Page 97 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

I gasp, staring at him, straining against the invisible shackles around me, but they only pull tighter.

Caryan says through gritted teeth, his voice carving across my nerves, “Do not fight me, Melody. I have no patience for this.”

Maybe it’s the adrenaline running too wild in my blood. But I feel anger boiling up, for once overruling my fear of him. I would have clawed at him if my body wasn’t pinned.

“You have no right—” I seethe as he comes for me again, glowering at him when he cuts me off with a growl, fangs snapping right into my face.

The onyx in his irises turns into midnight-blue threads, spreading like tendrils of ink in black water. The effect of it makes him suddenly look like a predator on the hunt whose instincts have taken over.

“Oh, my little girl, I have every right in the world, believe me,” he snaps. Then his hands trace my ribs again, his magic pushing my shirt up, bristling over my skin.

I freeze at the violation. Tears of anger and fear well up in my eyes, but I swallow them down.

An instant later, the shackles of magic loosen, and I have to fight against my knees to keep standing when he lets me go.

I glare up at him, not willing to submit to his bared teeth, sharp and honed, to his simmering eyes. “Fuck you!”

His hand shoots out so fast I only feel his grip around my neck when he pushes me against the wall once again. “Do not fight me again, ever. You are mine,” he growls, a sound so low, so inhuman, it slithers over my bones and into my core.

Then his fangs pierce my flesh.

I don’t feel the pain, barely feel anything before he pulls back, eyes wide. The same eerie alloy of gold and red suddenly simmer in them, lacing around the blackness. But the primal aggression, the sheer possessiveness of the act robs every remaining resistance, until all that lingers is my depthless fear.

I want to curl into myself. Hide.

He’s still more animal than sentient being.

What have I done? I try to retreat, but he places a hand next to my head, blocking my way with his arm as if to say that he can force me to stay here. Can do anythingto me.

He wants me to realize. To understand what I am to him.

He leans slightly closer, the gold weaving back in like filigree artwork, lacing those thick, black tendrils. His breath brushes my lips when he snarls, “Don’t be fooled by my looks. I’m a monster, however human I might look to you. And I’m the very worst of them all. Don’t make me lose control, do you understand? Do not push me ever again.”

I hold perfectly still. Finally, he straightens slightly and lowers his hand, the blackness in his irises shifting into an ambiguous gray, as if he has made a decision.

Just then, Riven appears at the door, his lilac eyes wide with shock as I meet them.

30

Riven

“What happened?” Riven asks as soon as he trusts his own voice enough to speak. His tone is husky from the violence he just witnessed, from his own anger simmering under his skin, the cataclysmic magic in his veins still ready to surge. Abyss, he’s never seen Caryan lose control that much. But then, he’s never seen someone talk to Caryan like that and live long enough to see sunrise either. At least not after Gatilla, whose magical shackles had prevented him from killing without her explicit wish.

And yet, to see Caryan biting Melody like that—it flipped something in him.

It was pure dominance. Pure ownership. Pure… Caryan might as well have claimed her right before Riven.

The rational part in Riven knows Melody is his slave and that Caryan has every right to do with her whatever he desires, just as he told her. He knows Caryan bit her before.

Yet every fiber in his body screams at him to go for Caryan’s throat.

He smothers those unfamiliar impulses and takes a deep breath, reminding himself that things could have turned out much worse.

Yet—if he’d come a minute earlier, this wouldn’t have happened. He’d been at the border when Caryan had called him over their bond. He’d come as fast as he could, but—that one minute…

He should have been here. Should have intervened. He promised to protect her, always, yet he hadn’t been there in time.

Nefarians infiltrated my kingdom. My court,Caryan says coolly, his voice sounding only in Riven’s mind.

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