💥 This is a rough draft and is unedited. Each word is battle-born. Read at your own risk, be kind, and enjoy.

A Wonder image I generated during brainstorming.

*Need to catch up? Read here to see what you missed last week. Or read ahead in my Scarlet Hearts After Dark Reader Community. It’s free to join and follow.

🫦 Read with caution. Vikings and spiciness ahead.

💀 💀 💀 💀 💀

Arless Episode: “Control”

Fresh blood thrums through my body. My heart pounds with a toxic mixture of sated desire and fear, and every nerve ending tingles with fire and energy as my mind spins.

I’m sequestered in my room for a whole ten heartbeats when there’s the lightest knock at the door. I know it isn’t Lucian. He wouldn’t dare come to my room unless it was life or death. And Sylas would know to give me my space.

I nearly laugh at the idea of Constance outside my door. She would never come to our rooms knowing what we are—what we’ve done—and I don’t blame her in the slightest.

“Go away, Thorne,” I growl quietly and pull the covers over my head, though I’m not the slightest bit cold. The weight is comforting. Familiar. And I want to crawl beneath them and hide for as long as the fire and hunger in me will allow, muting the world around me.

Flickering firelight plays over the thin blanket and I watch it dance. A scathing, screeching memory invades my mind.

Thorne’s marriage celebration.

The fire.

Hel’s cool breath and salacious promises that rose from the ashes.

But even more than the incessant hunger and burning need that is never sated, was the screaming.

The muted darkness was all that gave me solace when we tried locking ourselves away in the beginning. Only after two days did we realize wooden doors were pointless. That’s when the night screams filled the corridors and the rumors started. The day our staff disappeared, and the village started to talk. But they aren’t rumors if they’re true.

“Not going to happen, Ari.” Thankfully, Thorne’s words are little more than a whisper, because the mice in the walls are loud enough, and the crackling Birchwood in the hearth is blaring and grating on the last of my nerves. I couldn’t bear his baritone too.

He opens my door and I pull back the covers as he pokes his head in. Thorne’s red braids fall around his face, and the worried look on his rugged features melts my heart, but only slightly.

“You might as well come in at this point,” I grumble. “You’re letting out the heat.”

Quietly, Thorne closes the door behind him, and with careful footsteps, he walks to the fire. “What,” he says, crouching to stoke the flames, “suddenly you get cold again?”

“If only,” I mutter, and sitting up, I pull my legs to my chest, shaking my head. “I never thought I would miss mortal problems like that, but I do.”

He pokes and prods the wood. “Aye. Funny how that works, eh?” Rising to his feet, he comes over to my bed, running his hand down his face as he sits on the creaking bedframe.

If we hadn’t seen each other in excruciating pain and utterly feral, I might feel a modicum of unease, naked with a blanket falling off me. But I don’t. Thorne’s always been more like a brother, and now . . . Now we share a curse that precludes social etiquette and anything remotely normal. There are no boundaries between us. He’s seen me drinking blood from a man’s neck like a rabid animal, after all.

I can practically hear him blinking. “Stop looking at me like that,” I tell him, finally meeting his gaze. I lift an eyebrow. “I won’t break . . . even if I’ve never felt more broken.”

His expression is unchanging, and I wonder where his thoughts go.

Until the change, I never noticed the way Thorne’s heartbeat quickens when he’s worried, or the way his eyes crinkle with concerns, even when he fronts his feelings with a cocky smile. And as the gold flecks illuminate the green in his eyes, I can see why Tilly loved him so much. His ego might bulge bigger than his biceps at times, but his heart is just as big and mushy when it comes to those he loves.

“I know you won’t break—you’ve always had more fortitude than all of us combined. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t in pain, or scared, or angry like the rest of us.”

I shake my head, staring at the flames in the hearth as I concentrate my focus on one image, one noise, instead of the barrage of them overwhelming me with each beat of my heart.

“It’s never been like that before,” I say in Thorne’s silence. “It was amazing and horrible all at once. I thought my head was going to explode.”

He pours me a mug of water from my bedside table and hands it to me. Immediately, I gulp it down. It’s more of a habit than a necessity. But the coolness eases the burn in my throat and makes me feel more normal.

“If feeding strengthens us, it makes sense that feeding during the day, when we’re less in control of our senses, would allow us to harness the overwhelm better. Especially with the sunlight, when the world is so much brighter and louder.”

I feel the furrow in my brow deepen as I think about that, ticking off the list of overpowering sensations that throb like a gaping wound through every inch of me.

We sit in silence as his heartbeat, the flames, the mice and creaking rafters fade to the back of my mind, and then it dawns on me . . .

“Thorne . . . It worked.”

His green eyes shift to me.

“I didn’t kill him. I fucked the hell out of him and fed from him, but I didn’t kill the southerner.” I blink at him. “Did I?”

A rush of ease settles over me, but Thorne shakes his head. “Not at all. The bastard was swaying on his feet a little, but he was very much alive when Sylas paid him.”

Nodding, I bite the inside of my cheek, replaying the consensual gratifying frenzy of flesh and blood in my mind. “There was no feverish compulsion to drain him, only to feel good, unlike the other times I’ve fed. It’s almost as if—” I remember the scent of desire permeating off him and the swelling of his cock. “As if his willingness took the predatory instinct out of it. Like, without the chase, it was more perfunctory, you know? And the desire, I think it gave me something more than hunger to focus on.”

Thorne leans against the post of my bed, rolling a piece of thread between his fingers. “Perhaps that’s the key to it all, then.” His furrowed brow eases a little. “We find willing vessels for feeding and fucking.”

Then he frowns again and we both arrive at the same conclusion at once.

“Sylas,” we whisper.

“If sex and desire are required for balance,” Thorne whispers, his voice sad, “Sylas will be gutted.”

“What about you?” I rasp and my heart hurts for him—for both of them.

It’s only been two weeks since our families were ripped away from us. I didn’t have a wife or children, and my struggle has been wretched. But Thorne and Sylas did, and there is no way they are ready for something like this. Even if their lives depend on it. And Sylas . . . I know him as well as I know myself, and he would rather starve than cheat on the memory of his wife, and that’s exactly what it would feel like to him.

“We might not have a choice,” Thorne croaks, and while I know he misses his beloved Tilly, losing his sister devastated him differently, perhaps even more. “We already know what happens when we wait too long and deny ourselves.”

“There’s always the option of not giving a fuck,” I say wryly. “We could simply let ourselves loose in the world. We’d be unstoppable. Strong. We’d have each other.”

Thorne smirks. “And in a hundred years’ time we’d be miserable, alone, and have lost all of our honor.” Thorne shrugs. “Sure, why not?”

“It would be easier,” I admit.

“Aye, and we would hate ourselves more than we already do.”

“All we can do is try,” I remind him. “But that’s easy for me to say.” I give him a sad smile and rest my cheek on my knee.

“Lucian might be an issue as well.” Thorne shakes his head and runs his fingers through his beard. “He was in a state when you ran out of the room.”

I don’t have the energy to think of Lucian’s reaction to this—to me and the southerner. Not when I’m trying to grasp hold of a shred of control in a never-ending future. And not when I will need to feed again soon if I’m to keep the desperation at bay.

“The southerner.” My eyes widen. “Is he still here?”

Thorne shakes his head. “I heard the door close when I was coming up the stairs. Though, if the connection was as good between you as it sounded—” He clicks his tongue. “Something tells me he’ll have no qualms coming back.”

Leaning back against my pillows, I stare at the fire, a tightly wound knot of uncertainty. “Feeding isn’t our only problem and Hel’s too busy sitting on her jagged black throne, watching us massacre our people while we figure this out for ourselves.”

Thorne leans his head back, dipping his chin ever so slightly. “Aye. We need an army if all that we’ve done wasn’t for nothing.” His timbre is calm, his thoughts distant. “We need to get ourselves straight first. There is time to figure the rest out.”

“Thorne, our people are dying,” I say, though after what we’ve learned today, I don’t feel as helpless as I did when the day started.

His eyes meet mine in earnest. “It will all get sorted.” He swallows thickly. “It has to.”

“Sylas?” I whisper. Having felt his desperate hunger, I know our fearless leader is in pain and has denied his need to feed for far too long.

Thorne dips his chin and runs his fingers over his braided red beard. “He hasn’t slept or fed.”

“And we know he won’t fuck,” I finish for him.

Thorne cringes at the words as if they physically hurt him, because they do. Everything about all of this affects us all, and while we’ve always been tied together in some way, this is different.

Now that I’ve fed, I can feel the entire house even hungrier than before, craving what I have. Every compulsive swallow each of them takes is a breath of wanting that stirs inside me. It’s building—nudging me like a depraved, ravenous sickness.

Then, low and deep somewhere in the castle, a growl rumbles through the corridor. It thrums with warning and sharpens with desperation, and when a crash follows, Thorne and I rush for the door.

There’s more Darkborn coming next week!

Until next week….

xo, Lindsey (and Scarlet)

P.S. If you want to read ahead in the Darkborn’s story, you can find more chapters in my Scarlet Hearts After Dark reader community. Create a free account and read for free.