Bound by Shadows

The mansion was too quiet.

Silence pressed against the walls, filling every corner of the great halls until it felt like the house itself was holding its breath. I moved restlessly from one room to another, each step echoing like a confession I didn’t want to make. My chest felt tight, as though the stillness of the night had slipped inside my lungs and refused to let go.

Alexander had left hours ago.

I had watched him walk away from me, his men trailing after him like shadows torn from his body, swallowed by the night. He hadn’t said much before leaving—he hadn’t needed to. His fury had been a living thing, coiling off his skin like smoke, thick enough to choke me. And yet I had let him go.

What else could I have done?

I pressed my palm to the cold windowpane of the study and stared out into the endless dark. Somewhere out there, he was fighting. Somewhere out there, he was bleeding. Somewhere out there, men were dying at his hands.

The thought should have repulsed me. And it did—at least, part of me recoiled from the truth of who he was. But another part of me… the part that remembered the way his eyes had burned when he promised they’d never touch me again… that part felt something else entirely.

Safety.

And that was what terrified me most.

I wasn’t supposed to feel safe in the arms of a man who lived in shadows. I wasn’t supposed to long for his return, pacing the mansion like a restless ghost until the sound of engines rolling up the driveway snapped my head toward the door.

My breath caught.

The growl of tires on gravel. Headlights sweeping across the walls. And then silence again, heavy and absolute.

He was back.

I didn’t realize I was trembling until I gripped the edge of the desk, steadying myself. My heart pounded in my ears as the front doors opened, the heavy hinges groaning. Footsteps entered—measured, sure, and terrifyingly familiar.

And then he appeared.

Alexander filled the doorway like he had brought the night inside with him. His suit was torn, his shirt smeared dark in places I didn’t want to think about. The faint coppery tang of blood clung to him, carried across the air before he even stepped fully into the room. His face was set, cold as carved stone, his eyes burning with something I couldn’t name.

He was beautiful and terrifying, a god carved from shadow and fury.

I froze, unable to move as his gaze locked on me. For a moment, he didn’t speak. He just looked—his eyes scanning over me, down my trembling hands, up to my face where I couldn’t hide the fear I knew was written there.

The silence stretched, pulling me tighter and tighter until I thought I might shatter.

Then he exhaled, slow and deep, and it was as though the whole house exhaled with him.

“You’re awake,” he said. His voice was low, roughened, as if smoke and violence had scraped his throat raw.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I whispered, my words sounding small, fragile.

He stepped further into the room, and the air shifted with him. It was suffocating—the weight of his presence, the heat of him, the shadows that seemed to cling to his broad shoulders. My back pressed instinctively against the desk, but he wasn’t advancing quickly. His movements were deliberate, controlled.

But there was blood on his hands.

I saw it clearly as he shrugged off his jacket and let it drop carelessly to the floor. His knuckles were raw, split open, dried crimson staining the lines of his skin. The sight made my stomach twist. I wanted to recoil, to tell him to stay away. But I didn’t.

Instead, I whispered, “You’re hurt.”

His eyes flickered, a brief crack in the armor. “Not mine.”

Something in his tone made my skin prickle. There was pride in his words, but also something darker, something that made me realize how far he had gone tonight.

“You killed them,” I said softly, more statement than question.

His silence was answer enough.

He moved closer. The scent of smoke and iron and something distinctly his filled my lungs, dizzying me. I should have stepped back, but there was nowhere left to go. The desk was at my spine, and he was in front of me, his body radiating heat and danger.

“They won’t touch you again,” he said finally. His voice was calm, but it thrummed with a kind of finality that sent shivers down my arms.

I swallowed hard, my throat dry. “You… you scare me sometimes.”

The truth slipped out before I could stop it. And for a moment, I thought I saw something flicker across his face—pain, regret, maybe even shame. But it was gone in an instant, buried beneath steel.

“I should,” he murmured.

The honesty in his voice should have broken me. But instead, it bound me tighter. My breath hitched as he lifted his hand, the same hand still smeared with someone else’s blood, and brushed his knuckles against my cheek. I flinched, not from pain, but from the sheer intensity of it—the contradiction of something so brutal being used so gently.

“You’re trembling,” he said, almost to himself.

I couldn’t answer. My words had tangled in my throat.

His eyes softened, but only slightly. “Don’t tremble for me, Isabella. Tremble for them. The ones who thought they could take you. The ones who thought I would let them.”

I should have pushed him away. I should have screamed at him, told him I didn’t want his blood on my skin, his violence in my house. But instead, I stood frozen, the warmth of his hand on my cheek anchoring me in place.

Because deep down, beneath the fear, beneath the confusion, a terrible truth was blooming in my chest:

I needed him.

Not despite the shadows he carried, but because of them.

When he leaned closer, his breath brushing against my hair, I felt my knees weaken. His presence was overwhelming, pressing down on me until there was nothing else—no air, no thought, no light. Just him.

“I would kill the world for you,” he whispered, his voice low and rough.

The words terrified me. And yet, against all reason, they also wrapped around me like a vow.

My hands lifted of their own accord, trembling as they touched his chest. His shirt was torn, damp in places where blood—his or theirs—still lingered. He didn’t stop me. He just looked at me with those unyielding eyes, daring me to accept him as he was: brutal, merciless, unrelenting.

And God help me, I did.

I closed my eyes and let myself lean into him, just enough to feel the solid weight of his body anchoring mine. His arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me flush against him, the strength of him undeniable. My heart raced, thundering in my chest, not knowing if it was from fear or something darker, something far more dangerous.

The silence stretched again, heavy and suffocating, until finally he pressed his forehead to mine.

“You’re mine, Isabella,” he murmured. “The shadows know it. The world will learn it. And no one—no one—will ever take you from me.”

I should have run from those words. But I didn’t.

Instead, I whispered back, “Then don’t let the shadows take you from me.”

For the first time that night, I felt his body still against mine. His breath caught, and though he said nothing, I knew I had reached some part of him buried so deep he rarely let it surface.

And in that moment, as the mansion stood cloaked in silence and the night pressed heavy against the windows, I realized something terrifying:

I wasn’t just bound to Alexander by circumstance.

I was bound by shadows.

And I didn’t know if I would ever escape them