All Chapters of Bound By Vengeance : Chapter 41 - Chapter 46

I paused in the corridor, counting the beats until her breath steadied. Silence after an exchange like that was not emptiness — it was the echo of a promise being born. Desire gathers itself in the pause, accumulates weight. I liked to watch it form.There’s an intimacy in being watched. Not the crass kind that reduces a person to a body, but the exacting, careful attention of someone who studies the map of another soul. I catalogued her small betrayals: the tremor when she laughed too loudly; the way her fingers hovered at the edge of a table as if she could steady herself; the slow exhale that followed any mention of me. Each was a breadcrumb. Each led me closer.I walked to the room that connected to the conservatory and moved a single lamp’s switch, so a warm pool of light bled across the Persian rug. The light was an actor I set on stage—nothing harsh, everything flattering. Ambience matters. Control is as much about environment as it is about words.When I reentered, Selena had

The night was alive with quiet.Not the peaceful quiet of rest, nor the hollow quiet of emptiness—this was the quiet that lingered before a storm. A quiet stretched so taut it hummed, every shadow sharp, every breath magnified, every heartbeat carrying the weight of anticipation.Others might have found it unnerving. But not me.I thrived in silence.Silence was a weapon, one I had honed across centuries. In silence, the mind screamed the loudest. In silence, desire bled into fear, and fear into desire, until no one could tell them apart.Selena was restless tonight. I could sense it in the air before I even reached her chamber doors. Her presence was not still—her energy quivered like a blade on the edge of snapping. Every shiver of her breath, every subtle shift in her body betrayed the storm beneath her carefully constructed composure.Perfect.I did not rush. I never rushed. Patience had been branded into me long before her kind even knew my name. The deadliest predators knew the

She is on the edge.I can feel it in every breath she draws, in the way her shoulders stiffen when she hears my footsteps in the distance, in the way her eyes betray more than her mouth dares to speak. Every fiber of her is strung tight as a bowstring, every nerve wound like a wire ready to snap.Selena doesn’t realize it yet, but tonight, the game changes.Resistance is no longer her shield. It is her invitation.I watch her from the shadows of the hallway, my gaze tracing the subtle movements she thinks go unnoticed. The quick clench of her jaw, the way her fingers tremble slightly when she believes no one is looking, the restless shifting of her weight from one foot to the other. She is restless fire contained in too small a space.She believes she still holds control. That she can fight me with her silence, her scorn, her sharp tongue.But she has already begun to unravel.I step into her room without a sound, letting the air shift with my presence. She looks up, startled, her bod