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“You are mine,” Zevran pants into my ear, each thrust punctuated with fierce emphasis. “Every lie he told you, gone. Every time he made you feel small, gone. You are adored. You are desired. My wife is so fucking beautiful.”
The worshipping devotion in Zevran’s face burns away all the shame, the fear, and the memory of Troy’s cruel rules and petty control.
This is healing. This is victory.
“Zevran, please—” I sob, my thighs gripping his hips
“Come for me, printsessa,” he demands, his thumb finding my clit, working it hard.
The orgasm bursts through me like lightning. I scream his name aloud, my body convulsing around his cock in wave after wave of intense, violent pleasure. Zevran groans driving deep into my trembling heat as he spills himself inside me, his weight crushing me into the mattress. He holds me tight as we both shudder through the peak.
He stays buried inside me for a long moment, his chest heaving against mine, his lips pressed to my sweaty temple.
When his breathing slows, he pulls out gently. He stands up, unconcerned with his nakedness, and walks over to the chair. With one swift motion of his blade, he cuts the zip ties, then hauls Troy up by his collar—blind, weeping, and broken—and drags him across the floor toward the adjacent bathroom like a sack of trash.
“Wait—Cora, please—!” Troy chokes out, his voice high and thin with animal panic.
Zevran throws him inside the bathroom, steps in, and kicks the door shut behind him.
I pull the sheet to my chest and listen.
There is no grand speech. No debate. Just the brief scramble of shoes on tile, a sudden, choked gurgle, and then silence.
The tap runs.
I rest my chin on my knees as hard-won peace settles over my soul. Troy controlled my life, sold me like livestock, and enjoyed my suffering. Now he’s a corpse on a bathroom floor, and I feel zero regret.
The water stops.
The door opens, and Zevran steps back out, his hands washed clean.
He stands in the doorway, and my chest aches with love. The stark white bandage around his ribs, the faint bruise forming at the edges, the butterfly stitches on his brow. He looks exhausted, but he’s still standing. He went through hell to pull me out of mine.
He crosses to the bed, and I open my arms, pulling him down against me. He sinks into my touch, letting his head rest against my chest, his heavy weight settling over me as the tension finally leaves his massive frame.
I stroke his hair, pressing my lips to the top of his head.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Zevran says quietly into my skin. “About my brother.”
“About Artem?”
He tenses slightly, holding on to me tighter. “I’m not the man you think I am, Cora. I’ve never told anyone this. Not even Alexei.”
“Tell me,” I whisper, my fingers moving gently through his hair.
He takes a slow, shaky breath. “The year I was twelve, Artem overdosed while I was alone with him. I saved him, and he swore on our mother’s life that he would get clean. Then six weeks later, I found him unconscious on his bedroom floor again, a needle in his arm.”
Zevran stares across the room, gazing into his oldest nightmare.
“I knew Mom would break. Dad would retreat even deeper. My sisters would be devastated. And I thought… I could stop this. I can make sure that Artem never hurts us again.”
A heavy silence fills the space between us.
“So I walked outside and pretended I hadn’t seen him.”
My heart aches for the sad, angry twelve-year-old boy with a burden no child should carry.
“Mom came home and found him in time,” Zevran continues, his voice rough. “Artem moved out, and he lived a while longer. But I didn’t know how to live with myself. No one knew that I’d seen my brother unconscious, dying, and I’d walked away. But I knew. I knew I’d been that fucking cold and ruthless. He died two years later, in an apartment surrounded by other junkies who didn’t do CPR on him or call an ambulance. I sat at his funeral while my mother wept, asking how anyone could see her baby like that and turn their back. Her words were knives in my guts. It felt like I was the one who killed him.”
