Chapter 2: Gilded Cage

The penthouse was a mausoleum of glass and steel, cold and silent as a tomb. My new heels clicked on the polished concrete floor, the sound echoing through the vast, open space. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a breathtaking, dizzying view of the city lights, a kingdom spread out at my feet. A kingdom that belonged to the monster who owned me.

“She is a transaction.”

His words cycled in my head, a toxic mantra. A transaction. A means to an end. I wrapped my arms around myself, but nothing could ward off the chill seeping into my bones.

A stern, older woman named Agnes, who I presumed was the housekeeper, had wordlessly shown me to my room. It was luxurious, with a bed bigger than my entire old apartment and an ensuite bathroom with a waterfall shower. It was also utterly impersonal. A beautifully decorated prison cell.

Restlessness, sharp and anxious, clawed at me. I couldn’t just sit in that room. I had to move, to map the boundaries of my new cage. I crept out into the hallway, the plush carpet swallowing the sound of my footsteps.

The silence was absolute. Until it wasn’t.

A low, guttural sound reached me, so faint I thought I’d imagined it. I froze, my breath catching. It came again, from the far end of the dark hallway—a snarl of pure, unadulterated agony, followed by the distinct, sickening crunch of splintering wood.

Fear, cold and sharp, pierced my heart. Every sane instinct screamed at me to run back to my room, to lock the door, to hide. But the same inexplicable pull that had jolted through me in his office now tugged me forward, a fish on a hook. My feet moved of their own volition, carrying me down the shadowy corridor toward the source of the sound.

The door at the end was slightly ajar. A sliver of light cut across the hallway floor. I pressed my back against the cold wall beside it, my heart hammering so violently I was sure he could hear it.

I dared a glance through the crack.

It was a study, and it looked like a hurricane had torn through it. A heavy oak desk was cleaved in two. Books were strewn across the floor, their pages torn. And in the center of the destruction stood Kaelen.

His suit jacket was gone, his white dress shirt torn at the sleeves, strained across a back corded with muscle. His head was bowed, his hands—now tipped with claws that gleamed like obsidian—braced on the mangled remains of his desk. His entire body trembled with the effort of restraint.

A raw, ragged whisper tore from him. “Control… it. She is… nothing.”

He was arguing with himself. With the beast inside.

As if sensing my presence, his head snapped up. His eyes, glowing with that same feral gold from the office, locked directly onto mine through the narrow opening of the door.

There was no storm in them now. Only wildfire.

Time stopped. The air vanished from my lungs.

In a movement too fast for my eyes to follow, he was at the door. He didn’t open it. He simply tore it from its hinges, the sound of rending metal screaming through the penthouse. The solid oak slab crashed against the opposite wall, exploding into splinters.

He loomed in the doorway, a primordial force of nature unleashed. The scent of wild forests and raging storms poured off him. His claws retracted, but the danger radiating from him was a physical pressure.

“I gave you a rule,” he growled, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that I felt in my very bones. “You broke it.”

I was frozen, a rabbit before a wolf. I could only stare, my mouth dry.

He took a step forward, forcing me to crane my neck to look up at him. His gaze burned into me, full of fury and a torment so deep it stole my breath.

“What are you doing to me?” The question was ripped from him, not an accusation, but a desperate, horrified confession.

He was close enough to touch. Close enough that the heat of his body seared my skin. The humming under my own skin erupted into a frantic, screaming chorus. My hand, acting on an instinct I never knew I possessed, twitched at my side, aching to reach out and…

What? Soothe the monster?

The thought broke the spell. I stumbled back a step, my back hitting the wall. The movement seemed to snap him back to himself. The wildfire in his eyes banked, replaced by a shuttered, icy coldness that was somehow worse.

He looked from my terrified face to the destruction in his study, his own expression twisting with self-loathing.

“Get out of my sight,” he whispered, the command laced with a venom that felt directed inward. “Before I forget you’re a transaction and remember what you truly are.”

He turned his back on me, a dismissal more absolute than any door.

I didn’t need to be told twice. I fled, the echo of his confession—What are you doing to me?—chasing me down the hall, a ghost that would haunt my gilded cage forever.

He wasn’t just a monster. He was a prisoner, same as me. And I was his torment.