.

I carefully grabbed her hips and dragged my tongue through her slick folds, tasting her, sucking her swollen clit into my mouth the way I knew she liked. Raven moaned above me, one hand braced on the back of the couch while the other tangled in my hair.

Vesper rode me harder, her moans growing louder and more desperate with every bounce. She was shameless, and vocal in a way that made my cock throb inside her. Every time she dropped down and took me to the hilt, she let out these high, broken sounds that echoed off the cabin walls.

When she came, it was explosive.

Her pussy clamped down on me like a vice, pulsing and rippling as she squirted around my cock. She screamed — loud enough that if we’d been in a hotel, the people across the street would’ve heard every filthy detail. Her whole body shook, thighs trembling on either side of my hips as she rode out the orgasm.

I kept licking Raven through it all. She came not long after — quieter than Vesper, but no less intense. Her thighs squeezed around my head as she gushed against my tongue, her body carefully still so she wouldn’t aggravate her bruises. It wasn’t the strongest orgasm I’d ever given her, but she seemed satisfied, panting softly as she lifted off my face.

Vesper was still panting, slumped forward with her hands on my chest.

Raven grinned at her, wicked and amused.

“You okay, Ves?”

“Better than okay,” Vesper breathed. She looked down at me, eyes glassy with pleasure. “Can I go again?”

Raven glanced at me, then back at her best friend.

“He hasn’t cum yet. So you have until then.”

Vesper nodded, still catching her breath. “Just… give me a second.”

Raven laughed, low and mean.

“We don’t want our puppy to lose his erection. Maybe you should let him lead for a bit. He’s good at it.”

Vesper looked genuinely surprised.

“You let him lead?”

Raven met my eyes and gave one sharp, unmistakable command.

“Pounce.”

I moved.

I grabbed Vesper around the waist and flipped her onto her hands and knees on the couch in one smooth motion. She gasped, then moaned as I got behind her and lined myself up. I gripped her hips and quickly pushed into her in one long thrust, bottoming out so deep she made a sound I didn’t think a human could make.

“Oh my fucking god—” she choked out, voice wrecked.

I fucked her hard and deep, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing through the cabin. Every thrust punched a broken moan out of her. She kept saying I was deeper than anyone had ever been, that she could feel me in her stomach. She came twice more — loud, shaking orgasms that left her arms trembling and her face pressed into the couch cushions.

I was getting close. Too close.

“Vesper—fuck—I’m gonna—”

She reached back blindly, voice hoarse.

“Pull out— I’m not on the pill anymore. Not since my last partner.”

I respected it instantly. I pulled out at the last second, my cock slipping free of her soaked pussy. I barely got two strokes in before I exploded.

Thick ropes of cum painted her back in heavy spurts. Most of it pooled in the small of her back, but some dribbled down over the curve of her ass and between her cheeks. I kept cumming — long, pulsing shots that left me shaking and empty.

Raven watched the whole thing with that wicked grin.

“Damn, Nomad,” she laughed, voice rough with satisfaction. “I knew we did some damage in the hot spring, but you shot that like a goddamn firehose.”

Vesper was still face-down on the couch, breathing hard, cum cooling on her back. She let out a weak, breathless laugh.

The three of us collapsed together on the narrow couch, tangled and sweaty and completely spent. We quickly fell asleep like that, not knowing what the morning would bring.

The fire crackled low in the wood-burning stove, the only steady sound in the small cabin. Snow pressed against the windows in thick, silent drifts. The three of us sat close on the couch — me in the middle, Raven on my left in nothing but a skimpy red sleep shorts, Vesper on my right in even tinier black shorts. Their bare skin pressed warm against mine on both sides. The joint had burned low, but Raven passed it to Vesper anyway. Vesper took a slow drag, held it, and passed it back without a word.

Raven stared into the flames for a long moment before she spoke again. Her voice was quieter now, rough around the edges.

“You’ve heard the nightmares on the news recently,” she said. “Kids being abducted. Terrible things happening to them. Everyone wants to believe it’s only the rich and powerful elites doing these things. The truth is… it’s often things from the Pit. Damned souls much prefer young, innocent souls. Souls that are right at the edge of losing their innocence to the world. Those give them the most strength when they feed.”

She took the joint back from Vesper and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in her lungs before exhaling toward the ceiling.

“There are a lot of evil humans who do the same,” she continued. “But they’re ruled by extremely powerful damned souls at the top. Those ones get the pick of the litter. We were taken by those evil people. Sold to the fuckers at the top so they could beat us, break us, and eat our souls when they were at their prime.”

Vesper’s arm tightened around Raven’s shoulders. Raven’s fingers squeezed mine harder under the blanket.

“There were twelve of us kids,” Raven said. “Most of them younger than I was. I was one of the oldest — a few months from turning sixteen. Vesper had just turned fourteen. They restrained us fast. Zip ties. Duct tape. Then they loaded us into the back of a truck like cargo and shipped us off to the first torture center.”

She passed the joint to me. I took a small hit and handed it to Vesper. The cabin stayed quiet except for the fire.

“I wish I could say there was one distinct look to the monsters or one specific thing they did to us,” Raven went on. “But they were both men and women. Some loved using the belt. Some got off on humiliating us — making us crawl, making us say things, making us watch while they hurt the younger ones. Others just wanted us dead. We always got it worse because Vesper and I fought back every single time.”

Vesper let out a shaky breath and took another drag from the joint before passing it back to Raven.

“You were the only reason I didn’t break,” Vesper said quietly, her usual bubbly tone gone. “Every time they came for us, you were already swinging. I would’ve given up if you hadn’t been there telling me to keep fighting.”

Raven’s jaw tightened. She stared at the joint between her fingers for a long second.

“I would’ve broken without you,” she admitted, voice low. “You kept me from going completely feral. Every time I wanted to just… let them kill me, you’d look at me like I was an idiot for even thinking it. We kept each other alive. That’s the only reason we’re still here.”

Vesper’s eyes shimmered in the firelight, but she blinked hard and forced a small, crooked smile.

“Yeah, well… somebody had to keep your stubborn ass from getting us both killed too early.”

Raven let out a short, wet laugh that cracked at the end. She wiped at her eye with the back of her hand like it was nothing.

“The second time they loaded us up and shipped us somewhere new, we tried to escape,” she continued, voice steadier again. “I remember kicking one of the guards as hard as I could right between the legs. I put everything I had into it — like I was trying to make his balls come out of his mouth. He dropped like a sack of bricks. We took off running the second he hit the ground. Unfortunately, his partner was a more powerful damned soul. No matter what we did to him — punching, kicking, even stabbing him with broken glass — it didn’t stop him. He beat us half to death right there on the side of the road. Said the only reason we were still alive was because our souls weren’t ‘ripe’ enough yet.”

She passed the joint to Vesper again. Vesper took a long drag and held it.

“The other kids looked up to us because we always tried to protect them,” Raven said. “But in that kind of hell… how do you keep the people around you from falling into complete despair? We noticed pretty fast that the kids who broke first — the ones who stopped fighting — never came back to the cells.”

Vesper exhaled slowly, smoke curling around her face.

“We both needed vengeance,” she said, looking at Raven. “We would never be satisfied until every man and woman in that company was lying in a pool of their own blood like our parents. That was the only thing keeping us going. You never let me forget it. Every time I started to slip, you’d remind me why we had to stay alive.”

Raven’s eyes were glassy now. She didn’t bother hiding it this time.

“You were the only person I trusted,” she said quietly. “The only one who understood what it felt like to watch your parents die in front of you and then get sold like meat. We didn’t have anyone else. Just each other.”

Vesper reached over and squeezed Raven’s hand where it rested on my thigh.

Raven gave her a small, shaky smile and took the joint back. She took a hit, then passed it to me without looking away from Vesper.

“Everything changed on the third transfer,” she said, voice rough again. “The truck stopped in the middle of nowhere during the middle of the route. The guards had gotten bolder. They figured since most of us had given up fighting back, they could do whatever they wanted. They were wrong.”

She took another slow drag and handed the joint to Vesper.

“As soon as they popped those back doors open, Vesper and I pounced. Vesper took the man on the left. I took the damned soul on the right. He was strong, but I wasn’t going to play fair. I knew this was our best shot. I gouged at his eyes with my fingers, digging in deep. I even ripped one of his ears halfway off with my teeth. He screamed like his brain was leaking out. But I didn’t realize these things could regenerate. While we were trying to get the rest of the kids to follow us into the trees, he caught us off guard. He pulled out his gun, pressed it right against my temple, and said he’d have to apologize to his boss… but I was too stubborn to break, so I was better off dead.”

The cabin went completely silent.

Raven’s voice dropped to almost a whisper.

“I closed my eyes and the world went silent. I just… waited for the end. Then I heard the gunshot. I opened my eyes and saw that evil creature with a hole in his head, screaming bloody murder as he started melting from the inside out. Black ichor poured from the wound like it was boiling. And just past him… two massive figures stood there in the dark.”

She swallowed hard, a single tear slipping down her cheek before she could stop it.

“The one who had fired the shot had his arm still extended, a revolver with a spider grip in his hand. After six months of the worst hell imaginable, our saviors didn’t look anything like what we had imagined. They didn’t have wings. They didn’t look like angels. They looked like punks. Rough. Dangerous. Covered in leather and scars. Instead of wings, they rode black beasts that roared like thunder.”

Raven’s fingers were gripping mine so tightly it hurt.

“It was Grave and Varak.”

Vesper leaned in and pressed her forehead against Raven’s temple, eyes closed. Her voice was thick when she finally spoke.

“We became best friends in that hell because we had no one else,” she said quietly. “We relied on each other for everything. To stay alive. To keep fighting. To remember why we couldn’t give up. I don’t know if I would’ve made it out without you, Raven. I really don’t.”

Raven’s voice cracked for the first time.

“Me neither,” she whispered. “You were the only reason I kept going some days. Still are.”

They stayed like that for a long moment — foreheads touching, breathing the same air, the joint burning low between them.

I sat between them in silence, feeling the weight of everything they had survived press down on the small cabin like the snow outside.

The fire burned lower.

And for the first time, I truly understood why these two women would burn the world down for each other.

Chapter 26- Sleepover

The walk back to the cabin was pure torture.

I followed Raven and Vesper through the snow, still completely naked, my cock thick and aching between my legs. Every step made it bob heavily against my thigh, the cold air doing nothing to calm the desperate throb Vesper and Raven had left me with. My balls felt tight and heavy, full of denied release. The hot spring water had washed away the pre-cum, but the pressure remained — a deep, insistent pulse that made every movement uncomfortable.

Raven walked ahead of me, steam still rising from her bare skin. Vesper walked beside her, tall and powerful, droplets running down the smooth brown skin of her back and over the firm curve of her ass. Neither of them looked back at me. They knew exactly what they’d done.

By the time we reached the cabin, I was shivering from the cold and still painfully hard.

Inside, the fire had been stoked higher. The small space was warm and smelled like woodsmoke and the faint mineral scent of the hot spring. Vesper immediately went to the large duffel bag she’d brought and unzipped it.

“Fresh winter clothes,” she announced, pulling out thick thermal base layers, heavy sweaters, insulated pants, and heavy socks. “I figured we’d need them when we eventually leave this place. But honestly…” She glanced at the glowing wood stove and grinned. “I don’t plan on wearing much while we’re stuck inside. It’s way too hot in here for real clothes.”

She giggled, that bright, bubbly sound filling the cabin.

“I also packed something extra special. I had a feeling my best friend and I were going to have one of our old sleepovers like when we were teens.”

Raven’s eyes lit up with genuine excitement for the first time since the demon had knocked her off her bike.

Vesper pulled out two small, silky items and tossed one to Raven. They were barely-there thongs — one black with delicate lace, the other deep red. Then she pulled out two tiny pairs of sleep shorts that looked more like underwear than actual clothing. She kept the red thong and a tiny black pair of shorts for herself. Raven got the black thong and the red shorts.

They dressed right there in front of me without any shame.

Raven stepped into the black thong first, pulling the thin straps up over her bruised hips. The tiny triangle of fabric disappeared between her ass cheeks, the black tramp stamp sitting just above it like a dark promise. The bruises across her stomach and ribs looked even worse in the firelight. She tugged on the tiny red sleep shorts — they rode so low on her hips that the waistband sat beneath the bruises, barely covering anything.

Vesper did the same. She slid the red thong up her long legs, the thin fabric stretching over her smooth brown skin and disappearing between the firm globes of her ass. The tiny black sleep shorts she pulled on next were even shorter than Raven’s. They hugged her athletic thighs and sat low enough to show the deep V of her hips. Her breasts remained bare as well — full, dark-nippled, and proud.

Both women stood there in nothing but tiny thongs and even tinier shorts, bodies on full display. Raven’s pale, tattooed, bruised form next to Vesper’s warm brown, athletic one. The contrast was striking and impossible to ignore.

I was still standing there naked, cock half-hard and throbbing.

Vesper noticed. Of course she did.

She reached back into the duffel and pulled out a fresh pair of boxers.Throwing them across the room at me. "Put that thing away." I felt heat rush to my cheeks before muttering my thanks.

The next thing she pulled out was a small Ziploc bag of weed and a pack of rolling papers. With practiced ease, she sat on the edge of the couch and began rolling a joint on the small table beside the stove. The firelight painted her bare breasts in warm gold as she worked.

Raven’s eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas.

“Oh my god,” she breathed. “I haven’t smoked weed in forever.”

Vesper grinned without looking up. “Figured you could use it after getting your ass handed to you by a demon.”

Raven laughed — actually laughed — and dropped onto the couch beside her, wincing slightly at her bruised ribs but clearly more like her old self.

“Do you remember when Varak and Grave caught us smoking behind the old barn that one summer?”

Vesper threw her head back and laughed so hard she nearly dropped the joint she was rolling. “Oh my god, yes! Grave was so pissed. I thought he was going to actually murder us. He went on this whole rant about how we were going to ruin our lungs and our brains and how we needed to be sharp for the job.”

Raven was giggling now, the sound light and real. “And Varak just stood there with his arms crossed, looking all serious… until he asked if we had any left and took a hit.”

Vesper cackled. “Grave looked like he was going to have an aneurysm. ‘You’re the leader, you idiot!’ And Varak just shrugged and said, ‘I’m off duty.’”

They kept going back and forth, trading stories and inside jokes I didn’t understand. Raven teased Vesper about some old boyfriend Vesper had tried to hide from Varak. Vesper fired back about Raven once getting so drunk she tried to ride her bike naked through the woods. They laughed until tears formed in their eyes, bodies relaxed and comfortable with each other in a way that spoke of years of shared trauma and survival.

I stood there watching them, still flushed and painfully turned on. Every time one of them shifted, every time a breast swayed or a their shorts disappeared between firm cheeks, I twitched. I didn’t want to seem desperate or needy. So I tried to play it cool.

I cleared my throat and stepped closer. “Mind if I join?”

Vesper looked up from the joint she’d just finished rolling, eyes sparkling with mischief. She licked the paper slowly, deliberately, before sealing it.

“Sure, Nomad. But you have to sit between us.”

Raven patted the small space between her and Vesper on the couch, grinning that wicked grin. “Come on, puppy. Don’t be shy now.”

I sat down between them. The couch was small. My shoulders brushed both of theirs. Raven’s bare breast pressed lightly against my left arm. Vesper’s thigh pressed against my right.

Vesper lit the joint, took a long drag, and passed it to Raven. Raven inhaled deeply, eyes closing in pleasure as she held the smoke in her lungs before exhaling toward the ceiling. She passed it to me.

I took a hit. The weed was strong. It hit fast, loosening some of the tight frustration in my chest even as it did nothing to calm the persistent ache between my legs.

The girls kept talking and giggling. Inside jokes flew over my head. Raven was becoming more and more like her old self — teasing, mean in that flirty way, laughing freely. Vesper matched her energy perfectly.

After a while, the high settled over all three of us. I felt warm. Loose. And much calmer about our situation.

I glanced between them — these two tall, powerful, nearly naked women who clearly loved each other in a deep, complicated way.

“How long have you two known each other?” I asked quietly.

The laughter died down. Both women went still. They exchanged a look over my head — something heavy and painful passing between them.

Vesper took another slow drag from the joint before answering.

“We met when we were teenagers. At a high-end social event,” she said. Her voice had lost its bubbly edge. “Our parents worked together at a small company. They were invited to this fancy party with a potential partnering company. The kind of company that was supposed to open doors and increase money flow. The party was formal and elegant. Small guest list. A few nice families. Kids ranging from about ten years old up to sixteen.”

Raven stared into the fire, her expression distant.

“We met each other at that party,” she continued. “We were both wearing these stupid little dresses that didn’t match our personalities at all. We hated them. And we hated each other on sight. We were too similar, I think. Too stubborn. Too angry at the world already. Our families had to break up a fight between us in the middle of the ballroom. They were so embarrassed. Said we were making them look bad in front of their potential bosses.”

Vesper passed the joint to me again. I took a hit, the smoke curling in my lungs.

“Other than that,” Raven said quietly, “the night seemed normal. Until the head of the big company stood up to make a toast to the new partnerships and new friends.”

She went very still.

“All the adults who were with us drank the champagne provided and collapsed at the same time. They started seizing on the floor. Some of them were screaming. Some were choking for breath before they died. We watched our parents die right in front of us. All the kids were screaming and crying. It was chaos.”

Raven’s voice had gone flat, almost detached. But her hand had found mine and was gripping it tightly.

“Then they took us.That was the night we lost our parents, our freedom, and our hope.” she said. “But it was also the night Vesper and I gained each other.”

Vesper’s arm slid behind me reaching out to Raven and squeezing her shoulder. The two women leaned into each other over my lap, their bare skin warm against mine.

Neither of them said anything else for a long moment.

The fire crackled. The joint burned low between Raven’s fingers.

And I finally understood why these two women — so different and yet so perfectly matched — were willing to die for each other.

They had already lost everything else once.

They weren’t going to lose each other too.

Chapter 25- Hot springs

The snow crunched under our boots as we stepped out of Grave’s cabin into the brutal Alaskan cold. The sky was still that deep, endless black of polar night, broken only by the faint shimmer of the northern lights far above the treetops. Steam rose in thick white plumes from somewhere behind the cabin, glowing faintly in the darkness like a beacon. Vesper walked on Raven’s left, one arm hovering near her elbow without quite touching. I stayed on her right, close enough to catch her if she slipped but not daring to offer more help after the last time she’d snapped at me.

Raven walked on her own.

She moved stiffly, one hand pressed lightly against her bruised ribs, but her chin was up and that mean little smirk had returned to her black lips. The cut above her eye was still bandaged, and the dark purple bruises across her torso and one thigh were stark against her pale skin in the weak light spilling from the cabin window. Every step made her wince, but she refused to let either of us carry her.

“Stop hovering like a pair of mother hens,” she muttered, voice rough but teasing again. “I got knocked off a bike by a demon, not turned into an invalid. Keep your hands to yourselves.”

Vesper laughed, that bright, bubbly sound cutting through the cold air. “There she is. I was starting to miss the bitchy version of you.”

Raven shot her a sideways glare that held no real heat. “Keep talking and I’ll show you how much energy I’ve got left.”

I stayed quiet, watching her carefully. Every time she favored her left side or sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth, something tight and protective clenched in my chest. The bruises were worse than I’d realized in the dim cabin—deep, ugly marks blooming across her ribs where the demon had struck her, another dark one across her stomach, and a nasty scrape along her hip that the hot water would probably sting like hell. She looked powerful even like this. Dangerous. Beautiful in a way that made my throat tight.

We followed the trail of steam through the snow, two hundred yards that felt longer in the freezing wind. The path Varak had melted earlier with Ashreaver was already starting to refreeze at the edges, but the steam guided us straight to the spring.

It was small—just a natural rock pool maybe eight feet across, tucked between snow-covered boulders. The water bubbled gently, sending thick white steam curling into the night sky. The contrast was surreal: boiling heat in the middle of a frozen wilderness, snow piled high on the surrounding rocks while the pool itself steamed like a cauldron. The air smelled faintly of minerals and sulfur.

Raven and Vesper didn’t hesitate.

The second we reached the edge, Raven started stripping. She peeled off her jacket first, then the tank top underneath with a small hiss of pain as the fabric pulled at her bruises. Her pale skin glowed in the steam, covered in tattoos—thorned roses, screaming faces, occult sigils that seemed to shift in the flickering light from the northern lights. The silver bar through her left nipple caught the glow. The black tramp stamp above her ass flexed as she bent to push her pants down. Bruises marred her ribs, stomach, and one thigh, dark and angry against the ink. She was still the most beautiful, terrifying thing I’d ever seen.

Vesper stripped beside her with the same casual confidence.

She was every bit as tall as Raven—six-three easy—but carried it with a different kind of power. Warm brown skin, smooth and unmarked except for a few thin, symbolic tattoos on her forearms and one small ritual mark at the base of her throat. Her cornrow braids swung down her back as she pulled off her vest and tank. She was leaner than Raven, all athletic muscle and long lines—strong shoulders, toned abs that flexed when she moved, full breasts with dark nipples already tightening in the cold air before the steam hit them. Her hips curved into powerful thighs and a round, firm ass. Less ink than Raven, but what she had looked old and earned. She looked like someone who could break you in half and then laugh about it while helping you up.

I stood there like an idiot, looking between them.

Raven was pale and dangerous, covered in ink and scars and that wicked black tramp stamp, bruises mapping every place the demon had hurt her. Vesper was warm brown and athletic, almost regal in her strength, fewer marks but no less powerful. Both tall. Both lethal. Both completely naked now and utterly unashamed as they stepped into the steaming water.

My cock twitched in my jeans before I could stop it.

I cleared my throat and took a step back. “I’ll, uh… give you two some privacy. I can come back later or—”

Vesper’s bubbly laugh cut me off. She was already waist-deep in the water, steam curling around her breasts as she turned to look at me with that wide, mischievous grin.

“Aww, has the big bad new Reaper never seen a woman’s body before?” she teased, voice bright and teasing. “You’re acting like a blushing virgin, Nomad.”

I felt my face heat despite the cold. “Of course I have.”

She tilted her head, cornrows shifting. “Then you shouldn’t have any problem joining us in the spring, right? Water’s perfect. Warm. Relaxing.” Her tone stayed light, but something sharper flickered in her eyes.

I remembered Raven's warning. Don’t get involved with Vesper. She’s second in command. Almost as strong as Varak. She’ll break you in half and laugh while she does it.

I swallowed hard, glancing at Raven.

She was already submerged up to her chest, black hair floating around her shoulders, the biggest, most mischievous grin splitting her face as she watched me squirm. She looked like she was enjoying every second of this.

“You heard the lady,” Raven purred, voice low and mean in the best way. “Strip.”

Vesper’s personality shifted in an instant. The bubbly energy dropped away. Her voice became calm, commanding, the second-in-command of the Night Reapers speaking.

“Strip. Now.”

I looked between them—Raven grinning like a cat with cream, Vesper watching me with steady, unreadable eyes—and knew I wasn’t getting out of this.

My hands went to my jacket.

I stripped slowly, the cold biting at every inch of exposed skin. Jacket first. Then shirt. Boots. Jeans. When I finally pushed my boxers down, my cock sprang free—already half-hard from watching them, thick and heavy in the freezing air. Steam curled around it as I stood there completely naked.

Vesper let out a low whistle, eyes dragging slowly down my body and back up.

“Damn, girl,” she said to Raven, voice dripping with delighted shock. “You didn’t tell me he was this hung. That’s not fair.”

Raven chuckled, low and filthy, the sound going straight to my dick.

“Yeah,” she said, eyes locked on mine with that wicked gleam. “That’s a BIG reason I keep him around.”

My face burned. My cock twitched visibly in the cold air.

I stepped into the hot spring before I could think better of it. The water was scalding after the freezing wind—almost too hot at first, sending pins and needles racing across my skin. I sank down on Raven’s left side, the rocks smooth under my ass, the water coming up to my chest. Heat soaked into my muscles. Steam rose around us in thick curtains.

To my surprise, Vesper didn’t stay on Raven’s other side.

She moved through the water with liquid grace and settled on my right, effectively sandwiching me between the two tall, naked women. Raven’s thigh brushed my left leg. Vesper’s pressed against my right. Their shoulders were close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off their skin even in the water.

It seemed a little strange that Vesper was coming on to me like this. The way she’s been acting since I met her… the way she punched me, the way she snuggled up to Raven the second she could… I would’ve sworn she had a crush on Raven.

Then the teasing started.

It was relentless.

Vesper leaned in first, her breath warm against my ear. “You’re already hard, aren’t you?” she murmured, bubbly again but with an edge. “We haven’t even touched you yet.”

Her hand drifted under the water and rested high on my thigh, fingers brushing dangerously close to my cock. Not quite touching. Just close enough to raise my heart rate.

Raven’s laugh was low and mean on my other side. Her fingers traced the fresh raven tattoo on my arm, then slid down to my chest, nails dragging lightly over one nipple.

“Look at him,” she purred to Vesper. “All that power from Widow and he still gets this worked up from two naked women in a hot spring. Cute.”

Vesper’s hand slid higher, her knuckles brushing the base of my cock under the water. I jerked, hips twitching before I could stop myself. My cock throbbed, fully hard now, straining in the hot water.

“Fuck,” I muttered, voice rough.

Raven leaned closer, her bruised ribs pressing lightly against my arm. “Poor puppy,” she teased, breath hot against my neck. “All that size and nowhere to put it. You keep looking at us like you want to devour us both.”

Vesper’s fingers wrapped loosely around the base of my cock under the water—just a light, teasing grip that made my breath catch. She stroked once, slow and deliberate, thumb circling the head. I groaned, head falling back against the rocks.

“Vesper—” I started.

She squeezed lightly, then let go completely.

“Uh-uh,” she said, voice sweet and commanding at the same time. “Not yet. We’re just getting you warmed up.”

Raven’s hand joined in from the other side, her fingers tracing up the length of my cock with feather-light touches before pulling away. Both women were touching me now—light strokes, brushes, nails dragging along my thighs and stomach—keeping me throbbing and desperate while never giving enough pressure to finish anything.

They kept it up for what felt like forever.

Teasing comments. “So big and hard for us.” “Bet he’d beg if we asked nicely.” “Look how he twitches when we touch him.” Hands sliding over my chest, my abs, my thighs. Breasts brushing my arms as they leaned in. Lips close to my ears, whispering filthy things while the hot water swirled around my aching cock.

I was panting, hips trying to chase their touches, cock so hard it hurt. Pre-cum leaked steadily into the water, washed away by the gentle current. Every time I got close to the edge, they pulled back—laughing softly, switching sides, starting the slow torture all over again.

Raven’s voice was the meanest, the most deliciously cruel.

“You’re not allowed to cum yet, Nomad,” she whispered against my ear, one hand stroking me with just enough pressure to make my vision blur. “Not until we say. Understand?”

I nodded frantically, voice breaking. “Yes—fuck—yes.”

Vesper’s bubbly laugh mixed with something darker. “Good boy.”

They kept me there—hard, throbbing, desperate—until my balls ached and my whole body shook with the need to release. Then, just when I thought I might actually lose it from the teasing alone, they stopped.

Completely.

Vesper pulled her hand away first. Raven followed a second later. Both women leaned back against the rocks like nothing had happened, steam curling around their bare breasts and satisfied smiles on their faces.

Raven stretched, wincing slightly at her bruises but looking far too pleased with herself.

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” she said lightly. “We should get back before we turn into prunes.”

Vesper nodded, already standing up in the water, droplets running down her toned body. “Wouldn’t want Varak coming back and finding us corrupting the new blood too much.”

They climbed out together, naked and dripping, not even glancing back at me as they bent over to dry their legs with the towels we’d brought.

I couldn’t look away.

Raven’s ass was more plump, full and soft-looking even with the bruises. The position gave me only the slightest hint of her pussy, just a teasing shadow between her thighs.

Vesper’s ass was more toned, firm and athletic. When she bent over like that, I could easily see her pussy—smooth, dark, with a clear hint of the pink between her lips as she shifted to dry her calves.

My cock throbbed painfully at the sight.

Raven glanced back over her shoulder, that wicked grin still in place.

“Come on, puppy,” she called sweetly. “Don’t stay in too long. You’ll overheat.”

Vesper laughed, the sound bright and cruel in the cold night air.

I stayed in the water, cock still rock-hard and aching, balls tight and heavy with denied release. The hot spring suddenly felt too hot. My heart hammered. My skin burned where they’d touched me.

They walked back toward the cabin together, leaving me alone in the steaming water with nothing but frustration and the northern lights overhead.

They had left me exactly like that—blue-balled, aching, and completely at their mercy.

I sank lower into the water, groaning as the heat did nothing to ease the desperate pulse between my legs.

This was going to be a very long night.

Chapter 24- The Reapers

Varak leaned forward in the creaking wooden chair, while slowly running his hand through his beard.

“That’s how we started the Reapers,” he said quietly. “The three of us—me, Grave, and Gore. We recruited more members the deeper we went. Every time we found another twisted soul trapped in the Pit, we bound it to a bike. We rode the old roads together, purifying damned souls wherever they surfaced. We got good at it. Maybe too good.”

“I remember Grave was pissed the first time Gore took us to The Hollow and introduced us to the damned souls who worked as informants. The same ones you saw that night—gray skin, glowing eyes, claws they couldn’t quite hide. They fed us information about bigger threats in exchange for drugs and alcohol. Grave refused to ever step foot in that place again after the first visit. He wanted to burn it to the ground with all of them still inside. Said they were just monsters wearing stolen skins, and we were making deals with the devil.”

Varak shook his head slowly.

“Gore knew better. The information was too good to ignore. As long as those damned souls didn’t attack innocents, they were useful for locating the ones that were feeding. Grave never forgave it. Every time we rode past that bar he’d get this look in his eyes—like he was calculating how much gasoline it would take.”

A bitter smile touched Varak’s mouth.

“I noticed something strange over the years of riding with them… as Grave and I got older, Gore never changed. Same face. Same salt-and-pepper beard. Same cold blue eyes that looked straight through you. Almost six years passed and he stayed exactly the same. Then one day, after we’d grown the crew large enough, he told us he was retiring. Said the job had taken enough from him. That’s when we established the Reapers Hand—five of us to replace the power of one old man. I still don’t know where he spends his time now. I’ve sent messages. I’ve gone back to that workshop. Nothing. One thing I’m sure of… that old man was never just a man. He’s still out there somewhere. It's funny I'm getting close to the age he looked when we met that old bastard.”

Varak’s voice grew heavier, rougher with old grief.

“After Gore's retirement the Reapers kept riding. But Grave’s rage never faded. It only grew. Killing damned souls was the only thing that gave him any kind of relief. No drug. No bottle. No woman. Nothing else touched him. He lived in a prison of pain without his family, and the only key was ending monsters. I watched my best friend disappear a little more with every hunt.”

He looked directly at Raven, then at Vesper.

“That was until we found you two.”

Raven’s fingers tightened around mine under the blankets. Vesper went very still.

Varak’s voice softened, almost gentle.

“Grave truly cared about you, Raven. The only time I saw real glimpses of the man he used to be before the army, before Sarah and Nora— was when he was with you. Finding a little girl around the same age his daughter would have been… it shook some of the frost off his soul. He was hard on you. Brutal, even. But he wanted you strong enough to survive this life. He couldn’t protect Nora. He was damn sure going to make sure he didn’t fail you.”

Raven’s eyes shimmered in the firelight.

I couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

“What happened the night you found them?” I asked quietly. “How did you—”

Varak shook his head, cutting me off gently but firmly.

“That’s not my story to tell.”

Raven’s voice was soft, shaking just a little.

“I’ll tell you,” she whispered. “When we’re alone.”

Varak stood up slowly, his massive frame unfolding from the chair. The firelight caught the burn scar on his chest one last time before he buttoned his shirt.

“I need to scout for that demon,” he said. “Ashreaver’s the only one who can cut through this snow effectively right now. I’m going alone.”

Raven and Vesper both started to protest at the same time.

“Varak—”

“Old man, you’re not—”

He raised one hand, the gesture final.

“Rest. Both of you. And make sure Raven is comfortable—she’s still hurt. I’ll be back before the next gray light.” He paused at the door, a rare, tired smile touching his scarred mouth. “You two smell like the Ashlands. There’s a tiny hot spring about two hundred yards behind the cabin. Just follow the steam. Wash up, Warm up, and soothe your wounds. That’s an order.”

He ducked through the low doorway without another word. The door clicked shut behind him. A moment later we heard Ashreaver roar to life outside, the deep engine cutting through the snow like thunder. Through the window we saw a narrow path of melted snow glowing orange as Varak’s bike pushed heat and flame ahead of it, carving a track through the drifts. Then he was gone, swallowed by the white darkness.

Chapter 23- Gore

Varak stared into the flames, the twisted burn scar across his chest gleaming in the orange light. When he spoke again, his voice was low, rough, and thick with old pain.

“They got up without saying a single word,” he said. “All four of them. Just… rose. The way they moved wasn’t right. Jerky. Wrong. Like their bones didn’t fit inside their skin anymore. The sounds coming out of their throats weren’t human. Wet gurgles. Clicking. This low, hungry moaning that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. At the time we thought they were on hard drugs—PCP, something that made them insane. We were wrong.”

He swallowed hard, the scar on his lip pulling tight.

“Grave didn’t hesitate. Neither did I. We opened fire at the same time. I emptied my entire magazine into the nearest one. Grave did the same. We shot them in the chest, the head, the legs—anywhere we could hit. The noise was deafening in that small living room. Brass casings bouncing everywhere. The smell of gunpowder and blood filled the air. They cried out—high, broken screams that didn’t sound like anything human—and dropped. But they didn’t stay down. They twitched. Crawled. Kept coming toward us, dragging themselves across the bloody floor like they didn’t even care that bullets just teared through them.”

“We watched their bodies start to… change. Contort. Bones shifting under the skin. Skin splitting and knitting back together around the bullet holes. The veil of what they really were started peeling away right in front of us. Their eyes glowed faintly. Teeth lengthened into jagged points. Fingers stretched into claws. One of them had a mouth that unhinged too wide, like a snake. They looked like monsters. Straight out of a nightmare. I hated them. I wanted them dead more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.”

His voice dropped even lower.

“But Grave… he saw something I didn’t at first. He noticed they were still feeling the pain. Every bullet. Every broken bone. They screamed. They writhed. Even though they kept healing, they felt every bit of it. I saw the look in his eyes change. What I saw was pure, cold rage. He was going to make them suffer. If they couldn’t die, he was damn sure going to make them wish they were dead.”

Varak’s voice cracked slightly.

“He used anything he could get his hands on. A broken table leg as a club—swung it so hard he shattered one of their skulls. Knives from the kitchen block. His taser from his cop belt—he jammed it into one’s eye and held it there until the thing convulsed and smoked. Even the broken glass from the shattered window. He picked up a long shard and started carving. They tried to fight back, but they couldn’t handle two veterans pumped full of adrenaline and grief. We must have tortured those things for hours. Blood everywhere. Chunks of flesh. I remember the smell was worse than any battlefield and somehow in that moment I didn't care."

He went quiet for a long moment, staring into the fire.

“Then a motorcycle pulled up in front of the duplex. I heard it before I saw it. Deep, guttural roar that didn’t sound like any bike I’d ever heard. As I watched the man step off and walk toward the open door, something in me went cold. A chill started at the base of my spine and crawled all the way up to the edge of my skull. After multiple tours, after firefights and explosions and watching men die in the mud… I had never felt fear like that. Not in my soul. Not like this.”

“Grave didn’t even notice. He was too far gone in vengeance, still hacking at one of the things with a broken bottle. The man who walked in wasn’t tall or broad like us. He looked… regular. Older. Salt-and-pepper beard. Average build. But his presence filled the entire room. You could see the sky in his eyes—extremely blue, like staring into a clear winter day. Chilling. Ancient. He didn’t say a single word. Just walked past me like I wasn’t even there and went straight to the monsters on the floor.”

“He pulled a blade from his hip. It wasn’t quite a sword, but it sure as hell wasn’t a knife either—about eighteen inches of matte black metal that seemed to drink the light around it. The edge looked like it had been forged from cooled lava, with faint runes etched along the fuller that pulsed with a dull crimson glow. The hilt was wrapped in what looked like dried sinew or leather from something that had never been human. It felt wrong just looking at it. Like it was alive.”

“The stranger stabbed each of the monsters once. Just once. They didn’t scream. They shattered. Their bodies broke apart like glass hit with a hammer, pieces dissolving into black mist that melted into the floor like ice turning to water. Nothing left but puddles of thick, dark blood where four monsters had been. Clean. Final.”

“Grave still ignored him. The second the last one was gone, he crawled across the bloody floor to his family. He gathered Sarah and Nora into his arms and just… held them. Rocking. Whispering things I couldn’t hear. I’ve never seen a man break like that and still keep breathing.”

The fire popped loudly in the silence.

“The stranger turned and started walking back toward his bike like none of it mattered. I forced myself in front of him. Blocked his path. Told him I needed an explanation. He told me to move. When I didn’t, he hit me. I’ve been hit by trained soldiers, by gang members, by demons. Nothing compared to that punch. It felt like getting hit by a truck. But I gave it right back. We went at it for a while—fists, elbows, knees. I wish I could say I won. I’d be lying. The old bastard was just as tough as I was, maybe tougher. He put me on my ass in the blood and laughed like a madman.”

“‘Okay, boy,’ he said. ‘You might be able to handle the truth without breaking.’”

“I looked up and saw that Grave had moved his family to their bed and covered them with a sheet. He walked back to us, finally looking the stranger in the eyes. ‘Tell me what those things were, old man.’”

Varak’s voice grew heavy.

“The stranger told us they were damned souls. Once they get into our world, all they want to do is feed on human souls. It was his job to hunt them down and kill them before they could become something worse. My mind flashed straight back to the demon on the battlefield. The old man shook his head. ‘They usually don’t attack high-populated areas like this. Some of them are intelligent. They have turfs. Feeding grounds. They don’t get whipped into a frenzy like that unless… they’re attracted to someone who’s been marked by something from the Pit.’”

Varak touched the burn scar on his chest.

“I knew then. I had attracted them there. I showed him this scar. He just muttered, ‘How the fuck are you still alive?’ He told us demons rule the Pit. They normally can’t escape it. But when damned souls cause enough corruption on Earth, it creates a fracture between the planes—just big enough for one demon at a time to slip through. He said he’d never been able to truly kill one. The last one he fought, he injured it badly enough to force it back into the Pit to recover. Once it’s back inside, it has to wait for the next fracture.”

“Grave was still in shock and pure, murderous rage. Without hesitation he asked if there were more. The stranger said there are always more. I knew then that Grave would never be satisfied until he’d killed every last one of them that roamed the Earth. The old man laughed and told us we didn’t want his responsibility. But Grave was insistent. Finally the stranger sighed and said, ‘Fine. I’ll teach you about the Pit and what I fight against.’”

“We tried asking his name and how he knew about these things. All he would say is that it was better not to know who he was. He told us to come up with something to call him instead. We were standing there in all that blood and gore from the blade he’d used. So we started calling him Gore.”

Varak’s voice grew quieter, more emotional.

“We called the police to recover Grave’s family. As soon as the call was made we ran. Knowing we could never go back. Making it the second time we had to flee our homes. It was like God was telling us we belonged on the road."

"We followed Gore for hours until we got to his workshop. The workshop looked like it belonged to a madman. Gutted bikes everywhere. Custom machines built from parts and his own hand-forged designs. A massive forge at one end of the yard, glowing red-hot. He told us that he loved riding because it made him feel truly free. The custom bikes were a hobby he did in his downtime. Then he started teaching us.”

Varak’s eyes grew distant again.

“He taught us about the Pit. About the special metal that comes from its edges—the only thing that can truly kill a damned soul. He taught us about twisted human souls trapped down there, warped by the suffering until they become something else. And he taught us how to bond those twisted souls to the Pit metal.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, wicked-looking knife with a matte black blade etched with the same runes as our revolvers.

“He showed us his own blade. Called her Zaria. We didn’t realize until he tried handing it to us that we couldn’t even lift it without the soul inside giving permission. It felt like it weighed a ton otherwise. He showed us two or three other weapons. None of them chose us. He said we’d have to save a twisted soul ourselves to build a real bond. But we’d need Pit metal to bind it to.”

Varak looked at me, a small, grim smile touching his mouth.

“I looked between his forge and the bikes and asked if they had to be bonded to a weapon. What about a motorcycle tank? Gore just smiled at me like I’d said something crazy… but interesting.”

“‘Weird idea, kid,’ he said. ‘But I like it.’”

Chapter 22- Tobi or not Tobi (sorry had to make the joke)

We listened intently to Varak's story. Vesper sat wedged firmly between Raven and me on the couch, her long arm draped possessively around Raven’s shoulders, head resting against her best friend’s collarbone. Raven didn’t push her away. She just leaned into the contact, eyes half-lidded, still pale and bruised but awake.

I tried to shift closer anyway. Vesper’s elbow found my ribs with deliberate force, pinning me in place. She didn’t even look at me. Message received, I guess.

Varak sat in the creaking wooden chair, massive frame hunched forward, the twisted burn scar across his chest and shoulder. He stared into the flames for a long moment before he spoke again, voice low and rough.

“I was in the hospital for six weeks after that last battle. Fighting for my life. The demon’s claws had torn me open from collarbone to hip, and the fire it breathed had cooked the muscle underneath. Doctors said the infection should’ve killed me twice. I remember waking up screaming more than once, convinced the thing was still standing over my bed. Tobi never left my side when he could. He sat in that hard plastic chair, still in uniform sometimes, staring at the wall like he was waiting for the next attack. When they finally discharged me, we were both done. Honorable discharges. Medals we didn’t want. Nightmares we couldn’t outrun.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, the scar on his lip pulling tight.

“Adjusting to normal life was hard. We couldn't go back to the old projects. Too many ghosts, too many people who still wanted us dead for what happened in that alley. With the money we’d saved in the army, we bought a little duplex on the edge of town. Two units side by side, shared wall. Close enough to hear each other if shit went sideways, far enough to pretend we had separate lives. I took one side. He took the other.”

Varak’s storm-cloud eyes dropped to the floor.

“During my time overseas I saw I could be more than my father. I didn’t have to be a piece of shit who was a slave to his addiction. But the pain never left. The burns. The memories. I started drinking the second the hospital released me. Cheap whiskey at first. Then whatever was strongest. I’d sit on my side of the duplex at night and hear Tobi having PTSD flare-ups through the wall—screaming, sometimes breaking things. Some nights we’d just sit together on the porch, smoking and talking until the sun came up. We were the only two people who understood what the other had seen. Our lives were woven together tighter than the tapestry of fate itself back then.”

He exhaled slowly.

“When we finally got steady work, Tobi became a rookie cop. People from where we grew up would’ve spit on that choice. Cop's were the enemy in the streets. But after everything he’d done overseas, it made sense to him. Structure. Purpose. A badge instead of a rifle. I went into contracting—building houses, framing, heavy lifting. My injuries screamed every day. But I'm a stubborn bastard and the alcohol numbed the worst of the pain.

Tobi still carried that cold soldier edge during his first few years on the force. Couldn’t shake it. He’d come home after a shift with that same blank look in his eyes he used to get after clearing a mission.”

A small, genuine smile touched Varak’s mouth for the first time.

“Then one day everything changed. Tobi pulled over a mustang for a broken taillight. The woman inside was Sarah. Sweet as hell. Bright smile, big laugh, studying to be a nurse. She joked with him the whole time he was writing the ticket—teasing him about his serious face, asking if he ever smiled on duty. She ended up asking him out before he even handed her the citation. Said laughter was the best medicine and he looked like he needed a heavy dose.”

Varak chuckled, low and rough.

“She was right. The longer she was around him, the more that army-coldness cracked. He started laughing again. Started sleeping through the night without waking up swinging. The PTSD flare-ups through the wall got quieter. Less frequent. He’d bring her over to the duplex on weekends. She was super accepting of me—never judged the bottle in my hand or the way I sometimes shook when the burns itched under my shirt. She just… saw us. Both of us.”

Varak’s smile faded into something softer, almost reverent.

“It wasn’t even a year later they were engaged. I started hearing less and less screaming through that shared wall. We still hung out all the time—barbecues, late-night talks, the three of us. Then one night over dinner Sarah rubbed her stomach and grinned at me. We have some news. We're pregnant. You're going to be an uncle Varak. Tobi asked me right then and there to be his best man… and the baby’s godfather. Said I was family. The only person he trusted with his child’s life if anything ever happened to them.”

Varak’s voice cracked for the first time.

“I couldn’t understand it. Me. A nobody. A drunk. An angry, burned-up ex-soldier with more blood on my hands than most people see in a lifetime. Why would they trust me with something so precious? Tobi just clapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Because you’re my brother. Always have been.’ That night was the last time I drank to numb the pain. The day Nora was born I was six months sober. Ten years. Ten good years. I got to watch my best friend become a husband and father. Got to hold my niece when she took her first steps. We even bought this cabin together as a hunting spot—somewhere we could all get away from the city and just… be. Family.”

He reached into his worn leather wallet and pulled out a small stack of photos, passing them to me one by one.

The first showed a much younger Varak and Tobi standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the duplex, both grinning like idiots, beers in hand. The next was the wedding: Tobi in a suit that barely contained his frame, Sarah radiant in white, Varak standing tall beside them as best man. Then a photo of a tiny baby girl with dark curls and Tobi’s eyes cradled in Varak’s massive arms while he looked down at her like she was the most fragile, important thing in the world.

Varak took the photos back carefully, tucking them into his wallet like they were made of glass.

“But as you already know,” he said quietly, “this tale doesn’t have a happy ending.”

He stared into the fire, jaw clenched so tight the muscle jumped.

“I remember that night like it just happened. Something in the air felt wrong. Heavy. Like the calm before a storm that was going to tear the world apart. Full moon, bright as daylight. Tobi and I had both been working late. I pulled into the driveway first. His front door was standing wide open. Lights on inside. No sound.”

Varak’s voice dropped to almost a whisper.

“We rushed in together. I had my old service pistol. He had his duty weapon. The living room was wrecked—furniture overturned, glass everywhere. And in the middle of it… multiple people. Standing over Sarah and Nora. They were on the floor. Unmoving. Blood everywhere. So much blood it looked black in the moonlight coming through the windows.”

His storm-cloud eyes lifted to meet mine, then Raven’s.

“I looked over at Tobi. Watched the change happen in real time. The husband. The father. The best friend I’d known since we were kids. It all vanished. What was left was the soldier. Cold. Focused. Lethal. He drew his gun without a word and aimed it straight at the nearest figure standing over his family.”

Varak’s voice went flat.

“That was the night Tobi died and all that was left was Grave. ”

Chapter 21- Best friends

The fire crackled softly in the wood-burning stove, casting flickering orange light across the small cabin. Snow whispered against the roof and windows, the deep drifts outside keeping the world silent and buried. Raven sat propped against the couch cushions, still wrapped tightly in blankets, her face pale but her eyes clearer than they had been in days. The bruises across her ribs and stomach had darkened to ugly purples and blacks.

I shifted on the couch, trying to scoot closer to her. My shoulder brushed against hers as I leaned in, wanting nothing more than to feel her warmth and make sure she was really okay after everything that had happened in the Ashlands.

Vesper moved faster than I expected.

She dropped onto the couch between us with deliberate weight, her long frame wedging itself firmly in the middle. She turned sideways, threw one arm around Raven’s shoulders, and snuggled in close, resting her head against Raven’s collarbone like she had every right to be there. Her cornrow braids spilled across Raven’s chest. She shot me a quick, pointed look over her shoulder—half warning, half challenge—before turning her full attention back to Raven.

Raven didn’t push her away. She just sighed, the sound tired but fond, and let Vesper cling to her. Her black-lined eyes flicked to me for half a second, something soft and conflicted flickering across her face before she looked away.

Varak pulled the wooden chair closer to the stove and sat down heavily. The old wood creaked under his massive frame. He unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt, exposing the thick scar tissue that ran across the left side of his chest—angry, raised, and twisted like melted wax. The firelight made the old burn look even worse.

“You’ve probably guessed by now,” he said, voice low and rough, “that a requirement to be chosen as a Reaper is that you must know pain. My story isn’t any different.”

He looked at the fire for a long moment, the scar on his lip pulling tight as he spoke.

“I grew up in some of the worst streets you can imagine. My mother died giving birth to me. My father was a piece of shit with a gambling problem that got him killed before I turned ten. He borrowed money from the wrong people—real vicious bastards who ran the neighborhood like their own private kingdom. When he couldn’t pay, they made an example of him. They didn’t just shoot him. They beat him half to death in an alley, broke every finger, and then cut his throat slow so he’d feel every second of it. I found what was left of him the next morning. That was my childhood.”

Varak’s storm-cloud eyes were distant, seeing something none of us could.

“I grew up tough and mean because that was the only way to survive. The only good thing in my life was my best friend, Tobias. Even though we came from the same shit, his family was different. They still tried. His mother made sure we ate. His father taught us how to throw a proper punch and when not to. Tobias and I were inseparable for years. We fought together, stole together, bled together. He was the closest thing I had to a brother.”

He paused, jaw tightening.

“But when I got old enough to understand the kind of power that came with money, I fell hard. A local gang started noticing me—how big I was getting, how mean I could be. They offered me a way in. Selling drugs. Running product. Roughing up anyone who looked at them wrong. I told myself it was just business. Money was money. I started carrying a knife everywhere. I learned how to hurt people without killing them.”

Varak’s hands flexed on his knees, the thick knuckles scarred and calloused.

“One night it all went to hell. A few of the gang members caught Tobi walking home alone. They jumped him. Tobi was always bigger than most guys our age—strong as an ox even then. He didn’t go down easy. He knocked one of them clean out with a single punch. The others pulled knives. I showed up right as it was getting ugly. Tobi looked up and saw me standing there with the gang. He looked at me like I’d just stabbed him in the back myself. Disappointed. Like I’d chosen them over him.”

Varak’s voice dropped lower, rougher.

“That look broke something in me. I jumped in. We fought like animals. Fists, boots, knives. In the middle of it all, one of the gang members came at Tobi from behind with a blade. I didn’t think. I just reacted. I pulled my own knife and drove it into the guy’s side, right between the ribs. He made this wet, gasping sound. Blood poured over my hand, hot and thick. The rest of them ran. Tobi and I stood there in that alley, breathing hard, watching that bastard bleed out on the concrete. He died right in front of us. Eyes wide open. Still trying to curse us with his last breath.”

He rubbed a hand over his face.

“Tobi told me we had to leave town. The gang wouldn’t let that slide. They’d come for us both—hard. We had no money, no car, nothing. So we did the only thing two desperate, broke kids could do. We walked straight into a recruiting office and signed up for the army the same day. Boot camp was hell, but we had each other. We got through it together. Then they shipped us overseas.”

Varak stared into the fire, the orange light reflecting in his eyes.

“We didn’t realize we were trading one hell for another. Different uniforms, same blood. Multiple tours. Missions that went sideways fast. I watched brothers bleed out in the mud, screaming for their mothers while their guts spilled into the dirt. I saw men come home in pieces—missing legs, missing faces, missing souls. I managed to survive it all. But Tobi… he thrived.”

A bitter smile touched Varak’s mouth.

“To survive in that kind of war, you have to reprogram yourself. Shut off the parts that feel too much. Tobi did it better than any of us. He went from a slightly rough kid who still had some light in him to a stone-cold soldier. He trained harder than anyone. Ran farther. Shot straighter. Killed cleaner. The guys in our squad started calling him Grave because of how many enemy fighters he sent to the grave. It stuck. Even the officers started using it. My friend Tobias became Grave long before he ever touched a Reaper bike.”

Varak unbuttoned his shirt further, fully exposing the massive, twisted burn scar that covered the left side of his chest and shoulder. The firelight made the old wound look wet and fresh.

“Our last battle changed everything. We were pinned down in some godforsaken valley. Heavy fire from all sides. Then something landed in the middle of the battlefield. It wasn’t a mortar. It wasn’t an airstrike. It was a demon. Twenty feet tall. Wings like burning leather. Horns. Claws that tore through armored vehicles like they were tin cans. It started ripping through our lines like we were nothing.”

His voice went quiet.

“I got caught in the open. The thing’s claws raked across my chest and set me on fire at the same time. The pain was… indescribable. Like my skin was melting off my bones. I remember screaming. Then Tobi was there. He dragged me out of the fire while the demon was distracted tearing apart a squad on the other side of the valley. He carried me on his back for almost a mile while the world burned around us. I was barely conscious, but I heard something that didn’t belong. It wasn’t gunfire. It wasn’t grenades or artillery. It was the deep, guttural roar of a motorcycle engine, coming from somewhere in the smoke and chaos. Something that shouldn’t have been there.”

He leaned back in the chair, the fire popping loudly in the sudden silence.

“Tobi carried me all the way to the extraction point. Saved my life that day. But the things we saw… the demon… it changed both of us forever. That was the beginning of everything that led us here.”

He glanced toward the door, where the deep snow still buried the world outside.

“And now one of those things is loose in Alaska. Searching for a contract it shouldn’t be allowed to fulfill.”

The fire crackled. Raven’s hand found mine under the blankets despite Vesper still wedged between us. Her fingers were cold, but they squeezed mine hard.

Varak’s story wasn’t finished yet.

Chapter 20- Everyone Leaves

The cabin was still dark when my eyes opened.

I lay there for a long moment, Raven’s warm, naked body curled against mine under the heavy blankets, listening to the soft crackle of the fire. My arm was numb where she had used it as a pillow. The air inside the small space had warmed considerably overnight, but the cold still pressed against the log walls like a living thing. I carefully slid my arm out from under her and sat up, the blankets slipping down to my waist. The fire in the wood-burning stove had burned down to glowing embers, the heat barely pushing back the chill.

I stood, naked, and crossed the few steps to the stove. My bare feet touched the cold floorboards, sending a shiver up my spine. I opened the firebox, added two split logs from the small stack I’d brought in earlier, and stirred the coals with the poker until flames licked up around the dry wood. The fire caught quickly, popping and hissing as sap boiled out of the pine. Orange light spilled across the room, casting long shadows over the framed photos on the small table beside the stove—Grave’s photos. The massive bearded man. The family portrait. The sixteen-year-old Raven smiling like the world had never hurt her.

I stared at the small window. Still pitch black outside. No hint of dawn. I checked the cheap wind-up clock on the mantel. It was past eight in the morning according to the hands. Then it hit me.

Some parts of Alaska had months of near-total darkness this time of year. Polar night. We were far enough north that the sun barely, if ever, rose right now. The northern lights we’d seen last night were probably the only real light we’d get for weeks.

I turned back to Raven. She hadn’t moved. Her breathing was deep but ragged, her face still pale even in the firelight. The bandage above her eye had a small spot of dried blood. Dark purple bruises bloomed across her ribs and stomach where the demon had struck her. I couldn’t tell how long she’d been out. Hours? Most of the night?

I knelt beside the couch and shook her shoulder gently. “Raven. Hey. Wake up for me.”

Her black-lined eyes cracked open, heavy-lidded and exhausted. She barely lifted her head. When she spoke, her voice was rough, barely more than a whisper.

“Nomad…”

“Are you okay?” I asked, brushing a strand of black hair from her face. “You’ve been out cold.”

She managed a tiny nod, then winced. “Channeling the bike’s full power… takes a toll. Dark Mirage— it burns through you. I’ve never pushed it that long before. Everything hurts. Need more rest.”

Her eyes started to drift shut again. Then she mumbled one more thing.

“Water…”

I looked around. No bottles. No sink that worked without electricity. The tiny kitchen area had a hand pump, but I doubted it would give anything but ice right now. I slipped on my blood-stiff pants from the floor—they were freezing against my skin—and grabbed the largest pot from the rack above the stove. I stepped out onto the porch.

The snow had come down hard overnight. It was already up past my knees in places, the bikes nearly buried. The air was brutally cold, biting at my bare chest and face. I scooped the pot full of clean snow, packed it down, and hurried back inside before my skin went numb.

I set the pot on the wood-burning stove to melt. While it heated, I fed the fire more wood, building it until the cabin was properly warm again. When the snow had turned to water, I carried the pot over to Raven. I helped her sit up slowly, supporting her back with one arm. She groaned in pain, bruises protesting every movement. I tipped the pot and let small trickles of lukewarm water run into her mouth. She drank greedily, some of it spilling down her chin and onto her bare breasts.

She swallowed, breathing hard. “Never used the Dark Mirage that long before… thought I was going to burn out mid-air.”

I stroked her hair gently, the black strands damp with sweat and melted snow. “Save your strength. Don’t talk yet.”

She ignored me, voice still hoarse. “Only three or four hours of daylight a day up here this time of year. Maybe less. You need to use that window. Get our supplies off the bikes. Bring in as much firewood as you can. The extra storage is in the lean-to attached to the shed, not inside the shed itself."

I felt stupid for not realizing the shed was purely a tool shed. That's why I thought there was so little firewood “I’ve got it. Don’t worry about anything. Just rest.”

She gave me the smallest smile, eyes already closing again. “Varak will come with supplies soon. He’s dealing with the same whiplash from holding that fire vortex together so long. He’ll find us.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her how deep the snow was. We weren’t getting out of here for days. Maybe a week or two. The bikes were buried, and the road was gone.

She drifted back to sleep almost immediately.

I spent the rest of that first day working in the brief window of gray twilight that passed for daylight. I dug the bikes out enough to grab the saddlebags—road snacks, a few protein bars, some jerky, water bottles we’d refilled before leaving the motel, spare ammo, and the small medical kit from Raven’s bike. I hauled armload after armload of firewood from the lean-to into the cabin, stacking it high near the stove. I split a few larger logs with the axe from the shed, the rhythmic thunk echoing through the silent woods. By the time true darkness returned, my shoulders and back ached, but the cabin was stocked enough to last a little while.

The next three days blurred together.

Raven slept most of the time. I kept the fire going, melted snow for water, fed her when she woke, and checked her injuries. The bruises deepened to ugly purples and blacks across her ribs, stomach, and one thigh. She was in pain, but acted tough. On the fourth day, when the weak gray light filtered through the window again, she finally sat up on her own.

She was still pale, still moving stiffly, but her eyes were clearer. She talked more like herself—teasing, a little mean, but softer around the edges when she looked at me. I caught her watching me while I fed the fire or brought her water. Her gaze lingered on my bare chest, the fresh tattoo on my arm, the way my muscles moved. It wasn’t just lust anymore. There was something warmer. More careful. More afraid.

She was sitting up against the couch cushions, wrapped in blankets, when she finally asked the question that had been hanging between us.

“Why would you do that?” Her voice was quiet. “Put yourself between me and that thing. You could’ve died.”

I crossed the room and knelt in front of her. I leaned in slowly and gave her the gentlest kiss I could—soft, lingering, no heat, just warmth. When I pulled back, her black eyes were wide.

“Don’t you get it yet, Raven?”

She looked truly conflicted. Her lips parted, then pressed together. A single tear welled up and spilled down her cheek, cutting a clean track through the dried blood and ash still on her skin.

“Please don’t say it,” she whispered. “If you say it… you’ll leave too. Everyone I love leaves. Grave. My parents. Everyone. Don’t make me get attached. I can’t—”

I kissed her again, slower this time, tasting the salt of where her tear rolled down. “I’m never going anywhere. I promise.

Do you want to talk about it?”

She opened her mouth to answer—

A sharp knock rattled the cabin door.

I was on my feet in an instant, grabbing the spider-gripped revolver from the table. I cracked the door open.

Varak and Vesper stood on the porch. Varak looked exhausted but steady, his massive frame filling the doorway. Vesper’s cornrow braids were dusted with snow, her expression grim until she saw me. Then it shifted.

She punched me square in the face.

The blow snapped my head back. Pain exploded across my jaw and cheek. I tasted blood. Before I could react, she grabbed me and pulled me into a bone-crushing hug, lifting me slightly off the ground.

“That was for not listening to your superiors and breaking formation,” she said against my ear, voice thick. “The hug is for keeping your promise and protecting my best friend.”

She set me down. I touched my split lip, stunned.

In that moment I couldn’t stop myself from asking the question burning in my mind.

“How the hell did you two even make it here?” I glanced toward the door. “The snow’s still really deep out there. We’ve been buried for days.”

Varak gave a tired chuckle. “Ashreaver. She can push heat and flame through the exhaust and frame when I need her to. We cut a path the whole way—melted a narrow track through the drifts. Vesper’s bike followed right behind in the cleared lane. Without that, we wouldn’t have made it past the first mile.”

Vesper nodded, rubbing her gloved hands together for warmth. “Felt like riding through a goddamn oven the whole trip, but it worked. We’re not going anywhere else until this snow melts or someone clears the roads properly.”

Varak stepped inside, ducking under the low doorframe. He looked around the cabin with a small, sad smile. “Haven’t been here since Grave died. Place looks exactly the same.” His storm-cloud eyes moved to Raven on the couch. “Damn, girl. That thing really did a number on you.”

Raven sat up straighter with a pained groan, clutching the blankets to her chest. “What the fuck was that thing, old man?”

Varak’s expression darkened. He reached into his coat and handed her a small bundle—painkillers, fresh bandages, real food, and a couple of bottles of water. Then he looked at me.

“Nomad. Sit down. This is a long story.”

I sat on the edge of the couch beside Raven, my jaw still throbbing from Vesper’s punch. The fire crackled. Snow whispered against the roof. Varak pulled a chair close, his massive frame making it creak.

Vesper leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching us all with that same hard, protective look.

Varak took a deep breath, the scar pulling at his lip.

“Before I ever knew about damned souls or the Pit,” he began, voice low, “I saw one of those things. Only once. And it nearly ended me.”

He looked at Raven, then at me.

“And if that demon is here now… we’re in more trouble than any of us realized.”