The water was icy. The kind of cold that seeped right into the bones and gripped at the soul.
It trailed down his skin in rivulets, each droplet carrying with it a memory. A futile, desperate attempt to cleanse a taint that was beyond skin-deep.
A taint clawing at his very soul. Eating him up slowly but surely.
Kazim stood waist-deep in the river, bare to the cold and the quiet judgment of the forest. His hands trembled as he scrubbed at his chest, hard, harder, and then some,
He kept going until his skin turned red, until it felt raw. But it was not nearly enough.
The scent still clung to him, tightly entwined like it was emitted from his own pores. Or somewhere even deeper.
He could feel it in the hollow of his throat, taste it behind his teeth. A phantom heat that no amount of water could quench.
He sank lower, submerging to the shoulders, his teeth clenched against the icy chill as his breath thinned.
His hands moved to his neck, fingers scrubbing around the base where the stranger's mouth had been, tongue tasting with reckless abandon, teeth claiming without permission. He scrubbed like it would erase the memory, but his skin remembered the touch.
His body remembered the thrill... the possession, the delectable, sinful sex. Every thrust, the tightness... those low mewls that quickly grew into uncontrolled moans or pleasure.
Every sound...every gasp, every shudder, every climax.
Kazim bowed his head beneath the surface.
The river closed around him. Caressing, without judgement. Kazim wished it would do the opposite, he wished it would swallow him whole...drown him, so the taste of cum on his tongue was replaced by the taste his own death.
And then the river changed. Like it had heard him. Or maybe it was just in his own head.
It roared in his ears, merciless and cold, and for a moment he didn't rise.
Darkness pressed in around him, not cruel, just... still.
Maybe if he stayed long enough, it would leech the truth from his bones. Rewrite what had already happened, erasing it from existence so even he forgot that it had. He hoped it would.
Kazim broke the surface with a gasp, hair slicked to his brow, water streaming from his lashes like tears that wouldn't come on their own.
It had been years since he had forgotten how to cry. Though he felt terribly close to it at this moment.
He'd never felt dirtier in his life. Not in battle, not when he was doused from head to toe in blood, not even when he fell face first into a pool of black ichor.
It wasn't just the scent of another man that marred him. It was the ache that still lingered deep in his chest, deep enough where he could delude himself that it wasn't there. There lay the memory of his surrender. The twisted truth that even now, even now...his body wanted it again.
The taste of Nyx... the feel of Nyx, like he had been perfectly made to fit Kazim's shaft. Not just any Nyx... that Nyx, the very same from last night.
Kazim leaned both hands on a stone near the riverbank, chest heaving in a blend of rage, self loathing and residual desires. His reflection stared back at him from the water, haunted, hollow-eyed, and foreign.
What had he done? What had he allowed to happen? How could he ever make up for this sin?
The blood moon was no excuse. That lie no longer held. He knew the haze. He'd battled through it, resisted it for ten years, even when he did not fully understand it.
But last night, he hadn't fought. He hadn't even tried to.
He had yielded.
Willingly.
And to what? Who?
That was a question he did not have the answer to.
It had fought him, wrestled him on almost equal footing in Kazim's crazed state. A feat not many could achieve.
It was something powerful. Something dangerous. Something sinfully wrong...he knew that much. That was all he knew, truly.
Kazim's hands curled to fists. His knuckles scraping the stone.
The forest should have screamed at him. The river should have risen and swallowed him whole.
Instead, everything just watched. Silent. Knowing.
His wolf, buried deep within, prowled restlessly. Not in remorse. Not in fear.
In longing.
Kazim slammed a fist into the water. Again and again. Water splashed violently, scattering droplets like broken glass.
This wasn't just about a scent.
This was about what it meant.
Who he was.
What he had allowed himself to become.
He was Alpha. The last of the Resistance's iron line. The example. The sacred standard.
The very symbol of defiance against the Nyx rule.
He existed for the sole purpose of hunting down Nyx. He was never meant to desire the enemy.
And yet he had.
And worse, he had liked it. Every painfully delicious moment of it.
The shame curled around his ribs like vines, blooming slow and poisonous.
Kazim stepped out from the water, shaking, still wet, still unclean. The cedarwood oil Idris had given him lay by the rocks, unopened. He didn't reach for it. He didn't bother.
No scent would cover this.
Not when it was inside him now. Like he had been inside it then.
Embedded.
Burning.
Stretched.
He knelt there for a long time, wind biting at his back, the river whispering behind him.
Trying to decide whether the part of himself he'd betrayed was something he could ever get back.
Or if the man who returned from the forest last night... had already replaced him.