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I grin. “Hmm?”
He makes a sound that’s part suffering, part religious experience.
“Luna,” he says again, voice dangerously high-pitched, like he’s seconds away from bursting into actual flames. “You, um. You’re, you’re very, wow, okay, so.”
I blink at him, all innocence. “What’s wrong, Elias?”
His hands spasm against the reins. “I, nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Just, you know, casually questioning every decision I’ve ever made in my life.”
I hum, adjusting deliberately, letting my arms tighten slightly around his waist, my breath ghosting against the back of his neck.
Elias lets out a choked whimper.
“Do you need a moment?” I ask, grinning into his skin.
“I need a fucking lobotomy.” he hisses.
I laugh, shifting just enough to let him breathe again, though I keep my arms snug around him, just to be an asshole.
Elias exhales so hard, like he’s been holding in his soul for an hour straight.
“This is fine,” he mutters to himself, like an actual lunatic. “I’m fine. It’s just, just a woman, just a warm, beautiful, devastating woman plastered against me in a murder realm, no big deal.”
I arch a brow. “You’re narrating out loud, you know.”
Elias makes an actual strangled dying animal noise.
I don’t understand why he is the way he is with me. The stammering, the fumbling, the god-awful, secondhand embarrassment-worthy rambling. The absolute mess he turns into the second I get close. It’s like he’s never been around a woman before, like the very concept of me is somehow short-circuiting his entire existence.
And maybe that would be cute, endearing, if I didn’t know better. Because there were others before me. Other Sin-Binders. Other women who had their hands on them, their power wrapped around them.
And fuck them.
The thought slams into me like a storm breaking, wild, vicious, irrational, a snarl curling beneath my skin, heat rising, a slow burn that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with ownership.
Because how dare he? How dare they? How dare any of them touch someone else before me?
The Wrath inside me rips forward before I can stop it, a flood of possessive, burning rage searing through my veins. My arms tighten instinctively around Elias’s waist, my fingers digging in, my body locking around his like I could burn my claim into his skin.
He chokes. Not just a little choke. A full-bodied, panicked, wheezing gasp, his spine going ramrod straight, his entire body tensing so violently I think the horse staggers beneath us.
“Luna,” he wheezes. “Luna.”
I don’t answer. Because I’m too far gone, too furious, my mind spiraling with images I don’t want, don’t need, can’t handle, Elias touching someone else, laughing with someone else, looking at someone else the way he looks at me.
No.
No.
He is mine. All of them are mine. The bond inside me pulls tight, Wrath coiling, rising, and Elias groans, low and pained, his body shuddering beneath my grip.
“Okay,” he rasps, still struggling against my hold, against the weight of my power sinking into him like fangs sinking into flesh. “I, um, this is, oh wow, this is happening, okay, Luna, babe, sweetheart, terrifying goddess of my demise. I don’t know what I did, but I am so sorry, and if you could please not crush my internal organs, that would be so sexy of you.”
I don’t loosen my grip.
Not even a little.
Not until I feel Lucien’s presence, a quiet, subtle force cutting through the storm in my veins, his voice a smooth, commanding thread.
Luna. Release him.
I snarl, but my grip finally eases, the Wrath fading just enough for Elias to suck in a full breath again.
“Holy shit,” he mutters, slumping forward slightly. “That was, wow. I think I saw the fucking light. Like, genuinely, I think I just had a religious experience.”
I exhale slowly, steadying myself, the anger still there, still hot, still coiled inside me.