WOLFLESS: Accidentally Marked By The Devil's Son-Chapter 26: Goddess ritual

Chapter 26

"Greater dark..." Her voice trailed off into the damp silence of the cave as she stared down at him.

He was a bloodsucker. An ancient predator. He was the literal embodiment of the dark, but right now, that darkness was being suffocated.

The relentless violet acid of the holy river had pushed his power back into his core, pinning it down.

He was a king being hollowed out from the inside, and he wasn’t strong enough to fight it alone anymore.

He needed a conduit. Isabella knew that the blood-bond between a vampire and his marked was a tether of possession and shared shadow—a type of magic that had existed long before the holy wars began.

It was a bridge of shared life. She looked at her trembling hands. Suddenly, a memory of a page she had skimmed in the library flashed through her mind.

She had barely given it a second thought at the time, it was a text about mate-bonding, and since she’d never imagined having a mate, she’d treated it like a boring fairy tale.

"You’re the dark," she whispered, her eyes stinging from the wisps of gray smoke rising from his scorched chest. "But I’m the one holding the leash."

She realized she had to try the Goddess Ritual, an ancient rite for bonded souls designed to transfer the source of one partner’s pain to the other.

She wasn’t an unholy being, so she hoped that if the holy water transferred to her, her human-wolf blood would neutralize it.

She didn’t know if it would even work. Afterall they were two entire different species who dispersed one another from the get go.

Never in her library hunt had she gone through a book which said to have had a pairing like theirs.

She couldn’t even call this a pairing, this mysterious being had forced himself on her and here she was trying to save his ass.

Isabella blinked rapidly, her eyes stinging more from the smoke.

The goddess ritual is said to had only worked once in the entire history of the shifters. The ritual only succeeded if the two souls were true Mates across every lifetime.

Isabella didn’t know that part. She was just a girl acting on a desperate, half-remembered prayer. She didn’t have the incantations or the tools; all she knew was that it required a transfer of blood.

But how?

Lucian began to shake uncontrollably, his heels drumming against the stone floor in a violent seizure.

Panic surged through her, pushing her forward until she was straddling his waist, using her weight to keep his convulsing body still.

"Don’t you dare die on me," she hissed, her heart hammering against her ribs. She took a deep breath and pressed her palms flat against the burning violet lightning on his chest.

The contact was instant and horrifying. The purity of the holy water hit her like a lightning strike.

It wasn’t warm, it was a searing cold that felt like thousands of needles being driven into every nerve ending in her body.

Isabella arched her back, a silent scream catching in her throat as the violet light flared, traveling up her arms like glowing snakes.

The cave seemed to vanish. Through the bond, she felt him. For the first time, the stone wall between their minds shattered.

She wasn’t just feeling his physical pain anymore. She was feeling his essence. She felt the weight of centuries, the coldness of a grave, and a lonely power that reached out for her like a drowning man.

Blood, blood, blood, her chanted. The violet light was crawling up her neck now, the coldness of the holy water threatening to stop her heart.

She didn’t have a knife. She didn’t have a shard of glass. In a moment of frantic, unthinking desperation, Isabella bit down on her own bottom lip.

She bit hard, the metallic tang of copper instantly flooding her mouth as she broke the skin.

"This man fucking owes me," she hissed through the blood, her vision swimming. If he doesn’t die, he better realize he’s getting my first kiss like this.

Isabella leaned down, her white hair veiling them both in the shadows of the cave. Her heart was hammering against his silent chest as she pressed her bleeding lip directly against his.

His mouth was cold—deathly cold—and slightly parted as he struggled for air. She tilted her head, forcing the contact, and let the warmth of her blood drip onto his tongue.

For a second, nothing happened. The violet lightning on his chest pulsed one last, blinding time, nearly throwing her off him.

And then, the shaking stopped. Isabella felt the shift instantly. The coldness she was feeling was suddenly sucked away, replaced by a vacuum-like pull.

She started to pull back, gasping for air, thinking the ritual was done.....when a large and impossibly strong hand, shot up from the floor.

It slammed against the back of her head, his long fingers tangling in her hair with a possessive, iron grip that pinned her in place.

Lucian’s eyes didn’t open but his mouth moved against hers with a primal, starving force, his teeth grazing her wounded lip as he sucked hard, pulling her life-force directly into him.

Isabella’s eyes went wide. A surge of dark and intoxicating heat flooded from his body into hers.

The violet rot on his chest vanished into thin air, neutralized by the sheer power of the blood exchange.

Isabella struggled to breathe as the l pull became violent. Her eyes were wide, darting between Lucain closed eyes as she tried to wrench her head back, but Lucian didn’t budge.

Suddenly, two sharp, needle-like points of pain pierced her bottom lip.

Fangs. Isabella’s panic went into overdrive. She thrashed against him, her hands clawing at his bare, now-healed shoulders, but it was like trying to fight a mountain.

is he serious right now? her mind screamed through the haze of pain. she literally just performed a forbidden, soul-selling ritual to keep him from turning into a puddle, and his first instinct was to drain her to her deathbed?

She felt her blood being drawn out in pulsing gulps. The intoxicating heat she’d felt moments ago was being replaced by a terrifying lightheadedness.

Her limbs felt heavy, the edges of her vision fraying into black lace. He’s going to kill me, she thought, her movements becoming weaker, her frantic scratching turning into a desperate, limp cling.