Page 66 of The Sin-Binder’s Fate (The Seven Sins Academy #1)

Silas emerges first, stepping out of the main house like he’s just barely holding himself together. He looks... different. Not physically, not in any way most would notice, but I can see it, the way he carries himself, the quiet pull of his energy now stitched to Luna’s.

And then she follows.

Luna moves like something reborn, her entire presence sharpened, honed, like she’s stepped out of one skin and into another. She isn’t just walking. She prowls, the air around her humming with the raw charge of borrowed power.

Her hand grips a weapon that shouldn’t exist. I watch as the metal shifts, twisting like liquid shadow, a hybrid of Wrath’s brutality and Silas’s illusions. It flickers between solid and unreal, an unpredictable, living thing in her grasp. A blade when she wills it. A ghost when she doesn’t.

The binding is complete.

She looks up, and her eyes, fuck. They hold a new weight, a new knowledge, something ancient and starved. She knows now. What it means. What she’s capable of. And then she does something that shouldn’t be possible.

She pulls.

I feel it instantly, the moment her bond threads into mine, not fully connected, but reaching. A hunger that skims the edges of my power, testing, tasting. It’s instinctual, not something she’s aware of yet, but it’s enough to make my pulse stutter.

She’s learning too fast.

A wraith lunges from the shadows. I move before I think, because I always do. The thing snarls, its body a mangled specter of what it once was, not truly dead, not truly alive, an echo of something long forgotten. It reeks of decay, of hunger that has no end.

I twist, too fast, too smooth, stepping into its path just as it strikes. Its claws swipe through empty air. Not because I dodged, because I was never there to begin with. It hisses, disoriented, its mind catching up to the illusion of me I left behind. A second too slow. A second too late.

I tear through it with my bare hands. Its body shudders, unraveling as I siphon, pulling the last remnants of its existence into my own. It doesn't die, it simply ceases.

Luna watches. And I wonder if she knows yet. That she can do the same.

I scan the battlefield for him.

Riven .

I wasn’t there when she fell, but he was. I didn’t see the exact moment her blood hit the ground, but he did. He felt it. Held it in his hands while the rest of us were too busy trying to keep from drowning in the war surrounding us.

And when Lucien took her, I saw him fight it. The raw, wordless thing in him that did not want to let go. The kind of fear that claws through your ribs and makes a home in your spine.

Now, I find him in the chaos.

He’s standing just beyond a wreckage of bodies, his sword still dripping black ichor, his breath steady even though the battle still rages. And for the first time since this all started, since she nearly fucking died, he isn’t moving.

Because he sees her. Luna, alive. Fighting. Surging forward like she was never meant to be anything less than war itself.

Riven doesn’t call to her. Doesn’t interrupt. He just watches. The relief is instant. Brutal. It’s in the way his shoulders ease, in the breath he lets out, in the flicker of something soft that crosses his face for a single, fractured second.

She doesn’t see it. She’s too caught up in the fight, her body moving in perfect sync with Silas, the two of them feeding off each other’s energy now that their bond is sealed.

But I see it. And what’s more, I understand it. It’s not jealousy. Not something possessive, like it should be. Like it would be for anyone else.

Because we don’t think like that. We were made to be sins, to embody the things that should unravel men, should unravel each other. But with Luna, there’s no fight to keep her. No twisted desire to claim her as more mine than his, or his than mine.

It’s just nature.

She is his. She is ours. There’s no question of it. And Riven? He looks at her like she is the only thing that has ever belonged to him.

Riven isn’t made for love. Not the easy kind, not the kind that rolls off the tongue like a careless promise. No, for him, love is a war. A thing wrought in blood and fire, something that must be battled for, something that costs.

To be loved by Riven means you have earned it, suffered for it.

And he does not give freely.

He doesn’t love like Silas, who stumbles into affection as gracelessly as he stumbles over his own words. He doesn’t love like Elias, who turns everything into a joke until one day, without realizing it, you’re laughing with him and never stop. Riven fights. He resists. He denies.

Because to give anything means he could lose it.

And I understand that. I understand him. Because I see the way he looks at her, even when he pretends not to. Especially when he pretends not to.

I saw him hold her, fury eclipsed by something deeper, something raw. I saw the way his hands gripped her, not just to steady her, but to make sure she was still there.

I see the way he watches her now, standing just beyond the battlefield, breathing hard but not moving. Not stepping forward, not letting her see.

Because Riven will make her fight for it. Not out of cruelty, though he is cruel. Not out of spite, though he’s capable of that too. But because he has never given anything of himself without making damn sure it was wanted first.

She doesn’t know that the hardest battle she’ll ever fight won’t be against the wraiths, the Sub-Sins, or the war that looms over us like a blade to the throat.

No.

The hardest battle she’ll fight will be him. And once she wins, because she will, she must, she will realize what it means to be loved by Riven Kain.

It will be ruinous. It will be consuming. And it will be forever.

Lucien doesn’t look at her. Not fully. But he does glance. A flicker of movement, a fraction of a second where his gaze betrays him. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t soften. There’s no shift in his expression, no break in the carefully constructed walls that make up Lucien Virelius, Pride incarnate.

I see the way his eyes find her anyway, even when he refuses to acknowledge her outright. Even when he pretends she doesn’t exist.

He checks. Just once. Just enough to confirm that she’s still standing, that she’s still fighting. That she’s still here.

It’s a curious thing. Lucien is not a man who falters. He does not hesitate. He does not allow himself indulgences, especially not ones that come in the shape of a girl he refuses to need.

And yet, I watch as something tightens in his jaw before he forces himself to look away, a muscle twitching beneath the surface of that perfectly controlled exterior.

I almost grin. Because Lucien will fall.

And when he does, it will be catastrophic.

He will not go easily. No, Lucien will resist it the way he resists everything that threatens to touch him.

He will fight it with every sharp edge he has, with every ounce of defiance, with every single denial he can muster.

But in the end? Pride always falls the hardest. And his fall will be glorious.

Two are bound to her now. And it will only get worse. The pull of it hums through my bones, a whisper of inevitability none of us are ready to face. Each of us battles against it, claws at whatever scraps of resistance we have left, but it won’t matter.

Some of us will fight harder than others. Lucien, of course, he’d rather burn himself to nothing than admit he’s already lost. Riven will go down with teeth bared, knuckles bloodied, an animal in a trap that he refuses to acknowledge.

But Elias? Elias will go next. He follows Silas in everything, always has. Where Silas goes, Elias lingers just a step behind, their bond a strange, unshakable thing. Silas bonded first, and whether Elias realizes it or not, he’ll follow.

It’s funny, really. Just weeks ago, we all swore we wouldn’t. We refused her, mocked the very idea of it, treated the pull like it was something beneath us. A joke. A curse.

But here we are. Falling. And Silas, Silas is shielding her now. It’s strange to see. Not because he’s incapable, but because he cares. He’s reckless, a disaster waiting to happen, always making the wrong move at the worst time. But now?

Now, he is her shadow. He doesn’t leave her side, moves with her, around her, his illusions flickering in and out of existence, projections of himself to confuse, to mislead, to protect.

I can’t remember the last time he cared about a Sin Binder. Not like this.

Silas was always selfish in his affections, taking only what he wanted, when he wanted. But now?

Now, she is his. Even if he never says it, never admits it, never acknowledges the shift in him, he will not fail her. And for all his idiocy, for all the ways he’s doomed to ruin her eventually, the way he watches her now is, Beautiful.

I drive my hands into the wraith’s throat, twisting until the bone gives way. The thing barely has time to choke out a sound before I rip. Its body collapses, dissolving into shadow and smoke, curling around my ankles like it wants to drag me with it. Like it wants to take something from me.

Not today.

I flick the black ichor from my fingers, stepping over what’s left of the thing without sparing it another glance. Another wraith surges toward me, this one moving faster, jaws unhinged as it lunges,

Pathetic.

The moment it’s close enough, I let the void in me unfurl, my hunger curling outward in dark tendrils that wrap tight around its throat, its arms, its ribs,

And I take .

Its body withers instantly, skin stretching taut, bones snapping inward as I siphon every drop of life out of it. The thing barely has time to scream before it crumbles into dust, leaving only a brittle whisper of what it used to be.

I inhale.

Fuck.

The energy floods my veins, raw, unfiltered power, thick and pulsing. It’s never enough, though. It should be. I should feel satisfied. But that kind of hunger never truly fades, it just lingers, waiting, whispering.

I shake off the residual pull of it and glance up. Her body moving like she was made for this, like the war inside her has always been waiting to be set loose.

And fuck me, she’s beautiful like this. I could watch her fight forever. And that’s the problem. I let out a slow breath, flexing my fingers as I force myself to turn away before I do something stupid. Before I let myself think about what I really want.

Because I do want her. More than I should. More than I let her see.

But right now, I’m safe. I’m the friend. The one she can talk to. The one who doesn’t make it complicated. Who doesn’t push, doesn’t take, doesn’t demand more from her than she’s willing to give.

She trusts me. And I don’t want to ruin that. I don’t want to put the weight of a bond on her shoulders, don’t want her to look at me the way she looks at the others, like she’s waiting for the moment they decide to pull her under, to make her theirs.

But fuck, I want to. I want to push her against something solid and see if she’d shatter or if she’d fight me. I want to bury my hands in her hair, tilt her head back, taste that fire of hers until we’re both burning.

I want her to choose me. But I’ll wait.

Because that’s what love is, isn’t it?

Waiting .