Page 9 of The Naga Lord's Pretty Little Mouse

Seren.

She doesn't behave like prey.

Prey cowers. Prey submits. Prey doesn't lift its chin and demand to be seen as something more than a prize, a possession, a thing to be controlled.

She is not prey.

That is what makes her dangerous.

I turn from her door, letting the silence of the estate settle over me as I move through the halls, past the empty dining chamber and the archways that overlook the jungle beyond. The wind drags through the open corridors, whispering through the vines that creep along the pillars, the leaves glowing faintly with the pulse of magic that hums beneath Nagaland’s soil.

Far below, the torches of Kario flicker, casting gold over the sharp lines of the city. The night is restless. I can feel it in the sky, the anticipation hanging thick between the buildings, in the distant roar of the arena where warriors bleed for the gods’ amusement.

I have not set foot in those sands in years. Not since the curse.

The taste of battle, of steel and sweat and victory, is as hollow as everything else.

Seren’s words still scrape against my skin. You paid for me. Yet you don't treat me as a slave.

She is correct.

I hate that she is correct.

The truth is simple: I could break her.

It would be easy. A single command, a single exertion of force, and she would fall in line like the others. Humans are fragile things, their will bendable, their defiance nothing more than the last desperate sparks of a dying flame.

But I don't want her broken.

I want her as she is.

Fierce. Unyielding. Mine.

The curse doesn't stir at the thought of claiming her. The bond remains absent. But something elsedoes movebeneath my ribs, something restless, something I don’t understand.

The gods are cruel in their amusements.

I turn away from the balcony, gliding back into the shadows of my estate, past the walls etched with my lineage, past the door to her chamber.

I hear her breathing inside.

Steady. Controlled.

Awake.

She is waiting. She expects me to test her. To see how far she can push before she is punished.

I don't enter.

Let her wonder. Let her question.

I retreat into my own chamber, the night stretching long, the jungle whispering outside.

Tomorrow, she will see what it means to stand in a world of predators.

If she is not prey?

Then I will make her something else entirely.

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