Contents

  Book Two

  Concilium

  Author’s Note

  Content Warnings

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thiry-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  Book Two

  Concilium

  Gabriela T. Badra

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2025 by Gabriela T. Badra

  Cover design by Gabriela T. Badra

  Cover images by Gabriela T. Badra

  Interior design by Gabriela T. Badra

  Edited by Gabriela T. Badra

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a self-published book.

  First edition: November 30, 2025

  ISBN: 9798993774312 (paperback)

  Gabriela T. Badra

  gabrielatbadraauthor@gmail.com

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to Book Two of the saga. Before you delve into the continuation of this story, I would like to inform you of a structural change in the narrative that will enrich your reading experience.

  Initially, the book will feature a dual perspective:

  First Person (Sarah): To maintain the emotional intimacy and direct connection with the protagonist.

  Third Person (Heath): Used strategically to explore the context, develop the worldbuilding, and offer a broader view of the secret organization's internal workings.

  Once Heath's perspective has served its purpose of establishing the fundamental pillars of the conflict and the world's structure, the rest of the narrative will remain exclusively from Sarah's first-person perspective.

  With this structure in mind,

  Enjoy the book!

  Content Warnings

  This novel contains themes and scenes that may be sensitive or triggering for some readers, including:

  Explicit Sexual Content: Detailed and graphic scenes of sexual activity.

  BDSM Themes/Power Dynamics: Exploration of control, submission, and consent within intimate relationships (including light bondage, blindfolds, and verbal domination).

  Implied Sexual Violence and Trauma: References to the protagonist's non-consensual defloration as a form of manipulation.

  Aggressive Language and Behavior: Verbal and physical interactions featuring strong elements of possessiveness, roughness, and control.

  Graphic Violence and Gore: Descriptions of traumatic murder, mutilation (in a character's backstory), and intense physical violence.

  Abuse and Emotional Manipulation: Tactics of psychological manipulation, gaslighting, and prolonged emotional abuse by multiple male characters.

  Kidnapping and Confinement: Scenes involving the deprivation of freedom and the kidnapping of a key character.

  Death and Family Trauma: Descriptions of the violent loss of family members in the prologue.

  Use of Objects/Toys in Intimate Scenes: Inclusion of sexual toys and symbolic elements (like the silver clock) within intimate scenes.

  Reader discretion is advised.

  Are you ready to open your eyes and lose yourself in this secret society, where corruption is a forbidden pleasure?

  Good girl.

  Prologue

  ~1776~

  The cell's cold sank into Heath's bones as if determined to shatter them from within. He did not know if it was night or day; only the damp stone, the thirst, and the savage roar churning inside him existed. An unknown, hungry beast that would not let him breathe.

  Elizabeth had tricked him, and he had fallen like a complete idiot.

  He did not know how long he had been submerged in that darkness. He only remembered the words she spoke to him after they made love, just before a pulsating ache began to devour him from the inside.

  "You will be so useful to us, my Heath," she whispered, her naked body pressed against his, stroking his hair with a poisonous tenderness.

  Before he could respond, she leaned over him with an inhuman speed and sank her fangs into his neck. The pain was a brutal lightning bolt, and his body began to convulse, unable to comprehend the nature of what was happening to him.

  The cell door creaked, pulling him from his tortured thoughts, and the sound plunged into his ears like a rusted knife tearing the silence.

  Then Elizabeth entered, accompanied by a man he did not recognize. Both were smiling. In her, the mockery was evident and venomous.

  "Elizabeth... why am I locked up? What have you done to me?" Heath's hands clutched at his neck; every word was an agony. His throat burned, parched. "Why am I so thir...?"

  "Thirsty?" the white-haired man interrupted, his voice sharp as a dart. He smiled maliciously, enjoying the torment on Heath's face. "I know. It's unbearable, isn't it?" His mockery echoed in the cell.

  Elizabeth tilted her head, watching him as if he were a newly caged creature.

  "Poor Heath..." she whispered, and the sweetness in her tone tore at him more than any knife. "You still don't understand what you are now."

  The hunger roared within him, fierce, uncontrollable.

  "Elizabeth..." His voice trembled, broken between fury and pain. "You... you lied to me."

  She smiled. A slow, poisonous smile.

  "No, my Heath. I showed you your truth."

  "I need water... Please, my mouth is dry," he managed to articulate, the desperation resonating with an unmistakable harshness in his voice.

  "Water?" the man retorted with a mocking, dry laugh. "It's not water you need. But don't worry, Ashwyck. We aren't so cruel as to not feed you, are we, Elizabeth?" He diverted his gaze to the woman he had, in a time not so long ago, imagined as the mother of his children.

  "Oh, of course," Elizabeth replied, drawing a smile heavy with malice.

  He was about to answer, to scream, to demand an explanation, but a chorus of cries interrupted him. They were heart-rending screams, a sound of deep affliction. Another man, possessing unheard-of brute strength, approached their position. He carried three people over his shoulders, their heads covered by cloth bags. He carried them with an inexplicable ease, as if they were merely sacks of debris. He had never witnessed such a display of force in a human being.

  In that instant, it dawned on Heath that the sound of wailing was coming from those three bodies on the newcomer's shoulders.

  Elizabeth and the fair-haired man, whose name he still did not know, opened the cell bars. Heath tried to move, to struggle in a futile attempt to escape. It was useless. The man with the almost-white hair was faster, gripping him in a way that paralyzed all movement.

  "Calm down, Ashwyck," he whispered in his ear with a condescending, mocking tone.

  He could perceive his breath. It smelled of metal, but it was a strange, sweet, intoxicating metallic scent that ignited an unknown madness in him. His mouth watered; it was as if that aroma was exactly what his body, at last, was demanding.

  The man of inexplicable strength entered the cell and threw the three bodies onto the floor, mere centimeters from him.

  Heath saw the satisfaction painted on Elizabeth's lips, but it was a satisfaction tinged with perversity, very different from the one he knew from her at the climax of their encounters.

  The three figures, still hooded, continued their uncontrolled crying. Heath felt a pang of familiarity upon seeing them, but his mind resisted concentration; the incandescent burning in his throat monopolized every one of his senses.

  "It's time to eat, Ashwyck. This will be the dinner you'll never forget," said the white-haired man, with cruel sarcasm.

  Heath did not grasp the full extent of his words until the bags were stripped from the three people's heads.

&
nbsp; "No... Please... No," he thought.

  His father. His mother. His sister, Olivia.

  Their eyes met. His mother and Olivia cried inconsolably, and his father... Heath had never seen that kind of look in him: one that understood, a silent terror before the imminent horror.

  That anguish vanished, violently replaced by the same savage burning in his throat.

  Suddenly, his gaze diverted to his family's wounds, fresh and coagulated blood at various points on their bodies. He could taste it. The flavor of their wounds settled on the tip of his tongue, mixing with the same aroma from the blonde man's breath. Metallic... sweet... That exquisite flavor was branded into his consciousness.

  The white-haired man released him and exited the cell with the other, leaving him inside with his family, and with his own thoughts turned to torment.

  Elizabeth and the men watched him with satisfied expectation, awaiting whatever reaction they expected from him.

  Olivia was the first to speak.

  "Heath, I'm so scared. I don't like your gaze," she sobbed.

  "Shhh," said his mother, pulling Olivia's forehead to her chest, trying to keep her from seeing her elder brother's hungry look. "It's alright, darling."

  His mother's gaze met his, and in it there was not just fear, but also sadness, a deep understanding, and, still, love.

  "Mother, I don't know what's happening to me," he said, and an unrecognizable, rough voice—like that of a monster—left his mouth. "I can't stop smelling your bloo..." The word died in a whimper of pain, choked by need.

  His father rose from the floor with sudden fury and, through the cell bars, addressed their three spectators:

  "What have you done to my son? What did you give him?"

  "Oh, don't worry. It won't take long for you to find out," responded Elizabeth, with a smile of hypocritical empathy.

  His father turned to look at him with an expression of resignation and pure terror.

  Heath tried to restrain himself, but the urge to sink his teeth into the people he had loved most in his entire life had become an unbearable torture. The fire and the burning that consumed his throat were indescribable.

  Several hours passed, or maybe days; time had lost all meaning.

  He let himself be consumed by the irrational thirst, begging for death to arrive and end it all.

  However, to his surprise, death did not come.

  Daylight was revealed, and with it, his thoughts and memories were replaced by a more primitive force, an uncontrolled animal. His family stopped being his family. Now, they were... prey.

  Heath moved with terrifying speed. He could hear his sister's screams, then his father's, but they served no distraction. There was only room for one idea.

  Blood.

  His mother was the last. When he approached her, she did not fight, she did not scream, she did not shed a tear. She only looked at him with a deep understanding, letting him know with her eyes that everything was alright and that she still loved him.

  "Heath," she said, looking him in the eyes with tears suspended on the threshold. "You are a good man. Do not forget the goodness in your heart."

  It was the last thing he heard her say before watching life extinguish from her eyes.

  Chapter One

  The city was sunk in fog, damp, rotten as always. A perfect stage for the hunt.

  Heath's steps echoed on the cobblestones, measured, elegant, as if he did not carry the boiling rage of a chained animal in his chest.

  Sarah.

  The image of her skin staining with Phillip's was a lash.

  A murmur of human laughter pulled him from his thoughts. Two men stumbled in the darkness of an alley, the stench of alcohol ingrained in their cheap clothes. Heath did not even bother to hide. They saw him too late.

  A flash, a crunch. One fell with his throat ripped open, the other barely managed a scream before Heath’s hand plunged into his chest. Warm blood burst forth like a spring, staining his fingers.

  He wasn't hungry. He was enraged.

  He grit his teeth as he drank, as if taking this man’s life could tear away the image of Sarah moaning beneath Phillip.

  "What stupidity," he thought.

  It had been his idea. He pushed her into that world, he threw her into its jaws. Phillip was just a pawn. Now it burned him to see her marked by him.

  He dropped the lifeless body against the damp stone. Silence fell again, broken only by the slow drip of blood onto the ground.

  Another alley, another prey. A woman this time, young, fear in her eyes. She didn't run. None of them did when they looked him directly in the eyes.

  He felt no remorse seeing her gaze, nor empathy. In the end, this was what he truly was.

  A monster.

  A murderer who killed without pity.

  "Run," he whispered, and when she obeyed, the chase was so quick that he barely felt the adrenaline. Another dead body. Another useless puddle.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The reflection in a puddle looked back at him: reddened eyes, tense jaw. An uncontrolled predator.

  He took a deep breath, fighting the tremor in his hands.

  "Oh, wow... you look like hell," a familiar voice said, cutting the silence behind him.

  Heath turned slowly, suppressing a growl, and rolled his eyes when he recognized him.

  Jackson.

  The only one who had managed to become something akin to a friend in all those centuries.

  The recent rain had left puddles reflecting the yellowish light of the lampposts, and the blood of the bodies at his feet mixed with the water, forming dark threads that ran between the cracks in the cobblestones. The air smelled of iron and rot, so thick it clung to his throat.

  Jackson emerged from the shadow with the same irritating calmness as always. His pale skin stood out under the dim light, and his honey-blonde hair, long and slightly disheveled, fell over his shoulders like a memory of more human times. His hazel eyes, contrasting with the paleness of his face, shone with an irony that seemed never to fade.

  "I’m not in the mood, Jackson," Heath replied, kicking one of the still-warm bodies lying on the ground, just to release the rage.

  Jackson arched an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest, with that insolent air that made him seem immortal in another way.

  "I don't get it. Your plan must have worked, right? At the meeting, I saw Phillip quite charmed by your... human pet." His smile twisted, cruel and amused at the same time. "So what’s the drama? Since when do you kill people for anything other than thirst?"

  The buzzing of rage surged back to his temples.

  "Jackson, I told you I'm not in the mood."

  Jackson clicked his tongue, observing the bodies around him with a gesture of feigned disapproval.

  "What a spectacle," he murmured, leaning down to look at the woman's livid face.

  With one finger, he traced the bloody line on her neck, as if evaluating a poorly finished work of art. "You didn't even bother to be clean. This isn't like you, Heath."

  Heath simply watched him, suppressing the impulse to rip that smile from his lips.

  "Did you come just to annoy me?"

  "No," he replied with a soft laugh. "I came because I was a little thirsty. And now I find you here, with a few corpses at your feet, as if you've lost your mind. Something has to be going on with you."

  Jackson took a few steps closer, with that irritating calm that made him look almost human.

  "Let me guess," he said, his hazel eyes gleaming in the gloom. "Does it have to do with your pet?"

  Heath's jaw clenched.

  "Shut your mouth, Jackson."

  "And what if I don't want to?" he countered mockingly, tilting his head, his blonde hair falling over one shoulder. "Come on, Heath, you don't have to pretend with me. After so many centuries, I think I've earned the right to know why you're losing control. Does that human have something to do with it?"

  Heath clenched his fists, digging his nails into his palms.

  "She is... irrelevant."

  Jackson let out a brief burst of laughter, the mocking echo bouncing off the alley walls.

  "Of course she is. That's why you come here, to bleed humans dry until the ground is soaked." He leaned toward Heath, lowering his voice. "Don't tell me you got attached to the human."

  "Be careful with your words," Heath growled.