All Chapters of Bound To The Ruthless Alpha: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Roen gave a short nod, his expression never changing, as if I'd asked him to deliver breakfast rather than prepare a woman for systematic humiliation.He understood what the red collar meant, what it symbolized in the twisted hierarchy of power that governed these darker moments. It was the mark of the condemned, the sign that mercy had been weighed and found wanting."She is to be taken to the black cell. Restrained. The floor bolts this time."Roen's only movement was a single, controlled blink—the only sign that he understood the full implications of what I was asking.He knew what the floor bolts meant, what position they would force her into, what they were designed to accomplish.He understood the difference between mere imprisonment and deliberate degradation.I leaned back in my chair, fingers steepled beneath my chin in a gesture that was almost meditative, almost peaceful."Bind her wrists above her head. Ankles wide. She is not to speak until spoken to. No food. No water. N

The door was reinforced with a frame of thick, blackened iron etched with sharp runes that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat, like veins carrying some dark life force through the metal. The symbols were more complex here, more intricate, speaking of bindings that went beyond the physical, of chains that could hold more than just flesh and bone.This wasn't part of the pack's usual infrastructure, wasn't connected to any legitimate function of governance or justice.It felt older than the mountain itself, older than civilization, older than the careful rules that governed how civilized people treated their prisoners.Built by ancestors who believed in pain as penance, in submission as natural law, in the breaking of spirits as a sacred duty.One of the guards stepped forward and pulled a key from his belt—not the simple iron keys used elsewhere in the fortress, but something more complex, more ceremonial. I watched his hand shake slightly as he inserted it into the lock, the only sign th

The world was reduced to sensation. The gritty, unforgiving cold of the stone beneath my knees. The dampness that had long since seeped through the thin fabric of my nightgown, a chill that was a permanent resident in my bones. The raw, burning ache in my shoulders, pulled taut by the iron cuffs suspending my wrists above me. The pedestal, a cold, unyielding block of marble, dug into my ribcage with every shallow, terrified breath I took, a constant, painful reminder of my position. Bent over. Offered up.This was my father’s peace offering. His tribute. My body, the currency.I had lost track of time in the windowless chamber. Minutes bled into hours, or perhaps it was the other way around. The only measure was the deepening throb in my joints, the slow numbing of my fingers as the cuffs bit into my circulation. My legs were splayed wide, anchored to the floor by thick leather straps at the ankles, the muscles in my inner thighs screaming from the sustained, unnatural stretch. I coul

I clenched my teeth, the muscles in my jaw aching. The word felt like shards of glass in my throat. “Aria.”A pause. I could feel him drinking in the sound, tasting it.“Louuder.”I swallowed hard, my throat dry as dust. He wanted it to be real. He wanted to hear me claim this humiliation.“Aria,” I said again, the word sharper, more forceful this time. It echoed off the cold stone walls, and it sounded alien, like it belonged to someone else. A girl who wasn’t bent and chained and naked under his gaze.He took a step closer. I could hear the deliberate slowing of his boots, the soft scuff of leather on stone. He was savoring this.“You’ll speak when told,” he said, his voice a low murmur that brushed the fine hairs on the back of my neck, raising them. “You’ll answer what I ask. You will hold your position until I say otherwise. You will not close your legs. You will not cry. And you will not pretend this wasn’t earned.”*Earned.*That word. It cut deeper than any threat of physical

He didn’t say Roran Vale. He didn’t need to. The ghost of my father was the third presence in the room.I stared down the barrel of that camera, my vision blurring with unshed tears.“Do you think he’ll remember holding you when you were a little girl?” His voice dropped to a murmur, almost conversational, as if we were discussing the weather. “Will he feel pride… or guilt?”My heart shattered. The tears came then in a silent flood, streaming down my face, dripping from my chin. I wasn’t sobbing. I was just… leaking. Emptying. There were no more walls left inside me to hold anything back. He had broken them all down.I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to die. I wanted the stone floor to open up and swallow me whole.*Click.*Another photo. And this time, Kael didn’t check the small screen on the camera. He didn’t need to. He knew what he had captured.He straightened up and stepped back from the tripod, leaving the camera there, still pointed at me, its dark eye still watching.The maids—I