Chapter 9 Raphael
Raphael
I HAVE SPENT MY LIFE COLLECTING VULNERABILITY.
Citizen Soldier Playlist
“Runaway (From Myself)”
“Reason to Live”
She lasted longer than I expected before passing out. It’s almost time.
First, I direct Seth to loosen the chain connected to the collar since she is deadweight and slack. I’d prefer her not to suffocate in her passed-out state. Not when she has given me the first glimmer of potential out of all the girls we’ve brought here or to the cabin.
I don’t interfere as my boys swap their bets. Vincent never gambles. I don’t need to gamble.
“Fuck, look at those pussy lips,” Rory says, his voice thick and gravelly with how much he’s dying to fuck her. Never before me. “Gonna feel so goddamn hot and pretty when it comes time to shove our cocks in her.”
Jude tilts his head, observing with fascination. “Her inner labia are a lovely, darker red.”
“You think she’s tight?” Seth wonders.
“Who cares?” laughs Rory. Yes. Anyone is tight with him.
The suction cup does its work, pulling long, slow, and hard, granting her femininity a reprieve before it sucks hard again. She still doesn’t move as her pubic lips grow plumper and thicker.
Rory loves the torture, the sadism. Jude enjoys watching from a far more scientific and biological standpoint, admiring the physical form and how much the body can take.
Vincent keeps a safe distance because his emotions run far too deep, and if he loses control, no force in the universe could stop him short of all of us uniting against him. Seth goes with the flow as usual.
For me? It’s the power. The control.
She earned herself a Level 1 Kinship Punishment when we killed for her, and she drew Jude’s blood and ran in defiance.
Taking Rory’s flesh earned her Level 2. But when she dared to draw her line in the sand, when she stared into my eyes and refused to flinch at the abyss staring back at her, she earned Level 3.
She will likely not survive the night. If she does not, she will pass into the next world and carry my darkness with her like a ghost. If she does…
Everything is a means to an end.
The bruises decorating her skin. The blood dripping down her back. The flesh torn from the whip. The swollen red flesh between her legs is a means to an end.
Every soft cry, every whimper, every moan, every sound she has made is a means to an end. Every breath is a test.
Not because I want what’s best for her. No. Because I’m a psychopath. Not a stereotype. I’m built differently, wired differently. No empathy. No moral compass. Not by choice. It’s an incapacity.
I don’t feel fear, or guilt, or regret—not in the way the others do. But I know the consequences of breaking her. I know the cost. I choose carefully. Everything else is data.
Yes, I have a moral compass. It points toward what preserves my world and those bound to me. Not kindness, not mercy. Loyalty, utility, survival—that is my direction.
I don’t confuse suffering with meaning, or endurance with virtue. I don’t imagine I’m shaping her into something better. This isn’t punishment. It isn’t pleasure. It isn’t personal.
It’s procedure.
If she breaks, she was never useful. If she survives, she belongs—unconditionally, irrevocably. Not because she earned it, though my boys will view it so, including Rory. For me, it’s because the system worked.
I am her antithesis.
When Rory touched her, confirming her arousal—endorphins or chemicals related—she was not focused on any of them. She did not rebel with a denial of screams or unintelligible curses on account of the ring.
Instead, she looked to me. She looked into the abyss with tear-stricken eyes. In the eye of that moment, she gave me her vulnerability, her power. And when she faded into the darkness of her mind, she didn’t look away. Instead…she took me with her.
Her gaze challenges me. I cannot say why it pulls at me. But it’s an obsession now. Not by emotion but by design.
Even as Rory removes the suction cup, and the voices of my brothers remarking on the state of her red and puffy clit fade into the background, I assess her state.
We have taken her blood and flesh as she took ours.
Punishment returned tenfold as our law dictates.
All Kin-bound to such a law that both punishes, protects, and rewards.
It is the only way to maintain law and order among the damned.
While I don’t have a twisted arousal over her blood, sweat, and tears of misery as Rory does, seeing her stripped to her most vulnerable state is why cock is at its hardest.
In my younger years, sex was categorized by quantity vs quality, defending against the chronic boredom I felt.
I have spent my life collecting vulnerability.
The four men gathered around her have pledged their power, their lives, their very souls to me because I exploited them when they were at their most vulnerable—but I also saved them when they were at their weakest.
With great power comes…more power.
Our bond was forged through blood, flesh, broken bones, fire, torture, and more. The only ones who deserve to be our Kin, who may become our Kin, must survive the same.
She is not the first woman to enter our orbit. I picked up easy prey in bars with Seth at my side as a strategic chess move. Too easy to kill their self-esteem, too easy to brainwash. Those were Level 1’s.
But tonight, in the moments Briella stared into the abyss, she wasn’t handing her brain over for a washing. She was inviting me inside…
Because deep inside her, she knows only I can play with the demons there.
Level 2’s normally beg for death. And I grant it to them…much to my brothers’ chagrin.
So, when Rory strokes her, pulling at her dilated labia and tapping her bloated clit, I step forward. “Level 2” is all I say.
His fingers freeze, then pull back with a frustrated flex, his teeth gritting. But his simmering anger doesn’t last long. Not when Rory lives in the moment, chasing the next high after high—of which I grant him the lion’s share.
But my share comes first.
I loosen my belt.
“What else, Raphael?” Jude asks, the first to seek more direction. He will never lose that militaristic side, which makes him my second-in-command. Patience and endurance and unwavering loyalty make him my partner.
I level with Seth. His brown eyes catch the firelight, turning warm and ready. “The brand.”
He doesn’t balk. Vincent, the only other one with the steadiest hand, would. Seth has the steadiness and care. It’s not just about force—it’s about control, and Seth brings his craftsman’s finesse to it vs. Vincent’s raw power. Jude would spend an hour debating methods. And Rory?
It’s never a good idea to put an instrument of fire into the hands of a pyromaniac.
At least he’s content watching as Seth ignites the incinerator in the back corner of the cave to prepare the brand.
In moments, I’m as naked as my brothers. And standing closest to Briella. Her soft breathing echoes in my eardrums. She will wake soon. For now, I peel back a few violet curls, wet with her sweat from her cheek. I unlatch the back of the ring gag, letting it clatter to the floor.
I want every micro-expression and micro-sound she has to offer.
I don’t bother whispering in her ear.
She will wake once the excruciating brand hits her flesh. Before this, I will take all her power, her consent, her identity, her existence.
I begin the moment I dig my fingers into the backs of her thighs—hot with welted flesh and wet with blood—lift her until my cock is poised at her slick entrance… and drive myself deep to the hilt inside her.
Her head snaps up unexpectedly. Her eyes widen on mine. And then, that center as hot and soaked as predicted…clenches around me.
When she blinks and melts with tears pouring down her cheeks, but her lips are still and quiet with words of unspeakable weakness, I’m certain. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than her.
And I’ve never felt more powerful.