The creature screeches, my spine arching violently as the sigil lashes outward like tentacles of molten light. Lucien tightens his grip around my hips, grounding me, keeping me tethered, to his body, his mind, his raging cock.
“Come for me,” he orders, voice shaking with the effort of holding back the storm inside my soul. “Come hard. Let it drown in you.”
His hips snap forward, a brutal rhythm meant to burn the Shackle-Soul out with pleasure.
I convulse—once, twice, three times—each orgasm ripping through me harder than the last, each one making the creature recoil, weaken, unravel.
Lucien leans in, forehead pressed to the back of my neck.
Now, Elara,he hisses inside my mind.Push it out. Will it out. Condemn it to the hell it belongs.
The final orgasm crashes over me so violently I nearly black out—white-hot, bone-deep, a full-body shudder that throws the creature into a psychic scream.
And in that moment, Lucien reaches for the dagger.
The blade hums.
My sigil twists.
The Shackle-Soul writhes, desperate, cornered.
Lucien lifts the dagger to my spine.
And my entire world narrows to one single, burning truth…
He’s going to carve this thing out of me and, holy gods, I will let him.
11
THE DAGGER-PURGE
LUCIEN
The moment her final orgasm tears through her, blinding, seizing, shuddering, and I feel the creature recoil. Its panic floods her bloodstream, sharp and metallic, and through our newly opened bond, I taste it.
Fear.
Hatred.
Possession.
Good.
Let it fear me.
Let it understand what it means when a vampire of my age chooses violence.
Elara collapses forward, trembling, her body slick with heat and magic. I keep her upright with one hand on her hip while the other lifts the dagger. The blade thrums, eager. Hungry in its own way.
Her spine glows molten silver then searing black beneath the sigil, pulsing with the Shackle-Soul’s desperate attempts to cling to her.
It writhes the harder it feels me gather my power.
You cannot have her,I snarl into the bond.She is mine to protect. To possess. To fuckinglove.
The creature answers with a psychic shriek that forces her body to spasm.
She cries out but I tighten my grip, steadying her.
