Page 14 of Heresy (The Lost Gospels #1)

Before I can answer, his teeth sink into the soft flesh of my shoulder, a searing, animalistic pain that tears a raw cry from my throat.

He has marked me. He pulls back, his gaze dropping to the fresh, bloody bite mark.

"Mine," he murmurs, his voice thick with possessive satisfaction as he watches a trickle of blood run down my skin.

His free hand becomes a claw at my waist, grabbing a fistful of my skirt and roughly shoving it upward. The cold plaster is a shock against my bare skin. My survival instinct screams, and I thrash against him.

My fighting only fuels his cold fury. He pins my hips with his body, driving a knee between my legs to force them apart.

As his hand comes up to my chest, his fingers find my nipple through the thin fabric of my shirt and pinch, hard.

A sharp, new agony makes me cry out, the sound swallowed by the dim hallway.

It’s far from a caress; it's an act of punctuation, a cruel emphasis of his control.

His hand leaves my chest, and I hear the sharp, metallic tear of his zipper being undone. The sound is brutally casual in the tense silence, the last barrier falling away.

He enters me with a single, powerful, violating motion.

The pain is a sharp, tearing invasion. Air gets trapped in my throat, any scream choked into silence. His thrusts are a brutal, punishing rhythm, slamming me against the wall until the impacts reverberate through my skull. His eyes are locked on mine, watching me break.

"Tell me," he grinds out, the words punctuated by a bruising thrust.

My silence is the only weapon I have left.

"Say it," he growls. He suddenly withdraws from me, the abrupt emptiness a shock, before he slams back into me with punishing force.

A short, harsh, humorless laugh escapes him as a sob of pain is torn from my throat.

He leans in, his voice a venomous poison.

"You think you have a choice? You think your silence matters?

" He punctuates the words with another brutal thrust. "You belong to me.

Your body. Your defiance." He grinds into me. "Even your pain. It's all mine."

Again, he pounds into me. My traitorous body, even as my mind screams, begins to respond to the deep, coiling heat of being utterly claimed. He feels the tremor in my thighs, and a grim, joyless smile touches his lips.

"You will learn," he growls.

With one final, impossibly deep thrust, my body betrays me completely.

A broken sob is torn from my throat as a violent, involuntary convulsion rips through me.

It is more than pleasure. It is annihilation.

My cry is the trigger he was waiting for.

He drives into me one last time, a harsh, guttural groan tearing from his own throat—the sound of a beast finishing a hunt, a raw, frustrated release of pure, possessive rage.

The moment his harsh groan fades, it’s over.

He pulls out of me abruptly, the sudden emptiness a shock to my system.

The fragile, painful heat is gone, replaced instantly by the cold, damp air of the hallway.

He steps back, a single fluid motion, adjusting himself with a casual indifference that is a fresh and deeper violation than the act itself.

He doesn't look at me. Not yet.

His gaze finds Fuse and Static, still frozen down the hall. It’s a silent, lethal threat that promises a painful death if his authority is ever challenged again. The two bikers, who seemed so predatory moments ago, shrink under his stare like chastened boys, unable to meet his eyes.

Finally, his head turns slightly. His gaze doesn't find my face, but the fresh, bloody bite mark on my shoulder. A mask of cold, hard satisfaction settles on his features.

"Now you know where you stand," he says, his voice flat and final.

He turns and walks away without a backward glance, disappearing into the darkness of his office.

The door clicks shut, and the sound breaks the spell.

The other members in the doorway melt away, refusing to meet my eyes, leaving me alone in the silent, dim hallway.

The strength that held me upright dissolves.

My legs, suddenly weak as a newborn foal's, give out completely. I slide down the rough plaster wall, the friction a dull scrape against my skin, until I’m a crumpled heap on the floorboards.

My body is a roadmap of pain: the sharp, throbbing fire in my shoulder, the deep, bruising ache between my legs, the sting on my lip.

My mind is a whiteout of pure, numb shock.

Then, the cold seeps in—the cold of the floor and the chilling, absolute cold of my own humiliation.

My shirt is torn open, my skirt still bunched around my hips.

I am wreckage left behind after a storm.

And they are watching. I can feel their eyes on me from the main room, the silent, curious eyes of the pack.

Get up. The quiet voice in my head is not a command; it’s a raw, ragged plea. Don’t you let them see you break. Get. Up.

My limbs are shaking, but I obey. I use the rough wall to haul myself to my feet. I don't look at him. I don't look at anyone. I keep my eyes fixed on the staircase. I pull the tattered edges of my shirt together, a futile gesture of modesty.

Zero walks a few paces behind me, his footsteps silent.

His presence is a constant, chilling pressure at my back.

The long walk through the main room is a gauntlet of silent judgment, with my own personal reaper ensuring I complete it.

Every step is an effort of will. I do not limp.

I do not cry. I keep my chin high, focused on the single goal of reaching the cold, concrete sanctuary of my cage.

He follows me up all four flights of stairs. When I reach my door, I stop. He moves past me, produces a key, and unlocks it. He swings the door open and then steps back, a silent, final order.

I step inside.

The door to my cell clicks shut behind me, the sound not of imprisonment, but of sanctuary.

I lean my back against the cold steel, my body trembling.

My hand instinctively goes to my shoulder, my fingertips probing the deep impressions of his teeth.

The physical pain is a grounding reality. A brand. A claim.

And it is familiar. But the artist is different.

Dmitri’s cruelty was a slow, patient art form. He smiled while he did it. My fear was his pleasure, my pain his masterpiece. He was a sadist who found his humanity in the breaking of others.

Hex is no artist. He's a storm. There was no joy in his assault, only a flash flood of raw, possessive rage. He looked at me with a hatred that felt like it was burning him alive from the inside out. He wasn't hurting me for pleasure. He was hurting me because he's in pain.

That single, chilling distinction changes everything. It doesn't lessen the terror, but it gives it a name. It gives it a shape. And his words, spoken in this very cell, come back to me.

"My ghosts are bigger than yours."

It wasn't a boast. It was a confession. The explosive rage in the hallway wasn't a display of strength; it was a moment of profound weakness, a total loss of the control he prizes. A king secure in his crown doesn't need to brand a woman to prove his authority.

He's a man in a cage of his own making. What I witnessed wasn't the roar of a lion. It was the sound of him rattling his own bars.

This realization doesn't make me feel pity. Pity is a useless, dangerous emotion here. A wounded animal is the most dangerous kind. But it does make him… understandable. It makes him a puzzle. And a puzzle has a solution. A weakness. A key.

This newfound clarity is a spark in the ashes of my humiliation. Understanding is a weapon, and he has just handed me the key to his entire armory.

I push myself up from the cot and walk to the small, barred window. I look out at the faint, ghostly reflection of myself in the glass. I see the shadows under my eyes, the cut on my lip, the angry, branded mark on my shoulder. I see a victim.

But then I look closer, into my own eyes. And I see something else. I see the girl who survived her father’s cruelty. The woman who fought back against a monster and walked away. A survivor.

He thinks he broke me. He thinks he branded me.

He’s wrong. He just showed me his wound.

A new, cold purpose settles in my bones. I am no longer just the ghost in his cage.

You want to play with ghosts, Hex? I think, my reflection staring back, a silent promise in my eyes. Fine. I've been living with them my whole life.

Let's see who haunts whom.