Claimed By The Ashen Lord

ARIELLA'S POV

“Matteo, let go of my wrist! What the hell do you think you're doing?” I said in a sharp voice as I tried to free my hand from his grip.

But he didn't let go.

His grip wasn't aggressive at all—that was what frightened me most about it. It was desperate. He held onto my like I was the only solid thing left in a tilting room. From the way he didn’t blink and the way his eyes had gone somewhere far beyond this shop, I realized he didn’t know what he was doing.

I dropped the tattoo gun I was using to draw his phoenix tattoo a few minutes ago before he grabbed my arm, and placed it softly on the table.

“Matteo,” I kept my voice calm even though I was shaking beneath it—his eyes were turning white. “Release my wrist, now.” I reached out and tried to pry his hands away with my other free hand.

He blinked repeatedly, and his eyes were back to the normal blue it had, and his focus returned in stages as he looked around and his eyes landed on his hand around my wrist. He released it quickly and flinched backwards so fast that he knocked the ink on the table beside him.

The ink bottles fell down and shattered with a loud noise that made me scrunch my face.

“Oh my… I'm sorry. I'm—” His voice was rough, like he hadn't spoken in days. “I don't—I wasn't trying to—” he stuttered as he bent to pick the bottle pieces on the floor.

“It’s fine, leave it.” I said, but it was a lie—it wasn't fine. “Just breathe.”

He shook his head and stood up too quickly, grabbing the edge of the table to steady himself, and his eyes swept the shop like he was checking for something.

Then he leaned towards me, “Don't let them find you.” he said and his voice was barely above a whisper.

He straightened, blinked twice, grabbed his jacket and walked out without finishing his tattoo.

I stood there alone in the empty shop at 5pm, trying to understand what had just happened.

This was not the first strange thing that had happened to me in months. It had been going on for three months—clients finishing their sessions and returning days later with no reason they could explain, sitting in my waiting chairs for hours watching me work like they needed to be near something and couldn't name what.

Conversations between strangers on the pavement outside my shop dissolving the moment I stepped through the door, the people involved blinking at each other like they had forgotten what they were arguing about.

The barista two blocks down who had started delivering my order before I arrived and looked slightly dazed every time I walked in, like she was trying to remember a thought she kept losing.

I had typed search terms into my phone every single time it happened, until the results stopped making any kind of sense. I had no name for what was happening.

And now Matteo—who had been a regular for eight months, and had four sessions. He always tipped, and never for once acted strange in the middle of a session.

I exhaled slowly. I only had two more clients, and I think I could hold it together for that long.

—

At 5:30pm, the second client walked in and I started her tattoo. It went smoothly, and she left without any incident.

At 7:13pm, the third client called and shifted it to three days, and I was glad. I needed to go home and try to understand the absurdity of what had been happening to me.

I started tidying the shop, and I was halfway through the cleanup when the door opened, and I felt the air in the room change drastically—It was impossible to ignore, so I turned around to see who it was.

A man was at the threshold of the door and he was tall, dark haired, wearing a plain coat, but it looked expensive, and he was extremely handsome.

He stepped inside and his gaze landed on me immediately, like he had known where I was before coming here.

There was something about him that made the back of my neck prickle—not attraction—something other than that. It was the same instinct that had been misfiring at odd intervals for three months—the one that said ‘wrong’ before my brain could assemble a complete thought.

"We're closed," I said and turned back to the ink bottles I was arranging in their boxes.

"Well, your sign says open until nine."

I didn't look at him. "I'm making an exception tonight." I said sharply.

"Hmmm, for what reason?"

I dropped the box and turned to look at him, the irritation visible on my face. "Because I've had a difficult evening and I don't want a longer one." I turned back to the counter and started stacking my sketch books. "Check the website and book an appointment. If you’re lucky enough, you get a date before this month ends.”

“I don't want to wait till then.” His voice was still calm.

I dropped the sketch books on the counter with a thud. “What's your problem, mister?” I turned around and crossed my arm. “What part of ‘we're closed' don't you understand? I don't have the energy for this tonight, please go.” I said as I picked the sketch books back up and walked to the drawer by the side.

"Your seven fifteen slot is empty.” He said, undeterred.

My hands froze on the handle of the drawer, and I turned around slowly. "How do you know that?"

He looked at me with a flat expression, like it was normal for any random stranger to know my schedule.

The prickling at the back of my neck sharpened. "You have about ten seconds to explain how you know my schedule before I chase you out myself." I said, trying to hide the uneasiness in my voice.

"I'd like a tattoo," he said, as though I hadn't spoken.

"I'd like an answer." I snapped back.

He shoved his hands in the pocket of his coat. "Get the tattoo done and you'll get one."

I stared at him, and he looked back at me with his grey eyes that shimmered under the light like glass, with complete patience, and it was the most aggravating thing I had ever watched a person do while standing completely still.

"Sit," I said, because my mouth had apparently stopped consulting my brain.

He settled into the client chair like it had been built for him.

"What design?" I asked as I pulled on fresh gloves.

He shrugged. "Custom. Your instinct."

I rolled my eyes. "My instinct needs a brief, mister. Placement, reference, size—"

"Surprise me."

I looked at him over the top of my glove and furrowed my brows. "You want me to put something permanent on your skin without telling me anything about what you want?"

"I want to see what you come up with when nobody tells you what to do."

I blinked. "That's not how tattooing works."

"Hmmm." He said nonchalantly, and he pulled out his phone and started scrolling through it.

I picked up my sketchpad, and my eyes were still on his face. My hand was already moving toward the pencil like it had made a separate arrangement. Something about him was making my hands want to draw and I resented that deeply but I did it anyway.

The design came out faster than anything I had produced before—pulled from somewhere I couldn't locate, my hand following lines that felt like they already existed and I was simply finding them. What came out was a fiery pattern, stark and precise and somehow ancient-looking.

I stared at it for a moment longer than I intended.

"Placement," I said.

He unbuttoned his shirt without being asked. His muscles were perfectly toned, with nice abs—but—that wasn't my focus. His right arm and shoulder were already covered in extensive ink—complex and eye catchy, work that had clearly accumulated over a very long time. He pointed to an unmarked surface of his forearm.

I prepared the stencil and reached for the gun.

"Ground rules," I said as I checked the tattoo gun. "You move, I stop. You talk too much, I stop. You annoy me, I stop. And you tip too. Generously."

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. "Agreed," he said.

I placed the stencil on his skin and started.

He was completely still, and he didn't look at the tattoo once. His grey eyes were fixed on me the entire time.

I kept my head down and my lines clean and I told myself his attention wasn't doing anything to my concentration—even as the work came out sharper than usual. Like being watched by him was making me perform at a level I didn't normally reach and I found that deeply irritating.

"You're not going to tell me your name," I said after a while, and I told myself that conversation during sessions was normal.

"You didn't ask." he said, his eyes not leaving my face.

"Okay, I'm asking now."

He considered this for a moment longer than it warranted. "It doesn't matter tonight."

I kept my focus on the lines. "It matters to me. I like to know who I'm working on… For documentation purposes."

"I think that’s not the main reason. You're working on someone who won't forget this," he said quietly, as he pointed to the tattoo that was forming beneath the tattoo gun, and something about it made it land somewhere unexpected.

I pressed slightly harder on the next line than I needed to, and he didn't react.

When I finished, I set the gun down and reached for the cleaning cloth.

His hand closed around my wrist and his thumb pressed lightly against the inside of my wrist where my pulse was doing something I would have preferred to keep private, and from the way he went completely still I understood that he could feel exactly what it was doing.

He rose from the chair slowly and the full height of him rearranged the space between us and I had to lift my head to look at him and his eyes had changed—still grey but something had surfaced in them now, and I should have stepped back.

But I didn't.

"Do you know what you've done?" he said quietly and my throat tightened.

His knuckles grazed my cheekbone—the lightest possible contact—I felt my cheek heat up from the touch and I struggled to maintain eye contact with him, my pulse hammering in my throat, and something about the way his eyes locked on mine made my feet feel like jelly.

Then his phone rang, and I was extremely grateful.

He looked at the screen, and his expression darkened. Whatever he saw there was definitely bad, and he let go of my wrist and reached for his coat.

I cleared my throat. "Y—you haven't paid," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

He started walking towards the door.

"Hey." I followed him two steps. "We had an agreement. You said you'd tip. You haven't paid anything—"

He paused at the door without turning around.

"The people coming to your shop," he said, without looking back. "The ones who keep returning.” he paused. "I'll find out why that's happening."

My heart stopped.

Nobody knew about that. Not Isla, my best friend, nor Tessa, my neighbour. Not a single person knew about what had been happening. I had kept it entirely to myself because saying it out loud would have made me question my sanity.

"How do you—" My voice came out smaller than I intended. "How do you know about that?"

He didn’t respond, he just walked out.

The door clicked shut behind him, and the bell chimed once, and I realized he had gone—no name, no payment, no explanation—and I was standing in the middle of my empty shop alone with my heart hammering against my ribs and my hands shaking.

A stranger who had walked into my shop uninvited, sat in my chair, said nothing about himself for two hours, and walked out without paying—knew about the one thing I had told absolutely nobody.

I locked the front door and told myself there was a reasonable explanation for this.

But I couldn't think of one.

—

When I reached my car, I got in and sat still for five minutes, trying to calm my racing heart. When I was steady enough, I reached for the ignition, and I froze mid air.

My hands were glowing.

It wasn’t the bleed of the parking lot lights through the glass. It was something underneath my skin—faint and gold, pressing upward, pulsing in a slow and steady rhythm that was not my heartbeat.

I turned them over. I knew every mark on these hands. Every scar, every tattoo, every line from eleven years of being a tattoo artist. I had mapped this skin more times than I could count.

What was moving beneath it now was something different—it wasn't mine.

The glow pulsed again, like something breathing, and it didn't hurt.

I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself that it was my imagination.