Fear, yes. Genuine apprehension about what was coming, what he would do, how it would feel. But beneath the fear, something else entirely. Something that recognized this as exactly what I needed—structure, consequence, someone who cared enough to correct me when I strayed.
Someone who wouldn't let me destroy myself, no matter how hard I tried.
"Yes, Daddy."
The words fell from my lips like surrender.
His eyes flared with heat—satisfaction and hunger and something that looked almost like pride. His hands released my face slowly, reluctantly, his fingers trailing down my throat before falling away entirely.
"Go," he said.
I went.
Chapter 6
Thestudywasemptywhen I arrived, but that didn't stop my heart from trying to escape through my throat.
I took the chair by his desk the way he'd instructed. The crystallized-night surface gleamed before me, star-maps turning slowly on the far wall, shadow-script books breathing on their shelves. Everything exactly as it had been when we'd signed the pact.
My thighs pressed together beneath my shift. The thin fabric felt inadequate suddenly—too revealing, too vulnerable. I hadn't thought to put on anything more substantial this morning, hadn't imagined I'd end the day like this: waiting in his study with my pulse between my legs and my stomach in knots.
Anticipation coiled low in my belly like something alive.
I tried to think about what I'd learned in the archives. Evara's face—my face, almost. The scar we shared. The impossible weight of a soul that had broken the world ten thousand years ago and somehow found its way into my blood. But every time I reached for those thoughts, they slipped away like water through cupped hands, replaced by something more immediate.
The memory of his voice.
Now, you will face the consequences of breaking my rules.
Heat bloomed between my thighs despite myself. Or maybe because of myself—because some part of me had been waiting for this since the moment we'd signed the pact. The part that wanted structure. Wanted boundaries. Wanted someone who cared enough to correct me when I strayed.
The part that had never been corrected because no one had ever cared enough to try.
I don't know how long I waited. Time had stopped meaning anything in this place, in his absence, in the space between knowing I'd done wrong and facing what came next. The star-maps completed one full rotation. Then another. My fingers twisted in my lap, nervous energy with nowhere to go.
And then he was there.
I felt him before the door opened—the bond blazing to sudden awareness, his heartbeat strong and steady where it had been muted by distance. The shadows in the room surged toward the entrance, and I watched them curl around his ankles as he stepped inside.
He didn't speak.
The silence was worse than anger.
He crossed the study with that predatory grace I'd noticed the first day, each movement deliberate and controlled. His starlight eyes found mine across the space between us—bright now, so bright, fed by days of my surrender—and I saw something in them that made my chest ache.
Not rage. Not fury.
Disappointment.
Quiet and certain and wrapped in something that looked terribly like care.
I opened my mouth to explain, to apologize, to fill the silence with words that might make it better. But he reached me beforeI could speak, and his hand caught mine with a gentleness that undid me more than harshness ever could.
He pulled me to my feet.
Still silent. Still watching me with those devastating eyes.
He led me out of the study.
