Author's Note: I'm posting this new chapter, however I am aware that many of you were unable to read chapter 36 due to a Wattpad glitch last weekend. I'm still working on how to rectify this, however some readers have told me they were able to access it via the web, rather than the app, so it might be worth trying that way if you can. For those who still can't see it, I'm so sorry and I hope it won't deter you from reading chapter 37. I'll be happy to discuss what happened in chapter 36 in the comments of this chapter if anyone would like to know! 

Something was touching my face.

It was a soft caress so feather-light that it left a path of tingling skin in its wake, enough to rouse me from the darkness in which I dwelt, but not enough to wake me completely. It was like those first few moments when slumber fades and consciousness calls to you, when you're lost in some marvellous dream-like world and haven't quite yet stumbled back to reality. Bad things are forgotten. Pain and grief dismissed as nothing but nightmares. And just for a few seconds, you remain there, in some suspended animation of bliss and warm cocooned happiness.

And then you wake up. And remember. And see. 

When I woke up, the first thing I saw was the deep hazel eyes of my husband, so close that I could clearly see the little flecks of amber sparkling in his irises like glitter. I think that had I seen those eyes as a human, I might have thought them beautiful, but now I could only see them for what they were: venom hidden behind the mask of the man I had once loved. Brandon was just mere inches away, studying my face intently as he ran his fingertips very gently down my cheek, tracing the outline of my lips, the contour of my jaw-line. I wasn't sure how long he'd been conducting one of his unsettling little experiments on just how much he could bear touching his vampire wife but I pushed that instinctual bubble of fear deep down inside my gut and resisted the urge to flinch. I wanted to though. I wanted to twist my head away from his grasp, but I wasn't about to show him my fear, nor antagonise him in any way by showing him my disgust.

The second thing I saw was that we were home - our old home - and I don't know why but that unsettled me more than being imprisoned in some godforsaken hellhole, like the catacombs under the old Varúlfur compound or the dank beast-filled barn where I'd watched them torture Harper. We were in the dining area of the kitchen and it was unusually dark, lit only by a few of the under-the-cupboard lights which illuminated the worktops now blanketed in a layer of dust. The large glass patio doors were covered by a blind that hadn't been here before. The dining table was gone and all that was left were the chairs, one of which I happened to be tied to. I had no idea why he'd brought me, why he'd even consider it, but it hurt to be here, it hurt to look around and see nothing but dust and ghosts.

Very slowly, he sat back in the chair he'd placed right in front of mine and folded his arms across his chest, a small proud smile adorning his achingly handsome features. He looked better than the last two times I had seen him but there was a sense that he'd gone to a lot of effort. Underneath his Varúlfur stench, which always overpowered everything else, I could detect the musky hints of the vanilla shower gel that he always liked to use and the strong scent of his cologne - in fact, I could tell he was wearing far more than usual and couldn't help but wonder if that had been intentional, in an effort to hide his natural odour. His hair looked slightly damp and brushed back off his forehead as if he'd recently washed it. His clothes were a vast improvement on the last time I had seen him too, skinny fit black Armani jeans, those expensive black leather boots from the brand I could never remember the name of – something which always used to bother him, because brands had always been his thing – and, I duly noted, the crisp white Abercrombie tee that I'd always been very vocal about admiring him in.

I blinked, trying to shake off the haze that was engulfing my head, fuelled by the hammering throb at the back of my skull where I'd been hit. A few more seconds crept by and the momentary shock of being here, in this place, was soon overtaken by the knowledge that something felt wrong. Very wrong. I closed my eyes, almost unwilling to close them to the very real threat that sat just in front of me - which in itself seemed like a foolish defensive error - and tried to connect with the power that had been nestled under the surface for so long and found nothing. Actually, nothing was probably the wrong word. It wasn't as if there was nothing there to find, I could sense the Angel within, but it was as if it was numb ... asleep ... dormant. My breath hitched in my throat when the realisation dawned on me and Brandon's eyes flickered into life, no doubt seeing the panic that suddenly flooded my own.

"How are you feeling?" he asked almost innocently and straight away, I knew. Whatever had happened to me, whatever the cause of my powers being rendered inactive, Brandon was only too aware of the reason why.

In a half-daze, I looked down, aware suddenly of the binds that held me, pulled tight around my chest and disabling my arms against my sides.

I hadn't imagined the jangling of chains after all.

Wound around my upper body was a heavy, oval-linked chain, black in colour and looking unlike any metal I had ever seen. It was wrapped around me three times and the more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of the black frame of Lucifer's mirror, the metal glistening like the oil-slick shine of snakes scales and utterly, utterly repellent. The metal seemed to breathe and undulate, like it was some living malevolent creature that could tighten and crush my bones at any second. The sight of it sent a wave of nausea rocking through my body and at the same time, there was something horribly familiar about it, as if I'd seen it before, maybe even touched it before.

"What is this?" I gasped.

"I must admit," Brandon answered, almost conversationally. "I wasn't sure what one chain could possibly do when Drachmann gave it to me, I never really believed, you know? But he was adamant. Said it was the only thing that would work, the only thing that would stop you from trying to fry us all alive, we just had to get it on you. And I'll be damned if he wasn't right."

"What is it?"

"In all honesty, I can't even believe I'm saying it, the thought of what it is and what it was used for – I mean, originally used for – it just seems like bloody madness. But then again, if anyone had told me my wife was an angel, I wouldn't have believed them either. Still struggling to get my head around that, by the way."

"You want to try finding out that you were sleeping with a dog all your married life," I said, narrowing my eyes.

He smiled and winked at me, despite the slur. "Hmmm, funny because I don't remember you ever complaining too much. In fact, you were always pretty vocal about how much you enjoyed it." His eyes drifted down to the slick black binds holding me. "We never did try this though, did we? I mean, obviously not with a chain, but I do quite like the idea of you being all tied up and helpless."

"Maybe we should come up with a safe word?" I replied with a sneer. "I've got one. Well actually, I have two. Fuck you."

Brandon's smile wavered a little. "I see your language hasn't improved. Still, we can easily rectify that. You'll soon learn it's better to do things my way. This will see to that." He leant forward again and ran his finger along one of the heavy links and stopped to look at his hand, rubbing the pads of his finger and thumb together as if the chain had left some sticky residue on his skin. "You can feel it, right? I mean, I know I probably can't feel it like you can, but then again it wasn't made for me so it's bound to feel different."

"Who was it made for?"

His voice dropped to barely more than a whisper, his eyes sparking with amber flecks that seemed to move and shift across his irises as if he was telling me some humorous tale that amused him. "It was made for the angels," he said. "Well, one angel in particular but apparently the power it wields works on any angel. This was made for Lucifer himself, can you believe that? Bound in the Chains of the Abyss and cast down into the fiery depths of Hell for a thousand years until he was freed to forever languish in darkness! Drachmann went on for bloody ages about it, but that's basically the gist of the whole thing. How crazy is that, Megs? It's all true, of course, but it still sounds insane. And yet here we are, well, here you are." He shifted closer on the edge of his chair so that his knees were either side of mine. "So there'll be no fire. No burning. No whatever else it is you can do. Not while you're wearing these chains."

"And what now?" I asked. "I'm assuming you have no intention of releasing the boy?"

He shrugged. "I don't have him, at least not here anyway."

The panic spiked hard in my chest. "Where is he? If you've hurt him..."

"Megs, relax, he's fine." He patted me on the leg, as if he was placating a child, but instead of removing it when he was done, he slid it a little further up my thigh and rested it there. I could feel the heat from his palm radiating through my jeans and warming my skin. Wetting his lips with his tongue, he smiled again only this time there was a nervous edge to it, one that told me that by doing this, by touching me, he wasn't feeling quite as confident as he pretended to be.

I swallowed. "I want to see him," I said, my tone softer, more pleading. "I want to see for myself that he's okay."

"You don't believe me?"

"You promised you'd trade him for me. And yet here I am powerless to do anything and you still have Lucius. What the hell do you expect me to believe, Bran? I need to know that he's okay. I need to see him. Please."

He didn't say anything for a moment, but he studied my face intently, a small frown marring his forehead. Finally, he shook his head, one curl breaking loose which he quickly pushed back, raking his hands through his unruly dark locks.

"You do realise this is pointless, don't you? Caring for the kid, I mean. He's not what you think he is. The boy's not even human, for goodness sake."

"And that means I shouldn't care?"

"You're caring for a kid that's not even yours! You know, I could understand if this was some moral battle of good versus evil or whatever you want to call it. God versus Lucifer. Heaven against Hell. But this has gone beyond that for you. This is about you loving something that isn't even your responsibility."

I glared at him. "I wasn't my dad's responsibility and he loved me. He didn't have to take me in. He didn't have to adopt me and he certainly never had to love me, but he did. You of all people should understand that. You said you understood, remember?"

I remembered. I remembered talking for hours with him about it, about how devastated I was when my dad had died, what it had been like to be thrust back into the cold confines of the social care system, orphaned and unwanted. I remembered how Brandon had held me as I'd cried. How he'd said he would always protect me. Always love me. 

"I did understand, you know I did, but that was different." He sniffed dismissively.

"Why?"

"Because Lucius can never be yours, Megs and you shouldn't even think about him like that. He was born for one reason only."

"To be bled dry by Drachmann? He's a child, Bran and as sick and as twisted as you've become, you must know how fucked up this is. Even your moral compass must be telling you that killing a child is wrong."

"He's not a child, not really. He's not a boy. He's ..."

"What? A thing? A vessel? Nothing? Is that what Drachmann told you? What do you think is going to happen when you cut him open? Will he kick and struggle like a child when you stick the knife in? Will he scream like a child when you start cutting? Will he bleed like a child would bleed? What about when he's finally dead, when there's nothing left of him to bleed out? How do you think he will look, Bran? Because I'm willing to bet he'll look just like any other dead child would look when they've been slaughtered and I can't believe you could even stomach the thought of that, let alone allow it to happen and be a part of it."

"Listen, I know how difficult it will be. You've become attached to him, I get that."

"Difficult? Difficult?"

"Yes, difficult," he insisted, with a scowl. "But once it's done, once everything is done, you want a kid, I can give you one. Not some make-believe child that isn't yours. Our child. Ours. Together."

I stared at him, recoiling inwardly as if he'd just punched me square in the stomach. "What? What the hell are you talking about? Bran, it was a physical improbability before when I was human but in case you hadn't remembered I'm a vampire now. It can't happen. It's not possible."

He nodded, smiling as he inched closer, sliding both hands up my thighs. "It can. Really it can. They can help us. Lucifer can make it happen. Once he's free, he'll help us."

"Drachmann told you that?" I said, scornfully.

"No Lucifer did. I met him, Megs. I actually met him." His eyes lit up as if enthralled by the very thought of it. "He said he'd give me anything I wanted. I said I wanted you, Megs. You. I told him that losing the boy would upset you - see, I knew that, I knew it would, I know you so well - and he said he would help us, that he'd give us a child and then you'd be happy. You'd come back to me and we'd be happy. Like we were, you know?"

"Were we happy? Really? I slept with someone else. Before I knew about you, about this, before I knew how our whole marriage had been based on a lie. I did that. And so did you."

He sneered. "She was nothing to me."

"But he's something to me."

He flinched and gripped my legs, digging his fingers in cruelly, desperately. "I was something to you before he came along! I was everything to you."

"Yes you were," I whispered, feeling the pain wrack my chest as I looked at him. "But it wasn't enough, was it? Face it Bran, if it had been enough, if we had been enough for each other, we wouldn't be here now. You would have rejected your destiny and I would never have met Harper. I wouldn't be what I am, and you wouldn't be what you are. We'd still be together, but we're not."

He reached up one with one hand and grasped the back of my neck. "That's because you needed a baby and I could never give you one. But soon I will be able to and everything will be just perfect. Think about it, Megs, think about what that child will be. Part Varúlfur, part vampire. A hybrid. A new race like nothing this world has ever seen before. It will be the start of a new era and we'll be there at the forefront of it all, where no Varúlfur or vampire can oppose us or stop us from being together."

He pressed his mouth hard against mine, holding my head in place as he forced my lips apart, forced his tongue inside my mouth and I could do nothing against the onslaught of his passion as he kissed me. I wanted to gag and cry at the taste of him on my tongue, at the insistent smell of him assaulting my senses, at the roughness of his beard against my face. Pulling back for a moment, he rested his forehead against mine, exhaling in short gasps of air that were hot on my skin. He licked his lips, unable to hide the grimace.

"I hate this, I hate that it's like this, I can't bear it," he whimpered.

Planting a trail of firm fervent kisses down my cheek and along my jaw line, he nuzzled my throat and I stiffened as his hand pulled hard on my hair, making my scalp shriek with pain, as his hand pushed upwards on my thigh, more forceful, more demanding. I pressed my legs firmly together but he didn't even seem to notice.

"Soon it won't be like this, I promise," he breathed against my neck. "It will be like it was before, only better, so much better. Lucifer will make sure of that. We'll be able to taste each other, touch each other and it will feel so damn good, Megs, I swear it will. I can't wait for when I can kiss every inch of you without feeling this pain. I don't want it to feel like this anymore. Part of me just wants to say to hell with it and take you now, here, in our house where I took you so many times before, do you remember? And even though it'll be wrong, even though it will feel wrong, I can't stop myself from thinking about it. I've barely thought about anything else since I knew you were one of them. And I know how disgusting that is, because we don't lay with your kind, but I kind of like the idea of doing something so wrong, so forbidden, so unnatural. I want you so much that it's driving me crazy. I know we have to wait, I know we shouldn't take the risk, but I still wish we could."

With a trembling hand, he began to unfasten the first few buttons of my shirt, fumbling to undo them like he was a nervous school-boy. As his breath quickened against my skin, I held my own, my mind howling in panic. I hadn't expected him to take it this far, I hadn't expected him to even dare to try this again, not after what had happened back at the compound.

"Bran..." I croaked.

"Don't ruin this, Megs," he murmured. "Not now. Not yet."

He couldn't undo many of the buttons, because of the chain wrapped tightly around my upper body, but he unfastened enough so that he could open the shirt to reveal a wide V of pale skin. Tentatively he ran his fingertips along my collarbone and down to the soft swell of the top of my breast, which really was all he could reach, but even that was too much. It was all too much and I was fighting back the urge to scream, to tell him to stop, to tell him that I didn't want this and I didn't want him. His lips had found my skin again and he pressed them against my neck, trailing them lightly downwards, following the path his fingertips had taken just moments before. I clenched my fists as he brushed the curve of my breast with his mouth and I screwed my eyes tight shut as he sucked gently on the skin there, his body juddering against mine as he did so.

And then it came, a growl so deep that I felt the sound vibrate against my chest and my eyes shot open as he stood up suddenly, knocking the chair out from underneath him and sending it clattering across the kitchen tiles. Towering over me, he yanked my head back with one hand and gripped my chin using the other, forcing me to look into his eyes that now blazed a poisonous, ravenous yellow.

"Stop it," he snarled, wrinkling his nose in anger. "Stop resisting this. It knows what you're doing. It can feel you defying me, it can feel you fighting what you really want. I won't be able to stop it from hurting you if you keep refusing to accept this." His face crumpled in agony. "Don't make me hurt you, Megs. Please, I couldn't bear it, not now, not when we've been through so much to get here."

I couldn't bring myself to speak, I didn't even know how to form the words. With an anguished moan, he bent down and kissed me again, this time more tender even though I could still feel the rage emanating from his whole body. He was practically shaking, desperately trying to hold it together.

"I will have you," he said through gritted teeth, as he brushed the hair back off my face. "Whether before or after, I don't care what it takes, I don't care what I have to do. We were destined to be together, Megs, you might not believe me now, but you will. You'll remember how good it feels, you'll remember how much you want this and when that happens you'll forget everything else, you'll forget him, you'll forget them all and we can go back to how it was. Instead this time, it will be just you and me and our child. I'll make you happy, I promise you that I will."

I willed myself to breathe. "You want to make me happy, Bran? Then let me see Lucius. Let me say goodbye and then I'll be yours. I won't resist you, I swear to you that I won't. I just need to see him, just one more time. Please." My eyes stung with tears that did nothing to cool my flushed skin as they slipped down my cheeks.

He chewed on his lower lip as he mulled over my request, his eyes calmer than before as he searched out mine. Smoothing away the tears, he raised his hand to his mouth and tasted the dampness that lingered there on his fingertips.

"I really shouldn't, you know," he murmured, his brow furrowing. "I can probably get you in there, but only for a short while. You say your goodbyes and that's it, okay?"

I nodded. "Sure, I understand. Thank you."

"On one condition."

My heart sank but I'd known it was coming. Of course, it had been inevitable.

He brushed his thumb gently over my lips, parting them slightly as he looked down at me.

"Kiss me," he said. "Kiss me like you used to. Kiss me like you mean it. Do that and I'll let you see the boy."

He was leaning down before I could even reply and by the time he had pressed his mouth upon mine, I was already counting robotically in my head, steeling myself for the taste of his tongue, urging myself not to recoil even though every drop of blood in my veins was screaming at me not to do this. It took everything I had to relax into the kiss, everything I had not to bite off his tongue and spit it out onto the kitchen tiles. I did the only thing I could to get through it. In my head, I banished the dust and the ghosts. In my head, I became her again, the old Megan, in her old home, surrounded by all those little inconsequential things she loved so much, kissing the husband she loved more than anything in the world. His tongue was soft and warm against mine, the kiss deep and sensual, his mouth gentle and enticing.

And I hated him for it. Hated her. Hated this.

When it was done, when he'd decided it was enough, he pulled back and smiled at me the way he used to. He'd always had such a beautiful smile.

"I love you," he said. "Say you love me. Please."

The old Megan smiled back. Lovingly. Adoringly.

"Yes," she replied. "I do love you. I always have."