DEMANDING DELUSIONS
(Brayen's POV)
Vallen was everywhere tonight. She lived in the condensation on the glass, in the amber depths of the liquid, and in the suffocating silence of the suite. I had lost track of the bottles I'd opened. I didn't care.
I drank until the burn in my throat was the only thing I could feel. The night had reached its nadir, draped in a darkness so thick it felt physical.
My head throbbed, the pulse of blood in my ears drowning out the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock. I felt unmoored, as if my soul had begun to detach from its shell. I stumbled back toward the master suite, my steps uneven, my grip on reality slipping with every breath.
When I pushed the door open, the dim glow of a single bedside lamp cast long, distorted shadows across the room. My blurred vision fixed immediately on the velvet sofa.
Chiella was there.
The night dragged on. I threw myself onto the bed, but sleep was a ghost I couldn't catch. My body refused to settle. Just as my eyelids grew heavy, I saw her stir. She looked uncomfortable, a fragile silhouette struggling against the restrictive layers of her wedding gown.
As she sat up, the moonlight caught the curve of her frame. In my fractured state of mind, the lines of her face blurred. The air seemed to shift, and suddenly, I wasn't looking at Chiella anymore.
I was looking at Vallen.
The delusion hit me with the force of a physical blow, shattering what was left of my restraint.
I stood up. I didn't think; I moved on instinct, driven by a desperation that had no place in the waking world. I crossed the room and reached for her, my hands framing her face. My touch was anchored in a longing that had nowhere else to go.
Without realizing it, I felt the tracks of hot tears spilling down my cheeks.
"Vallen..." I whispered, my voice a broken thread.
She remained still, watching me with an unreadable expression. I didn't care. In my mind, I only saw the eyes I had been starving for.
"I miss you so much, Vallen. Why did you leave me?"
I pulled her into a crushing embrace a desperate, hysterical prison of a hug.
"Wake up, Brayen! I am not Vallen! I am Chiella!"
Her voice was a sharp, jagged edge that sliced through my delusion, hitting my chaotic mind with a brutal clarity.
I gasped, a flare of anger igniting because the illusion had been ruined. I shoved Chiella away with enough force to send her reeling back toward the sofa. But before I could fully withdraw, the image of Vallen flickered again, overlapping Chiella's terrified face like a double exposure.
I was a monster born of grief, and that monster refused to be satiated.
I lunged, grabbing her body and pulling her back toward me. I kissed her not a caress, but a demand. I pinned her against the wall behind the sofa, drowning her in the scent of whiskey and my own wreckage.
"I missed you, Vallen," I breathed against her lips, my mind sinking deeper into the lie I had constructed.
I kissed her with a buried, brutal passion, as if the sheer force of it could drag the world back three years.
Crack!
The sting on my left cheek was sudden, a searing heat that burned through the haze. The sound of the slap echoed, shattering the suffocating silence of the room.
I stumbled back. That singular moment of pain snapped the threads of my alcoholic delusion. My vision cleared, sharpening with a dangerous edge.
It wasn't Vallen standing before me. It was Chiella.
I looked at her her eyes were glassy, brimming with tears that were ready to spill, pleading for a mercy I didn't possess. A sliver of guilt, no larger than a needle, pricked my consciousness. I should have felt pity. I should have stopped.
But the alcohol in my veins, the festering trauma, and whatever demons possessed me tonight rejected any form of compassion. There was no room for mercy. That slap had done nothing but awaken a dormant rage and a wounded pride.
My right hand moved on reflex, gripping her throat with a harsh, unyielding strength. I shoved her back, forcing her small frame against the wall once more.
"You dare," I hissed, my voice dropping into a register that was low and lethal.
A torrent of tears began to track down Chiella's cheeks. Her trembling lips, the very hand that had just struck me it all fed into a different kind of hunger. Her desperation, that raw look of helplessness, was captivating. It beckoned a dark, long-buried impulse to the surface.
"Let me go, Brayen! Please, let me go!" Her voice was strangled, caught beneath the iron grip of my hand. She fought me, her fingernails clawing at my skin, trying to break my hold.
Her resistance only served to fuel my dominance. I tightened my grip on her throat, stealing her breath, before crashing my lips against hers again. The kiss was savage, a relentless demand. I didn't yield an inch.
I kissed her out of desire.
I choked her out of rage.
And I did it because Vallen was never coming back. Chiella would be the one to pay for the void.
Chiella thrashed beneath me, tears soaking her pale face, but her rebellion only satisfied the brutality I had unleashed.
I seized the fabric of her white wedding gown. The expensive silk tore with a sharp, deafening rip, shredding like worthless paper. I didn't care about the damage; my hands were rough, bruising her arms and waist, marking the skin that was now exposed to the cold air.
I pinned her small frame into the velvet sofa. I stripped away the remains of my own clothes the garments that had become symbols of my depression and this entire charade.
I had rejected her. I had insulted her. But now, I was claiming her.
My hands roamed over every inch of her cold, shivering skin. She was trembling pure, unadulterated fear.
"You will have to endure this, Chiella," I whispered into her ear, my breath hot and heavy with the scent of whiskey. "I warned you to run. You ignored me. You had the audacity to step into my sanctuary."
The words were my justification, a weapon I turned against myself through her suffering.
Chiella's whimpers were caught in her throat, a steady stream of tears flowing down her face. She pleaded with a voice of utter despair.
But instead of pity, I found a twisted satisfaction in every drop. Her pain and helplessness were mirrors of the wreckage I had lived in since the moment I met her. The horror in her eyes was the only thing that felt real in this drunken haze.
Under the cold, indifferent moonlight, I committed an act that should have been born of love, but was instead forged in hate.
This wasn't passion. This was an execution. A punishment for Chiella for daring to take Vallen's place in this house and a punishment for myself for how far I had fallen. I took her possessing her with a passion that was designed to destroy.
Under the twin grip of obsession and alcohol, I no longer saw Chiella. I saw an object a vessel for my agony and my rage.
I stripped her, tearing away the remnants of her gown with movements fueled by pure, unadulterated anger. Every piece of fabric that fell away was a symbol of the dignity I was discarding. I stared at her exposed form not with the warmth of desire, but with a predatory hunger to destroy; the hunger of a man demanding back what the universe had stolen from him.
She turned her face away, her tears soaking into the velvet of the sofa. Her small hands moved to cover herself a futile defense that only served to ignite my darkest instincts for dominance.
I broke through. I claimed her innocence with a brutal force, granting no pause and offering no mercy.
This was a desecration an act born of hatred and tangled lies. I no longer cared for her pain; I only cared for the explosion of agony within my own chest.
Her fragile frame was forced to endure the storm of my destructive passion. I possessed her with a crushing intensity, carving pain into the spaces where love should have been etched. Chiella's breath came in ragged gasps, choked by muffled sobs, but I refused to hear them. The only sound in my ears was the phantom scream of Vallen from the past.
I pushed into her, forcing her to accept every regret, every failure, and every wound I had carried from Vallen's grave.
I am a monster forged by grief, and that night, I made sure Chiella knew that the monster now dwelled right beside her.
And when it was finally over, only a frigid silence remained in the suite. A silence more lethal than any scream. I collapsed beside her not from exhaustion, but from a profound, soul-deep revulsion toward myself.