My fingers dig into the blankets beneath me. The tether had pulled taut in my chest, reeling me towards her. I’d felt my Enchantra respond without my permission—reaching, seeking.
There’s no denying it now: how truly dangerous she is. Despite how her presence here in Heartwood has started to feel more like a cure than a disease, there’s only one clear decision I can make.
She cannot be allowed back into that bastard King’s hands.
That dark entity deep inside me uncoils and stretches. When I think of watching those violet eyes glaze with death, it bites, pain piercing my heart. It taunts me, wraps around my ribs and squeezes, and suddenly I’m seeing her beneath me, those eyes rolling back, my name on her lips as I—
I bite down on the inside of my cheek until I taste copper. My jaw locks, muscles jumping beneath the skin. A tremor runs through my shoulders, down my arms. The thing inside pulses with each heartbeat, swelling, pressing against the cage of my chest until I can barely breathe around it. My dick is rock-hard.
I stopped fighting it days ago. Now I just let it show me everything I want to do to her, every way I want to break her—simply let it engulf me and ride this obsession until it begins to fade and sleep again.
The longer she’s here, the longer she breathes, the harder the temptation becomes to resist. I punish myself in Ceira; her unwitting compliance in this addiction only fuels her voracious sexuality. I feel no guilt—her company and her eager pussy are the only things keeping me from ruin.
“We should get out there.” Ceira yawns with a stretch and gets up, holding out her hand.
The flames blur and dance. Orange bleeds into red. I don’t move.
Her palm cracks across my face.
My hand snaps up, fingers circling her wrist before the sting fully registers.
“Bitch.”
“For you, always,” she purrs.
I rise, rolling my shoulders back, lifting my chin. My features settle into the mask of the Alpha they need to see. My hand slides down to dig my fingers into the tight leather covering her arse.
We join the Gathering.
Everyone is seated, food is passed around, conversations are flowing. Domanikk is there, his usual glass of Fae Wine in hand, looking relaxed. My brow furrows.
Then I see her—standing in front of the table, waiting. For me.
Her eyes find mine. There is no fire in them, no hint of the defiance that I have come to desire like an addiction. Just resignation.
No!
Heat floods my veins, sudden and vicious. My vision narrows. She stands there so still, so accepting of what’scoming, and something in my chest twists sideways, something that feels dangerously close to … panic?
She’s giving up. She’s letting go. And in doing so, she’s slipping through my fingers like water, denying me the very thing that makes herher—the thing I crave more than breath itself.
My heart thumps against my ribs—once, hard—and I hate her for it. Hate her for this quiet surrender that feels like abandonment. Hate myself more for needing her defiance so desperately, for being so pathetically dependent on the fire in her eyes to feel alive.
Without that spark, what is she? What amI?
I lean down and whisper into Ceira’s ear, my voice rougher than intended. “Stay here.”
I stride towards her, each step fuelled by a rage I can barely contain. Red creeps in from the edges of my vision, tunnelling everything down to her face, her throat, the pulse I can see beating there—too calm, too resigned.
She’s supposed to fight. She’s supposed toburn.
When I reach her, she makes the mistake of breaking my gaze, her head dipping slightly in submission.
Something inside me snaps.
“You need to fight it, Alaya,” I hiss it low, for her ears only, a desperate command wrapped in fury. “Where’s that fucking defiance I have come to crave?”
Fight me. Hate me. Just don’t leave me with this hollow shell.
