Chapter 427:

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“What… what do you mean?” Aekeira struggled to clear the cobwebs from her mind, still lost from his brain-melting kisses.

“It will reactivate my sexlust,” he said. There was hunger in his eyes, but also restraint.

She sat up, confused. “Your sexlust went dormant…?”

“After your departure, the first few months were… unbearable. Trying to resist the sexlust alone nearly drove me over the edge. My beast and I didn’t want anything to do with the females Daemonikai brought to me. No matter how much blood I drank, the hunger wouldn’t abate.” Pain flickered in his eyes. “It was horrible.”

Aekeira could imagine.

“But I thought I could handle it,” Lord Vladya said, his expression faraway. “After two months of resisting, I went on my first killing rampage.”

Something inside Aekeira shriveled up and died. The lust that had plagued her vanished as if it had never been there, and a chilling cold replaced it.

“How many?” she asked hoarsely. Dreadfully.

“Six.”

Aekeira gasped.

He pulled back completely, sitting at the edge of the bed. “I had taken six lives.” His tone was neutral, but the pain was right there in his gray eyes. “Three humans, three Urekai. They had families. They weren’t meant to die that way.”

No wonder he exiled himself to this place. Aekeira swallowed, feeling the dryness in her throat. “What happened after…?”

“I woke up, snarling, half-mad, chained to my bed. Daemonikai had found and subdued me. I remember the driving urge to kill him. To kill everyone,” he recalled, his face pinched. “But Daemonikai looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘I’m doing this for your own good.’ Then he left me there for the rest of the day.”

ᴹᴼᴿᴱ ᵁᴾᴰᴬᵀᴱˢ ᴵᴺ ᴳᴬᴸᴺᴼⱽᴱᴸˢ.ᶜᴼᴹ

Aekeira didn’t say a word, but her heart, as treacherous as ever, reached out to him. Pulling closer to where he sat, she took his hand—his paw—in hers, uncaring of the long, sharp claws.

“By the time he returned the next day, my demons had quieted. Only then did he send the females in. They forced me and my savage beast to satisfy the lust that’d pushed me over the edge.” His spaced-out eyes blinked, then glanced at her. “He saved my life. For the first time in months, I could breathe again. But…”

“But?” she urged.

“That was the last time I felt that overpowering hunger for sex. The instinct that drives our kind to need sex as a necessity went to sleep. Dormant.”

Aekeira’s mouth gaped open. “Is that bad? It sounds bad. Did something break in you?” He hadn’t been with another female in two years?

There was something different in his eyes now. In the way he looked at her. Like he was seeing her for the first time.

Intense. More focused.

Her heart started to race. Aekeira squirmed under that penetrating stare. “My lord…”

“It’s not bad, just… impossible,” Lord Vladya said in a low voice. “I didn’t want to believe it. If I hold on to hope only to be disappointed again, I fear it will be my breaking point. So, I do not expect. I do not hope.”

She struggled to keep up with him. “I don’t understand.”

“Our kind has two compulsory urges that must be satisfied every once in a while, or we cannot function—”

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