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Chapter 2 - Chapter 2:The Obsidian Cage

They locked me in a room carved from molten stone — beautiful and terrible, like him. Walls of black rock shimmered with veins of lava. The bed was too large for one person. Everything smelled faintly of fire and something… male.

I didn't sleep.

The bite on my neck still throbbed.

It wasn't bleeding, but it burned. Not like a wound — more like something pulsing just beneath the skin, alive with heat.

I'd been beaten before. Branded. I knew pain.

But this… this wasn't pain.

It was a bond forming.

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VaerionPov

He stood alone on the balcony, wings half-spread in the dark, fire simmering in his veins.

Fool, he thought.

He hadn't meant to touch her. Not like that. But the moment he'd scented her — innocence, ash, and something older — it had ripped through his control.

She was nothing. A slave. A tribute.

But his dragon didn't care.

It had chosen her.

It wasn't just hunger now. It was something worse.

Possession.

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🕯️ Back in the Room...

The door creaked open. I stood. I didn't want to, but my body obeyed.

He entered like a storm.

His cloak was gone. His armor, too. Bare chest, runed and scarred, gleamed in the flickering firelight. He didn't look at me at first — only stared at the mark he'd left on my throat.

"You should be afraid of me," he said.

I was.

But not in the way I should've been.

I wasn't afraid of being killed. I was afraid of the way he made me feel — like I was meant to belong to someone. Like I wanted to be kept.

"I don't understand," I whispered.

His gaze snapped to mine. "You don't have to. Just obey."

He walked closer.

My knees hit the edge of the bed.

He didn't touch me. Not yet. But I felt the heat of his body, the way his power pressed against me like a wall.

"I don't take mates," he said. "But the fire in you… it sings to mine."

My voice trembled. "I'm just a slave."

"No," he growled. "You're mine."

He leaned in again, his breath brushing my ear.

"I won't touch you tonight." He paused. "Unless you beg."

Then he vanished in a blur of black flame, leaving me burning and breathless.

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