Page 12

Blackwell doesn’t blink beneath the weight of her refusal.

“I know how this looks,” he says, voice measured like he’s reasoning with a council of kings and not the two people currently vibrating with the instinct to rip this room apart. “And I know how the others will react. Wrath won’t take this lightly. Lust won’t like being displaced. Greed will ask what’s in it for him. But that’s not your concern right now, Lucien.”

My jaw tightens. My name shouldn’t sound so polite coming from his mouth. Not when what he’s asking is a betrayal dressed up in inevitability.

“You should let Luna and Theo work this out themselves.”

The words hit like venom. Dismissive. Calculated. As if this,this, is a minor misunderstanding, like she’s deciding between tea or arsenic.

She laughs. Sharp. Bitter.

“Oh,absolutely not,” she says.

She turns to face Blackwell fully now, the shift in her stance violent only in its precision. Every line of her body sayswar.

“I’m not working anything out with him.” She gestures toward Theo without looking at him. “He can fuck off back to wherever you’ve been keeping him, and you can spare me the sanctified bullshit about balance. I’m not bonding to another man like this is some divine scavenger hunt.”

“Sweetheart,” Theo starts, voice syrup-drenched, already halfway to a smile.

Luna’s head snaps toward him.

“No. You don’t speak. You don’t look at me. You don’tbreathe in my direction.”

He raises his hands in mock surrender, that damn grin never faltering. “Kinky.”

“I will burn that grin off your mouth.”

And for a beat, the roomtilts. Not from magic. Not from Dominion. But from the livewire between them, volatile and vicious. Not chemistry. Something older.Rivalry.

Blackwell watches her like he’s seeing an equation align. It’s disgusting.

“I didn’t agree to any of this,” she says, each word punctuated like a blade dragged through cloth. “I’ve already bonded to seven men, each one forged into my soul, each one a burden and a gift Ichose. I won’t be forced into an eighth because you suddenly remembered your lost little mistake and thought,oh, let’s toss him in the mix and see what happens.”

Theo exhales. “I’m not a mistake. I’m the original sin.”

“And you’re still expendable,” I snarl, stepping forward. “Blackwell, this is reckless. You want to revive a creature we couldn’t contain, hand him to her, and call it divine strategy? You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“I haven’t,” Blackwell says evenly. “You’re just too close to her to see the bigger structure forming. This was always going to happen.”

“No,” Luna repeats. “Not like this.Not withhim.”

She turns back to me then, and that’s what finally sears. Because her eyes aren’t angry anymore. They’re wounded. And underneath it, betrayal. Not because I orchestrated this. But because I didn’t stop it fast enough.

Theo sits there, calm as fire. And I know. He’s already counting the ways to unravel her. And worse, he’s already decidedhe will.

Blackwell then turns to me with that maddeningly civil tone he reserves for orders dressed as reason.

“Speak with the others,” he says. “Explain what’s coming. Prepare them.”

Prepare them?

As if they’d welcome this. As if Riven wouldn’t already be sharpening something for Theo’s throat. As if Silas wouldn’t pull the arms off this man for making Luna eventense, let alone what I’ve already seen bristling under her skin. And Caspian? Caspian will smile, then lace Theo’s tea with something slow and poisonous and swear it was an accident.

Blackwell keeps going like he hasn’t just shoved a blade into my spine.

“Bring Theo home.”

My body locks. Every instinct trained to obey,Dominionrooted in the marrow of my command,wantsto move. But my will flares hotter. More brutal. Moremine.