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I didn’t hesitate. I pushed to my feet and ran in the opposite direction. The clearing behind me had already emptied of everyone but the corpses and the hellsteeds. The vampires had let the witches and thralls go for their game. I plunged into the trees, branches scraping my skin. My heart pounded, a steady rhythm the soulbond echoed back in chorus.

Find me.

Fuck me.

Claim me.

An hour ago, I’d planned to leave the kings for my freedom. But now, all I wanted was them. I wanted them to chase me. I wanted them to throw me to the ground, rip off my gown, and ravage me until I felt whole again.

This wasn’t me. This was the bond. But that didn’t matter.

The path to my left led deeper into darkness, so I turned right. A vampire could see in the dark, but a witch or human was as good as blind. We were within the city’s border stones. Hellbeasts and wraiths weren’t a problem, but I still wanted to see what monsters stalked me. My feet pounded into grass as I crested a small incline—

And I nearly tumbled down it as I stumbled back. Ilenia whimpered in Roxiana’s arms, the Crown Chancellor’s fangs in her neck. Isabeau crouched between her thighs, sucking on her gushing femoral artery. The witch was pale and limp, a drugged grin on her face as they drained her nearly to death.

It hit me like ice water. A jolt straight through my soulbond-induced lust.

The night wouldn’t end in death for me or the witches, but it would for all the humans. Luc had ordered them killed. The vampire I ran from, the vampire I wanted inside me. I strained past the thunder of my heartbeat, and the forest answered with screams, moans, and grunts.

I tore my gaze away from the councilors and stumbled back into the trees. I needed to get out of here.

But I couldn’t outrun this.

A few paces more and I spotted Sabas with a witch pinned against a tree. Eral. He moaned, his hands clawing at the bark as Sabas fucked him, fangs buried in his throat. Another few steps and two Imperial Guard had a human woman between them, her body slack and paling as they fed and fucked.

Everywhere I turned, witches and humans were writhing and moaning and dying as the vampires feasted.

Oh, stars. This wasn’t a fun little run anymore, no matter how hard the soulbond tried to make it feel like one. I needed the kings, but they weren’t here. Only carnage committed with their blessings.

I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t ever escape. I had tried and failed. The humans and witches all chose to flee the Capital of Dawn for themselves, but if they hadn’t brought me along, would they have escaped? Had I doomed them all?

I had begged for escape, and they paid the price.

I leaned against a tree, trying to catch my breath. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. Even though I was a witch, I couldn’t outrun a vampire. I didn’t know a thing about magic. Not that it mattered, since I didn’t have any power to use.

The only choice I had was where the kings caught me.

And there were no good choices.

I pushed off the tree and stepped forward—

And everything changed.

A towering hedge rose an inch from my face. I jerked back. What the fuck? I glanced up, up, up to the distant sky, stars twinkling overhead. It was still night. My feet still sunk into grass. Screams and moans still echoed around me. But the air was warmer now, thicker, like it was now summer instead of spring. I backed away—

And bumped into another hedge. It prickled against my bare skin. I glanced downward.

Where the fuck were my clothes?

My collar had returned, but my gown was gone, replaced by a few dangling chains of silver and gold. Rubies and sapphires the size of a grape brushed my skin. I had thought my outfit to the Red Queen revelry was little more than a necklace, but this was actually little more than a necklace.

Why was I naked in what looked like a hedge maze?

My heart was already pounding with terror and excitement, but now confusion surged to join them.

What the fuck?

“Surrendering already, little witch?”

I yelped as the words ghosted across my ear. I tried to spin, but Luc looped a finger through the handle at the back of my collar. My airway constricted. I froze, the heat of him pressing into my back. The soulbond flared so strongly I nearly mewled.

“What’s—” My question choked off as Luc tugged the collar tighter.

“No speaking.”

I tried to disobey. What the fuck was happening? Why weren’t we in a forest anymore? Where had my clothes gone? But I couldn’t even gasp out the words. My mouth refused my commands.

A dark glow caught my eye.

Two cuffs circled my wrists, one silver and the other gold. A rune glowed on one of them. Obey . Like the rune on the witch’s collars. What the—

A scream rang out ahead of me. No, a battle cry. My head snapped up.

The pressure around my neck vanished. Luc’s heat disappeared. The collar, the cuffs, the hedge maze—gone. I stood in the center of a small clearing, back in the forest.

And one of the human thralls was charging out of the trees, wild-eyed, a rusted blade raised in her hand.

I stumbled backward—

Silver rings glinted in the moonlight.

A large hand closed around hers, catching the blade mid-swing. Her eyes widened as Luc appeared from out of nowhere. Again. With a gentle squeeze of his hand, bone cracked. Her scream shifted from fury to agony. The blade slipped from her grip… and was caught by another familiar hand wearing gilded ruby rings.

“Bad thrall,” Jules purred, as if planning a seduction, not a murder. Blood splattered across his pale skin, his gold-embroidered tunic more red than white now. The runes in the fabric struggled to deal with the mess.

Blood dribbled down Luc’s chin, too. I’d only been running for a couple minutes. Hadn’t I? I couldn’t really tell, not after that hedge maze. Had it been a hallucination? Psychosis? Whatever it was, Luc and Jules had used the time to eat a thrall or two.

Jules tossed his blade carelessly over his shoulder. It embedded in the dirt next to me. I flinched, but didn’t move. It took everything I had not to run forward. Not to tear that ruined shirt from his shoulders and claw my way closer.

Fuck me. Claim me. Fill me.

The soulbond pulsed louder, its message changed. It had gotten its chase. Now it wanted surrender. My terror dulled beneath its song.

Luc reached for the thrall, like he planned to snap her throat and be done with it.

Jules swatted him away. “Not yet, darling. I want to play.”

Luc arched a brow. “I want to fuck our wife.”

My heart leaped. The soulbond jumped with it.

“Well, yes, I want to fuck our wife, too, but I can play first.” Jules glanced over at me, lips curling into a sly smile. “How about you start without me? I’ll join you when I’m done.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks. Luc turned toward me, the silver in his eyes swallowed by his shadowed pupil. “Very well.”

He started forward.

The Conqueror. Lucero Azaras. Luc. For once, all three sides of the King of Dusk stood before me. His walk was the seductive lure of a predator. There was no fear in his stride, no hesitation. Only the certainty that anything he desired in this world was already his.

I suddenly understood why people cowered when Luc walked toward them. He wasn’t a man. He was an unrelenting force of nature, a storm on the horizon. One that would crash against the shores of your life, claiming everything in its path. No amount of begging or bargaining would change its course.

The Conqueror took what he wanted.

And what he wanted right now was me.

My skin prickled. Stars, my cunt was dripping. There was something very, very wrong with me.

But then I met his eyes again. His anger hit me like a gust. This wasn’t a joyful reunion after the block rune’s removal. She had tried to run. Tried to escape with witches after insisting she knew nothing about being one. It had been centuries since someone had tricked me, tricked Jules. If she wasn’t ours, she’d be killed for the offense.

But she was ours. And all the bond wanted was for me to fuck the betrayal out of her.

And I wouldn’t object—

I yanked out of Luc’s head. He might not object, but I did. The King of Dusk might have called me his wife, but tonight I would be his whore. His captive. His plaything.

I bent down, grabbed the hilt of the thrall’s blade, and raised it.

Not toward Luc. There was no point aiming it at him. I wouldn’t win a fight. I wouldn’t even land a blow.

I raised it to my throat.

Luc halted instantly, the stillness of a hunter sighting prey. Behind him, Jules kept his hand on the whimpering thrall, but his dark gaze fixed on me. “What exactly do you plan to do with that, little witch?”

I swallowed. “Don’t come any closer.”

Luc grinned, slow and dark. “Coming closer is exactly what your body wants me to do.”

I swallowed again. He wasn’t wrong. My nipples ached so hard they hurt. My clit throbbed. I needed them. Needed to be whole—

Shut up.

Holding my gaze, Luc started forward again, leisurely, confidently.

Challenge accepted.

Which meant I needed to follow through.

My throat brushed against the blade’s tip. I didn’t want to die. Not now. Not last week. Not this entire year. Not really. I wanted control of my fate, not out of my life. But I would never control my fate, not after tonight.

My gilded cage would become a prison.

Still, I didn’t want to die.

My hand trembled as I pressed the blade’s cold edge to my skin—

Before it even nicked me, Luc was there. His hand closed around the sharp metal. He pulled. The dagger ripped from my grasp as pain flared, echoed across the bond as the blade cut into Luc’s flesh. He didn’t flinch as he flung my meager weapon. It spun end over end, embedding in a nearby tree.

Then his bloodied hand wrapped around my throat.

I grabbed his wrist, but he yanked me back, slamming my spine into his chest. The breath rushed out of me in a single gasp. His grip wasn’t bruising, but I was trapped, held too firmly to fight. Not that my body wanted to fight. My hips shifted before I could stop them, thighs pressing together as desire coiled in my core.

Traitor .

Behind us, a scream split the air. The crack of bone. A wet tearing sound. Jules’s melodic laugh. Oh, stars. He was going to torture the thrall to death while Luc fucked me.

“If you ever threaten your own life again,” Luc whispered in my ear, “you’ll get a cuff on each wrist that stops you from holding anything that could be used as a weapon. You’d be surprised how many things it won’t let you touch.”

A cuff on each wrist. Like in the hedge maze hallucination. My confusion cut clean through the fog of lust. “What—”

Luc tightened his grip around my neck, cutting off my words. Just like he had minutes ago in the maze with the collar I no longer wore.

For a second, he just held me. I writhed in his arms, not ready to surrender even though I was already caught. Like a fox thrashing in the snare, fighting against the inevitable. My back brushed the strong planes of his chest, smooth velvet over corded muscle. I shuddered, heat unfurling low in my belly.

Another scream behind us. Something soft and wet hit the forest floor. My desire tried to shrivel—

Luc growled. The sound rumbled through his chest and into mine. My nipples tightened to hard peaks. He nipped the top of my ear and rolled his hips against mine. The thick, hard press of him against my ass made me whimper. The blood on his chin smeared my forehead.

I stopped moving. Stopped struggling. I drew in a shaky breath, eyes fluttering closed. My pulse beat between my legs, a drum of need through my whole body. I hated how good it felt to be caught. Hated that my body arched for him, even after everything.

But the soulbond didn’t care what I’d done. What they’d done. What they were still doing—Luc’s heat at my back, Jules humming over a low gurgle.

It only cared that I was theirs.

I melted into Luc’s hold in a heady, intoxicating surrender. I wasn’t giving in. Not really. Just... accepting. There was a difference.

There had to be.

His breath brushed my ear. He held me there for another eternal moment, but I stayed still and waited.

“Good girl.”

I shuddered. A soft moan escaped me at the rumble of those words. Luc’s hand slid to my chin. With a firm squeeze, he twisted my head—and claimed my mouth.

My lips parted, helpless to resist the way he kissed me. His tongue conquered and plundered. Droplets of warm blood stained even hotter skin. I gasped, but he swallowed the sound.

His other hand traced around my waist, then up to my chest. He found my nipple beneath the thin fabric of my gown and circled it. Once. Slowly.

Then he fisted the fabric of my dress and tore it from my body.

I gasped. Cold air brushed my bare skin while his body burned behind me, heat radiating from his chest to my spine. The shock of it cracked through the haze of want, sharp and real. A flash of panic. A reminder that this wasn’t safe.

But Luc didn’t stop.

His free hand drifted lower, knuckles brushing down my stomach. He threaded his fingers through my damp curls. His palm settled over my mound. He cupped me. For a second, he just held me. Gently. Possessively.

Then two fingers slid into my wet heat and landed on my clit.

“Luc—” His name tore from my lips.

The thrall echoed my cry, a shriek of agony.

He nipped my lips. “Silence, witch.”

Pleasure burst like lightning as his fingers started to swirl. I bucked in his grasp. “You don’t… you can’t…”

“I can,” he murmured. “You are mine. If I want you to come on my fingers, that’s what you’ll do.”

“Luc,” I moaned. Stars, I shouldn’t have felt this way. I had tried to run. I was his captive bride. Jules was torturing someone a couple feet away.

“With every day that passes, I feel more and more from you through the bond.” His voice darkened. “I know how desperate you are for me, little witch. It fills you with such...”

I arched back against him. “Fear.”

“Shame,” he corrected, licking the line of my throat. “You really do want to be my toy and you hate that.”

“Go fuck yourself, Luc.”

He pulled his fingers out of me. I tried not to whimper and squirm. Luc’s grip tightened at my throat. My vision flickered. His knuckles brushed my ass as he—

As he unlaced his trousers and stroked himself, my slick coating his fingers.

He jerked my head back until I met luminous eyes, his gaze a sliver of molten silver swallowed by black. “I will. With you.”

My vision blurred. The world tilted. Within a blink, I was on my back, my legs in the air. Luc had dropped to his knees in front of me, pulled my ass up from the ground, and hooked my ankles over his shoulders. His pants slunk low on his thighs. His perfect, erect cock nocked at my entrance.

I pushed onto my elbows, my pulse fluttering in a sudden panic. I was too exposed, too out of control. Entirely at the Conqueror’s mercy.

And the Conqueror didn’t have any mercy.

In one hard thrust, Luc sunk into me to the hilt.