“Good,”he answers, tension straining his tone, though there’s a gentleness threaded through it.“I’m working on strengthening our bond. For all of us. So we can feed you. Keep you strong. Keep you alive, Lillien. Until we can?—”
“No.”Panic rises fast, drowning.“Don’t. Please. Don’t risk it. If he finds out—if he takes you from me—I’ll shatter.”
A pause. Heavy. I feel him weighing the truth between us.
“He won’t,”Cassiel promises.“You won’t lose us. And we won’t lose you. Not again.”
Relief cracks me open—until his voice shifts, rougher, sharper, guilt bleeding into fury.
“But you shouldn’t have left us.”
The words cut like iron through my chest.
“I thought—”My throat burns.“I thought I was protecting you. Protecting all of you.”
“We don’t need protection,”he growls. The bond quivers, heat edged with grief.“We needed you with us. Not there. Not chained. Not his.”
My hand presses against my sternum, right beneath the necklace Zepharion forced on me. The gem pulses like a leash, red light thrumming against my skin. I can’t feel the others through it, but somehow—gods, somehow—Cassiel got through.
A trembling smile ghosts my mouth—until I hear the scrape of a chair.
“Problem, pet?”
His voice slices the air, smooth and sharp.
I look up. Zepharion’s golden eyes are narrowed, his mouth curling like a viper baring its fangs. I blink, my body scrambling to obey before my mind can catch up. “No—no problem.”
“You haven’t touched your food.”
“I’m hungry,” I murmur, pushing food around the plate. “Just… not for this.”
His laugh is low, displeased, dark as a blade dragged across stone.
“Oh, I know.” He leans forward on one elbow, voice curling into my ribs. “But you’ll have to wait. A few more days. Until our wedding night.”
The words coat my skin like oil. My stomach heaves. My soul rejects it so violently I almost gag.
Cassiel…I reach again—desperate—but he’s gone. The bond drops into silence.
And I am alone. Again.
Something twists inside me. A scream, a blade, a spark. The fork slips from my hand, clattering against the plate.
“We both know I’ll never be yours.”
The words tear out before I can leash them. A whisper of fire riding on their backs.
Zepharion stills. Too still. Then, slowly—deliberately—he stands. He moves like a predator circling prey that dared to bite.
“No matter what you do,” I say, louder now, though my fingers tremble against the tablecloth, “no matter the bonds you sever or the ring you put on my finger, or the leashes around my neck—I will never belong to you.”
The silence after is thick, viscous, deadly. And then… he smiles. A serpent’s delight.
“You’re still new to being a succubus,” he purrs, circling the table. “So young. So full of fight.”
He stops behind my chair. Leans down. His hand slides around my throat—gentle, but claiming. Threatening. His thumb presses into the pulse hammering there.
“You have no idea,” he whispers against my ear, “how rabid your kind becomes when truly starved. How desperate. How feral.”
