Chapter 334: _ Is This The End?
María José flinched when I said her name.
"María José," I repeated, gently, the way a parent might call a startled animal. "You’re safe. It’s just me."
Just me. As if that should mean something. As if I hadn’t spent the last five months building a throne out of lies and compulsion just to sit at her side.
She was still frozen. She had one hand pressed to the underside of her belly, and the other caught between clutching her towel and reaching for something that could ground her. Her eyes were wide, darting from the locked door to my face and back again.
I stepped forward, slowly, like she was a deer in the woods. I hated that she looked at me with fear. Not because I didn’t deserve it—no, I did, but because I wanted more than fear. I wanted ownership. I wanted her under me, not beneath me.
"Don’t look at me like that," I said softly, brushing a hand through my hair. "I didn’t mean to scare you. I just... I lost myself for a second."
"You kissed me," she whispered, voice hoarse. "Why would you..."
I reached for her, brushing her shoulder, but she jerked away.
"I’ve been here... through everything. The hearings. The baby. Axel’s ghosting
you at night. I listen to you. I make you tea. I hold you when you cry. I..."She snapped. "That’s what friends do, Mateo! That’s all you were ever meant to be."
The word burned. Friends.
No. No, no, no. I had not done all of this to be friend-zoned like some forgettable stable hand. I’d earned my place. My throne. My family. My child.
My jaw clenched as I stepped closer. She backed into the dresser. Her fingers shook.
"Mateo..." she whispered it now like it was a ward, not a name.
Wrong, Luis.
She didn’t know it, not truly. Not consciously. But some part of her still remembered. That was the problem with compulsion, there were always cracks. Deep ones. Soul-level cracks that memory-wiping couldn’t always seal.
My hand reached toward her again, slower this time, like I was calming a skittish mare.
"Let me explain," I murmured. "Let me just..."
She stepped away. "No."
But I was already too close. I couldn’t stop. My fingers brushed her cheek, and she went stiff. She stopped breathing. My thumb hovered at her lips. The smell of her clean skin, heat, motherhood, sent a sick kind of pleasure uncoiling in my stomach.
I dipped my head and I kissed her again. This time, she didn’t scream. That’s the kind of woman María José had grown up to be. She doesn’t scream or panic anymore. She was no longer timid or afraid. If there was a problem, she’d face it head-on.
Before her pregnancy had mellowed her strength, she used to fight me before I’d send her wolf to slumber and then erase her memories after making love to her. However, my child seemed to be taking a toll on her strength.
"It will feed on her soul, wolf, and strength. But my daughter is powerful enough. She’ll survive it." The devil had said to me some nights back.
"What if she doesn’t survive, master?" I’d asked.
And as though he wasn’t declaring the potential death of his daughter, "Then she dies, Luis. She has already given us this child. She’s fulfilled her destiny." He’d replied with a straight face.
I remembered falling on my knees, begging for the devil to spare the love of my life. And when he asked: "Do you not believe in her strength?"
I was humbled. Thus, I chose to believe in her capability. In our love...
Right now, she didn’t kiss me back. Her lips were soft and unmoving as if she were too stunned to even breathe.
"Please don’t..." she breathed against me.
"I need you," I whispered. "You’re mine. You don’t know it yet, but you’re..."
"I said stop," she hollered, shoving at my chest. "This isn’t you."
It was me. For the first time in weeks, I was being exactly who I was. I gripped her wrist firmly enough to stop her from walking away.
"You’re mine, María José. You can not escape me."
"I-Ignacio?!" She gasped, awestruck.
Finally!
Every time I tried to claim her, she’d crack the code and learn of who I really was. That alone was proof of our love. Despite the borrowed skin, despite all the lies, María José could spot me in a room of thousands if she looked well enough.
I groaned. "In the flesh, mi Amor."
I reached for my buttons, undoing the first two, slowly,. Her eyes flicked down and widened in alarm.
"What are you doing, you disgusting demon?! You’ve been Mateo all along? Deceiving me?!" she sobbed, unable to bear the reality.
My fingers paused.
I wanted her. Gods, I wanted her. She looked like a vision with that flushed skin, red hair damp against her neck, belly glowing under the soft towel. She was the mother of my child. My claim. My reward.
But then... I felt a shudder in the air. Something... off. The wards I’d laid, the soundproofing, diversion, memory fog, all of it had twitched like static. My skin prickled. My demon lifted its head.
No. Not now. How? What’s going on? I turned my head sharply toward the door and felt Axel coming. I could feel it like thunder in the soles of my feet. But how? He shouldn’t even be on this floor, much less aware of this hallway. I’d spelled the air, cloaked the corridors, rerouted every sense away from this moment.
Unless... Unless someone was with him.
No.
No.
I had sealed this room with a deterrent spell. Anyone approaching should’ve been repelled with a memory wipe or redirected back toward the eastern wing. But Axel was cutting through the veil
Shit.
I turned back to María. She was trembling now, backing toward the bed, the confusion in her eyes slowly solidifying into something that would become memory. Accusation.
Was this it? The end for us?