The First Binding Novels & Stories

Fractionally shorter than the ones before it, fractionally closer to stopping without stopping. Then he was past me. Continuing down the corridor with the same unhurried certainty as always. I stayed against the wall. Listened to his footsteps until they turned the corner at the far end and disappeared. Then I stood there for a while longer. My right hand was warm again. I pressed it flat against the wall and felt the cold stone against my palm and thought about the word the elder had used. Binding. The ritual was called a binding. Something that held. Something you couldn’t undo by deciding you wanted to.

“I wasn’t trying to—” “I know,” he interrupted softly. He stepped closer, kneeling in front of me without hesitation, without fear. His fingers hovered near the mark, never touching. “That,” he said, voice low, “is the first binding mark.” My heart pounded. “First?” Fenrir swallowed. “There are seven.” The weight of that number settled into my bones. “What happens when all seven appear?” I asked. He didn’t answer right away. When he finally spoke, his voice wasn’t princely or powerful.

Rhen demanded, though the ground was already answering the question for her, a low hum rising through my own boots, not violent, not hungry, closer to grief than to hunger. "I think it is a person," Wren said. "I think the very first binding was never built to contain a creature. I think it was built to contain a grief so old and so enormous that the first guardians were afraid of what it would do to the world if it were ever allowed to simply exist out loud."

The first hour was rope. He bound her slowly enough that she felt every pass. The first wrap around her ribs was cool, then warm from her skin; each tightening made her next breath smaller, her breasts pushed up and framed, nipples left bare to the loft air until they drew tight and ached. He checked two fingers under every band. When the harness closed, her heartbeat lived in the rope.

Instead, she stood to help me get dressed. “You know, you’re lucky. If the Binding hadn’t forced your body to compensate for shock, you might have lost them.” “The Binding?” I asked, obviously confused. She nodded as she tucked me under the white thin sheet of my exam bed. “The Binding does a lot more than what the original Accord members thought. I don’t know where it comes from. It wasn’t addressed back then and I never asked. The first ones are long dead. It’s old magic. Older than vampires. I don’t fully understand it. But I have seen it before. It relies on the bond to provide sustenance. Did you feel it while you were separated?”

"The page that follows the prophecy." The music continued around them. Nobody else in the room knew the conversation was happening. "Tell me," Ryder said. "The vow you made," Sorin said carefully. "On the ridge, and again in the nursery. Both were valid. Both were necessary." He looked between them. "But the prophecy I gave you — the contracted union, the formal renewal, the seal against shadow claim — that was the *first* vow. The one the original text called the binding vow." He paused. "There is a second vow. One that was never written into any contract. One the bloodline itself requires."

But Elian stepped between us. “There’s another way,” he said, voice strained but steady. “The First Binding. Not sacrifice, but sharing.” Morwen shook her head. “It’s never been done. The risk...” “Is better than losing her forever,” Jason rasped, though no sound came out. His meaning was clear in his eyes. I turned to them, hands outstretched. “We weave our ANIMUS together. Not one life for the many,but all lives for the whole.” Morwen stared at us. “It’s never been attempted. If the bond breaks. ”

Ronan said, settling beside Lyra with the same focused, protective intensity he'd brought to every threat against his family since the earliest days of his marriage. "House Voss's current matriarch, Isolde, has been quietly acquiring old texts and fragments related to what several of my contacts refer to only as 'the First Binding,'" Seraphine explained, spreading a series of careful notes across the study table. "From what little I've been able to piece together, this predates even the founding dispute between Blackthorn and Ashgrove by considerable centuries — possibly the very origin point of the binding magic House Voss's family has spent generations perfe

I began to bind her. "Hands behind your back, slut!" I hissed. "Yes, Okaasan!" she squeaked and did that. I loved it. I worked fast. I bound her legs. I worked the rope around her wrists so they were bound behind her. Then I worked the rope around her torso, knitting it around her stomach and her small boobs until I was done. The red looked so good against her skin. She knelt there, her bush dripping in her juices. She wiggled, the rope rasping on her fair skin. She moaned at the rough texture. I smiled, so glad that my daughter had her first experience with bondage. I looked up to my Masters. They were both nodding in appreciation.

Why is she giving me a bracelet? “This seems rather sudden though,” I admit. “Out of the blue. What’s the occasion?” “I thought it’d be something sweet to mark the start of the love we’re going to share,” she says with a smile. “I decided I’d give it to you before we mate, as a token to our fresh start. “I know it’s going to be more difficult for us, but we can make it work. We can do this together. I want you to remember that.” I worry that it’s bewitched in some way. Catherine always did have an interest in magic. Which makes me suspicious of some of the things she does.