Once Bitten *On Hiatus*

𝕱𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖞 𝕰𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙

• 𝓜𝓪𝓮 •

I wish I could have flinched or felt sick at the sight of Seraph ripping out Owen's tongue with the ease it would take me to rip a piece of paper in half. I should have felt nauseated. Disgusted by what he was doing. Hell, I should have felt fear.

But I didn't.

I felt a sort of numbness while I watched, and something in the back of my head repeated, "Owen deserves this."

I had scars littering my body, most of them long since fading to be barely noticeable. Noah had seen them before, but I had explained I didn't want to get into it. That I would never want to get into it, and he never asked again. He likely assumed I would tell him when the time came, but that time would never come. Not even after Owen was gone.

Owen hurt me both physically and emotionally. He got into my head and somehow made me believe that it was my fault that my parents were killed. That if they didn't have me, they would have never been targeted because they wouldn't have ever gotten into the drug game. And then he punished me because it was my fault. The cops didn't come after me because they didn't think I played a part. But I did. It was my fault. And if I took my punishment well...he'd reward me.

I blinked away the memories before they turned to those punishments and rewards, forcing that numbness back as I watched Seraph make good on his promise. He literally pulled Owen's pants down, grabbed his dick, and wrenched it from his body like he'd done with his tongue.

Blood gushed from between his legs, coating his thighs and the ground below.

Owen turned ghostly pale, his tongue-less mouth opening on a scream so high pitched I couldn't hear it. He shook, gagging at the extent of the pain.

Seraph glanced at it, then burst out laughing. The sound was maniacal and insane. But still he didn't scare me.

"Good boy," Seraph crooned, his smile wide and feral as he watched Owen cry.

I watched with a detached sort of interest, seeing how effortlessly Seraph maimed Owen. How his shoulders shook with silent laughter when he finally did shove the torn-off appendage into Owen's mouth, forcing him to swallow it. Wrapping a hand around his neck to stop it from moving down any further into his throat.

His previously pale face turned red as he literally choked on his own dick.

"Not much of a reward, is it," Seraph murmured to him, though I wondered if he could hear it. "Now look at Mae, Owen."

He did. His dark eyes raised, the whites of his eyes slowly reddening as the oxygen was taken from him. And in those eyes I saw pleading. Fear. The knowledge that he was going to die.

But there was no remorse. None. No apologies in that look. No regret.

Seraph finally ended his suffering by reaching out and grabbing Owen's upturned head. And in less than a second, his head was no longer attached to his body. His body fell to the dry grass with a thud, but I couldn't stop looking at the now sightless eyes still staring at me. Forever stuck pleading at me to end his suffering.

I'd looked at him like that before.

Seraph dropped the head in the pooling blood and stood to his full height, wiping his hands on his black pants and eyeing his handiwork.

He didn't look at me, that smile of his from before completely gone. All that was left was the stoic, unreadable expression he always wore as he continued staring down at the body, now completely surrounded by blood.

So much blood.

I wondered idly if he was hungry.

"I'm not," he answered, finally glancing at me. When our eyes met, he stilled, like he was surprised I was still so close to him after watching him kill.

His eyes moved down my body slowly, then back up until those reddish-purple irises were on mine again. It was a blatant once-over, and I wasn't sure whether I was pleased by the look or not.

He reached out and touched my head, and though I knew he'd done something terrible to Owen when he did this to him, I didn't think he would do that to me.

"You're a little crazy," he murmured.

I blinked. "You literally just tore a man's dick from his body and made him choke on it until you felt bad and decapitated him."

His lip twitched. "If you want to call that a dick, sure."

I snorted despite myself, and his lips curled up ever so slightly at the sides into a smile no one should wear after killing someone. His eyes softened as he looked down at me, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt this man would absolutely never hurt me, whether he was a vampire or not.

He tilted his head and looked up, watching as someone neared.

I turned and saw Noah, his hands in his pockets and his eyes anywhere but the body.

'Go.' The one word was spoken quietly in my mind as he gave me a gentle push towards Noah.

I took a step towards Noah, but stopped and turned back to Seraph. He eyed me curiously, then looked back to Noah like he could explain what I was doing. Why I was suddenly stepping back towards him.

I wrapped my arms around him and he stilled, his already hard body somehow going rigid against mine. He was still for so long that I almost pulled myself away out of embarrassment, but finally he wrapped his arms around me, placing one hand at the base of my spine while the other cradled the back of my head.

Those same hands that just killed Owen held me so fucking gently against him. How could a man who could be so cruel be so tender?

'Noah looks like he's about to have a heart attack,' Seraph's amused voice filtered into my mind. 'Either that or he's going to shit himself. And speaking our hearts don't work like yours does...I'm going with him shitting himself.'

I bit my lip to keep from laughing and pulled away from him. I mouthed a "thank you" before turning back to Noah and grabbing his hand, pulling him behind me as I headed towards the castle.

And though I thought Noah would say something about Seraph being a bad guy, he remained silent, and I caught him glancing over his shoulder back at Seraph as we got farther away. He didn't look angry, or scared, or like he wanted to go off on me for getting that close.

He looked intrigued.

*****
A/N: Boom bam quick update without the hanging over the cliff about to die kind of ending.