Chapter 4
Sleep dragged me under again and again, thick and heavy like I’d been drugged, though I knew it wasn’t. My body just… gave up. The mattress was softer than anything I’d felt in months, maybe years, and for the first time since I’d been taken, I wasn’t shivering in some cold, stinking cell.
Once, in the haze of the day, I heard the door open.
There were light steps and then a soft clink of porcelain on wood.
Someone whispered something in a language I didn’t know.
The smell of food and fresh bread, roasted meat and something warm and rich lingered in the air.
My stomach clenched, but my eyelids wouldn’t open.
Exhaustion was a chain I couldn’t break.
It happened again later. The faint shuffle of footsteps, the scent of something sweet, fruit maybe, set down on the table near the bed. But my limbs were heavy, my head thick. The darkness pulled me back under before I could even try to reach for it.
The next time the door opened, it wasn’t quiet.
The sharp sound of bootsteps, heavier, purposeful, cut across the room. The temperature seemed to drop, though it wasn’t cold but just… charged.
I forced my eyes open. Lucien stood there, still in black, his expression carved in stone, but there was a burn in his eyes that made my stomach tighten. He looked at me, then at the untouched trays of food, and I saw his jaw lock tight.
He turned his head toward the door and his voice lashed out like a whip. “Get in here.”
Two men stepped into the doorway. “She hasn’t eaten,” Lucien growled, his voice low but vibrating with fury. “All day.”
One of them tried to speak, but Lucien cut him off. “Out of my sight. Now. I’ll deal with you later.”
They left fast, like the room itself was dangerous. The air was thick with the kind of stillness that came before a storm.
Lucien’s gaze stayed on the door until it clicked shut, then shifted to me with a weight that pinned me to the bed without him even touching me. He moved toward me in slow, deliberate strides, the quiet of it somehow louder than if he’d slammed his boots against the floor.
When he reached the side of the bed, he didn’t immediately speak. He just looked at me, taking in the fact that I was still curled in the same position I’d been in for hours, the untouched trays like silent accusations on the table.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, the dip of his weight pulling me a fraction closer. His eyes, sharp and dark, locked onto mine, and for a second, I thought he was going to unleash the same fury I’d just seen tear through his guards.
Instead, his voice came out low, almost quiet, but with a steel edge threaded through it.
“You didn’t eat,” he said. The softness in his tone didn’t blunt the command underneath. It wasn’t a question; it was a verdict.
Even without him raising his voice, I could feel the danger under those three words, coiled and ready to strike, not at me, but at the fact I’d gone without food. And somehow, that was worse.
“I…” My throat was dry. “I couldn’t stay awake.”
“Not good enough.” He grunted as he stood and went to the door, barked an order I didn’t catch, and came back with a silver tray minutes later. Steam rose from the plate, my mouth watered as I looked at the grilled chicken, seasoned vegetables and the bread still warm from the oven.
He set it down and picked up a fork.
I blinked at him in surprise. “You’re not…”
“I am,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. It wasn’t loud, but it carried the kind of weight that pressed against your chest and made you obey before your mind could even think of resisting.
“Sit up.” The words weren’t just an instruction; they were an order.
He slid an arm behind my shoulders before I could argue, the heat of his body bleeding through the thin fabric of my shirt.
His touch wasn’t gentle, as such, but it wasn’t rough either.
It was steady, controlled… like he was holding back far more strength than he was using.
I tried to push myself upright on my own, pride sparking stubbornness, but the moment my arms trembled, he was already taking over. His other hand cupped my elbow, guiding me until I was sitting against the pillows.
The movement brought him close, too close. The scent of him hit me, warm and dark, something like smoke laced with spice. It curled into my head, making my pulse trip over itself.
“There,” he said, adjusting the pillow behind me with a precision that told me he’d decided exactly how I was going to sit and for how long. “Better.”
But the way his eyes scanned my face, searching for any sign of weakness, made it clear he wouldn’t be satisfied until I did exactly what he wanted next.
“I can feed myself,” I muttered.
His eyes met mine, dark and unyielding. “You didn’t.”
Heat crept into my cheeks. I tried to turn away, but he was faster, sliding an arm behind my back, his other hand steady with the fork.
I pressed my lips together. “I’m not hungry.”
“You will eat,” he said, and when I shook my head, he simply brought the fork to my mouth and waited. That waiting wasn’t patient it was a challenge. And he didn’t break eye contact.
I sighed, opened my mouth, and let him feed me the first bite. The flavour hit my tongue and my body betrayed me, my stomach growling. His lips twitched, just slightly. We stayed like that, me trying to glare at him between bites, him not giving me a single inch until the plate was empty.
When he set the fork down, he leaned back slightly, still watching me.
The memories came rushing in then, his hand on my cheek, the heat of his mouth on mine, the sharp, dizzying sting of his teeth breaking my skin.
“You bit me,” I said quietly.
His gaze didn’t flinch. “I did.”
I swallowed. “That is weird…why?”
He studied me for a long moment, his gaze heavy, almost dissecting me. It wasn’t hesitation, it was calculation, like he was weighing exactly how much truth I could take without shattering.
“Because I am a Vampire,” he said at last, his voice as steady as steel. No drama, no theatrics just a truth dropped between us like a blade.
The word hit something deep in me, something that made me want to laugh, deny, call him insane… but couldn’t. Not after the way he’d moved through that warehouse. Not after the way his eyes seemed to see through me.
“And because,” he continued, leaning in just enough for the shadows to sharpen along his jaw, “the second I saw you chained in that room, I knew you were mine.”
My breath caught.
“My bite starts a bond,” he went on, his voice dropping lower, darker, like the words themselves carried weight only I could feel. “It’s not superstition. It’s not a fairy tale but it ties you to me. It makes it impossible for anyone else to claim you.”
His eyes locked on mine, unblinking, unyielding. “It keeps you safe.”
The sentence should have sounded like a promise. A vow. Instead, it landed like a lock clicking shut.
Safe. The word was sharp and sweet all at once, like honey poured over glass.
I wanted to push it away, to shove him back and demand answers he had no right to keep from me.
But my body… traitorous, reckless thing that it was…
leaned toward him. Like the pull of gravity had shifted and now he was the centre.
My pulse thundered in my ears, he said it started a bond, that his bite ties me to him and that no one else could claim me.
My mind tried to wrap around it, to find the cracks in the logic, but the memory of his mouth on mine, the sting of his teeth breaking skin, the strange heat that had rolled through me after… it all came back in a rush.
Fear coiled tight in my chest. Not the kind I’d felt with the Irish, the cold, the hopeless dread of knowing I was powerless. This was different. This was heat and danger and something that felt too much like want.
I should have been afraid of him. Hell, maybe I was. But under that fear, curling in the shadows of it, was something worse, an ache. An ache to be closer. To touch him again. To know what it meant to be “safe” by his definition. And that terrified me more than anything.
I forced out a laugh, thin and shaky, my voice sharper than I intended. “Do you hear yourself? Do you even know how insane you sound? A vampire? Really? What are you going to tell me next, that you sparkle in the sunlight?”
His eyes didn’t flicker. He didn’t smirk. He just stared at me, unblinking, a predator’s patience coiled in his silence.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I snapped, though the tremor in my voice gave me away. “You’re not a vampire. Those don’t exist. They’re fairy tales. Myths. Stories meant to scare kids into behaving.”
“Do you want proof?” His voice was low, a dare hidden in its depths.
“I want you to admit you’ve lost your damn mind,” I shot back, but my pulse hammered in my throat.
He leaned in, slow enough for me to notice, fast enough that I couldn’t step away. His mouth tilted, and then…he opened it.
Fangs. Not teeth, not canines sharpened into points. Fangs. Long, gleaming, lethal. My breath hitched hard in my chest, the sound embarrassingly loud in the silence between us.
“You’re lying,” I whispered, but it sounded weak, even to me.
“Do I look like I’m lying?” His lips pulled back in the faintest ghost of a smile, but there was nothing kind in it. It was hunger and it was truth.
The air thickened, pressing against my ribs, and the word echoed through me, relentless.
The word twisted in my head. “You…you said mine…what does that even mean? ‘Mine’?”
“It means,” he said, his voice like steel wrapped in silk, “that no one dare touches you, no one hurts you. You will never go hungry, or sleep on cold floors. You definitely won’t get sold to the highest bidder.
You’re mine now to protect, to keep. To feed if you need it, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you from me. ”
Every word landed with the force of a vow carved in stone, heavy and inescapable. His tone didn’t leave room for doubt or argument, it wasn’t a proposal, it was a fact he’d decided for both of us.
I stared at him, my pulse loud in my ears, drowning out everything but the sound of his voice.
The fear I’d expected to feel, the rational, self-preserving fear wasn’t there.
Instead, something else was curling low in my stomach, winding up my spine.
A low, unsettling pull like the air between us was threaded with wires, each one humming with an electric current that only I could feel.
His gaze didn’t flinch, didn’t waver, didn’t break. I’d been looked at before, judged, weighed and found useful or not. But this wasn’t that this was a look that stripped me down to bone and rebuilt me in his image before I could take my next breath.
“You don’t even know me,” I said finally, my voice thinner than I wanted, though the words were meant to land like a challenge.
“I know enough,” he replied, and there was no doubt in his voice, no hesitation. The weight of it settled over me like a chain… but it didn’t feel cold. “And the rest, I’ll learn.”
Something in his tone told me it wasn’t a patient kind of learning. It would be the relentless, consuming kind, where every inch of me, every thought, every secret would be found out and claimed. And I didn’t know if I wanted to run from that… or straight into it.
“I’m not yours,” I pushed back, the words coming out sharper than I intended. “You can’t just… decide that because you, because you bit me…suddenly I belong to you. I’m not some possession you can pick up and keep.”
His jaw ticked once. “You can argue all you want,” he said, low, dangerous, “but it doesn’t change the truth.”
My mouth opened to throw another retort, but it never came out, because Lucien moved.
Fast. One second, I was glaring at him, the next his mouth was on mine, scorching and unyielding.
The kiss was a storm, heat and dominance, the taste of something dark and addictive flooding my senses.
I forgot to breathe, forgot the fight, forgot my own name for one dizzying second.
Then he pulled me closer, his arm like iron at my back, his other hand stroking down my waist, moving up to cup my breast…
That’s when everything shattered. The heat, the dizzy pull between us, it all collapsed under the weight of memory.
A different hand, a forceful grip. The smell of stale sweat and cheap whiskey.
Voices laughing while I was held down. The tears filled my eyes, my muscles tensing like I was being attacked.
My chest tightened like a vice. The room spun. I shoved at him, not hard enough to move him, but enough to break contact. “Don’t…” The word came out hoarse, jagged. My breathing sounded like I had just run a marathon.
Lucien froze instantly, his hand dropping away. His eyes went black, not the hunger I’d seen before, but the kind of darkness that promised death. He stepped back a half inch, and his voice, when it came, was lethal.
“They touched you.” It wasn’t a question but a statement.
I didn’t answer, I couldn’t, but I didn’t have to.
The air between us felt like it went razor sharp.
His rage was a physical thing now, a predator pacing just under his skin.
He turned away, dragging both hands through his hair like if he didn’t, he’d wrap them around someone’s throat.
“Every. Single. One of them,” he said, each word cut from pure violence, his voice a deep growl pulled from his very soul, “will beg for death before I’m done. ”
I pulled my knees up to my chest, pressing into the headboard. Part of me wanted to tell him not to go, not to make more blood spill because of me, but the other part of me, the darker part, wanted to know that the men that hurt me, that hurt the other women, would never be able to do it again.
Lucien stood there for a long beat, breathing like he was forcing air in and out of his lungs. Then, slowly, he turned back to me, the edges of his fury smoothed over, but not gone. Not even close.
“Rest,” he ordered, his tone softer but still absolute. “You’re safe now. Nothing touches you again.”
He didn’t leave. He stayed in the chair beside the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his presence like a wall between me and the world. I felt the heat of him even with space between us, the weight of his eyes tracking every shift I made.
I don’t know when my own exhaustion won, but the last thing I was aware of was the silhouette of him there, watching, guarding, holding the violence back until I was asleep.