Chapter Four – The Shadows We Cast
The Unseen and the Unforgotten
The light in Httoq was artificial, engineered to mimic day and night cycles, but the shadows were real.
Lupa saw them first.
Noticed how they stretched and warped across the stone walls.
Romulus, seated in his throne of wires, cast the deepest shadow, thick and unwavering, tethered to him like a second spine. Remo’s shadow was restless, shifting even when he stood still, as if his body wanted to disappear before the world could catch him. Lupa’s own shadow moved before she did, anticipating her thoughts, shaping itself into ideas before she had words for them.
And Hermes—
Hermes had no shadow at all.
She turned, focusing on where he stood near the threshold, arms crossed, watching them all. The light hit him. The floor beneath his feet should have darkened. But nothing was there.
She tensed. “Why don’t you have a shadow?”
Hermes barely reacted. “Because I was born perfect?”
Romulus chuckled. Remo rolled his eyes. Remo moved first, circling him, his brows furrowing. He shifted, angling his body, stepping into different patches of light, but no matter where he stood, Hermes left nothing behind. No outline. No trace.
“That’s not normal,” Romulus muttered.
“No,” Lupa agreed. “It’s a problem.”
Lupa didn’t laugh.
“You knew,” she said, staring at him. “This whole time, you knew.”
Hermes exhaled through his nose. “Figured it out a while ago. People without the gene? They can’t see me. I could stand right in front of a No Nation officer and they’d look straight through me.”
Romulus frowned. “So that means—”
“It means,” Lupa interrupted, “that if someone can see Hermes, they’re Federated.”
A beat of silence.
Then Remo laughed softly. “That’s actually useful.”
Hermes smirked. “You’re welcome.”
Lupa didn’t respond. She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the shadow on the floor that didn’t belong.
A shape that wasn’t theirs.
A shape that shouldn’t be there.
And then, slowly, it rose.
The Devourer of Shadows
The temperature shifted first—subtle, like breath against the back of the neck. Then came the weight, something unseen pressing into the air, thick and expectant. The shadows deepened, stretching in ways they shouldn’t. The light dimmed—not fading, but folding, surrendering to something else.
And then, she stepped through.
The darkness peeled away from the floor, stretching into limbs, curving into a mouth. A woman emerged from the void, her body flickering like something unfinished, her edges dissolving into the air before reforming.
Feast had arrived.
She inhaled deeply, tasting the room before she even spoke.
“You,” she murmured, eyes landing on Lupa. “You called me.”
Lupa’s breath caught. “I didn’t—”
“But you did,” Feast interrupted, stepping forward. “Not with words. With knowing. That is enough.”
She turned her gaze, scanning them all. Reading them.
Then, she looked at Romulus.
And she smiled.
The Sin in the Dark
Romulus had been silent. Felt his breath turn shallow. His body was responding, sharp and urgent, but his mind recoiled. It wasn’t just the touch—it was the knowing. The way she unraveled him with every word. The way his body betrayed him, moving before he could think, reacting before he could reason.
“You’re trembling,” she whispered.
He clenched his jaw. “No, I’m not.”
Feast laughed. “Oh, Rom,” she purred, her fingers pressing lightly against his pulse. “You don’t even know how to lie yet.”
He had watched. Listened. Calculated.
And yet, when Feast’s eyes landed on him again, he felt the air tighten.
“You,” she said, voice curling around him like smoke. “You will do.”
Romulus raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
She stepped closer, flickering as she moved. “I consume power. You generate it. I need to feed.”
Lupa’s voice was flat. “It’s simple efficiency.”
Romulus scoffed. “Sure, because ‘efficiency’ is exactly what I’m thinking about right now.”
Feast’s lips curled into a smile. “Oh, darling. I know exactly what you’re thinking about.”
She touched his collarbone, feather-light.
Romulus, for all his strength, did not move.
Feast leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of his ear.
“You don’t understand your body, do you?” she whispered.
Romulus tensed.
“You grew too fast,” she continued. “You weren’t supposed to exist like this. The forest abandoned you. Your sister kept you alive. You are a symbiote to her, incapable of surviving without her close. And you—” she let out a soft laugh “—you aged thirty years in five.”
Romulus swallowed.
Feast’s voice was velvet. “You should have had your first woman at eighteen. By my calculations, that means at three and a half years old, your body was twenty-one.”
He let out a slow, shaky breath.
“Tell me,” she whispered against his jaw, “how does it feel to have a body that wants what the mind doesn’t understand?”
His fists clenched at his sides.
“How does it feel,” she murmured, “to be starving and not know what for?”
The big man wanted to step back.
But he didn’t.
Because she was right.
The triplets had never been meant to separate. They were a system, an equation that functioned only when all variables were present. Lupa needed them close.
Maybe that was why Remo had never resisted Hermes. Maybe Lupa’s desire had bled into him, made him feel it as his own.
And maybe, for the first time, it was Romulus’s turn.
Feast placed a hand on his chest, just over his heartbeat.
“Let me show you,” she whispered.
Romulus let out a ragged breath.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.
Feast smiled, slow and dangerous.
“Oh, darling,” she whispered. “That’s the best part.”
And then she kissed him.
It wasn’t soft.
It wasn’t kind.
It was hungry, like she had waited lifetimes for this moment.
Her lips were warm, tasting of something sweet and forbidden—peaches soaked in honey and citrus, a perfume of spring rain, of something fresh yet sinful.
Her skin was bronzed like the morning after a storm, her mouth too large to be delicate, yet impossibly perfect, full and lush, the kind of mouth that devoured and blessed at the same time.
She smelled like rose milk spilled on warm skin, something faintly creamy and floral, like the ghost of a garden tangled in sin.
She pressed against him, and he felt her breath at his throat, warm, damp, intoxicating.
He was drowning.
Her body was heat.
Heat pooling between her knees, wrapping around him, teasing, threatening.
Romulus gasped into her mouth, his hands finally moving, gripping her waist, pulling her against him.
And then—
The shadows moved.
Like liquid ink spilling across the room, they coiled around them, bending the light, swallowing them whole.
Suddenly, the fortress wasn’t quiet anymore.
A city roared around them.
The hum of engines, the murmur of voices, footsteps against pavement. Somewhere, a car horn blared.
Romulus tensed.
They were still in Httoq.
But they weren’t.
They were making love in the middle of a city street, in broad daylight, surrounded by a sea of invisible people.
And no one could see them.
The sound, the movement, the rush of bodies—it was everywhere.
Feast moaned against his lips, her fingers in his hair, dragging him deeper, pressing her body to his, letting him feel everything.
He was hard. Desperate. Terrified.
She felt it.
Smirked against his lips.
“You’ve never had this before, have you, Rom?”
He shuddered.
She kissed his throat. Bit softly at his jaw.
“Then let me have you first.”
Romulus let out a sound—half a groan, half surrender.
His fingers dug into her hips, her thighs—warm, soft, strong.
Feast moved against him, slow, teasing, her heat pressing against his hardness, the friction a perfect, agonizing torture.
Romulus had never been touched like this.
Never been wanted like this.
And she knew.
She whispered it against his ear.
“You are mine now.”
Romulus should have pulled away. Should have fought it. But his body was already answering, pressing closer, surrendering to something larger than want, larger than thought. It was hunger, raw and aching, written into the very bones of his existence.
And for the first time, he had no desire to fight it.
