~ CASIMIR ~“Please, Cazz, I needed your help!” she croaked, desperate and terrified, but now gaining hope, because she’d seen me hesitate. She put her hands down on the carpet and started inching towards me, her body still naked and flushed from fucking my brother.“He hurt you?” I asked carefully, doing everything I could not to let her see that I knew she was lying.A volcano of rage was rumbling in my chest, threatening to erupt.“Yesss!” she hissed. “He said… he said if I didn’t do it he’d kill me! I just prayed you’d forgive me!” Her voice was a thin rasp, barely a whisper. She crawled towards me, keeping her head and shoulders lower than her plump ass that I had bitten more than once, and cupped, and squeezed, and wondered if it tasted like her shoulder and whether I’d claim her after we were mated.My body shuddered as the cold wind of betrayal punched, sliding a frozen knife between my ribs.“Why did it have to be him?”It was the question I should have asked him before I sto
~ CASIMIR ~At first when she went still and I took the first step back into an entirely new life, fury was still my fuel. My hands shook, but my bones thrummed with power and adrenaline and sheer thrill.I could barely breathe. Yet my body had never felt stronger.I took another step back, then another, taking in the carnage of the room… inhaling the scent of blood.Two bodies.My brother.My love—no, the female who had betrayed me.Both of them, I reminded myself. They were both traitors. Both self-serving, two-faced liars.There was a flash in my head of Sheba curled up in my bed, her head on my shoulder, laughing at something I had said, her hand stroking my chest—I staggered back two more steps as the world began to spin.My father’s voice became a hurricane in my head as I watched the female I had started to think I would mate bleed out on the floor.“…they will use you. They will deceive you. Smile to your face, then bare their fangs behind your back. They will take everything
~ JESSE ~We were now sitting on the normal couch that squatted against the wall of the room. I’d led him to it when he started shaking in the middle of that story. It was wide and flat and he was a lot less likely to fall off of it when he swayed. He hadn’t even stopped talking, his eyes darting left and right as if he wasn’t seeing this room at all, but the events he was describing.When he sat down, He bent forward, elbows on his knees, head hanging from his shoulders and buried his face in his hands.But he didn’t stop.When he first started speaking there was a pinch of jealousy in my chest because he smiled when he remembered caring about her, hiding her from his father. The hope… I’d never seen him hope before, and I ached for it.But I wept for him when he described the moment he discovered them together.I sobbed when his voice cracked as he tonelessly described shifting and killing his brother.And when he talked about confronting, and ultimately killing her… I could barely
~ JESSE ~At least he didn’t walk away, I told myself.We stood there, staring at each other, my head spinning and my heart aching for him.How could I possibly help him with this?But then he dropped his head and raked his hand through his hair, blowing out a breath before he straightened and met my eyes again, his jaw tight as a bowstring.“Jesse, I know I’ve hurt you. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I wouldn't. But you have to understand, it’s not just you I don't trust. It’s me.”Then he let me see in his head—flashes of memory, flashes of thought. And I stared and drank him in because he was never that open. But… but then it hit me what he was showing me—the inferno of rage that lived in his chest. The violence he’d been a part of. The violence he wanted to be a part of. The ability to shut down his emotions and just act—to let himself act on instinct, brutal and animal though it may be.The tightrope that he walked, day after day. All the ways he had to force himself not to simply destr
~ CASIMIR ~“I’m your slave, Cazz,” she said, everything in her shaking. “Not because you made me. I chose that. And I’m going to keep choosing it. Every day. No matter what.”The words hit me like a sonic boom, traveling through flesh and sinew and bone to slam into my heart—into the bond—and shake those defenses I’d been building around myself since I was nothing but a pup. Because I couldn’t remember a single day in my life that I’d felt safe. Ever.Yet… here she was…I forgive you.You’re worth it.A strangled groan broke out of my throat, and I dove for her, taking her mouth desperately, pulling her into my chest and lifting her off her feet.And when our skins touched, the steel walls I had built around my heart shattered.I pulled her to me, delving her mouth, staggering under the shock of it all as I carried her to the nearest couch—a simple sectional I’d brought here for resting between bouts of play.I dropped her to the wide seat of it and covered her, still taking her mout
~ CASIMIR ~Moments later my sight cleared and I found myself laying on my back, staring up at the ceiling of the dungeon, my mouth agape and chest heaving as I tried to get my breath back. But I couldn’t even think in full sentences yet.Jesse.Love.Power.Holy shit.“Cazz… what… what was that?” Jesse asked quietly from my right.Head spinning and heart hammering, I rolled over to find her curled on her side facing me, her face pale and eyes wide.“Shit. Are you okay?” I asked her hurriedly, combing her hair back from her face and pushing up on a shaky elbow and scanning her body for injuries or… something. I wasn’t even sure what I thought I might see. All I knew was that I’d almost been swept away by that… that tidal wave of power. I didn’t know how she’d survived it. And the panic in me when I realized she might have been hurt, or worse, lost…Everything in me shied away from the thought—and what it would mean.When I didn’t find any injuries on her, I brought my gaze back up to
~ CASIMIR ~We spent another hour there, just being together, sinking into the bond, letting our bodies accommodate the new power.I had to explain to her why the power came in these waves—new abilities, new levels of strength were triggered by the bond, by dominance, and… well, obviously by our lovemaking.My father had never told me that.“…when you gain in the power it’s like adding a limb. It takes time for your body to adjust,” I said, pushing a strand of hair back off her face that had fallen over her cheek. “But it’s like healing… over time, you forget that it even hurt. And it just seems natural for it to be that way,” I said with a shrug.She frowned. “So when you get stronger, it hurts you?”“Sometimes,” I admitted. “It depends. A big rush like that—I’ve never felt anything like that before. That almost burned me away. That was… that was a lot, Jesse.”Then I met her eyes and she smiled. “You’re a lot too, Cazz. It’s okay. We’ll get there.”I couldn’t decide if her simple fa
~ CASIMIR ~“You ready, Casimir?”My father stood in the doorway of my chamber in simple leathers, his hair tied back, and a smile on his face. He winked when I looked at him.I nodded and smiled as I scrambled to my feet, thanking God that he hadn’t arrived ten minutes earlier when I’d been making a model. He could probably smell the glue, but I’d just tell him I had fixed… something.I was twelve, and beginning to grow. He kept telling me to leave puppyhood behind me. And I was eager to do it.But I liked making things.I had decided that when I was King, I was going to make a decree that games and creative things—not just prophecies and books, but fun stuff like building and art and dance—wouldn’t be deemed childish. That anyone would be allowed to do them.Because then I could too.I scrambled out of my chair and ran after my dad, who’d turned on his heel and stalked down the hall, expecting me to keep pace, even though his legs were still inches longer than mine. But I didn’t min