TRIPLE UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOUND THE FUCKING ALARM

CHAPTERS 23-25 ARE NEW!!
ENJOY HUMANSSS!!!!!!

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Luciel’s POV

Metal sings against metal, and flesh batters against bone. Leather creaks as its owners force it to move faster than it should, demanding it keep pace with their attacks whilst still protecting them from any that slip through.

Many slip through. The cost of it forces grunts from lips that anger to free them.

The ground shakes, trembling violently from each paid strike, whether that be by magic or hand, but the ice holds, used to this strain— carved to contain it in this sectioned theatre below.

It is a sectioned war, contained in circles too big and squares too small, none of which are comfortable, but war, when it was true, was rarely ever comfortable.

I watch from the sidelines, observing, noting, and learning, for there was always something to learn when victory was the subject of one’s focus, and every member of this clan loathed to concede any fight.

The trio that brawls in the square nearest to me attest to that: two vampires and a mage, each out for themselves.

The mage, of ancestral earth, brings cuspidated shards of ice from the ground to impale the others’ steps, and while it does strike, forcing blood from their feet, neither lets it stop them as they bear through the pain to carry out a haphazardly joint attack.

They come from either side, hands raised, fangs free, but when they land and slash into the shadow of the mage, they are already gone and filling the other side of the square, leaving the pair no other choice but to turn their attacks upon one another.

Blow for blow, they fight. Fists bruising, nails scraping, but neither slows, and neither does the mage as they rush forward with a spear raised from the ice to join the fray.

“They are toying with their food,” an old voice whispers before a familiar power steps into the space beside me. “Playing with one another.”

“I believe they are trying their best,” I counter, eyes glued to where they still barter in blows.

“They are trying to impress you,” she croons before she slams her foot on the ice, birthing a crack that travels straight to them as she roars, “FIGHT!”

The squabbling is instantly put to bed.

The mage’s eyes glow before the pillow of snow they fight upon rises into the air like a dome. They disappear under the cover, and only red eyes pave the way as they begin a brutalised battle for power.

I turn to the warrior at my side as she turns to me, seeing where her clouded blue eyes can not. She dons a smile as she bows her head, “Pylen.”

“Lindana,” I return, bidding her the same courtesy. “How are you, my dear?”

She chirps a laugh and waves a hand in front of herself. “Well I believe, but you must tell me. Do I still look like power?”

“Like a thunderstorm,” I promise, and her smile widens quickly.

Lindana was the oldest woken member of our clan who had not taken to the ices. Many did, wanting to leave the newer ages to their devices, or simply tiring of life, but according to tales, Lindana had always varied from her cohorts.

She was one of the clan’s founders, and our strongest warrior, even without her sight. She had been born so and turned the same, and naturally learned to fight just so too before the mages of her time offered to amend the ‘ailment’.

Lindana accepted and, as stories went, she made it only a week before she demanded her eyes be closed again. The world was ‘too bright’, people ‘too cunning’ in the open, and according to her, she fought better in the dark anyway.

“You feel different, Luciel,” she whispers, squinting at me while a soft wind passes through the white curls that flow down her back from their braided crown.

“It has been a trying millennium,” I acknowledge, facing forward again.

“But it has only just begun.”

“Trying still,” I assure her as a streak of blood sprays out from the square. Lindana’s hand whips out before me, shielding the assault from reaching me while she leaves it splash against her lips and cheek.

Her tongue creeps out to lick it away. “I like him, the wolf.”

“Of course you do,” I dismiss with a sigh. “You like small things.”

“Because they often are not,” she retorts. “Lots can hide where there appears to be no room for it.”

“I recall the lesson,” I reply before she can try to teach it to me again.

Lindana’s teachings had been some of the most gruelling in my earliest days within the clan, for there was no telling where or how she would attack you. It could be a barrage of fists that would assault organs you did not think you still needed until she delivered them a beating, or a poisoned needle in the eye that you would never know that she pulled from the inner lining of her sleeve.

The woman was relentless.

“What is his Mission of Valour to be?” She asks as the snow cloud before us finally begins to settle, the mage slain.

“I am hoping the Gods will tell me,” I mutter, and she frees another chirped laugh.

“Come now. Since when have you believed in the Gods? Has Maeve finally broken you?”

“No… they did.”

The snow settles, as bloodied where it settles as the ice it falls upon, and the picture that remains reveals the root of it. Pillars of ie break through to the roofing above, spiked all over where make-shift crooks do not hide, crooks that had not helped the mage at all.

They lay limp on the remaining vampire’s left shoulder, the other on their right. Their face is scratched open, blood dripping steadily from their temple as they walk from the square’s border and make for the mages’ claimed corner for a faster healing.

“Our turn then,” Lindana declares before shouting for a mage to reset the square. A lifted hand and it is as though there was never any blood shed at all.

“I do not wish to fight,” I state, shaking my head, and Lindana laughs again as she opens her hand at her sides.

“Of course you do, Pylen. Why else would you have come here?”

Wordlessly, her latest students deliver her favoured spear and her helmet into her open hands before ducking away. Lindana slips the half-mask on, a unique and sleek contour that covers her eyes but nothing more, with splayed golden wings spreading from the top.

My reflection shines in it, and I can not deny the presence of madness in my eyes that begs for warfare.

Lindana steps into the square, waving her spear open as she does. It is half the length of her, but still long enough to knock my wits from my mind and punch a hole through me. It had done it before, and that was her being kind.

“Two spears,” I demand and find a pair delivered into my palms a moment later. I hold them in one and pull my leathers from over my head.

I could not afford to be strained, not with Lindana.
She smiles, noting the change and finding glee in it.

It would be a serious fight, and she was so rarely awarded such these days with her and Maeve’s relationship what it was. But that was good. I wanted a serious fight. There was a restlessness in me that had refused to relent since Maeve had taunted me with unfamiliar names of other men, and I needed it gone.

I step up to the square’s border, but not into it, knowing the moment I did, she would make a claim for my blood.

“Rules?” I ask, and Lindana laughs again, but this time, it is a more angered sound.

“Rules,” she spits, swatting her spear to the side to shove the offence from her presence. “What rules are there in war, Luciel?”

“First to near death, then,” I offer, and she concedes with a nod.

“Do not worry, pylen,” she whispers. “I will stop before we reach there.”

“Gods,” I groan, but do not waver any longer.

I fill each palm with a spear, hold them tight and step over the line.

Lindana is a golden flash, and then she is rage and fury unleashed from the Seven Hells.

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Peter’s POV

I hear it before I see it— the sound of fighting that my genes always told me to run from, but it hardly sounds like fighting or sparring as Maeve claimed. It sounds like war.

Metal against metal, and then against flesh and bone that I can hear break.

Each lash echoes through the ice, telling tales of blows so painful it lends me their ache. The sound is as though lightning and thunder have been given autonomy, and immediately fell into battle.

“We can return,” Maeve states as she turns to me, and it is only then that I realise that I stopped walking, and that I’m clinging so hard to my arm cuff that it’s digging into my skin.

I free it and try to straighten, but my knees wobble, and she sees it.

“We can return,” she repeats, slower this time, and I know she’s annoyed, but if there was one thing about Maeve, she was always honest.

I shake my head. “N-No.”

I needed to see what I would be up against, and even if I already regretted this, turning back would only let my mind conjure up scarier versions of what reality likely was. Plus, I was close enough to scent blood, and even though I’d never scented his before, my soul rattles within its confines knowing that it is his.

Luciel is in there, fighting and bleeding, and I could not walk away from that, not even if it was just because of their version of ‘sparring’.

I walk on until I’m at her side again, and Maeve nods once in approval before she starts forward again. I force myself to follow.

The blows grow louder the closer we get, the ring of clashing metal ringing in my ears, but I bear through it until we break from the tunnel and enter yet another hidden treasure within the clan.

Where I expected to find the ground at my level, it sits yards beneath, at the bottom of a wide stairwell that lead down into a fighting pit like that of a collosiaum, only this one is ten times the size and it’s not one arena alone that waits at the bottom.

Sectioned into randomly sized circles and squares, fighting pits sit spaced out where the ice breaks and is filled instead with raised snow. The snow is likely meant to be a more solid platform for fighting, but only one of them is in use right now, the others abandoned, as all present watch the show in the centre.

It is set in one of the squares, and any wolf would say that it is too cramped for a proper fight, and yet, the pair inside it make it enough.

A woman with a white mane for hair, and a golden spear that matches her strange halved helmet, and—

Oh Goddess…

Dark brown muscles bunch and give, tensing before they release a strike from arms that are as thick as trunks, and veined like one too. His chest, exposed, is wide and equally as muscled, firm like his shoulders, both of which bleed from his given wounds.

I usually felt woozy seeing blood and opened skin, but it is as though my body forgets to be afraid as I watch his blood from his highest wounds trickle down his chest in rivulets. It paints him red, a complement to all the gold, especially the two golden rings piercing his nipples.

My breath pants out of me. My heart leaps and refuses to return.
It hovers in some distant place while I take in the earth-shattering view that is my mate fighting shirtless.

Why is he… Joseph begins, but he becomes as distracted as I am as Luciel spins himself with his spears, straining the muscles of his torso in a way that makes my head fuzzy.

Heat pours into my body, coming in a wave so fast and brutal it almost sways me forward, but I press a hand to the wall and keep it there. I dig my nails in, then my claws too so that I do not make a fool of myself, or Goddess forbid, expose my arousal to anyone around because that is what I am— aroused.

I should be afraid, scared for my mate and my all-too-close future in one of those pits, but instead, my body stirs in ways it has never done in the face of violence, and it is as alarming as it is exhilarating, and Goddess help me, but I can’t stop it.

Below, the fight endures.

I can barely follow it— the flash they become as they create the roaring blows I’d heard before, each freeing blood from the other that splatters across the ice, inside and outside of their square’s borders.

I spot fangs, follow the liquid shine their spears become as fast as they are, and all the while, my body grows hotter, my eyes pinned loyally to Luciel.

He’s beautiful, and Goddess knew he always was, but like this…

My claws dig deeper into the ice at my side as Joseph creeps forward, too curious to stop, and no better than me at fighting against the heat that forces him out. He notes all that I do of our mate while he fights, from the width of him tapering out at his waist to the fierce expression of determination on his face that forces a shiver down my spine.

He’s entirely focused, and it is compelling to watch, but so is his opponent, focused, that is, neither of them bracing for even a moment, knowing the other will be there if they do. It’s faster than any fight I’ve ever witnessed in the pack, faster than Dad, who’s always been so quick, and it’s too fascinating to witness to fear. Yet.

“How long have they been fighting?” Maeve’s distant voice asks from where she’s settled at the bottom of the stairwell beside others watching on.

“Three, four minutes, if so much,” someone replies, though I don’t look to see who. I don’t dare look away.

Maeve huffs, as though annoyed, but she says nothing else, quieting to see how it ends.

The woman, whom I have not glimpsed once before, and was sure I would have remembered if I did, moves like a praying mantis made of water, her spear an extension of her might, her technique unrelenting. Her solid gold mask clings to her as fiercely as she does her spear, but magic must be at play because even though it covers her eyes, it does not prevent her from meeting and blocking Luciel’s blows.

She bleeds as much as he does, her wounds just as deep, but the scent it releases is not one of anger or frustration. In fact, pleasure and satisfaction bloom from it like it so often did from Damon’s when he was sparing in the pack.

Nausea climbs as it always does, but then, my senses focus on Luciel again, and that strange fog of pleasure takes its place. I clench my legs together.

They keep fighting, keep skinning one another piece by piece until finally it reaches a head.

Luciel launches his spear at her like a javelin, and while she bats it away, he chases after it, ducking her sweeping blow and sliding in the space under her to wrap his hand around her throat and drive his other baton into the center of her chest.

I gasp just as stillness comes so suddenly it clears the air from the room.

They stare at one another, her with a bloodied smile beneath her mask, and him with a plain face, as though he does not feel the end of her spear piercing his ribs.

My heart races, fear finally reaching it and spreading like a wildfire, but I do not move. Do not dare. I want to run to him, heal him and help him, drag him away from the danger, but I’m not stupid and have just enough sense to remember that. Anything I did right now would only put him at a disadvantage.

Besides, I was in no state for Luciel to see me.

“I squeeze and your head rolls,” he whispers into the quiet.

“I push, and your heart comes out of your armpit,” she returns.

They stare at one another, and for a fleeting moment, memory overlaps the present.

Ice is replaced by marble walls, and instead of this terrifying pair, I see the bronze statue that had held Levi’s attention for over three hours the first time he’d seen his favourite statue in person.
We’d met at its home gallery while I was between expeditions and while the paintings were large and grand, but Levi cared for nothing else besides the statue of a man wrestling a python.

The creature was wrapped around his muscled body, its head mere inches from the man’s, who held it by its wide neck. A stalemate that spelt death for one outside of that moment.

That’s what these two are—the python and the man.

“We both win then,” Luciel murmurs.

“Both lose,” the woman corrects, but she drops her spear and Luciel frees his hand.

They break apart, and though there is still a spear breaching the woman’s chest, she still smiles as she offers her arm.

Luciel takes it, the two shaking hard before they break apart.

In sync, they both look up, but while the woman’s blocked gaze seems aimed towards the woman a few steps beneath me, there is no mistaking where Luciel’s falls.

My heart drops.

I should have left already, taken advantage of Maeve’s earlier offer or her distraction, but I had not and now Luciel stares directly at me, half-naked and covered in blood from already healing wounds.

I forget how to breathe again.
There is only the heat of his gaze, the firmness of his body that already encourages mine to submit, and as my mouth grows wet and my hole threatens to do the same, I turn and run.

I run fast and hard, faster than I had in the tunnels during my Trials or ever on the surface because he can not see me like this.

I don’t know what Maeve’s plan was, but I doubted it was this. No one could predict this.

The tunnel widens ahead of me, leading into the castle and I race for it, but only make it to the end before Luciel appears in the space ahead of me. Scrambling, I try to stop, but I’m not fast enough, and the ice is too slippery.

I slide across the ice, right towards him, and right into his bloodied hands.

He catches me in them, forcing my body to a firm stop, and I shudder as though I’ve been electrocuted.

He’s never touched me before.
Not once.

He does now, and it is as though Goddess has put her hands on me with the way euphoria explodes inside my body. Instincts flare to life and not one of them tell me to be afraid.

In fact, they demand the very opposite.

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PETER, YOU WHOREEEEEE!!!!!!

…you are charming me

Thoughts????????

If these two chapters feel like a whirlwind and I threw you upside down GOOD! Cause aint nothing predictable with these two and what goes on when they’re left alone hehehe.

Enjoy the next chapter!

Also, for anyone wondering, here’s my Lindana inspo – NOT MY ART