For a moment, it’s just us.
The predator.
The prey.
The blood between us binding tighter than ink.
“Did you enjoy your tantrum?” My voice is low, quiet, dangerous. “Did it make you feel powerful, little star? Smashing what you couldn’t stand to see?”
Her chin lifts. Defiant. Beautiful. Splintered.
Good.
Now I can teach her the difference between rebellion and war.
I step forward, slow and deliberate, boots crunching glass underfoot. The sound is sharp, merciless, like a verdict.
“Mirrors break,” I murmur, eyes fixed on hers. “So do girls. But paper…” I reach into my coat, draw out the folder, stained with my blood. “…paper lasts forever.”
I drop it on the bed beside her. Pages scatter, fanning across the sheets, across her bloodied hands. Every line, every signature, every proof. Her name written a hundred ways.
Her face hardens. Her breath stutters. Her fingers twitch.
And I smile.
“Read it. Scream at it. Tear it apart if you want.” My voice sharpens, cuts. “It won’t change what’s written. You were mine before you ever knew my name. And now—” I lean closer, breath hot against her ear. “—you’ll sign yourself over again. This time in blood.”
The papers flutter across the sheets like snow, like ash. She stares at them as if they might burst into flame, as if her hatred alone could scorch the ink from the page. But they don’t. They wait. Patient. Permanent.
Her hand trembles as she reaches for one. Blood from her palm smears the margin as she lifts it, crumpling the corner between fingers split and raw. Her eyes flicker over the lines—dates, signatures, annotations. Her name written clean, black, cold.
Her lips part. No sound. Just breath. The shallow, uneven kind of breath that betrays more than words ever could.
I lean down, pick up another page, and press it flat against her thigh. My fingertip traces her name, slow, deliberate, a brand burned through paper into flesh.
“This is you,” I murmur. “Not the blood. Not the glass. Not the tantrums. This. A line of ink, signed away before you were old enough to understand what it meant. Property. Prey. Mine.”
She jerks her head away, hair sticking to her blood-streaked cheek. Her jaw clenches. Her breath catches.
I grip her chin and force her face back to me, thumb digging into the bruise blooming there. Her eyes blaze. Rage, grief, defiance—they all look the same when they’re this close to breaking.
“You want to hate me?” My smile is sharp, cruel. “Hate the men who signed you away. Hate the hands that inked your cage. Hate the ghosts who turned you into a bargain.” I press the page harder against her skin until the edge cuts. A thin red line blooms, staining the contract in the only ink that matters. “But don’t you dare pretend you weren’t mine long before I touched you.”
Her throat works around a sound—half sob, half snarl. She rips the paper from me, tears it in half, shreds it until the pieces scatter across the sheets.
Good.
I laugh low in my chest, leaning back to watch her fury burn. “Tear them all. Every page. Every proof. It won’t change a thing. You can’t rip out destiny.”
She glares up at me, chest heaving, fists full of confetti-stained blood. Her voice is raw when it finally breaks free: “I am not yours.”
The words scrape like glass down my spine. They sting, but they thrill too. Because she’s wrong. And because she’s still speaking to me—even if it’s hate, even if it’s fury, it’s still mine.
I lean close, lips brushing the shell of her ear, voice low enough to cut:
“You’ve been mine since the first time you bled in front of me. And you’ll die mine, too.”
She shudders. Her eyes close. Her fists open, letting the torn fragments rain down like the ashes of her rebellion.
