IN FULL COLOUR - Dark Fantasy
Chapter 22

Axel

“What is the deal with that DOG at your ankles?” I growled as anger and jealousy poured from my mouth.

Gabrielle bent down and slid her nails back into the wolf’s coat, playing with its thick fur in between her fingers. Everything around me seemed to slow down as the male wolf picked up its head and started licking her hand, her fingers. MY mate’s hand.

My heart throbbed violently at the sight and pain shot through the emptiness in my chest. It hurt like hell, worse than my broken, splinted hand ever could.

“Why should I answer any of your questions if you keep ignoring mine?” She asked, voice calm and sweet.

The male’s tongue caressed my mate’s fingers, slowly, as though it was savouring each taste, each stroke.

Inside, I was losing it.

The sight was just too much for me to take.

“Stop.”

Something in my voice made her eyes snap up, focusing on mine. Instantly something in her face changed. Her large, caramel eyes grew even bigger. She looked truly frightened.

I didn’t have to ask her twice. At once, she removed her delicate hand from the male’s mouth and stared at me with her lips parted in terror.

My insides were still twisting sadistically from what I had just witnessed. An unknown, slave-male lapping up my mate’s savoury sweetness. Slowly caressing her fingers with his tainted tongue. Right in front of me.

The serpent inside my abdomen constricted around my organs at such force, I was struggling to breathe.

Abruptly, I stood up, my chair flinging back forcefully and crashing onto the hard stone floor. My nostrils were flaring, and my limbs trembled. I had never felt such anger, such raw jealousy before.

My eyes burned into hers. I hated her and I wanted her to know it. She shrank back into her chair and scanned her eyes over something to my left.

For a second, I thought that someone had entered the room and was standing behind me, but as I turned, I found the space to be completely empty.

I didn’t wait for her to say anything else, I needed to get out of there before I did something I would regret. So, instead of ripping into the male’s flesh, I turned on my heels and took large, deliberate strides out of the room.

Blood was whooshing through my veins at such a rate, it was whistling loudly in my ears. Still, my wolf remained dormant.

I needed him. Desperately.

The familiar crawling sensation under my skin intensified in uncontrolled bursts and I swiftly started making my way back up to my room, hoping I didn’t bump into anyone on the way. I kept my gaze lowered to the ground and pressed my splinted hand into my stomach for support.

Pain, dull and excruciating filled my emptiness to the brim. No, I’d rather deal with feeling nothing than feeling this utter despair. Rejection. Loneliness.

The world around me became blurry and I had to use my remaining right hand to guide me along the walls up the stairs and into my room, kicking the door shut behind me.

As soon as I did, I went to the ground and dug my fingers into my blonde hair. It felt like claws were digging into my chest, ripping chunks out of me and shredding whatever was left still intact.

A deep, guttural growl reverberated from inside my abdomen and once it exited my mouth, tears of frustration started stinging my eyes. Shit. I was going into another fit of rage.

“WHERE ARE YOU!?” I growled ferally, my hands trembling. My wolf remained still, hiding somewhere inside. “P-PLEASE!” I begged, “I NEED YOU! CAN’T YOU SEE I AM SUFFERING?”

Nothing. Not even a stir.

Everything after that was a distorted mess. How I had managed to drag myself into the bathroom and crawl under the steaming hot shower was unknown to me.

All I knew was that I needed to feel the physical pain. I needed it to sear away the unbearable stinging inside of me. I needed a distraction. I needed to forget what I had just witnessed.

I needed the pain to be on my outside so I could forget about the pain on my inside.

Gabrielle

When Axel started losing his self-control at the dinner table, I wasn’t sure who was unnerved the most, me or Locke.

I had underestimated his state of mind completely and only realized what I had done when he jumped up, flinging the chair back so harshly, it clattered to the floor behind him. I had no words as he stared at me in hatred. Pure fire burning behind those powder-blue orbs.

He hated me and I had pushed him too far.

I should have just been honest with him, corrected him the moment I found out what he had assumed about Nero. Instead, I had toyed with him. Played a very risky game with a very dangerous individual.

Locke knew it too because the moment Axel disappeared into the hallway, he made himself visible to me and I could see the troubled look on his face. Even the colours around him had changed, darkening in worry.

“He is a very intense individual,” he simply said, voice low and serious.

I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and stared into the empty hall, regretting everything I had said and done to push him over the edge like that.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Locke said grimly as he crossed his muscled arms over his chest. He leaned with his hip against the stone table, eyeing me wearily.

“I know.”

I needed to fix what I had broken. This wasn’t the person I was.

With that last thought in mind, I stood up and left the dining room, leaving my unfinished plate of food and Locke behind without looking back.

At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped. I was not sure whether I should go up or leave him to cool down first. With my hand resting on the wall to my left, I peered up the stone stairs, conflict storming within me.

Go or stay?

I kept seeing his face in my mind. The way he had looked at me while Nero licked my fingers. It had changed something inside of him, something had broken, and I needed to fix it.

Slowly and reluctantly, I made my way up the stairs towards the first floor where his room was located. I wasn’t sure exactly which room was his, but I couldn’t stop my feet from moving.

When I entered the first floor’s hallway, my breath hitched in my throat. Darkened, pitch-black dust was sifting through one of the closed doors. It was energy, dark, deadly energy, and it was his, I knew it the moment I saw it.

Shit.

With trembling hands, I knocked. The pure white wooden door sounding hollow underneath my knuckles. I waited anxiously, but his answer never came. Terror shot through me at the thought that he might have done something to himself, encouraging me to knock louder, more determined. I would never be able to forgive myself if that was the case.

I knocked a few more times but when he did not answer, I decided to enter. I had to make sure he was alright.

The door swung open with a creak, and I peered inside replaceing the entire bedroom saturated in Axel’s eerie blackness. It was like his energy had drifted out of him in clouds of dark heavy mist, seeping through every inch of the room. I had never experienced something like that before. Such vigorous energy blasting from a single individual, it was unnerving. Frightening even. The power he had within him and didn’t even know it.

My feet were moving on their own accord, and I found myself blindly making my way through the obscurity trying to replace him.

What have I done?

My own white-yellow energy seemed to be pushing the murky darkness back as I slowly made my way through the room. The sound of running water, and the thick blanket of steam finally directed me towards life. Towards the shower.

Axel’s blackened energy wafted around me, pushing on the whiteness which illuminated my immediate surroundings, my own lighting energy. Another reluctant step towards the source of the saturated blackness. Closer and closer until he came into view.

Boiling water was running down his bare muscled back. It ran in such scorching streams that every inch of his ivory skin had turned a bright, burning red. Every inch, every contour of his well-defined features openly protesting against the flaming liquid.

I couldn’t stop my eyes from roaming over his exposed back, down towards the full-length jeans and belt he still had on from dinner, as he stood there, utterly unaware of my presence. Hot steam was rising from him at the same intensity as his energy was oozing out, like he was deliberately trying to push it out. Almost as though the pressure of it inside of him had gotten too much and he was trying to release some of it.

Axel’s mind was somewhere far away from here, that part was clear.

Even though I knew he hated me and didn’t want any bit of me, I couldn’t help the feelings that bubbled up inside at that very moment. Uncontrolled lust instantly exploded within my belly at such force, it made my breath hitch and my heart hammer against my ribcage.

My position was given away by the soft, sharp intake of breath as my phone started to vibrate in my back pocket.

Within an instant and on full-alert, Axel spun around and pinned me hard up against the wet, tiled wall. His blackened energy which wafted about the room rapidly pulled back into him like fabric being ripped through an opening, disappearing back into his body.