I’d been monitoring the place for days, logging comings and goings, memorizing guard rotations, squinting through tinted windows like that would magically reveal some master plan.
And for a while, it was quiet. Too quiet. I was scribbling in my notebook: Tuesday, 10:42 PM. SUV arrived. Four men. All black suits, earpieces, no license plate on the rear, and then I froze.
There was a sound. Not from outside, but from inside. The soft, unmistakable click of a car door unlocking. My heart stopped. I slowly turned my head, the passenger door was opening.
“What the f—” I barely had time to react.
A figure slipped in fast, shadowy, masked, dressed in black from head to toe. Everything in me screamed to move, grab my pepper spray, something… but they were faster. I reached for my bag… but I was too late.
A gloved hand grabbed my wrist. The other clamped something over my mouth. I tried to thrash, kick, bite. My elbow connected with something solid, but they didn’t flinch. Then I felt it. A sting at my neck.
Needle.
“Shh,” the voice said, low, male, almost… amused.
My vision blurred, muscles went heavy and panic exploded in my chest as I tried to fight it, but the world was already slipping sideways. The last thing I saw was the dark outline of the figure next to me… and the flash of a black SUV parked just a few feet ahead.
His SUV. Pierce. He knew. And then everything went black.
I woke up, chained to a chair in a concrete basement wasn’t exactly part of the plan. My skull felt like it had been split open with a crowbar, and my throat tastes like copper and regret. The panic came in waves, sharp, cold, and mean.
My wrists were bound behind me, ankles strapped to the legs of the chair. Heavy-duty restraints. Metal. Industrial. Buzzing overhead lights cast long, shaky shadows across cement walls. No windows. No clocks. Just isolation and the thrum of my own racing heartbeat.
And then I saw Pierce. Leaning against a desk like we were about to gossip over iced coffee instead of… whatever nightmare this was.
“Good,” he said, voice smooth, like honey hiding poison. “You’re finally awake.”
“What the hell is this?” I snapped, rattling the cuffs. The metal bit into my skin, but I didn’t stop.
“Careful.” He pushed off the desk. “Thrashing’s not going to help. You’ll just bruise faster.”
“Untie me, you psycho.” He gave me a look. Casual. Dangerous. Like a predator that was bored with the chase.
“Now why would I do that?” His tone was almost playful. “You’ve been quite the busy little fox, haven’t you? Sitting outside my office. Watching my men. Taking notes in that beat-up spiral notebook like you thought no one noticed.”
My mouth went dry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He smirked. “God, you’re a terrible liar. Your pulse gives you away.”
“Go to hell.” He came closer, slow and measured.
“I admired the hustle,” he said, crouching next to me. “The forged ID. The mask. The act. Very convincing.”
“You’ve got the wrong girl.” He leaned in until I could smell him, woodsmoke, danger, and something wild underneath.
“You followed me,” he said quietly. “So I followed you back, mate”
“Stop calling me that,” I snapped, yanking at the cuffs. “‘Mate’. I’m not your damn mate, bro. The fuck is that even means?”
“Oh, but you are,” he murmured. “You didn’t seem to mind when you crawled across that stage. Or when my hand wrapped around your pretty ass. You felt it. The pull.”
“You’re sick.”
“No, Lyra,” he laughed, “I’m starving.”
He circled me like a lion stalking prey it already owned. “The mask didn’t fool me. I knew it was you the second I caught your scent. Cinnamon. Rain. That little hit of adrenaline you carry around like a signature.” I turned my head away. Refused to meet his eyes.
“I don’t know what twisted fantasy you’re living in,” I said, my voice shaking, “but I’m not playing along.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He crouched again, closer this time. “You already did. It is you who chased me.”
“I was doing my job.” I met his gaze. “Interesting life you leave, huh.”
“Mmm, quite that, yes.” His smile was cold. “And now you’ve got what? Evidence? An exposé? Going to ruin me from your little journalist blog?”
“I’ll publish everything,” I hissed. “Your operations. Your trafficking. This whole twisted kidnapping situation. The world will know exactly what kind of monster you are.”
Pierce didn’t flinch. Instead, he reached inside his coat and pulled out a gun. Not raised at first. Not pointed. Just there, heavy and quiet, dangling from his hand like a casual threat.
Then, slowly, he pressed the barrel to my cheek.
“Tell me again, little fox,” he whispered, voice like frost, “how you’re going to bury me. That actually turns me on.”
My chest heaved. Hands shaking. But I held his stare.
“You think that scares me?” I lied.
“No,” he said. His eyes softened, just slightly. “But you do.”
He leaned in, breath warm against my ear.
“You terrify me, Lyra. The way you looked at me, the way you moved. The way you saw me when no one else ever has.”
“You’re insane.”
“I told you,” he murmured, “you’re mine. My beautiful, defiant, mate.”
“Fuck. You.” A flick of metal. I heard the click before I felt it—he took the safety off.
“You should’ve walked away, Lyra.” The gun pressed harder, sliding from my cheek to my temple, ice-cold and unforgiving.
Then his hand grabbed my jaw, tilted my head and his mouth was on my neck and not for a seductive kiss. Bite.
Agony lanced through me. Sharp, brutal and unstoppable. His teeth sank in deep, tearing past my skin like I was nothing more than a claim to be marked. No warning, no permission. Just teeth. Pain tore through my neck like all-consuming fire, sharp and hot.
I screamed—a hoarse, broken thing—and fought against the restraints, my body convulsing with shock and fury and fear.
He held me still like it was nothing before pulling back, his lips were stained red. Blood. My blood. And he looked so damn satisfied, like he’d just claimed a prize.
“But now?” he said over his shoulder. “There’s no going back, little fox. You’re mine completely.”
I barely felt the gun fall away. All I knew, after he lowered his head to my neck once again, was the slow, deliberate swipes of his tongue over the wound—savoring it. Licking the bite like it meant everything.
He didn’t stop. His grip was iron, breath hot. And then… something inside shifted.
The pain didn’t ease, but behind it bloomed a strange heat, thick and humming. My heart raced, skin prickled. From some moment it wasn’t just pain anymore. It was just… wrong. Foreign. Like a wire had been cut and spliced into something completely else.
My vision started to blur, limbs twitched and numb now. Heavy. My eyes rolled back as darkness crept in, swallowing the corners of my sight, before my head dropped back.
I tried to move, I tried to breathe. But the room spun too fast and then—peacefull nothingness.
30
