Page 9 of The Sin-Binder’s Fate (The Seven Sins Academy #1)

The world feels off-kilter, like the floor beneath me isn’t steady, like reality itself is unraveling thread by thread, leaving me bare, exposed, shaken.

I can still feel the lingering phantom touch of Caspian’s power in my veins, simmering beneath my skin, making my breath come too fast, too shallow. He did something to me, I know it. Not just to my body but to something deeper, something primal, something I don’t even have words for.

I should be furious, disgusted, and outraged at how easily he manipulated me.

How he made me feel things I wasn’t supposed to feel.

But instead, there’s this heat curling low in my stomach, this unwelcome awareness of him, of the way he’s still watching me, his gaze heavy, amused, like he knows exactly what I’m trying, and failing, to suppress.

I swallow hard, forcing myself to sit straighter, to push down the twisting mess of emotions clawing at my insides.

He told me that I could command them. He insisted that it was my destiny. But what does that really mean? A dreadful thought creeps into my mind—horrible, impossible, absurd. I can’t even bring myself to say it. But I need to know. I have to find out.

I wet my lips, forcing myself to meet Caspian’s gaze, ignoring the slow, knowing way his eyes flicker down to my mouth.

“If one of you… if you, ” I stop myself, exhaling sharply, frustrated at how unsteady I sound.

I clench my fists. “If one of you does decide to… bond with me, what does that mean?”

Caspian smiles. It’s not his usual smirk, nor the sharp-edged amusement he’s been throwing at me since we sat down. No, this is something worse. This is wicked. Dangerous. I shouldn’t have asked.

He leans forward, deliberately slow, resting his forearms on his thighs, his entire focus narrowing in on me like I’m the only thing in existence. “It means exactly what you think it means, little sin-binder.”

No.

No, it can’t mean that.

I shake my head, but the look on his face tells me I’m not escaping this conversation.

“You’re lying.” My voice barely holds steady.

Caspian exhales, tilting his head as if he’s bored with my denial. “I don’t lie, sweetheart.”

He’s watching me too closely, like he’s relishing my unraveling, like he enjoys seeing me squirm under the weight of a truth I cannot possibly accept.

“You’re telling me,” I say slowly, carefully, as if speaking the words aloud will somehow make them less horrifying, “that if I bond with one of you… we…” My voice falters. I can’t say it.

Caspian lifts a single brow, his expression utterly unrepentant. “Yes. We fuck.”

I flinch .

He doesn’t.

I don’t even have time to fully process the weight of that answer before he continues, his voice dropping into something dangerous, sultry, inescapable.

“And not just one of us.”

My heart stutters. “What?”

He sighs, dramatic and indulgent, like he’s explaining something to a particularly dense child.

“You think you only get one of us? That’s not how this works, little binder.

” His lips curl as he studies my reaction, reading every little crack in my composure.

“Seven sins. Seven lovers. You belong to all of us.”

No. No. No. My stomach clenches, my breathing turning shallow again, and I can feel my entire body rejecting the thought, the impossibility of it.

“That’s insane,” I whisper, my throat tight, my skin flushed hot.

Caspian only grins wider.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice like velvet-wrapped sin. “You have no idea.”

Seven lovers. The idea is so impossible, so overwhelming, that my mind refuses to process it. I can’t make sense of it, can’t accept it, can’t even fathom how something like this could be real.

I shake my head, the movement jerky, disbelieving. “That’s not… that can’t be right.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice dripping with sinful delight, “it’s exactly right.”

I grip the edge of the table as if grounding myself will somehow make this conversation less insane. “How does that even work? You’re telling me every single Sin is just… bound to the same person? All of you?”

Caspian leans back lazily, draping himself over the chair like a king indulging in entertainment. “That’s the way it’s always been,” he says, rolling his wrist as if this is common knowledge, something so obvious it shouldn’t even need explaining. “One binder. Seven Sins. It’s fate.”

Fate.

The word sinks into my bones like a death sentence.

I wet my lips, my voice coming out rough, disbelieving. “That’s insane.”

Caspian lets out a low, satisfied chuckle. “Insane? Maybe.” He tilts his head, studying me. “Unavoidable?” His smirk deepens. “Absolutely.”

I hate how easily he says it, how effortlessly he accepts something that feels so monstrous. There has to be a way out of this. There has to be a choice.

“Okay, but… what if we just don’t?” My voice wavers, a mix of panic and desperation. “What if none of you bond with me? What if I refuse?”

His grin vanishes, his expression going unnervingly blank, as if he’s suddenly lost all interest in this conversation.

“Then you die.”

Ice slides down my spine. The way he says it is so casual, so final, like it’s not even up for debate.

I can’t breathe. “What?”

Caspian exhales through his nose, like I’m testing his patience now.

“That’s how it works, little binder. You don’t get to opt out.

The bond will pull at you, wear you down, devour you from the inside out.

It’ll force you to submit eventually, and if you fight it too long… ” He shrugs, careless. “You’ll break. ”

I force myself to stay steady, to think. “And what about you?” I manage to say, my voice only slightly shaking. “If none of you accept the bond, if you refuse, what happens to you?”

Caspian’s smirk returns, but it’s colder this time.

“Oh, we’ll suffer,” he says, dragging his fingers through his dark hair, too unconcerned for my liking.

“The pull will drive us mad. Our instincts will fight us every second of every day. We’ll be restless, violent, self-destructive.

” He leans in again, his gaze locking onto mine, suffocating.

“But we won’t die, sweetheart. Only you will. ”

Something cracks inside my chest.

The truth is clear, undeniable, horrifying.

There’s no way out.

I swallow hard, my voice dropping to a whisper. “So that’s it? I either let this happen, or I die?”

Caspian sighs, tilting his head as if he’s bored with my resistance. “You can fight it for a while,” he allows, his voice almost pitying. “You can scream, you can deny it, you can run. But fate is fate, sweetheart. You’re ours, and eventually…” His eyes glint darkly. “You’ll accept it.”

I grip the chair so tight my fingers ache. “I’ll never accept it.”

Caspian chuckles, low and knowing.

“Oh, Luna,” he murmurs, dragging my name out like it’s already his favorite sin. “You will.”

I should leave. I should walk away from this conversation, from him, from whatever the hell is happening to my life. But instead, I just sit there, staring at him as if I look long enough, I’ll somehow see the lie in all of this.

His smirk lingers, his head tilted slightly, as if he’s waiting for me to keep up.

Instead, I blurt out, “How old are you? ”

The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, and immediately, I regret it. It’s not the question I should be asking. Not when there are a hundred more important things I need answers to.

Caspian, however, looks pleased.

He exhales a soft laugh, tipping his head back as if he finds me endlessly amusing. Then his gaze drifts back to mine, slow and indulgent.

“Old enough.”

I roll my eyes. “That’s not an answer.”

His smirk widens. “It’s the only one you’re getting, sweetheart.”

I glare. “So you can tell me I’m doomed to be your little bonded fucktoy for eternity, but I can’t know how old you are?”

Caspian makes a sound low in his throat, something amused, something dark.

He leans in, elbows resting on his knees, his entire presence closing in on me like a shadow.

“Oh, Luna,” he murmurs, dragging out my name like it’s something filthy, something that tastes good in his mouth. “You want to know?”

I hesitate. Do I?

I’m not sure anymore.

Caspian takes my silence as permission. He lifts a hand, lazily inspecting his fingers as if this is all a game to him.

“I stopped counting after a few centuries,” he says, voice low, almost teasing. “Somewhere after my five hundredth year, I suppose. Time gets… messy when you don’t age.”

The room tilts.

My stomach drops so hard I think I might be sick.

“Five hundred,” I echo, barely above a whisper.

Caspian flicks his gaze back to me, watching my reaction with interest. “Five hundred was when I stopped counting.”

My mind struggles to process it, to grasp the sheer impossibility of what he just said. I’ve known, on some level, that they weren’t human. Whatever they are, it isn’t bound to the same rules of existence that I am.

But hearing it? Hearing it makes it real.

“Jesus Christ,” I breathe.

Caspian grins. “Oh, sweetheart. He won’t save you from this.”

Centuries of existence, of watching the world shift and crumble and rebuild itself over and over again, while he… what? Stayed the same? Unchanging, untouched by time?

A knot forms in my stomach, a strange, creeping sense of wrongness at the idea of something, someone, so ancient, so untethered from the world I know.

I force myself to swallow, to push past the discomfort clawing at my throat. “If you’re that old,” I say slowly, “then why are you here?”

Caspian lifts a brow, as if the question amuses him. “You’ll have to be more specific than that, sweetheart.”

I scowl. “Why are you at the academy? Why would someone like you, someone who’s lived for centuries, waste their time in a school?”

His lips twitch, the ghost of a smirk curling at the edges. He watches me for a long, dragging moment, his golden eyes luminous in the dim light. “Daemon Academy,” he murmurs, voice silky, “is not just a school.”