Chapter 6 The Coronation
Chapter six
The Coronation
Listening Companion:
FKA twigs - Pendulum (Official Instrumental)
I woke in stages again, but this time, the moments didn't fit together the same way.
My body felt different—heavier, hotter, like my blood had been replaced with molten honey while I slept. The obsession Rook had planted in my veins had taken root, spreading tendrils through my nervous system, rewiring my cells to crave him.
Someone had cleaned me while I slept.
I could feel it—the absence of dried slick on my thighs, the faint scent of soap mingling with the lingering musk of sex.
My skin felt fresh, tended to.
Yet, the soreness between my legs remained, a delicious ache that reminded me of what his mouth had done, but the evidence had been washed away.
He bathed me.
The thought sent a strange warmth through my chest. This man—this killer, this monster—had cradled my unconscious body and cleaned the aftermath of my pleasure from my skin. Had touched me with tenderness while I was vulnerable and unaware.
It should have disturbed me. The intimacy of it. The violation of being handled without consent.
Instead, my traitorous body flushed with heat at the image of his hands moving over me, gentle and possessive, caring for what belonged to him.
Another hit of the drug. Another way he's made me need him.
I shuddered.
Where am I now?
The ceiling above me was different.
No soft padding.
No quilted white walls.
This ceiling was industrial. Metal tiles stained with rust. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
I tried to move.
I couldn't.
My wrists were cuffed to the sides of a metal table—cold, hard, unforgiving. Not the velvet-lined restraints from before.
These were medical restraints.
The kind they used when they needed a patient to be absolutely still.
The kind they used for procedures.
I turned my head, scanned the space quickly, and my stomach dropped.
Oh God.
I knew this room. I had studied photographs of rooms exactly like this in my forensic psychology courses. Had written papers about the horrors that had been committed in spaces just like this one.
An observation theater.
The operating table I was strapped to sat in the center of the circular space, positioned beneath a massive surgical light that wasn't currently on.
Around me, arranged on steel trays and mounted on the walls, were the instruments of a bygone psychiatric era.
Electroconvulsive therapy machines with their dials, wires, and rubber bite guards.
Leather straps darkened with age and use.
Metal probes of varying lengths and thicknesses, some still bearing the faint discoloration of old stains.
And there—mounted in a glass case like a trophy—was an orbitoclast. The ice pick-like instrument they had used for transorbital lobotomies. They had inserted that instrument through the eye socket, tapped it with a hammer, and severed the connections in the prefrontal cortex.
A procedure that took ten minutes and utterly destroyed a person's soul.
This was where they broke minds.
This was where they carved out the parts of people that society found unacceptable.
The irony wasn't lost on me. I was about to be claimed by a madman in a room designed to manufacture compliance.
A sound made me turn my head the other direction.
Glass.
The observation window stretched along one entire wall, and behind it. . .
Oh no.
The Broken Court.
Dozens of them. Maybe thirty. Pressed against the glass like children at an aquarium, staring at me with wild, hungry eyes. Men and women in various stages of undress, some wearing the tattered remains of asylum uniforms, others in street clothes stained with violence.
I saw dried blood on faces, on hands, on bare chests.
I saw scars, tattoos, and piercings.
I saw madness given human form, assembled to witness. . .what?
One of them noticed my eyes were open.
"She's awake!" The cry went up, spreading through the crowd like fire through dry brush. "The Queen is awake!"
And then they began to chant. "The Queen! The Queen! The Queen!"
Dear God.
The sound was deafening even through the glass. Fists pounded against the window. Bodies pressed forward. The chant became a roar, a tidal force of devotion that made the surgical instruments rattle on their trays.
My heat surged in response, as if my body recognized the tribute even as my mind recoiled from it. Slick pooled beneath me on the cold metal table. My nipples hardened against the chilled air. The emptiness in my core pulsed with renewed demand.
Then I saw him.
Rook stood near a door on the far side of the room, his back to me, and for a moment I could only stare at the massive tattoo that covered his entire back.
The skull’s face was split in a manic smile and eyes wild with gleeful insanity.
As I stared at the tattoo, the light shifted, and I could have sworn the tattooed figure winked at me.
It's flirting with me. His skin is flirting with me.
The madness of the thought felt appropriate somehow. In this room, surrounded by the instruments of manufactured sanity and a deranged audience, what was one more delusion?
I went back to studying Rook.
He wasn't wearing the white silk pajama pants anymore.
Red boxer briefs clung to his hips, and that was all. Just a thin layer of crimson fabric between him and total nudity.
My mouth went dry.
He’s so sexy.
Rook was speaking with two men who towered over him. They had to be nearly seven feet tall, both of them, with shoulders like mountains and arms thick with muscle.
Scars decorated their exposed skin—not the clean lines of surgery but the ragged marks of violence survived.
One had a face that looked like it had been reconstructed after meeting the wrong end of a blade.
The other was missing an ear.
Dangerous.
The word felt inadequate. These were weapons shaped like men. And they were listening to Rook with the attentive deference of soldiers receiving orders from their scarier general.
Be careful, Rook. They’re so big.
But I could tell in their gazes and the way they held themselves that they had a respectful terror for their leader, the Trickster.
Soon. . .he dismissed them with a wave of his hand.
Both giants bowed—actually bowed, folding their massive frames in half—and rushed from the room like scolded children.
He makes the other monsters fear him.
The Trickster turned toward me.
Oh.
His body was a masterpiece of controlled violence. Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. Arms corded with lean muscle. A chest that looked carved from stone, with a light dusting of dark hair trailing down his abs toward the waistband of those briefs.
The playing card tattoos I'd glimpsed before covered more of him than I'd realized in the padded room. They wound down both arms in sleeves of ink, scattered across his ribs, disappeared beneath the red fabric. Suits, numbers, and face cards, all woven together in an intricate tapestry of chaos.
My heat roared in response to the sight of him. My body remembered what his mouth could do, what his fingers had promised, and it wanted more with a ferocity that bordered on violence.
The addiction is getting worse. I need another hit.
He approached the operating table with a predator's grace, and behind the glass, the chanting intensified. "The Queen! The Queen! THE QUEEN!"
Rook reached my side and looked down at me with those dark green eyes, and the tenderness in his gaze made my chest ache.
"Hello, Beloved." He stroked a braid from my face. "Did you sleep well?"
"Where—" My voice cracked. I swallowed and tried again. "Where am I? What is this?"
"This is the old treatment wing. ECT and surgical intervention." His hand traced down my throat, over my collarbone, between my breasts. "They used to bring patients here to fix them. To cut out the parts that made them unacceptable."
I shivered beneath his touch. "And you brought me here because. . .?"
His smile was beautiful and terrible all at once. "Because this is where you'll be crowned, Beloved. This is your coronation."
The word landed like a physical blow. "Coronation?"
"You are my queen." He gestured toward the observation window, toward the howling mass of his followers. "And they need to witness your claiming. They need to see you become mine."
"You're insane." The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
Rook's smile widened, and there was no offense in his expression.
Only amusement.
Only adoration.
"Why yes, Beloved. I am absolutely insane." He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. "And soon, you will be too. Isn't that wonderful?"
“No.”
“Yes.”
I tried to lift my hand. “Why am I restrained?”
“So you won’t try to escape of course.” He straightened, and his hands went to the waistband of his boxer briefs.
My breath caught. "Rook—"
He pushed the fabric down over his hips and let it fall to the floor.
I gasped.
Fuck. . .
His cock stood fully erect, jutting out from his body with an almost aggressive presence. It was massive—ten inches at least, thick enough that my fingers wouldn't be able to close around it. The head was flushed and swollen, glistening with pre-cum.
But it was the details that made me moan out loud. “Oh!”
The audience cheered. “The Queen is pleased! The Queen is pleased!”
On his cock was a frenulum piercing. It glinted at the base of the head.
It was a curved barbell through the sensitive skin on the underside, positioned perfectly to stimulate internal walls during penetration.
The metal caught the light as his cock twitched, and I imagined feeling that hard ridge dragging against my inner flesh.
And then there was the base. . .
The knot.
I had read about Alpha anatomy. Had studied the biological mechanisms, the evolutionary purpose, the physical specifications. But seeing it was different. Seeing it made my mouth water and my pussy tremble.