Chapter 16 #2
Vorath tries to rise, and I let him reach his knees before I speak again.
“Take him to the tunnels. Put him where he put my Chosen.”
The guards who have been waiting at the office door move forward. New guards. Males who chose to follow. They grip my father's arms and haul him upright, and the curses that spill from his mouth carry none of the weight they would have carried yesterday.
“You would cage your own father?” Vorath's words have gone hoarse, rage stripping away the control that has always defined him. “You would treat your blood like a common prisoner?”
“You caged my Chosen. You will experience what you inflicted.”
“The bars will need repair first.” A pause, and I let the silence stretch until his expression shifts with understanding. “I damaged them getting her out. Put him in the holding cells while I make the arrangements.”
His face goes pale. Not white, because Draveki skin does not pale that way, but ashen. The color of a male who has grasped what stands before him.
I tore metal apart with my bare hands to reach her. I would have torn through stone. Through steel. I would have torn through anything my father placed between us because his cruelty cannot cage, control, or destroy what we have become together.
“This is weakness.” Vorath makes one last attempt to regain control. “A true Lord would kill me. End the threat. You're proving everything I said about sentiment.”
“You don't understand strength. You never did.” I step close enough that he can see the silver of my eyes dilated, pupils contracted to slits. “Strength isn't making people fear you. It's making them choose you.”
He tries to respond, and I continue over whatever he meant to say. I don't want to hear it and now I don't have to.
“I want you alive. I want you to watch how a real House is run.
To see your people thrive because they want to be here, not because they're terrified to leave. That will make us the strongest House on the planet.” I let the words land before I deliver the final blow.
“Your legacy isn't death, Father. It's irrelevance.”
Vorath struggles against the guards' grip but they hold him tight. He can't break his way free. He's weaker than I thought. His curses echo through the office, promises of vengeance and threats of consequences that will never come to pass. I don't watch him go. He no longer deserves my attention.
“Samai.” I turn to my brother, who has watched the confrontation in silence. “Make sure he's secure.”
Samai moves toward the door, his gaze holding mine across a silence that stretches between heartbeats.
All the years of resentment and love is in that look, and beneath that, gratitude.
For trusting him with this. For including him in the rebuilding rather than casting him aside the way our father would have.
“And Samai.” I let the silence hold before I finish. “Thank you.”
His expression flickers and I see the little brother who screamed when their mother died and has tried to matter ever since.
“Teshra and Morath.” I turn to face my brother before he reaches the door. “Were they involved?”
Samai shakes his head. “Morath suspected nothing.
He's been running the pharmaceutical division exactly as Father instructed, never questioning why certain compounds were requisitioned.” His mouth twists.
“Teshra refused to participate when Vezra approached her.
That's why Father had her removed from sensitive areas three months ago. He framed it as a routine reassignment.”
Teshra protected her loyalty to me by saying nothing, and my father punished her for it in ways I never noticed.
“Find her. Tell her she's welcome in the private wing again.”
He nods once and follows the guards out. The door closes, and the office fills with silence. Maeve and I are alone. The violence is over. The threats have ended. My father is caged, and the House that was never truly mine has become ours to shape.
The adrenaline fades, and exhaustion takes its place. I have been running on rage and terror for hours, and now both have drained away, leaving nothing but the hollow that follows when survival is no longer in question.
Her hand touches my arm. That emptiness fills with her presence, with the warmth of her palm against my skin, with her scent that has become home in ways I never understood I needed. Not triumph. Not celebration. Relief. Certainty. The quiet certainty that whatever comes next, we face it together.
“It's over.” Her words carry the same exhaustion weighing on me, the same wrung-out awareness that the night has taken more from us than we realized.
“It's beginning.”
She looks around the office, taking in the polished surfaces and the symbols of authority and the view of the canyon that my father lorded over for generations. “This is yours now.”
“Ours.” I mean it.
She steps closer, her hand sliding up my arm to find my face. She turns me toward her, and the touch carries gentleness that belongs to a medic examining a patient, except her gaze holds no clinical detachment.
“You're wounded.”
I am. Somewhere in the violence, someone landed a blow I did not register. The wound has already begun to close, Draveki healing sealing the damage, but blood has dried along my temple and matted into my hair.
“Later.” I catch her wrist, hold her hand against my face, let her touch anchor me here, where victory should taste sweeter and instead tastes like standing at the edge of a cliff.
She’s experienced horror tonight. Caged by my father, beaten by his servants, left in the dark with nothing but strays and her own conviction to sustain her. “I want to take you somewhere that isn't this room.”
Somewhere that belongs to us. Somewhere we can simply be.
She steps against me, and her scent floods my senses.
Not her signature alone. Mine layered beneath it, woven through it, the claiming musk that marks her as chosen mixed with the sweetness that is hers alone.
We have become a single scent now, inseparable, and breathing her in is like breathing myself back into existence.
I catch the undertone beneath. Heat. Slick warmth rising from her skin. She is exhausted, bruised, wrung out from hours of captivity and violence, and her body is responding to my proximity with an arousal that sends my blood rushing to my cock.
“That's the best idea I've heard all day.” Her words come out rough, but the look in her dark eyes holds nothing of exhaustion. Only hunger. Only want.
My cock hardens against her belly, and I do nothing to hide it.
“I need you.” The admission tears free without permission. “I want you. Need to make you mine again.”
She rises on her toes and presses her mouth to mine. The kiss lands soft at first, and then her teeth catch my lower lip and the tenderness burns away into need. Her fingers grip my jaw, holding me where she wants me, and I let her take what she needs because I would give her anything. Everything.
“I want you too.” She breathes the words against my mouth. “I want you so badly I can't think past it. Not here, though.” Her gaze flicks to the office that still holds my father's presence in every surface. “Take me back to your suite.”
“Our suite.” The correction emerges before thought, and her eyes darken with an intensity that makes my cock throb.
“Our suite.” She accepts the word, accepts what it means, and her hands slide down my chest to grip the fabric at my waist. “And this time I don't want to leave for days.”
The growl that rumbles through my chest vibrates against her palms. I grip her hips and lift her, and she wraps her legs around my waist with the ease of a female who belongs there.
Her arms lock around my neck, her mouth finds my throat, and I carry her out of my father's office toward a future that belongs to us alone.