Grinning at him, I say, “No chance of that.”
Closing my eyes, I fully enter our connection. He’s as weak as a butterfly when he tries to fight against my will. Someday he’ll have enough strength to put up a challenge, but it will never truly be enough against me.
I’m his creator now.
Ripping through his emotions, I feel his hatred, his confusion, the ache and love for Chloe.
The ache and love for my fucking soulmate. The one who was created to complete me.
Eyes snapping open, I look at Isaac. He knows what I’ve seen, and everything that flows through our connection only lays bare the very core of him.
He tried to save her because he loved her.
How sweet and noble.
Such a fucking pathetic waste of time.
“She could never love you, Isaac,” I say, squatting down and pulling his head from the ground. “She could never be yours.”
“I… I know,” he whispers, his eyes leaking tears as he shudders. “But I had to try.”
“The church taught you that we are monsters. That we’re the darkness that wants to encompass the light. But who’s the real monster? We only want to be reunited with our soulmarked. The very gods give us the ability to find true happiness, and the Benedictine Order tries to keep us apart. Is that love? Is that the compassion and kindness your Order preaches?”
I let go of his hair and watch his head thump back to the ground.
Ouch.
Releasing him from my will, I stand up.
Isaac slowly rolls to his side before wobbling to his knees. He’s a fighter, and eventually the sight of him won’t fucking repulse me as much as it does. Someday he’ll be one of my fiercest warriors. My most devout champion. It’s in his soul, I feel it there.
He’s but a wayward child, one who must be brought into the fold and shown the path.
“All around you are men, your new family, your brothers,” I say, my feet carrying me over to the singular chair in the room. “And each of them waits for the day their souls will be reunited with their other half. With the one they were split from so long ago.”
A few of them nod.
Raphael fidgets.
A quick feel through the connection I share with Raphael shows his anxiety ratcheting up at my words. He feels his soulmarked somewhere, and he’s aching with a pain so fierce it would kill a mortal.
“Yet we’re the monsters. We want nothing but to find completion, but the Order, who you’ve so proudly marked on your chest, denies us that. Denies us something that was given to us by the very gods themselves. You feel it now too. You feel that gaping hole in the center of your being.”
Isaac shakes his head at that.
He doesn’t want to believe.
He doesn’t want to be wrong or for all the lies he’s been taught to come crashing down around him.
“It’s not hunger for more blood, Isaac,” I say. “It’s not a hole you’ll ever be able to fill with blood. Though I promise you, in the years and decades to come, you’ll try your hardest to fill it.”
Looking away from me, he shakes his head again. “This is all lies.”
“I could have Chloe come and speak to you about it,” I say with a smile and perhaps a bit of cruelty.
“No!” he shouts, his head whipping back and forth. “No.”
Pushing back into the connection, I can feel revulsion slowly creeping into his body. The desires of the flesh turning into wretched loathing.
“You can feel the wrongness of her now,” I point out. “Your repulsed by your own thoughts.”
“She… I...”
Pushing into the connection further, I take a single image of her in my mind and shove it through his. It’s the only image I will ever share with him.
Riding on top of me, Chloe’s blonde hair is flowing around her face, her head arching back as my cock slams up, into her.
The image shows no nudity, it’s simply her face contorted in bliss, but he knows what’s happening.
After staggering back, he flees to the side of the room. Retching hard but not bringing anything up. His body is still new, almost instantly processing any blood he consumes.
Truthfully, I shouldn’t have shown him that image, but I want there to be no doubt in his mind.
When he regains his composure, I continue. “You feel the revulsion of lusting after her. She’s your mother now.”
“I do,” he agrees quietly. “I should hate you for making me see that…”
“I hate myself for showing you that,” I say honestly, “but you’re a special case. You’re not a run-of-the-mill kind of guy, Isaac.”
“And we are?” Matthias grouches quietly from near the door.
“Compared to this one?” I ask with a laugh. “He was one of the chosen. He was selected from birth to be their champion against the dark. He’s a fallen paladin now, boys.”