With his hands on either side of his head, Hades stormed around the room, grabbing hold of anything his bare hands could reach for in the spare of the moment. Almost everything around him was either torn, shredded, or smashed.
The hunger, which had become so immensely overwhelming, turned him feral. And not even he, the most sane of his kind, could possibly control the animal weeping to leap out of it's coat.
But he was so close, he knew that the seconds were ticking by. No matter how painfully slow. As soon as the clock hit 7, he didn't have to spare another second, for the ritual would have commenced.
Hades bit down on his lower lip, something he had taken habit to in the past few weeks, and almost retched at the foul tasting blood that dripped into his mouth from his pierced lip. Unlike the others, he couldn't stand the taste of his own kin’s blood. It repulsed him, threatened to contort his very pleasure of the taste of human blood.
But for the first 300 years of his life, he had no other choice to drink from them. To a being with an almost soul like his, the idea of drinking from a human had been despicable, and he'd gone those torturous years with not a words complaint about it, in fear that what he was feeling was abnormal to his new race.
Well, he soon realised that that's because it was. No real vampire hated the taste of their own kin’s blood. But then again, Hades was really never one of them, and he knew it deep in his being, in the place he kept secret but also so wholly open to the others. It was not only his advantage to the outside world, but from the inside, it was his only down fall.
In that moment, he could feel the hunger more than it had ever taken a toll on him. He was good, composed, usually. He could hide the hunger until the very last slab of his dignity was on the line, and then he'd regrettably, torturously, submit to it.
But he knew now the reasoning of it. It was the girl.
Since he'd touched her creamy flesh, his cold hands on her arms and shoulders, the power of possession had influenced his very needs, down to the last shred of him.
And that amplified everything. Because he knew of her presence, what she held in her blood, and what her kind could do to his, it did strange things. He was attached to her in a way that made him want to never stop feeding off her blood. To drink her dry- not only to quench his thirst, but to ensure no other measles could lay a hand on her.
That was the absurdity of his new nature. It wasn't his fault, though. Nor hers.
But he had been growing to realise, over the past couple hours that- not including the hunger- everything else that urged him to her, this feeling he felt, dulled the longer he stayed away.
So it was clear, with the feeding of her blood inevitable, all ties between the two would never be sewn, in order for them to never have to be severed. The longer he stayed away, the better he would be at controlling himself. And hopefully, just hopefully, he would be able to get through the ritual without ripping her heart out in a mere show of possession.
Although he knew it would be even harder after the first drop of her blood touched his lips.
He could barely stand the thought of what it tasted like, his mouth watered and his fists clenched. How was he supposed to do this? And if Verity was right, and the aftermath of the feed left him even more connected to her, he was damned. Damned to hell. And he was positive, she would be too.