Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 26

Eve~

I knew well that I was tempting the devil with my actions. I could feel the heat radiating off him in waves, and he kept me pinned. I smiled, an action that did not hold joy. Just be done with it.

If I had been told five years ago that I would be here, baiting a man into ending my life, I would have been appalled. I would have never believed it. Yet here I was, doing it. He just had to snap, just once, and I would be done with this. I could not keep living like this. From one hell to another, from one monster to another. I was not strong enough.

I recalled the little scars that had littered my body before the Deltas concealed them with their abilities. Little markings inflicted by me. There had been a clear purpose, but again and again, I was brought back from the brink. They needed me alive. I was useful to them.

I remembered each nightmare, each vivid and horrifying detail. And then there were the visions that would attack me the moment I smelled blood. I was not safe anywhere—in reality, in my sleep, or in my own mind. I could feel my will to live draining with each new challenge.

I could not continue to live like this. What would happen after he was done with me? Which hell would I be sent to next? But just as everything had been taken from me, the freedom to end what belonged to me was taken away. My life was the only thing that belonged to me, yet again, I was not allowed to take it.

I had men stationed by my room, each with a live feed of the space I was kept in. Even the bathroom had a camera. I had lost my dignity and my privacy. What more was left to be taken?

So, I stared the Lycan king right in the eye, my skin crawling with our proximity as I taunted him. "Come on, your highness."

His face was a mask of pure rage as he glared down at me. What happened next was a blur. He released my hands.

His fist came crashing into the wall beside my face, the sound of splintering plaster ringing through the room as his knuckles buried themselves deep into the surface. The force of the blow made the walls tremble, and dust fell in a slow cascade over my shoulders. I didn’t flinch. Not even as the blood began to drip from his fist, smearing the white surface in a bright, angry crimson.

But then the scent hit me—blood, fresh and thick. My body tensed. I could feel it crawling up my nostrils, cold, metallic, suffocating. And then it started.

The first scream cut through the air, shrill and agonized. I blinked, and suddenly I wasn’t in the room anymore. I was back *there.* The flashes came fast—faces contorted in horror, hands covered in blood, bodies writhing, tearing apart. The beast, its eyes glowing red, dripping with malice and death, looming over them all. Over me.

I gasped, my lungs struggling to pull in air as the visions slammed into me one after the other. Blood. Screaming. The beast. Every flash sharper than the last. I clutched my chest, my heart pounding, breaths coming too fast, too shallow. The walls around me closed in, and it felt like my mind was being ripped apart. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t escape. Not from the blood, not from the screams, not from the monster inside me.

I pushed back against the wall, my vision swimming, my body trembling uncontrollably. "No, no, no…" I whispered, trying to force the images away, but they kept coming. Faster. Louder. More vicious.