Page 40

CHAPTER 40

S ven

“I think we’re almost there,” Erik told me, looking back over his shoulder at me, without ceasing to type. I looked at his monitor. “I spoofed an account at what they call the Leo level.”

Central Mithraeum

Login Confirmed, Leo Orichalcus

System Routing?

“What is that? Leo , you said?” I asked, my heart pounding harder as I thought of the possibility of finally seeing Mary again, even if only through a surveillance feed. “Is that like a rank?”

Erik nodded, his fingers flying across the keyboard with practiced precision. “From what I’ve been able to gather, they use an ancient Roman hierarchy. Leo —lion—seems to be a mid-level operational commander.”

“Can you access the surveillance system?” I leaned closer, my breath catching in my throat. The strange mix of anxiety and arousal I’d been feeling ever since we had handed Mary and Camille over to Beaumont intensified with each passing moment.

“Working on it,” Erik muttered, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Their security protocols are impressive, but not impenetrable. Especially not with the backdoor access we got from that data packet Jean Gisard sent his masters before he went dark.”

I paced behind him, unable to keep still. The Situation Room felt both too small and too large at once—too confined for my restless energy, yet the distance between me and Mary seemed to stretch across an unbridgeable chasm.

“Got it!” Erik exclaimed suddenly. The main display flickered, then resolved into a grid of surveillance feeds. “Now to find her…”

My eyes scanned the multiple screens desperately, searching for any glimpse of Mary’s distinctive red hair. Most of the feeds showed empty corridors, laboratories, training rooms—the inner workings of what appeared to be a vast underground complex.

“There!” I pointed to a feed in the lower right corner. “That’s her cell.”

Erik immediately enlarged the feed, and my breath caught in my throat. There was Mary, my beautiful, fierce, red-haired volva , backed into a corner of a stone-walled cell. She stood completely naked, her pale skin luminous against the darker background, her green eyes wide with fear and—I knew that look too well—unwanted arousal. Before her stood a tall man with olive skin and dark, intense eyes, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit that did little to hide his powerful physique.

In his hand, he held what I immediately recognized as a mastix —an ancient Roman whip used for both punishment and ritual. The multiple leather tails hung from the polished wooden handle, each one knotted at intervals to increase the sting without causing permanent damage. It was an instrument of discipline I had studied, but never used myself, preferring the cleaner lines of Norse implements.

“Who the fuck is that?” I growled, my fingers digging into the back of Erik’s chair as I leaned closer to the screen.

“According to the system, that’s Leo Marmareus,” Erik replied, his voice tight with tension. “He’s the agent who ran the extraction team, remotely from their HQ.”

I watched, my throat dry, as this Marmareus—this enemy—advanced on Mary. His movements seemed fluid, controlled, the stance of a man completely confident in his dominance. He clearly had extensive training, not just in combat, but in the darker arts of sexual mastery. The way he wielded the mastix , with casual expertise, told me everything I needed to know about his skill level.

“Mary,” he said, his voice carrying clearly through the surveillance system’s audio, “you will now learn what it means to disobey a Leo of the Pretorian Guard.”

I saw Mary’s throat work as she swallowed hard, her chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. Her nipples had hardened to stiff peaks—not from cold, I knew, but from the complex alloy of fear and arousal that I had cultivated in her during our time together. To my dismay and yet also to my pride, I could see that her training was responding to this man’s dominance, her body betraying her even as her mind might resist.

“Please,” she whispered, her voice small, but still defiant. “I don’t understand what you want from me.”

Marmareus smiled, a predatory expression that sent a surge of jealous rage through me. “What I want is irrelevant at the moment, Columba . What matters is what you need—discipline, structure, submission.”

I felt my cock harden painfully beneath my loincloth as I watched him flick the mastix, causing the leather tails to dance in the air. The sound made Mary flinch, her eyes following the movement with a mix of terror and fascination. In the midst of my concern—no, my fear—for her safety and well-being, I couldn’t deny the primal response of my own body to the scene unfolding before me.

I turned to Erik.

“We’re going to start the extraction mission today,” I told him. “Get Aksel working on the airline tickets.”

* * *

Mary

I screamed as the mastix lashed across my skin, the knotted tails finding every sensitive spot with unerring accuracy. Each strike sent fire racing through my nerves, pain blossoming like dark flowers beneath my skin. The sound of leather coming down on bare skin echoed in the small cell, along with my helpless cries and Marmareus’ measured breathing.

“Please,” I sobbed, my fingers clutching desperately at the thin mattress. “Please stop!”

“This is nothing,” Marmareus said calmly, his voice a stark contrast to the violence of his actions. “A mere taste of what awaits girls like you.”

Another lash fell across my thighs, making me buck and howl. The mastix was unlike any implement I’d experienced before—not even Beaumont’s cane had prepared me for this unique blend of stinging pain and spreading warmth. Each strike seemed to ignite my skin, yet somehow the pain transformed as it radiated outward, melting into a heat that reached deep into my core.

“Your body understands what your mind refuses to accept,” Marmareus continued, landing another precise stroke across the tender junction where my bottom met my thighs. “Look how your pussy weeps for attention even as you beg me to stop.”

I burned with shame at his words, knowing they contained a horrible truth. Despite the pain, and to my horror because of it, too, my body had begun to respond with mortifying enthusiasm. I could feel the wetness gathering between my legs, my inner walls clenching with each strike of the mastix .

As Marmareus continued my punishment, I felt a strange shift within myself. The volva part of me—the seer, the one connected to Yggdrasil—seemed to detach slightly, observing from a distance even as my physical body endured the discipline. This part of me noted with cool appreciation how closely Marmareus’ technique mirrored Sven’s—the careful attention to varying the strikes, the deliberate focus on sensitive areas, the way he read my body’s responses and adjusted accordingly.

I felt nearly as thoroughly dominated as I had felt when Sven disciplined me. The thought slipped unbidden into my consciousness, and I couldn’t deny its truth. Something about Marmareus’ confidence, his unwavering certainty, echoed my true master’s dominance. The realization disturbed me deeply, yet I couldn’t push it away.

I even thought I might have felt the opposite way if Leo Marmareus had taken my virginity, trained me, and sent me to spy on the Sons of Odin. The thought crashed through my consciousness with the force of revelation, leaving me gasping in its wake. Would I then have seen Sven as the enemy, as the dangerous stranger whose dominance threatened to unravel everything I believed in? Would I have felt this same confused tangle of resistance and surrender when faced with Sven’s mastery?

The mastix fell again, its knotted tails finding the sensitive undersides of my breasts. I arched my back, a strangled cry tearing from my throat. The pain blossomed, bright and sharp, then transformed into something darker, heavier, settling in my core with a weight that made my pussy clench and weep.

“Please,” I sobbed, no longer certain what I was begging for. “Please, I’ll obey. I’ll obey!”

Marmareus paused, the mastix hanging loosely from his hand. His dark eyes studied me, seeming to peer past my flesh and bone to the trembling, confused essence beneath. A slight smile curved his lips, not cruel but knowing, as if he had expected precisely this capitulation.

“Yes,” he said softly. “You will.”

He moved to the hidden cabinet in the wall, returning the mastix to its place with reverent care. He picked up the collar from the bed. The sight of it in his big hand—the one that had spanked Camille so hard, that had wielded the horrid mastix —sent a shiver through me, a complex mixture of dread and unwanted anticipation.

“Kneel,” he commanded, his voice severe.

I obeyed without hesitation, sliding from the bed to the cold stone floor. My body felt hypersensitive, every nerve ending alive and singing with sensation. The welts from the mastix throbbed in time with my heartbeat, a dismaying reminder of my punishment and my submission to it.

Marmareus approached with deliberate slowness, the collar held carefully, almost reverently, in front of him. He circled me once, twice, his gaze assessing every inch of my naked, trembling form. I kept my eyes downcast, afraid of what he might see in them—afraid of what I might see in his.

Standing behind me, he lowered the collar in front of my face. His presence seemed a wall of heat at my back. I felt his fingers brush against my neck as he gathered my hair, lifting it away from my nape. The touch was unexpectedly gentle, almost tender, and it sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with fear.

The leather felt cool against my heated skin as he placed it around my throat. It was wider than I had expected, covering the hollow at the base of my neck and extending nearly to my jawline. The material was supple, molding instantly to the contours of my flesh as if custom-made.

I heard the soft click of the buckle as Marmareus secured the collar around my neck. The weight of it felt both alien and strangely familiar, as if some part of me had always known this moment would come. My breath caught as his fingers lingered at the nape of my neck, testing the fit, ensuring it was snug but not too tight.

“Perfect,” he murmured, and I felt a ridiculous flutter of pride at his approval.

He moved to stand before me again, the belt dangling from his hands, wider than a regular belt, with the metal rings jingling slightly around its circumference. I shuddered at the memory of how Marmareus had used it to ensure Camille’s compliance.

“Stand up,” he instructed. “Arms at your sides.”

I complied, pushing myself to my feet then letting my hands fall limply against my flanks. He looked into my eyes as he wrapped the belt around my waist. His proximity felt overwhelming—the scent of him, clean and masculine with undertones of sandalwood and something darker, more primal; the heat radiating from his body; the intensity of his gaze as he focused on his task.

The belt cinched my waist tightly. I felt how it accentuated the modest curve of my hips and increased the swell of my little breasts above. The leather was cool against my skin, but quickly warmed, seeming to meld with my flesh as if becoming part of me. I quailed at the thought, at how easily these external bonds could become internal ones.

“Hold out your wrists,” he commanded next, his voice soft, but unyielding.

I extended my arms, wrists upturned in a gesture of surrender that felt both shameful and inevitable. The cuffs he fastened around them were narrower than the collar and belt, but still substantial, each one bearing its D-ring for easy attachment to other restraints. Marmareus checked each cuff carefully, his fingers sliding beneath the leather to ensure they weren’t too tight, the touch sending electric shivers up my arms.

“Down,” he said simply, and I lowered my hands back to my sides, acutely aware of the weight of the cuffs, the way they marked me as captive, as owned.

Next came the ankle cuffs, requiring me to lift each foot in turn as he crouched before me. The position forced me to balance precariously, to rely on him for support, a physical manifestation of the power dynamic between us. His hands were warm and steady on my calves as he worked, the touch clinical yet somehow intimate.

The thigh cuffs were last, and the most humiliating. Marmareus ordered me to spread my legs wider, and I complied, my face burning with shame as I exposed myself more fully to his gaze. He fastened the cuffs high up on my thighs, just below the curve of my bottom, his knuckles occasionally brushing against the wet heat of my sex as he worked.

He stepped back, looking me over, and then, apparently satisfied, he fetched from the cabinet the same kind of cushion I had seen him use with Camille. I couldn’t suppress a little whimper of fear and need.

Marmareus smiled, looking into my eyes so intensely I had to take a step back, away from him.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s right, Mary. I’m going to fuck you now, just as I did your friend.”