Chapter 261: Chapter 261- Vikram’s Anger

He didn’t have to say it. His touch branded the truth right into her bones.

She glanced down at her chest.

The soft cotton of her bra was already stained with two distinct, wet circles. Her aching nipples were practically burning through the material, fresh drops of milk soaking the pale fabric, ruining the clean garment in seconds.

He stared pointedly at the wet spots.

“What happened?” he murmured, an infuriatingly smug lilt in his voice.

She let out a shaky breath and reached for her blouse.

He snatched it first. With a fluid, gentlemanly grace, he held the garment open for her. She glared at him for a second before sliding her arms into the sleeves. He drew the pale fabric up over her shoulders, his broad palms smoothing down the length of her arms to her wrists, his heat lingering on her chilled skin.

Then, he began to button it. He started at her collarbone, his deft fingers slipping the small plastic discs through the loops with maddeningly slow precision. She stood frozen beneath his ministrations, biting her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

Her gaze snapped back to Vikram’s bed. To his slack face, and the crusty white stain of her milk splashed across his hospital gown.

“What do I tell him?” she whispered, genuine, terrifying panic finally bleeding into her voice.

Raven smoothed the lapels of her blouse, his thumbs pressing neatly against her collar. “You tell him whatever you need to.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” he agreed simply.

He grabbed her skirt from the floor. Crouching slightly, he pulled the soft fabric up over her bare thighs, dragging it securely over her hips and adjusting the stretchy maternity band to cradle the bottom of her belly.

“He’s going to know,” she stated, the icy dread pooling in her stomach. “He’s going to look at me and he’s going to know. The marks, my—”

“Yes,” Raven cut in smoothly.

“He’ll—” She choked on the word.

A flash of memory struck her. Vikram’s livid face in the parking lot two days ago. The frigid, boiling fury radiating from him in the dark car.

’How long. You bitch.’

She remembered the stinging crack of his palm against her face in the park. Her hand flew to her cheek instinctively, ghosting over the phantom pain.

Raven’s dark eyes tracked the movement. His gaze hardened infinitesimally.

“If he touches you,” Raven said, his voice entirely stripped of emotion. It was colder than ice.

“Raven—”

“If he lifts his hand to you,” he repeated, his eyes locking onto hers, “I will kill him.”

She stared at him. He didn’t look angry, nor was he trying to sound tough. He stated it with the mundane certainty of a law of physics. Gravity makes things fall; Raven will snap her husband’s neck.

“Don’t,” she breathed in horror.

“That’s not your decision.”

“He’s my husband—”

“And that’s also not relevant to whether I kill him.”

She was completely speechless.

He stood to his full, towering height, dominating the small hospital room with his broad shoulders. He raked his gaze over her, inspecting his handiwork. Her buttoned blouse. Her smoothed skirt.

Then, his eyes landed on her ruined hair.

He stepped into her space, burying his large hands into her messy locks. He didn’t yank the roots this time. He sifted his fingers through the dense, sweaty tangles, gently picking apart the worst of the knots. It was a bizarrely tender gesture from a man who had brutally pounded her into the mattress for hours. He didn’t fix it completely, just combed out the most obvious signs of a frantic, hair-pulling ravaging.

He gathered the heavy mass at the nape of her neck, twisting it into a loose, elegant knot. With a subtle flex of his dark, preternatural aura, the hair pinned itself perfectly in place, holding tight without a single clip.

She peeked at her reflection.

Her hair looked presentable, at least. But the mottled purple bruises collaring her throat were impossible to hide. And the wet, dark points of her nipples protruding arrogantly against the thin fabric of her blouse screamed the truth to anyone with eyes.

’He will know.’

The panic was a dull roar in her ears.

She caught Raven’s gaze in the glass. He was studying her pale, terrified face, easily reading the chaotic swirl of dread consuming her mind.

“I know,” he rumbled softly.

She didn’t ask him to clarify.

“It will be hard,” he told her. He offered no sweet platitudes, no assurances that everything would work out. Just the brutal, unfiltered truth.

She gave a single, jerky nod, bracing herself for the inevitable explosion.

“He’s going to—” She swallowed hard, staring at her unconscious husband. “He’s going to be—”

“Yes,” Raven said.

She dragged a shallow breath into her lungs.

“You should—” She cast a frantic look around the room. At the torn, stained sheets of her bed, the kicked-open bathroom door, the lingering, musky scent of sweat, sex, and milk hanging thick in the air. “You need to leave. Before he wakes up. You should—”

She whipped around.

He was gone.

She blinked at the empty air where a massive, terrifyingly solid man had stood a fraction of a second ago. Sunlight streamed quietly through the blinds, illuminating the dust motes. No sound. No shadow. No Raven.

She spun frantically, checking the corners of the room.

“Wait,” she hissed. She darted to the door, then the window. Both sealed tight. “Wait— wait, where—”

She stepped into the empty spot on the linoleum, looking down as if expecting to find a trapdoor. Nothing.

“Where did he—”

The realization hit her like a physical blow to the stomach. A cold spike of supernatural terror finally pierced through her post-coital haze. The man she had just spent twelve hours screaming beneath wasn’t entirely human. The way he had simply appeared. The unnatural stamina. The raw, dominating command that bent her body to his will. She had known it instinctively all night, but admitting it to herself meant acknowledging the sheer, horrific scale of what she had let inside her.

She stood completely alone in the center of the quiet room. Dressed, but utterly ruined. Her wet nipples poking brazenly against her silk blouse, her neck a violent canvas of lust.

“Wait—” she whispered to the empty air.

A sharp, rattling gasp shattered the silence. A desperate, full-lung pull of air, like a drowning man breaking the surface.

It came from the bed beside her.

She slowly turned her head.

Vikram.

His eyes were wide open, wildly dilated as he snapped back to consciousness. His chest heaved against the thin gown, his lungs working frantically to catch up with the waking world. He stared blankly at the ceiling tiles for a few seconds, blinking against the harsh fluorescent glare.

Slowly, his head rolled on the pillow.

His gaze locked onto her.

She stood frozen in a beam of harsh morning light, her hands hovering nervously by her sides. The silence between them stretched, thick and suffocating, packed with a thousand impending explosions.

His eyes began to move.

He didn’t look at her face. He took a slow, agonizingly thorough inventory of her body.

He saw the bruised, bitten wreckage of her throat. The tight, wet points of her nipples clearly visible through the damp fabric of her blouse. The messy, half-pinned state of her hair. His eyes flicked to the wrecked, stained sheets of her empty bed, and the wide-open bathroom door. He was absorbing the filthy, undeniable story the room was telling him.

He had been looking for confirmation of his suspicions since yesterday. Now, it was glaring right at him.

She watched the color drain entirely from his face. She saw the exact second his brain connected the pieces. The horrific reality crashed over his features, contorting his expression into something terribly twisted and broken.

“Husband—” she squeaked. It was a pathetic, terribly small sound from a woman who had absolutely no defense left.

Vikram finally met her eyes.

His jaw clenched so tight the muscle visibly popped beneath his skin. It was that same frigid, terrifying look from the parking lot, but amplified a hundred times over. It was the devastating, world-ending fury of a man whose worst, most paranoid nightmares had just been proven true right in front of him.

“You fucking bitch.”

He didn’t scream it. His voice was a low, guttural rasp, dangerously calm. He was keeping his tone leveled by sheer, white-knuckled willpower, because if he let the screaming start, violence would inevitably follow.

He threw the thin blanket off his lap and sat up.

The IV line pulling at the back of his hand went taut. He glanced at the tube, reached over, and violently ripped the needle from his vein, completely unbothered by the bright bead of blood welling on his skin. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the mattress, planting them firmly on the floor.

“How long,” he demanded, his dead eyes locked on hers. The exact same words he’d spat at her in the car, delivered in that same chilling, deadpan tone. “How long have you been spreading your legs for that man?”

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