Her silence dares me. Her silence screams.
So I make her feel it.
I slam my hips into hers, hard, brutal, forcing a ragged cry out of her throat. Her body arches, her wounds screaming open again. Blood slicks between us, hot, filthy, binding.
“This,” I groan against her mouth, devouring her broken sob. “This is forever. Not pretty words. Not vows whispered under light. It’s blood. It’s scars. It’s ruin. And now it’s all you are.”
Her tears soak my lips. Her thighs tremble against me. Her silence holds—barely. But she can’t take the word back. She knows it. I know it. The walls know it.
The shrine of her crumbles around us, photographs trampled, glass grinding, both of us painted in red.
And still, my smile cuts deeper than the wounds because she gave me the word that means I never have to let her go.
Forever.
Hook
Her silence after the word is a coffin lid. She thinks if she doesn’t repeat it, it loses power. She thinks she can bury it.
But I’m the one digging the grave.
I carry her back into the room, dragging her through the hall of photographs. Her bare feet smear blood across the clean floor, her body limp in my arms but her eyes still burning, still alive. The pictures flutter down as we pass, my shrine collapsing into ruin around us.
I lay her on the bed, the sheets already stiff with old blood, new blood soaking through. She tries to roll away, but the hook catches the chain at her ankle and drags her back.
“You whispered forever,” I remind her, crouching low, my voice a growl against her ear. “So now I’ll build it. Piece by piece. Scar by scar.”
Her voice cracks, hoarse, desperate. “You’ll kill me.”
I grin, feral, pressing the flat of the hook against her throat. “No. I’ll bury you alive. Because that’s what love is.”
I reach under the bed, pull out the box I’ve been saving. She stiffens when she sees it—the cold steel cuffs, the collar, the chain heavy enough to anchor her to the bones of the earth.
Her eyes widen, tears spilling hot down her cheeks. She shakes her head, whispering, “No. No. Please.”
And I kiss her forehead gently, reverently, before snapping the collar around her throat.
“There,” I murmur, voice soft and sharp all at once. “Forever looks good on you.”
The collar clicks shut around her throat, a sound louder than any scream. Heavy steel against fragile skin. It gleams red where my blood smears across it, a crown and a shackle all at once.
She thrashes, coughing, pulling at it with both hands, but the weight drags her back down. I catch her wrists, slam them to the mattress, and clamp the cuffs over her bruised skin. Cold iron bites into her, snapping shut with brutal finality.
Her sob shatters, raw and furious. “Don’t—don’t do this?—”
I lean close, my lips brushing the shell of her ear, the hook grazing her ribs. “It’s already done.”
The chain rattles as I thread it through the ring bolted to the floor, pulling tight until she can’t move more than a few inches. Her ankles kick, desperate, but I catch them one by one, shackling them down until she’s spread open, bound to the bed like an offering.
Every clink of metal is a nail in the coffin of her freedom.
Every breath she takes sounds more like a prayer.
I step back to look at her. Collared. Cuffed. Chained. Her chest heaves, fresh scars rising and falling under the steel that pins her. She’s never looked more alive.
“You think this is death,” I murmur, pacing slow at the foot of the bed, dragging the hook along the chain until sparks kiss the floor. “But it’s resurrection. The last one you’ll ever get.”
Her eyes burn into me, wet and wild. “You’ll never break me.”
