Incubus [malexmale]

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight (Killian)

I expected to see hate.

I expected to see Alexius sneer at me, glare at me, spit at me, wish the most painful and agonizing of deaths upon me. If he wasn't so drugged up, I would expect him to reach out and slap me across the face before he ripped my throat out with his teeth.

What I didn't expect to see were tears.

It felt like a harsh blow to my chest. His soft fingers wrapped weakly around mine, holding me back from my mission, from my job. His beautiful emerald green eyes staring right into my very soul, filled to the brim with crystal tears. One bubbled over his dark lashes and fell down the side of his face to the pillow beneath his head as he stared up at me. His lower lip very slightly quivered, mouth parted just a bit to release sharp, quiet gasps as if he were experiencing the worst imaginable pain in the universe.

He was crying. Alexius was crying. I suddenly felt dizzy as I stared at him, watching the emotion I had never expected to see on his face. I was expecting rage, hate, murderous intent from someone like Alexius, but I found myself watching him cry silently. The tears slowly began to dribble over his eyelashes, trailing slowly down the sides of his face, breathes sharp as if he couldn't handle what was happening to him.

I had never seen Alexius cry. There had been the time when we first had sex, when his eyes watered, but never had I seen him cry. If he wasn't so drugged and weak, I felt positive that he would be sobbing.

And I couldn't move. I just stood there, frozen in place as I stared at him. His fingers tried to tighten around mine, but the drug was taking full effect and his hand dropped from mine to the cot. I finally managed to take a step back and I should've stayed. I should've said something, anything, but I couldn't. I couldn't form words.

I could barely form coherent thoughts.

Alexius wasn't angry, or maybe he was, but it simply wasn't as powerful as the pain I had caused him. I did this, I thought in pain. I had caused him this pain, the pain that no one deserved to feel. I was the one who broke years upon years of barriers, only to slap him across the face once I'd gotten through. This wasn't my intention, no. I didn't want to do this. I just wanted to help him. I wanted to save him. I wanted to save everyone. This was my job. This was my duty. It was the job that had been handed down through my people for generations. My father, his father before him, and his father before him. I was made to do this... and yet, here I stood, wishing I could turn back time.

Stop, a voice in the back of my head shouted. There was no time for this. I could stand here and kick myself and watch Alexius cry until he died, but it would get nothing done. I had to take the information Lothos had given to Alexius back to Kalziar and Ryouta and ask them to analyze it. I had to make sure Alexius' father wasn't alive. If he was... Well, it wouldn't matter. Either way, Alexius was going to Erini where he rightfully belonged.

I finally managed to shut my eyes, but even that didn't block out the sight of Alexius laying there, practically paralyzed, crying because I had shattered the final pieces of a heart that was already broken. I had become more than just a murderer, more than a liar. I had become a monster. I had crushed the last light of hope that Alexius had kept lit just for me. And now it was gone.

I fought to concentrate, disappearing from the tent in Xolun to the main room of the demon council hall, several realms away, high in the sky, surrounded by clouds trimmed in gold from a sun that sat heavy in the sky on one side, a crescent moon dangling on the other amongst stars.

The room was large and silent, despite Ryouta and Kalziar being present amongst files and files of information as well as a laptop that sat showing a Google map of Earth. Ryouta looked up from the files he had been holding and paled as he got to his feet. Kalziar did the same, frowning.