When the Monster Fell in Love

**Ivery Clark POV** 

I stared down at the broken vase, the jagged pieces scattered at my feet. A single crimson petal from the flowers inside lay among the shards — delicate, ruined. 

My stomach twisted. Alrigo looked unstable right now, his gaze darkened, the shadows beneath his eyes growing heavier. 

*Is he drunk..?* 

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

It wasn’t the broken porcelain that terrified me.

It was him. Alrigo looked terrifying, even lethal. “Say. It. Again. Ivery.” 

My eyes lifted, slow and unwilling, and there he was. Closing the distance between us, soon towering over me, his shadow swallowing mine. 

And in that moment, I wasn’t sure what terrified me more — the possibility that he was drunk… or the chance that he wasn’t.

Still… I looked up. I was shaking, yes terrified to my core but my voice still came, broken and small.

“Please…let me go.” The moment the words left my mouth, something cracked inside him.

The darkness in his eyes turned into something far more volatile, the rage. The madness.

“Let you go..?” he hissed, his breath brushing my skin like smoke from a fire too close. 

“I don’t think you get it, ma bella,” he whispered, voice a rough caress and a warning all at once. “There’s no world for you outside of me now.”

“There *is* a world without you, Alrigo,” I said, my voice shaking but growing steadier. “And maybe it’s ugly, maybe it’s cruel, but it’s mine. I don’t need your mercy. I’ll definitely find a way out. You don’t control my soul.”

I could feel the tears welling up, but I forced them down.

“You don’t need me, Alrigo. You never did. I was a passing mistake you didn’t know how to let go of. So do it now. Let go. Because I promise you… I’ll live my life just fine. Without your name. Without your world. Without you.”

The silence after hung so heavy it hurt to breathe.

And for the first time, Alrigo looked… unsteady.

Not furious.

Not smug.

Not deranged.

Just a man… bleeding beneath the madness.

“How…” he rasped, voice barely above a whisper. “How can you say that?”

His voice, when it came, was low and ragged. “How can you say you can live without me…? That you didn’t mean anything?”

I felt it — the air shift. A storm rolling beneath his skin. 

“You’ll never leave me!” Alrigo growled. “How can you run while I bleed for you, while I fight demons for you—while I ruin myself just to keep you breathing in this goddamned world.”

“You want freedom, Ivery? Then you should’ve never let me touch you. Because once I did—you stopped being free.”

His mouth was inches from mine. The room spun, and for a second, the lines between hate, obsession, and desperate, forbidden longing blurred into one unbearable, dangerous truth.

“You think this is about owning you? About keeping a pet on a leash?” His voice cracked — just barely, but enough to split something inside me. “It’s not. It’s about the way I wake up in the middle of the goddamn night, aching for you. The way your voice ruins my peace. The way your absence makes this whole fucking world look gray.”

The admission came through gritted teeth, as though it cost him everything to speak it aloud.

“I should’ve discarded you. Used you, broken you, and left you for dead like the rest. But you… you infected me.”

*What… what did he just say?*

Something in my chest stuttered, traitorous and stupid. “A-Alrigo…are you drunk..?” 

““Would it matter if I was?” he murmured, voice low and gravelly. “You have already ruined me. And you think alcohol is what makes me say these things?”

“I don’t eat. I don’t fucking sleep. I can’t close my eyes without seeing you. Hating you. Needing you.” His thumb dragged possessively along the pulse hammering beneath my jaw. “You’ve made me weak, Ivery. No one weakens me. And you think you’re the one who’s trapped? When I’m the one who’s dying every second you try to run.”

“I look for you in every silence. I hear your voice in my fucking head when I’m alone. Do you get it, Ivery?” His voice cracked—only for a second. “I can’t breathe without wondering if you’re still mine.”

My heart stuttered. I hated the way it reacted to his words. I hated that heat rising in my chest, the ache blooming where there should’ve only been fear. 

He’s drunk, I told myself. He has to be drunk.

His lips were dangerously close to me. “And you think you can leave me? I’d tear this world apart to find you. There’s nowhere you could run where my shadow wouldn’t follow, nowhere you could hide where my name wouldn’t make them hand you over. You breathe because I allow it. You exist because I won’t let you go.”

His gaze dropped to my lips. He didn’t move, but I felt the weight of his words press against me harder than any touch.

“You’re not walking away, Ivery. Not because I’m angry. Not because I’m in pain. But because if you ever leave me…” his lips curled into something brutal, something cruel, “...I’ll burn the world to find you. And when I do, I’ll make you wish you never spoke those words.”

His forehead rested against mine, and for a moment, the world tilted.

“I’ll burn the world down before I let you go.”

When he spoke again, it wasn’t a threat, wasn’t a command. It was a confession disguised as a growl.

“Because you’re the only thing in this rotten world that makes me feel like there’s something worth bleeding for.”

And just like that — my heart betrayed me again. I felt it — a shift, a pulse, like my heart had the audacity to flutter at a moment like this.  

*Does Alrigo really likes me..?* 

I whispered, voice trembling against the space between us. “Do you… do you have feelings for me, Alrigo?”

The silence that followed was suffocating. 

His chest rose and fell, uneven and ragged. Alrigo Valerie King who was too proud, too angry at the world, too terrified of what loving someone could cost him, finally spoke.

“Yes…”