All Chapters of Bound & Tamed: An Illegal Affair: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

PercyThe van moves.It smells like disinfectant and old sweat. Not the sharp, sterile kind either, the cheap kind that only half masks what’s soaked into the metal over the years. Fear. Vomit. Blood that’s been scrubbed but never erased. I sit on the narrow bench with my wrists cuffed in front of me, ankles chained, the vibration of the engine rattling up through my bones. I hear the door slam shut behind me again, or I imagine it, I don’t know.That sound, thick and final, doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. There’s no jolt of panic, no tightening in my chest, just a faint acknowledgment, like checking off an item on a list. This is happening.The guard across from me doesn’t look at my face. He keeps his eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder, jaw set, posture rigid. Like if he looks directly at me, something might leak out. Judgment? Curiosity? I’m not sure which one he’s avoiding more.I lean my head back against the wall on the side. Cold metal kisses my scalp.The courthouse fa

PercyNight comes heavy and slow. The small lights above the room glow dimly, shadows crawling along the walls, and I lie on the bed, eyes wide, unable to force myself to sleep. My sister’s face is there before me, even in the dark, soft, pale, hair falling loose over her shoulders. Lila. I see the way her small frame turns into corners, trying to make herself invisible.I roll onto my side, pull the blanket tighter, but it doesn’t help. The room is silent, sterile. Nothing to distract me. No voices. No music. No games. Just me and the memory of what happened. I try to shove it away, but it sticks, clinging like wet ink to the edges of my mind.Sleep finally drags me down, and the darkness of my eyelids doesn’t erase the images; it just shifts them. The world morphs, and I’m back at the school, standing in the shadows of the hallways I can never escape. My chest tightens. My hands shake, even as I lie in my safe, private room. I see her, the real her, the living her, and then him. Cla

Percy Sleep in this place is strange.It isn’t the kind of sleep that eases you into rest with gentle arms and a quiet lull; it doesn’t cradle you and let your body dissolve into calm oblivion. Instead, it hovers over your mind lightly, almost mockingly, like a temporary visitor that could vanish at any second, leaving you exposed and alert. Even when the room is silent, even when nothing stirs beyond the faint hum of the fluorescent lights, some fragment of my brain refuses to surrender. It clings to awareness, keeps me half on guard.Maybe that’s why I wake up so suddenly.One moment, I’m in that hazy, comforting darkness of dreams. The next, my eyes snap open, and my body reacts before I can even register what yanked me out of sleep. There’s a brief, disorienting second when nothing feels anchored, the ceiling above me is foreign, the light too bright, the air too sharp and cold, cutting against my skin in a way that shouldn’t be normal. Then reality nudges back into place.I’m in