Scratch appears in the doorway without knocking, all six eyes taking in my appearance with obvious calculation.
“Forty-nine years, seventy-one days, and twelve hours until my service ends,” he mutters. “Lord Jesseth arrives within the hour. Master Kiakoa requests your presence in the strategy room.”
“Does he?”
“You are to be briefed on tonight's... performance.”
The word carries weight. This feeding will not be private, desperate, driven by need. It will be theater. A demonstration of power for an audience who will judge our worth by how well we can weaponize intimacy.
The strategy room feels different when I enter. Kiakoa stands behind the massive stone table, but his attention is not on the maps. It is on me, on the way the red silk moves against my body, on the exposed line of my throat.
His eyes burn gold in the sourceless light. When he speaks, his voice runs deeper than usual.
“Jesseth will expect to see weakness,” he says, stopping close enough that I feel the cold radiating from his skin. “A lord controlled by base hunger. A human victim afraid of her captor.”
“What will he see instead?”
His hand rises to cup my face, thumb tracing the line of my jaw. “A partnership. A woman who chooses pain because it serves her purpose. A lord who feeds not from desperation but from strength.”
The touch makes my pulse quicken, and I see his nostrils flare as he scents my arousal.
“Show me,” I whisper. “How it will be. Tonight. In front of him.”
His thumb moves to my lower lip, pressing gently. “You will not flinch. You will not cry out in fear. You will surrender to the pain because you want it, because it gives you what you need.”
“And what do I need?”
“Silence. Emptiness. The peace that comes when everything else burns away.”
His thumb pushes between my lips. I taste salt and something metallic. Without thinking, I bite down gently, just enough pressure to mark him.
He draws breath sharply. His free hand finds my waist, pulling me against the hard line of his body. Throughthe silk dress, I feel the evidence of his arousal, thick and insistent against my hip.
“You will offer yourself to me,” he continues, his voice rough now. “Not as a victim, but as a partner. You will make him understand that your pain is a gift you give willingly.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Will you take more than before?”
“Much more. Enough to leave you empty, clean, perfect in your surrender.”
Need builds in my body at his words. The promise of deeper feeding, of being drained completely, makes me wet.
“Where?” I ask.
Instead of answering with words, he turns my head to the side, exposing the long line of my throat. His lips brush against my pulse point, cold and soft.
“There,” he murmurs against my skin. “Where he can see everything. The bite, the blood, the way you arch into it instead of away.”
His teeth scrape lightly over my pulse. Not breaking skin yet, just marking the spot where he will feed. The sensation makes my knees weak.
“What if I can't do it? What if I freeze up in frontof him?”
“You won't.” His certainty rings absolute. “You have spent years hurting yourself in shame, hiding your needs, making yourself small and acceptable. Tonight you will be exactly what you are, without apology.”
A commotion in the courtyard below interrupts us. A single rider, a guide, returning from the border. Jesseth has arrived at the rendezvous.
