Such Violent Delights: A Holiday Paranormal Romance Anthology

by S. L. Jennings

  Isla abruptly stopped speaking and blinked rapidly.

  “Funerals used to be so much fun until you went and died and we had to throw a fucking funeral for you. We have to bury you.”

  Isla blinked at the screen.

  “Fuck you,” she whispered.

  And then the video ended.

  Sophie watched it until the phone battery died.

  Until she felt like she’d died all over again.

  Chapter 5

  Sophie didn’t want to think, especially didn’t want to feel while she waited for the final paralysis of death to fuck off and her power to stop falling through her numb hands. But there wasn’t much to do in a coffin.

  The vodka was gone.

  And that meant thoughts and feelings came that much easier.

  Memories of her death rushed through her like boiling acid and she realized that she was no longer mad at her wolf.

  She’d stopped being mad at him a long time ago, of course, but it took death for her to admit it to herself.

  It took her death to realize there was no way she could be mad at him ever a-fucking-gain.

  No, not when she could still hear the guttural, fractured roar being yanked from Conall’s throat as she died in his arms. As his agony poured through her with more force than the blade that had torn through the skin of her neck.

  Yeah, that memory would kill any anger at him and focus it on herself.

  Well, not entirely on herself, there was the whole case of that asshole who slit her throat in the first place. A lot of blame landed at his feet for sure.

  But he was dead, and Sophie felt a warm happiness that Isla had been the one to do that. She couldn’t blame the dead.

  But now she wasn’t dead, it was time she admitted her part in Conall’s pain. Though pain was too light of a word for it.

  Sophie might’ve been an asshole herself from time to time—almost all the time, in fact—but she did excel at taking responsibility for her actions.

  Mostly because she wanted people to know precisely who did things to fuck up their day and hopefully, their lives.

  Fucking up people’s lives was her and Isla’s favorite pastime.

  They almost always deserved it.

  Conall did not deserve what she did to him.

  Her nail broke off as she tore through the satin and started clawing at the wood on the top of her coffin. Warm blood trailed down her fingers, a hot ache followed the stream. Sophie took no notice of this and resumed her pointless clawing at the wood, splinters embedding themselves into the skin of her hands.

  She welcomed the pain. Wished it was more intense.

  But there was nothing worse than the pain that came with the sound of Conall’s roar, echoing through her brain with the sharpest of edges. It dragged through the flesh of her mind, raking at exposed nerves, playing on a loop.

  It was enough to drive her insane.

  It was enough to stave off the powers grappling for control at the back of her mind.

  She needed to get out of here.

  For a number of reasons.

  But she needed to get back to him.

  Because she was scared.

  Terrified, in fact.

  Not just because she was seriously fucking up her manicure trying to claw her way out of a coffin.

  Not because she was trapped in a fucking coffin in the first place.

  Not because she was going to run out of oxygen at roughly the same time she was going to gain access to enough power to get out of here.

  Not even because as soon as she tapped into that power—greater than she’d known before—there was a really high chance she was going to lose more important parts of herself and the beings she’d brought back from the grave would gain a foothold inside of her.

  Though that was kind of concerning.

  None of that overly bothered her.

  She’d survive it.

  She routinely survived death, after all.

  No, she was terrified at what her death would do to Conall.

  The werewolf who had convinced himself that she was his mate.

  And within the werewolf community, that shit was legit.

  She had learned that wolves who lost their mates went crazy—and not in the good way—usually unable to function in their human form. So they’d just prowl around as animals until they eventually died.

  And they did die.

  Like some terrible fucking Shakespeare play or an excellent Leonardo DiCaprio movie, these fuckers died because the one they loved met the reaper.

  She knew this not because she cared to know anything about the werewolf community, but because falling in love with a werewolf who considered you his mate meant this knowledge was thrust upon you.

  And it was thrust upon Sophie the last night her and Conall had together before his dirty little royal secret came out and she threw him out a window.

  After that, things didn’t slow down enough for them to talk further. In fact, Sophie lost herself to the power inside of her to stop Isla from dying at her own wedding.

  The last time she saw Conall wasn’t great since he had to yank her back from the abyss and then he was spelled by the bitches in the coven as they kidnapped her.

  She’d felt his pain, his rage and the fact he was powerless, rendered paralyzed. It was so visceral it was painted in the air. Sophie could’ve fought the witches. She had enough power to end them. She itched to finally slaughter the coven that caused her so much pain. But the spell they’d directed at Conall was designed to kill him. And all of Sophie’s waned energy went to saving his life, which she guessed was the coven’s plan. So they’d taken her. Tortured her, of course. Did horrible things with magic that Sophie was not brave enough to remember in the morbid quiet of her coffin.

  So she focused on the last night she had with Conall when they were tangled up in each other in the remains of a bed in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Where Conall could change at will and Sophie could use magic freely. It was their eye of the storm. Temporary. Like life.

  That night, Sophie had been sated enough to willingly ask Conall about mates.

  Which was when he told her what happened when werewolves lost theirs. His voice low and raspy as he told her that every werewolf that lost their mate followed them to the grave soon after.

  “That’s a little dramatic,” she said, resting her elbow on his chest and trying to pretend that the wolf wasn’t boasting more power over her than ancient beings inside her with the power to end the world.

  She usually excelled at lying, both to others and herself, but this night, she couldn’t.

  It was hard to lie to herself about the naked, muscled, and totally fucking hung wolf that had just given her six orgasms. It was impossible to pretend it was just about the orgasm.

  His hand—the one that had just handled her with some of the most delicious violence she’d ever experienced—came up to her face to delicately tuck her hair behind her ear.

  His claws were only just retracting, and his eyes were only now losing their otherworldly glow.

  Parts of him changed as he lost control, fucking her hard and rough.

  And he always fucked her hard and rough.

  There was no gentle for them.

  Gentle would break them.

  Or more importantly, it would break something inside Sophie. It would whittle down the last of the barriers she’d erected in order to pretend she wasn’t in love with a werewolf who declared her his lifelong mate and gazed at her like she invented fucking Puppy Chow.

  And the worst thing was, when he looked at her like that, made fierce forever type declarations, she didn’t want to curse him and throw up in her mouth. She wanted to look at him like he invented Doc Martens and make those same lame and cliché declarations.

  So yes, he was a lot more dangerous than the world ending magic inside of her.

  Therefore, whenever she felt soft and loving, she made sure it was hard and rough with them.

  Conall
was obviously happy to oblige in that respect. He was wild in every sense of the word—from his huge, muscled and scarred body, to the way his cock moved inside her, to the way he ruthlessly tore apart enemies in battle.

  Sophie had sensed something about tonight, as soon as they arrived at the cabin. Something she was pretending not to realize. She knew the grave called her, that death loomed. She had seen the vision of it happening.

  Which was why she should’ve been making a spell to erase all Conall’s memories of her, she should’ve been cursing some she-wolf with the burden of being his mate.

  But she didn’t.

  Firstly, because the thought of Conall’s hands being on another woman caused blue sparks to shoot from her fingertips and caused a small house fire when she’d toyed with the idea.

  Secondly, she wasn’t strong enough to cast the spell.

  Sure, she had more than enough juice, and if she really wanted to get serious, she could call to the ancient power that had been whispering to her more often. That had been coaxing her to surrender.

  Though if she surrendered to that power, tapped into that well, she would no longer have to worry about her feelings for Conall. She wouldn’t have feelings. She would have only a need for power, for pain, for destruction.

  Hence her making sure she didn’t listen to those whispers and pretending they weren’t getting harder to resist every fucking day. Shit, Conall was the only reason she continued to resist. He was her anchor, his touch, his all-encompassing presence demanding her to step away from destruction.

  Their connection got more tangled, more complicated with every passing day, Sophie knew that. Sophie could feel him, taste his emotions, his beast. She was becoming addicted to it. To him. And she knew that the mate connection she could no longer deny was doing something to him too. Something that tapped him into her vibrations.

  Which was so not fucking good.

  Not when Sophie had the explicit knowledge she was about to die.

  And maybe that’s why she had broached this particular subject on this particular night. Because she was a fucking masochist.

  Conall was taking longer to tame his beast this time.

  Sophie got it.

  As things became stronger between them, every time he was inside of her, she felt less and less control over herself and her powers. She’d just finished magically repairing the cracks in the foundations of the cabin around the same time Conall’s eyes cleared.

  “Dramatic?” he repeated, eyes still glowing though the wolf had retreated.

  “The fact you pretty much lose your shit if you lose a mate,” she clarified, though the wolf knew exactly what she meant. She narrowed her eyes. “I mean, yeah it sucks to lose a person you love, but life goes on. It’s pretty unrealistic, not to mention pathetic that these big, bad wolves can huff and puff and tear apart a car with their bare claws but can’t get over a mate croaking.” She raised her brow at him. “Yeah, we’re all immortal, but since forever is a long time to be alive, it’s also a long time to stay alive. Immortals die. It’s a fact.”

  She was being harsh. Cold. She knew it. Felt it. But she needed to. Because death was a fact. Her impending doom was truth of that. And she might come back this time, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know the rules to her little quirk. Didn’t know if there was a quota to the number of times she could cheat death. She only knew she couldn’t cheat it indefinitely. And even if she did come back this time, she didn’t know what she’d come back as.

  She needed to prepare herself for these facts. More importantly, she needed to somehow prepare Conall. The smart thing to do would be to push him away, do something unforgivable like sleep with his best friend, make him hate her and therefore make it easier on him when she croaked.

  But he didn’t have a best friend and she quite simply didn’t have the stomach for it. She was selfish. She knew how hard it would be to fight against the power inside her without Conall. Mainly because she was in his arms right now and it was a constant battle.

  She’d lose that battle at some point, she just had to hold out and make sure she helped her best friend stay alive.

  Then she planned on spilling it all with Isla. Trying to figure out a way to get this being out of her. And if that wasn’t possible, she was going to ask the vamp to kill her.

  Properly.

  Rip her apart, burn her and scatter her ashes. Sophie was pretty sure there was no coming back from that. She also knew she’d definitely be going to hell by asking her best friend to kill her and then have to live with that, but she’d bought that one-way ticket a long time ago.

  Conall’s glittering eyes jerked her back into the moment, back into her train of thought. “You shouldn’t advertise the whole death by proxy to the general public, Wolf,” she informed him. “Because the second your enemies figure out the best way to defeat a werewolf is to kill his mate, they’ll go for it…” She paused, swallowing bile at the thought of this wolf, her wolf, dying because of her. She reminded herself of her goal. “It’s what I would do,” she added.

  She wasn’t lying.

  Sure, killing a potentially innocent werewolf ran a little rogue on even her shaky moral compass, but they were in the middle of an end of the world type situation. There was no room for morals in an apocalypse.

  Not on the winning side, at least.

  And Sophie and Isla were always on the winning side of wars. They almost always were the reason they started too, but that was just details.

  Conall’s previously gentle touch turned violent as he clenched his hand around her neck, to the point where her bones started to protest, and breathing was obstructed.

  Her sensitive and aching core clenched at the brutal grip. He always hurt her in the best way, pain was always pleasure with them.

  But the hard glint her wolf’s eyes told her he didn’t have round three on his mind.

  The house probably wouldn’t have survived it anyway.

  “You would not do it,” he hissed. “It is a death that I would not wish upon even my most despised of foe.”

  Sophie rolled her eyes if only to hide her flinch at the truth to his words. “Oh don’t be so fucking noble,” she said, voice raspy from his grip around her neck.

  She made a conscious effort to betray no pain from the ferocity in his tone.

  Not to be affected by the fear radiating from his bones.

  Not fear for himself.

  For her.

  “Where’s that wolf that almost broke my ribs...again, while fucking me?” she asked. “Because he certainly wasn’t noble and I totally dig him.” Her hand trailed down his bare and scarred pec.

  There was still no softness in Conall’s gaze, nor did his grip let up. If anything, it tightened, along with the rest of his body, as if he were preparing for battle.

  For death.

  Which he was.

  He just didn’t know it yet.

  “This isn’t a joke, witch,” he ground out, voice sounding foreign to Sophie. He glanced at her neck as if he were only just realizing how close the bones were to snapping. He immediately released her and Sophie did not feel relief. She found herself wishing for more of the pain to distract her.

  But wishes were for genies and assholes.

  Conall was not letting up. He may have loosened the stranglehold on her neck, but the one around her heart only tightened.

  “I have witnessed only two of my kind lose their mate.”

  He shuddered.

  Her wolf, the one who tore the heads off demons, faced off with some of the most evil magic on this earth, shuddered at a fucking memory. Sophie struggled to steady her stomach.

  “And the proximity to such pain was...” He trailed off, clearing his throat. “The first lasted only hours. She had sustained injuries in a battle that killed her mate. Injuries that should’ve healed, but did not. She was one of the strongest warriors in our pack. She did not scream as her skin was torn open in the battle. She only started to scream when her mate’
s head landed at her feet. She screamed until her throat bled, until her voice expired and it was a mercy to those around. Some of the most hardened warriors who had witnessed the atrocities of the battlefield could not witness her pain.”

  He shook his head as if to rid it of images that Sophie could feel coursing through him. She listened with a horrified fascination. Conall never talked about his past. His pack. Since she had known him, he’d been a lone wolf. She knew that hadn’t been that way forever. Knew that there was pain and blood in his past. But they were immortals, everyone’s past was bloodstained.

  She was curious.

  But she’d told herself the more she knew about the wolf and his past, the harder it would be to walk away.

  Of course it was another lie.

  “The second lasted a year.” Conall shook his head. “A fucking year. To immortals, a year is nothing but a blink of an eye. But this year lasted centuries. Unblinking centuries. We had to kill him, in the end. It was kinder. Death is the only mercy afforded to those who have lost a mate.”

  Conall rarely spoke for an extended amount of time. Mostly because he didn’t need to speak to get his point across, and because actions speak louder than words. Sophie’s wolf was all about actions.

  But those words spoke louder than anything Conall had said or done before. Loud enough to damn near shatter the bones in Sophie’s spine.

  And he wasn’t fucking done.

  “Despite what you say repeatedly, my moon, you can feel this,” he said, tightening his grip around her. “That it is something more than what mortals have. It is more than their brains can handle. Forever is a vast and empty stretch without something to fill it up.” He squeezed her again, this time to the point of pain, but not enough pain. Nowhere near enough. “Someone to fill it up.” His eyes burned into her. “You fucking fill me up, Sophie. The only thing in this world to fear is emptiness. And I will die before that happens. That’s my vow.”

  Her spine was now in pieces. Shredded through her insides so everything was bleeding. She knew it. The emptiness. It was coming with her looming death. She was going to empty this wolf out, scoop out his insides, and leave him an unblinking corpse unless she figured out something to stop it.