Chapter 18: The Bite That Binds

Alaric

I should not want her this much.

Yet here I am.

In my Solar, pacing like a man possessed. Which, in many ways, I am. Possessed by her scent, her voice, the memory of her taste lingering on my tongue like sin.

It has taken every shred of restraint not to summon her. Every flicker of self-control not to storm through the corridors, rip open her chamber doors, and claim her all over again.

Not just her blood this time.

All of her. Every beautiful inch.

If I were to go to her now, I wouldn’t stop.

Not when I can still see the way her lips trembled beneath mine, or how her breath caught when I stepped too close. Not when the memory of her skin, warm and unmarked still burns beneath my fingertips.

She was born soft, but not fragile. There’s steel in her spine and stardust in her eyes. That’s what draws me in. More than the delicate slope of her neck or the flush that creeps across her chest when I say her name.

It’s the way she looks at me, not with fear, but with defiance tempered by curiosity. It’s the way her obedience comes laced with wit, like a girl playing a game she doesn't yet realize she’s winning.

Her beauty is not loud. It whispers. Lingers. Entraps.

Those wild curls, loose and tumbling down her back, make her look like something out of a dream I shouldn’t have.

And her eyes, gods, those eyes. Wide and sharp, too knowing for her age, and yet untouched by the darkness she walks among. She sees things she shouldn’t. Feels things too deeply. And still… she stays.

That is what maddens me.

And if I go to her now, I will ruin her.

Because I won’t stop. I wouldn’t be able to. The pull would be too strong, and she wouldn’t have the clear mind to back away from me.

I would take full advantage. I wouldn’t be able to resist. Not with her lips parting for me like a prayer, or with that fragile trust glowing behind her gaze.

I’ll take it all, her breath, her body, her devotion.

And she’ll give it to me, not realizing what she surrenders to.

She doesn’t understand the cost. The danger. The weight of a vampire’s bite.

My bite.

She felt a whisper of it that night. A graze. A flicker.

But if I were to sink my fangs into her now. Fully, deliberately, not even Edric’s warnings or her own human hesitations would save her from what would follow.

It would bind her to me in ways she couldn’t begin to understand. She would crave me with a hunger that would haunt her sleep.

She would wake aching for me, my mouth on her throat, my voice in her ear.

She would need me.

Dream of nothing else but my hands on her skin and my name in her mouth.

She’s already halfway there.

I feel it in the way her breath hitches when I touch her, in the way her gaze lingers a heartbeat too long.

Her attraction burns hot, reckless and uncertain, but real... Dangerous.

Because it mirrors my own.

Because it tempts me to ruin us both.

She’s likely with Edric now, pacing the other side of this madness.

Debating whether to come to me.

She will.

Eventually.

And when she does, I will break every law, every oath, to have her.

A soft knock pulled me from my thoughts.

Not hers.

The scent was wrong.

Sweet. But stale.

Clotilda.

She didn’t wait to be invited in. Of course not. She never did.

She swept into the Solar like a storm of silk and entitlement, draped in crimson that clung to her curves with calculated precision. The neckline dipped low, intentionally so, revealing the swell of her breasts and the glint of jewels nestled between them. Her dark hair was coiled high, lacquered into place like a crown.

Fitting for the Queen she still believed herself to be.

“Your Majesty,” she purred, her voice laced with syrup and sharpened edge. “You’ve been so... absent lately.”

“I’ve been busy,” I replied, not bothering to look up from the fire.

She moved closer, letting her perfume bleed into the room like poison in a glass of wine.

“Busy with matters of the kingdom, or matters of the heart?” she asked, velvet stretched over steel.

I didn’t flinch. “Is there a difference?”

She smiled. The kind of smile that held daggers behind its teeth.

“You tell me,” she said, stepping between me and the hearth. Blocking the warmth. Daring me to look. “Because since you've been king, you pursued nothing. Took no consort. Slept in cold sheets. And now, suddenly you burn.”

I met her gaze then.

“You assume much, Clotilda.”

She leaned in, her breath brushing the curve of my ear like a ghost of heat. “I know you,” she whispered. “I know your hunger. Your taste. I know how to still it.”

Her fingers reached for the knot of her robe, ready to let the silk fall.

“Let me remind you.”

I caught her wrist mid-air. Not harshly. But with enough pressure to halt the motion and leave no question of my intent.

Her eyes flared, surprise flickering into fury.

“Don’t mistake my silence for temptation,” I said, voice cold enough to frost glass. “It’s restraint.”

A pause. A breath between us heavy with rejection.

Her mouth curled downward.

“So that’s it, then?” she asked, stepping back, the rich fabric of her robe whispering against the stone floor. “You think yourself above all this now? Or is it that your appetite has changed?”

She tilted her head, dark curls catching the firelight like a halo. An illusion of innocence she’d long since abandoned.

“Tell me,” she hissed, voice dropping to something uglier, “is your sudden shift because of that little servant girl?”

I said nothing, and that silence… it wounded deeper than any spoken truth.

Clotilda’s face twisted. Grace peeled away, revealing something sharp beneath.

“I’ve killed for less,” she spat, venom threading through her voice. “You forget who I am. What I’m capable of. You think she’s safe here? With eyes always watching? With whispers already circling her like wolves?”

She took a step forward, voice rising like a blade being drawn.

“One day, someone will slit that pretty throat of hers while you’re too busy playing King-”

My movement was silent.

One moment she stood spitting threats. The next, her back slammed into the stone wall with a force that cracked through the silence.

My hand closed around her throat, lifting her just enough for her heels to lose contact with the floor.

Her breath caught in a choked gasp, eyes wide, lips trembling with the weight of her mistake.

I leaned in. Close enough for her to see the darkness behind my pupils. Close enough for her to feel the rage, ice-cold, ancient, and coiled beneath the surface.

“If you ever touch her,” I said, my voice so low it rumbled through her bones, “or so much as breathe another threat in her direction-”

I let the words linger, curling around her like smoke.

“I will make you bleed slowly. I will drag you to the catacombs and string you up like meat. The sun will never find you there. But your screams will.”

Her eyes flooded red with unshed tears and panic, veins bulging as her hands clawed at my wrist.

“I’ll carve your name into the stone myself,” I finished, “so that every noble who passes will remember what became of Lady Clotilda.”

I let go.

She crumpled instantly, gasping, coughing, legs trembling as she struggled to rise with what dignity she had left.

But there was none.

“You’re making a mistake,” she rasped, voice hoarse, hand pressed to her throat as she backed toward the door.

“I’ve made many,” I said coolly. “But protecting her will not be one of them.”

Her gaze snapped to mine. Wild now, something desperate and unhinged flickering in its depths. But she said nothing more.

She turned and fled, crimson silk swirling around her legs like spilled blood, her perfume already fading from the room.

The door slammed shut behind her.

I should have been satisfied.

Her fear should have pleased me, proof that she finally understood her place.

But it didn’t. Not entirely.

Because it wasn’t Clotilda who haunted me.

It was the girl I dared not name aloud.

The girl whose breath hitched when I got too close.

The girl whose blood still lingered on my tongue like a sin I would commit again. And again. And again.

Annora.

Her name was a tether. A curse. A promise.

And if she knocked on my door now. If she whispered my name just once…

There would be no Solar.

No crown.

No laws.

Only hunger.

And the ruin I would make of her.