The Living Incinerator

"Strip. Everything you brought from the mud belongs in the incinerator."

The woman speaking didn't look like a maid. She looked like a warden in a sharp, gray suit that didn't have a single wrinkle. We were in a white, sterile room just inside the gates of the Blackwood Estate. There were no windows. There was only the hum of a ventilation system that pulled the warmth out of the air until my skin was pebbled with goosebumps.

I stayed frozen, my fingers clutching the hem of my ruined dress. "I don't have anything else. This is all I have left of my home."

"You don't have a home, Vespera," she said, her voice as flat as a dial tone. She held out a bundle of black silk. "From this moment until the ninety-ninth day, you own nothing. You are an asset. Remove the dress, the jewelry, and the shoes. Now."

I did as I was told. My hands shook so violently that I nearly ripped the delicate fabric I had spent months sewing by hand. As the mud-stained silk pooled at my feet, I felt the final tether to my life snap. But the warden wasn't done. She stepped forward with a pair of shears and a basin of stinging, chemical-scented water.

She didn't ask. She grabbed the braid I had kept since childhood and lopped it off in one jagged motion. Then she scrubbed my skin with a coarse brush until I was raw and red, erasing the scent of the Silver-Moon pack, erasing the touch of Jax, erasing everything that made me a person. By the time she handed me the black silk slip, I felt like a ghost.

"The rules are simple," she continued, leading me down a hallway lined with sound-dampening panels. "You will stay in the Master Suite. You will not attempt to leave. You will not turn on any lights. The Master lives in total darkness. If you see his face, the contract is voided, your grandmother’s surgery is canceled, and you will be returned to the road. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I whispered. My voice sounded small and alien in the fortress's silence.

"Good. You will stay healthy. When the sun sets, the Master enters. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not touch him unless he initiates."

She stopped in front of a set of heavy steel doors. She swiped a card, and the locks hissed open. The room beyond was a void. I couldn't see a foot in front of me. The air smelled of old pine and a strange, electric tang that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"Enter," she commanded.

I stepped into the blackness. The door clicked shut behind me, the sound echoing like a coffin lid.

The silence was a weight. I felt my way across the room, my hands brushing against stone walls until I found the edge of a bed. I sat there for hours, my ears straining for any sound of life. I thought of my sister Elara, probably laughing in Jax’s arms right now. The bitterness was a slow-acting poison in my veins, but it was the only thing keeping me upright.

Then, the lock hissed.

The air pressure in the room didn't just change; it collapsed. The temperature spiked instantly. I didn't hear him walk; I felt the vibration of his presence through the floorboards. It was a scorching aura that felt like standing too close to an open flame.

I stood up, my heart hammering against my ribs. The scent hit me first—deep, primal.

"You're in my spot," a voice growled.

It was a rumble that vibrated in the pit of my stomach. I scrambled to the other side of the bed, my breath hitching.

"I... I'm sorry."

"I told you not to speak," he snapped. He was standing right in front of me now. I could feel the heat radiating off his chest. He was a wall of muscle and shadow that swallowed the air.

His hand shot out, grabbing my wrist. His skin was so hot it nearly burned. But the moment his fingers closed around my pulse point, the scream in my blood returned. It wasn't fear. It was a frantic, rhythmic pulsing that centered in my heart and radiated outward.

He let out a sharp intake of breath. He didn't pull away. Instead, he slid his hand up my arm, his thumb dragging over the sensitive skin of my inner elbow.

"What are you?" he whispered. He sounded pained.

"I'm a Dud," I whispered, breaking the rule again.

His other hand found my waist, pulling me hard against him. I felt the rough fabric of his shirt and the erratic, thunderous beat of his heart. It was beating too fast—irregular and violent. In the silence, I could hear a faint, distorted scratching sound coming from his throat, like a beast trapped in a cage of bone.

"You're not a Dud," he growled, his face dropping into the crook of my neck. He inhaled sharply, his teeth grazing my jugular. "The air in this city is filled with the stench of rot. But you... You smell like the moon before the clouds take it."

He pushed me back onto the bed, his weight pinning me into the mattress. I couldn't see his eyes, but I felt them burning into me.

"Ninety-nine days," he muttered, his voice breaking into a literal growl. "If I don't kill you first."

He didn't move to take me. He just lay there, his heavy head resting on my chest, his breathing ragged and desperate. As the minutes ticked by, I realized he wasn't attacking. He was clinging to me.

"Master?"

"Sleep," he commanded, his voice muffled against my skin. "Just stay still. If you move, the voices come back. And if they come back, I’ll have to tear your throat out just to make them stop."

I stayed perfectly still, my eyes wide in the dark. But as he finally drifted into a fitful, growling sleep, a small light flickered from the hallway through the gap under the door. For a split second, the light hit his hand draped across my waist.

It wasn't a human hand. The skin was turning a mottled, bruised purple, and thick, black veins were crawling up his arm toward his heart like living worms.

I looked at the black veins and felt a cold terror that eclipsed everything Jax had done to me. He wasn't just a billionaire with a temper. He was dying of the Feral Rot. The madness that turned Kings into monsters, and I was trapped in the dark with a man who was already halfway to becoming a corpse.