Where Lightning Meets the Dark

From the deep shadows of a stone archway, I watched them. Watched her. The midday sun beat down on the packed dirt of the training grounds, kicking up dust that glittered in the oppressive heat. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and the rhythmic thud of wooden staves against practice dummies, punctuated by the grunts and curses of first-years. It was a symphony of violence I usually ignored, but today, every sound was an irritant scraping against my nerves. My focus was singular.

Violet.

She moved with a desperate, sharp intelligence that set her apart from the lumbering brutes she trained alongside. Every other cadet relied on raw strength, on predictable, clumsy lunges. She relied on her mind. I watched her duck under a wide swing from a cadet twice her size, her smaller frame an advantage she was finally learning to use. She didn't try to block the blow; she wasn't strong enough. Instead, she pivoted on the ball of her foot, using her opponent's momentum against him, and drove the butt of her short dagger into the back of his knee. He howled and buckled.

A vicious, dark pride swelled in my chest, so potent it was almost painful. She was magnificent. A fucking warrior forged in fire and defiance. Every day she survived in this shithole was a testament to the iron will hidden inside that deceptively fragile body.

My mind, a fucking traitor, replayed the memory that had been torturing me for weeks. Her, gasping my name in the dark. The slick heat of her when my fingers finally found her, the taste of her on my tongue. The memory alone was enough to make my cock stir, pressing thick and hard against the seam of my fighting leathers. This feeling—this raw, all-consuming desire—was a weakness. A vulnerability I couldn’t afford. Yet, I stood there, rooted to the spot, unable to look away. Watching her fight, watching her survive, had become my own private addiction, a self-inflicted torment that was equal parts heaven and hell. She was my obsession, and gods help anyone who got in my way.

A low, guttural growl echoed in my mind, a vibration that was not my own but was so familiar it might as well have been. It was Sgaeyl, her irritation a perfect mirror of mine.
Get a hold of your emotions, would you? This does nothing to serve you. Her thought was laced with the ancient disdain only a dragon could muster.

I started to reply but stopped short when I saw him, Dain Aetos. He strode across the grounds as if he owned them, his posture a perfect study in condescending concern. He stopped just short of the sparring circle, waiting for Violet’s opponent to be dismissed by the instructor before he moved in. He was a sorry excuse of a rider. One who cloaked his simpering possessiveness in the guise of protection. It was pathetic. And it made my blood boil.

He said something to her, his head tilted. From this distance, I couldn’t hear the words, but I knew their shape. I knew the patronizing tone he would use, the one that implied she was a delicate piece of glass one breath away from shattering. He saw her fragility, her physical limitations, and nothing else. He saw the daughter of a general, a childhood friend to be coddled and controlled. He didn’t see the fucking fire. He didn’t see the woman who had met my gaze across a mat, defiant and unbroken. He didn’t know the woman who had bucked against my hips in the dark, demanding more.

As Dain spoke, a sharp, jarring pulse of emotion shot through my bond with Sgaeyl. It wasn’t hers; it was a secondhand feed, a raw transmission from Tairn. And Tairn’s emotions were a direct reflection of his rider’s. It was a flash of pure, unadulterated annoyance. A deep, weary frustration that was so potent I felt it in my own chest. Violet was sick of his shit.

But on her face? Nothing. The mask was flawless, impenetrable to anyone who couldn’t feel the storm raging beneath the surface.

And I was the only one who could.

That knowledge was a drug. It fed the darkest, most proprietary parts of my soul. While Dain saw the mask, I felt the truth. While he saw a fragile girl, I remembered the slick, wet heat of her cunt gripping my fingers, the taste of her release on my tongue. I remembered the way her eyes, those incredible hazel eyes, had gone wide and dark with pure sensation as I brought her to a shuddering climax against the rough stone wall of the parapet tower. Dain was talking to a polite cadet. I knew the feral creature that lived inside her skin.

My jaw clenched so hard a muscle jumped along my cheek. My shadows writhed at my feet, hungry and agitated. Dain was still talking, his expression earnest, his hand gesturing toward the fortress as if explaining something of grave importance. Probably telling her she should be in the Scribe Quadrant again. Telling her she wasn’t meant for this life. Every word I couldn’t hear was an insult I could feel. He was trying to smother her flame, to pack it back into the neat, safe little box he’d clung to.

What a useless fucking prick. I wanted to feel his nose break under my fist, the shock in his eyes as I tore him away from her and showed him, and everyone else, exactly who she belonged to. The thought was so vivid, so visceral, that my cock gave a hard throb against my thigh. Possessiveness and lust were a toxic, inseparable cocktail inside me, and I was drinking it down.

Then he touched her.

Dain placed his hand on her arm, his fingers wrapping around her bicep with an easy familiarity that sent a slurry of acid through my veins. He was guiding her away from the sparring circle, steering her like a prized mare. My hands clenched into fists so tight the bones groaned. The shadows around me thickened, no longer passive but coiling like serpents at my feet, a physical manifestation of the venom flooding my system.

My mind refused to stay on the sun-baked training grounds. It plunged back into the cold, windswept darkness of the parapet tower just a few weeks ago. The memory wasn't soft or romantic; it was a brutal, desperate collision. I had her pinned against the rough-hewn stone, the drop to the ground hundreds of feet below us a thrilling, dangerous whisper in the wind. Her cadet leathers were coarse under my hands, but the skin I’d exposed at her throat was impossibly soft.

I remembered the exact moment her anxiety had turned to raw, unrestrained lust. Her scent had changed, the clean smell of soap and wind giving way to the musky, intoxicating aroma of her arousal. I’d ripped open the front of her leathers, the buttons scattering into the darkness, not giving a single fuck. My fingers had plunged straight into her, finding her already soaking wet for me. So fucking hot and slick, her cunt clenching around my fingers as if trying to pull me deeper inside. She’d gasped, a broken, needy sound, her head thrown back against the stone, her brow-to-silver hair a chaotic halo in the moonlight.

“Xaden,” she’d breathed, not a plea to stop but a demand for more.

The memory was so vivid I could almost taste her. I had pushed her thighs apart, dropping to my knees on the cold stone, ignoring the bite of the wind against my face. I buried my face between her legs, my tongue finding her swollen clit immediately. She tasted of salt and her own unique sweetness, a flavor that was branded into my senses. I’d lapped at her, sucking her into my mouth, my fingers thrusting deep into her slick channel while my tongue worked her mercilessly. She’d cried out, her hands fisting my hair, her hips bucking against my face with a frantic, untamed rhythm. Dain saw a fragile girl who needed protecting; I knew the wild creature who had screamed my name into the night as she came apart on my tongue, her orgasm flooding my mouth with her hot, sweet release.

Dain started leading her away from the mat. He was talking, his expression sincere, his thumb stroking her arm in what he probably thought was a comforting gesture. To me, it was a fucking brand. An act of ownership. And it was an insult to the woman I knew, the one who had gripped my shoulders and met my thrusts with a power that matched my own.

A raw, primal jealousy clawed its way up my throat, hot as bile. It wasn't just about sex. It was about knowledge. I knew the sounds she made when she was on the edge. I knew the way her inner muscles fluttered around my cock right before she came. I knew the exact spot behind her ear that made her shiver. Dain Aetos knew her favorite color. The comparison was so laughable it was infuriating. He was touching my Violence...
No, not mine. But certainly not fucking his.

Every instinct, every primal fiber of my being, screamed at me to cross the fifty yards of sun-scorched earth and rip Dain’s hand from her arm. To put my body between them and let the bastard see the promise of death in my eyes. But she wouldn't like that. Not here. Not now.

Revealing my claim on her, my obsession, wouldn't be a victory. It would be signing her death warrant. It would paint a target on her back so large that not even Tairn could protect her from it. Every enemy I had—and there were legions of them within these walls—would see her as a lever. A weakness. A pawn to be used against me. No, my public rage wouldn't save her. It would damn her. And that thought, more than anything, was a chain holding me in place. So I stood there, locked in the shadows, and I watched. I forced the blinding heat of my rage into a cold, analytical focus.

I watched Dain. I dissected his every move. It was a pathetic, transparent strategy. See how he positioned himself? His body was angled slightly, using his own bulk to shield her from the view of the other cadets milling about. It was a subtle act of isolation, disguised as creating a private space for them to talk. He was cutting her off from her quadrant, from her friends. He was making himself her entire world in that moment.

And his hand. That fucking hand on her arm. It wasn't a lover’s caress. It wasn't even the friendly touch of a childhood companion. It was an anchor. A coddling restraint. His thumb stroked her bicep, yes, but his fingers were curled just a little too tightly, a subtle pressure that said, Stay here. Listen to me. Don't walk away. He was physically reinforcing his verbal lecture, using his superior size and strength to pin her in place without ever raising his voice. It was manipulation at its finest, a textbook example of control masquerading as care.

He leaned his head down, forcing her to tilt her chin up to maintain eye contact. Another power play. It made him the authority, the one dispensing wisdom from on high, and it made her the supplicant, the student. He was reinforcing the very dynamic she was fighting so hard to escape: the idea that she was small, fragile, and in constant need of guidance. He didn't see a rider. He saw a liability, a problem to be managed back into the scribe quadrant.

My cock was still hard, pressed painfully against the seam of my leathers. The rage and the lust were so intertwined they were indistinguishable. The thought of his hands on her, even in this chaste, public way, sent a possessive fury through me that was intensely, sickeningly arousing. I wanted to rip his hand off her and kiss her, showing him the ravenous heat that burns beneath her controlled mask.

I forced the image down, burying them under cold strategy. My stillness was her shield. My silence was her armor. Every second I remained here, unseen in the shadows, was a second she remained safe from the consequences of being mine. It was a bitter, fucking irony. To protect the woman I wanted to claim in front of the world, I had to pretend I didn't see her, that she meant nothing to me. I had to let this lesser man paw at her, lecture her, and try to shrink her back into the box she’d just begun to claw her way out of. Each condescending word I imagined him saying was a lash against my own back, a punishment for the one secret I had to keep. The secret of her, writhing beneath me, her body slick with sweat and her own wetness, completely and utterly mine.

And then Dain leaned in, his mouth hovering just beside her ear. From this distance, I couldn't hear what he whispered, but I could see it. I could see the way his lips moved, the puff of his breath stirring the fine, loose hairs at her temple. I could see the disgusting intimacy of the gesture, a secret shared between them in the open, and it was a thousand times worse than a public shout. It was a claim of a different kind—a claim to her thoughts, her secrets.

Violet’s face, which had been a carefully constructed mask of polite patience, broke. It was a minute fracture, a crack so fine that only someone who had spent weeks studying her every expression could have seen it. Her jaw tightened, a hard line forming along the delicate curve of it. Her eyes, for just a fraction of a second, lost their focus on him and went hard, cold steel.

The raw, undiluted wave of her fury slammed into me through the bond, so potent it was like a physical blow. She wanted to shove him away. She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. But she didn't. She held it in, a testament to her own brutal control.

My control, however, evaporated.

A surge of rage, so pure and hot it felt like dragon fire in my veins, obliterated all my cold analysis. The shadows around my feet didn't just coil; they surged upwards, licking at my calves, hungry. My teeth ground together with a sound that was audible even to my own ears. He was whispering poison to her, and she was forced to stand there and take it. All my resolve to stay hidden, to protect her through inaction, turned to ash in my mouth.

I should have walked away. The smart move, the strategic move, was to turn my back, retreat deeper into the shadows, and find some other outlet for this violence simmering under my skin. I should have gone to the sparring rings and beaten someone senseless. I should have found Sgaeyl and flown until the rage was just a dull ache in my bones. Every rational part of my mind screamed at me to leave.

But I was rooted to the spot. My boots felt like they were forged to the fucking ground. The magnetic pull of our bond was a physical thing, a thick, unbreakable cable stretching across the training grounds, tethering my soul to hers. I could feel her fury as if it were my own, and leaving her to face it alone felt like tearing off a limb. It was more than the bond, though. It was my own dark, selfish desire. I wanted to watch. I needed to see. I was addicted to the sight of her, even like this. Even when it felt like I was flaying myself alive.

The memory of her on the parapet tower returned, not as a coherent scene, but as a series of explosive, explicit flashes. Her cunt, slick and swollen around my tongue. The taste of her release, hot and sweet in the back of my throat. The sight of her thighs, trembling in the moonlight. Her hands fisted in my hair, pulling me closer, demanding more. That was the real Violet. And this man, this boy, was trying to smother that fire with his wet-blanket concern.

My cock was stone hard now, a painful, throbbing weight in my leathers. The thought of striding over there, of grabbing Dain by the back of his neck and smashing his face into the dirt, was almost as aluring as the thought of throwing Violet over my shoulder and carrying her back to my room to fuck her until neither of us could walk. I wanted to punish him, and I wanted to claim her. The two urges were one and the same, a singular, overwhelming need to impose my will on the scene before me. To make it right. To make her mine again, not just in secret, but in the fucking daylight for everyone to see.

He pulled back, a self-satisfied little smile on his face, as if he’d just solved a complex problem for her. Violet gave him a tight, forced nod. She was a fortress, impenetrable and perfect, revealing nothing of the inferno I knew was raging inside her. And I remained her silent guardian, a predator leashed in the darkness. The torment of it was exquisite. I was her protector, and my protection was a cage of my own making, forcing me to stand by while the one person I wanted to shield from all harm was being slowly poisoned right before my eyes. The shadows around me writhed, a silent chorus to the violence in my heart, and I did not move. I just watched.

The mess hall was a cacophony of scraping chairs, clattering cutlery, and the loud, boisterous chatter of hundreds of cadets blowing off steam. It was a mundane, daily ritual that grated on my nerves on the best of days. Today, it was fucking torture. I sat with my wing, a slab of dry meat and some questionable stew on the plate in front of me, untouched. My body was here, at this table wedged between Garrick and Bodhi, but my entire being was focused across the cavernous room.

On her.

Violet was sitting with her own squad, Rhiannon Matthias chattering away at her side. But it wasn't her friends who held my attention. It was Dain Aetos, who had pulled a chair up to their table and angled himself so he was squarely in her space, his back to most of the room as if they were the only two people there. He was holding court, leaning forward on his elbows, his expression earnest and intense. He was talking at her, not with her. Even from fifty feet away, I could see the condescension in the set of his shoulders, in the way he gestured with his fork to emphasize a point.

I felt her emotions like a physical sting behind my own eyes. A frustrated, simmering anger she was holding tightly in check, but was dancing down the bond. On the surface, she looked attentive. She was nodding, her expression neutral, the perfect picture of a cadet listening to a superior. But I could see the subtle tells now. The slight stiffness in her neck. The way her fork was perfectly still beside her plate instead of moving. The way her gaze was fixed on his mouth, not with interest, but with the kind of focus one gives a venomous insect, waiting for it to strike.

She was tolerating him. Enduring him. And the fact that she had to was setting my teeth on edge.

Dain leaned in closer, his voice dropping, though his animated hand gestures didn't stop. He was lecturing her. I didn’t need to hear the words to know the tone. It was the same one he’d used on the training grounds—that infuriating, patronizing cadence that suggested he knew what was best for her, that her own thoughts and instincts were secondary to his superior judgment. He was treating her like a problem to be solved, a fragile piece of glass that needed his constant supervision to keep from shattering.

The memory of her in the parapet tower, her body arching into mine, was a stark, violent contrast. There was nothing fragile about the way her nails had scraped down my back. Nothing fragile about the strength in her thighs as she clamped them around my head, her hips bucking as she came on my tongue. That was the real Violet. A fucking storm of power and passion and intellect, all wrapped in a deceptively small package. And this fucking child, this boy who’d known her his whole life, couldn't see any of it. He only saw what he wanted to see: a girl he needed to protect, to mold, to keep safe.

He speaks to her as if she is a child who cannot wield her own power, Sgaeyl added, the thought sharp and laced with Tairn's disgust. Tairn is… displeased.

Displeased was a fucking understatement. The fury coming through the bond was a hot, agitated buzz, a direct reflection of Violet's own suffocated rage. It fed my own, stoking the embers that had been glowing since the training yard into a low, steady fire in my gut. My hand tightened around my knife, the handle digging into my palm. I wanted to get up, stride across the hall, and plant the point of this blade in the table right between his fucking fingers. I wanted to see the shock and fear on his face as I leaned in and told him that the next time he spoke to her with anything less than the respect she commanded, I’d cut his condescending tongue out of his mouth.

But I stayed seated, a mask of indifference plastered on my face. Exposing the truth of our connection here would be a death sentence. So I watched, my jaw clenched, feeling her irritation as if it were my own, a shared secret simmering between us across a crowded room. Dain kept talking, oblivious, poisoning the air around her with his concern. And with every word I couldn't hear but could feel the impact of, the fire in my gut burned a little hotter.

A lull in the surrounding roar of conversation, a brief, coincidental pocket of quiet, allowed a fragment of Dain’s voice to carry across the hall. It was sharp, clear, and laced with that infuriatingly patient tone he reserved for her.

“…far too reckless, Violet. That stunt on the mats today could have gotten you killed.”

My blood went from a simmer to a rolling boil. My hands, resting on my thighs under the table, clenched into fists so tight my knuckles turned white. The wood of the bench creaked under the strain as my leg muscles locked.

Reckless. He thought she was reckless instead of seeing the calculating force of nature she truly was.

The memory of her in the tower wasn't just a flash; it was a fucking brand on my soul. Her, on her knees, taking my cock down her throat with a ferocity that stole my breath. There was no hesitation, no fragility. Just a raw, demanding hunger. I remembered the slick heat of her mouth, the scrape of her teeth against the base of my shaft, the way her throat worked as she took me deeper than I thought possible. She wasn’t reckless; she was deliberate. She knew exactly what she wanted and she fucking took it.

Another snippet of Dain’s voice cut through the noise. “You need to rely on my judgment. I’ve been here longer. I know how to keep you safe.”

My judgment. The sheer fucking arrogance of it sent a wave of black rage through me. I imagined my shadows around his throat, not to kill him, but just to squeeze until that self-assured look on his face shattered into the terror he deserved to feel. He wanted her to rely on him? On his narrow, fearful, by-the-book view of the world? He would have her hiding in the Scribe Quadrant, buried under dusty scrolls, her power—her glorious, terrifying power—withering on the vine.

I knew her power. I’d tasted it. I’d felt it pulsing against my skin. After I’d gone down on her, when she was trembling and breathless, slick with her own release, she had pushed me onto my back. She’d climbed on top of me, her silver-tipped hair a wild halo in the moonlight, her eyes burning with an intensity that could level cities. She hadn’t hesitated. She’d mounted me, her wet cunt sliding against the head of my cock, teasing, controlling. She’d guided me inside her with a slow, deliberate slide, her inner muscles clenching around me in a hot, impossibly tight grip. She was the one who set the pace, her hips rocking, her body demanding everything I had to give. She wasn't some damsel needing to be kept safe. She was a fucking queen claiming her throne.

And Dain Aetos, with his condescending whispers and his suffocating concern, was trying to tell that queen she was a pawn.

He saw a girl to be protected. I saw a warrior who had fucked me with a strength and certainty that left me raw. He saw fragility. I saw the muscles in her thighs quivering, the sweat beading on her skin, the fierce, determined set of her jaw as she fucked herself onto my cock, chasing her own pleasure with a single-minded focus that was the most profoundly arousing thing I had ever witnessed. He saw a child to be coddled. I saw the woman whose guttural moans echoed off the stone battlements, whose orgasm had felt like a lightning strike, her cunt contracting around me in violent, exquisite spasms that left me dry.

My own cock was granite-hard, pressing painfully against the seam of my leathers. The rage was a physical thing, a sickness in my stomach and a pressure behind my eyes. Every instinct screamed at me to cross the room, to haul Dain out of his chair and show everyone—show her—what a man who truly saw her looked like. To show them the difference between possession and worship. Dain wanted to play house with a pretty, breakable doll. I wanted to kneel before a goddess of fucking war.

He saw her as a weakness to be sheltered. I knew she was a weapon, and the most infuriating part was that I was forced to sit here, silent and seething, while this blind fool tried to dull her edge.

“Riorson.”

Garrick’s voice was a low rumble beside me, dragging me from the red haze of my thoughts. I blinked, the image of Violet’s flushed face and sweat-slicked body fading from my mind’s eye.

“Did you hear a word I said?” Garrick asked, his brow furrowed with mild annoyance. “The quartermaster is shorting us on whetstones again.”

I forced my gaze away from Violet’s table, turning my head just enough to meet Garrick’s eyes. My own felt hot, my jaw so tight it ached. “Tell him I’ll pay him a visit if he can’t count,” I said, my voice flat and cold, utterly detached from the furnace burning inside me. It was a piss-poor response, but it was all I could manage.

Garrick gave me a long look, but didn’t push. He knew my moods. He turned back to his meal, leaving me to my torment. My attention snapped back across the hall like a taut string, pulled by a force I couldn’t fight.

Dain was still talking, still gesturing. And Violet was still listening, her posture a masterpiece of polite tolerance. But it wasn’t the memory of her body that held me captive now. It was the memory of her mind.

A few nights after the parapet, I'd found her in the archives. She’d been researching Navarre’s eastern border skirmishes, and she’d found a discrepancy in the official histories. She’d laid out the scrolls, her small hands tracing the faded ink of maps that were centuries old. She hadn’t been flirting. She hadn’t been trying to impress me. She’d been consumed by a puzzle.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she’d whispered, her brow furrowed in concentration. “The supply lines they claim to have used are impossible. The terrain is too treacherous. They’d have lost half their men to attrition before they even saw the enemy.”

I’d stood there, ready to push her up against a bookshelf and lift her legs around my waist, but her intensity stopped me cold. I looked at the maps, at the histories I’d been forced to memorize my entire life. I’d never questioned them. No one had. But she, with her Scribe’s mind and a warrior’s burgeoning instinct, had seen the lie hidden in plain sight.

We’d spent the next hour hunched over those scrolls, not as enemies or lovers, but as equals. She’d dismantled a hundred years of accepted military doctrine with quiet, ruthless logic. Her intellect was a weapon, sharper than any dagger, more devastating than any siege engine. The entire time, all I could think about was how that same brilliant, analytical mind had been focused so completely on my cock just nights before. I remembered her looking up at me while she rode me, her eyes dark with pleasure but still so fucking sharp, as if she were committing every sensation, every shift of my hips, every groan I couldn't hold back, to memory. She wasn't just feeling it; she was learning me. Cataloging me. Conquering me.

That was the woman I wanted. The one who could strategize an impossible campaign and then turn that same ferocious intelligence to figuring out exactly how to ride my cock to make us both come so hard the world fell away.

And Dain Aetos was telling her to rely on his judgment.

The rage came back, colder this time, more potent. It wasn’t just that he was trying to possess her body. He was insulting her mind. He was trying to smother the brightest fire I had ever seen. He saw a girl who needed to be led by the hand through training exercises. I saw a woman who could rewrite our entire understanding of this war. He wanted to cage her, to keep her safe and small and reliant on him. I wanted to hand her an army and watch her burn our enemies to the fucking ground. I wanted to see her unleashed, to see that brilliant, vicious mind set loose upon a world that would never see her coming.

I wanted to be there when it happened. I wanted to be the one she came back to, covered in the blood of her enemies, her eyes blazing with triumph, and fuck her on a table full of battle maps.

My gaze locked on her across the room, a desperate, silent plea. See him for what he is. A cage. A fucking anchor. I longed to feel the spark of her thoughts, to tell her that I saw her, all of her, and that I would never, ever ask her to be less than the magnificent, terrifying force of nature she'd turned herself into.

My thoughts were a godsdamned storm, a chaotic whirl of rage and memory and a desperate, aching need. And then, through the haze, I saw it.

Dain moved. He leaned forward, his expression one of earnest, patronizing concern, and placed his hand over hers where it rested on the tabletop.

Just like that. A simple gesture. A comforting touch, anyone else would have called it. But I saw it for what it was. An anchor. A claim. The brand of ownership being pressed onto her skin in full view of the entire mess hall. He wasn’t comforting her; he was staking his territory, marking her as his to guide, his to protect, his to fucking manage.

My breath caught in my throat. I saw the muscles in her jaw flicker. Her shoulders, which had been relaxed in a posture of feigned interest, went rigid. It was a minute shift, one that ninety-nine percent of the people in this hall would miss. But I saw it. I felt it, like a sympathetic tremor through the stone floor. Her fingers, trapped under his palm, curled slightly, a reflexive attempt to pull away.

She didn't want his touch.

And he ignored it. He fucking ignored it. He kept his hand there, pressing down with a gentle finality that made my vision swim with red. He kept talking, his thumb stroking the back of her hand as if she were a nervous mare that needed calming.

That hand. I knew that hand. I knew the feel of her skin. I’d held that same hand in mine, lacing my fingers through hers as I drove my cock into her, our clasped hands a bond of trust against the cold stone of the parapet. I’d felt her nails, short and practical, dig into the muscles of my back as she shattered around my tongue, her cunt clenching and releasing, drenching my face in her slick, sweet come. I remembered the exact texture of her palm against my cheek, a touch so tender it almost broke me, right before she climbed on top of me and took my cock deep inside her.

Dain was touching something sacred. He was putting his filthy, condescending hands on something that belonged only to us.

The memory of her riding me came back, sharp and visceral. I remembered grabbing her hips, my thumbs pressing into the soft skin just above her ass, guiding her, urging her on. I’d felt the powerful flex of her thighs, the way she controlled every fucking inch of my shaft sliding in and out of her tight, wet heat. She had been in charge, a goddess of pleasure taking what she wanted. And when she’d been close, she’d braced her hands on my chest, her head thrown back, a raw, guttural moan tearing from her throat as she fucked herself into her orgasm. Her hands, flat against my pectorals, had been the only thing grounding her as her body convulsed around my cock.

That was touch. That was connection. A collision of power and pleasure, freely given and ravenously taken.

What Dain was doing… that was defilement. It was a violation. He was touching the hand of a queen and treating her like a child. He was touching the body of a warrior who had screamed my name into the night sky and acting like she was a piece of fragile glass.

My shadows deepened around my feet, writhing with an anger so profound it was almost a physical entity. I wanted to send them across the room, to wrap around Dain’s wrist and snap the bone. I wanted to feel the crunch, see the shock and pain on his face as his hand was ripped away from her.

He had no right. He hadn’t earned the right. He hadn’t seen her at her most vulnerable and her most powerful. He hadn’t tasted her, hadn’t been inside her, hadn’t felt the very essence of her power contract around his cock. He didn’t know the way her breath hitched right before she came, or the scent of her skin after she’d been thoroughly fucked. He knew nothing.

He saw a project. A cause. A girl to save so he could feel like a man.

I saw the woman who had knelt for me and then made me beg for her. I saw the strategist who could dismantle a century of lies. I saw the fire that could burn the world down. And I wanted to be the one to hand her the fucking torch.

His thumb stroked her hand again, a slow, possessive, utterly oblivious gesture.

That was it. That was the final fucking straw.

A low, guttural sound, halfway between a snarl and a groan, tore from my own throat. My muscles went rigid, my entire body locking up in a wave of pure, unadulterated fury. My knuckles were white where I gripped the edge of the table, the wood groaning under the pressure. The shadows around my boots churned, no longer just deepening but coiling like starving serpents, hungry for violence.

He had no fucking right.

Dain’s thumb stroked her skin again. I had worshipped that body, learned its language, submitted to its power. And this fucking child, this condescending, self-righteous prick, was touching it like it was his property to soothe. He was putting his bland, sterile touch on the same skin I had marked with my teeth, the same hand that had held me inside her while she came apart.

It was sacrilege.

A violent tremor shot through me, a quake of rage so profound it threatened to split me open. I was going to kill him. Right here. I was going to cross that hall, rip his fucking hand from hers, and smash his face into the table until there was nothing left but blood and splinters.

The scraping sound of my chair against the stone floor was like a thunderclap in the sudden silence of the mess hall.

Every head turned. Garrick’s. Bodhi’s. Imogen’s. Across the room, Violet’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, finally breaking contact with Dain. Dain himself looked up, his hand finally dropping from hers, a flicker of annoyance on his face that quickly morphed into outrage as he saw me.

I didn’t see any of them. Not really. My world had narrowed to a single, burning path out of this room. Every instinct screamed at me to walk toward their table, to finish what my body was demanding. But beneath the rage, a colder, more desperate thought took hold. Her.

Her eyes meet mine with an intensity I could feel not just physically, but deep within my soul; like she's standing on the hillside above Aretia alongside me, gently but fiercely moving me to ground myself. In a second I feel her even deeper—She’s lowered her shields.

“Im ok, Xaden, It’s ok” her voice softens my shoulders for approximately one and a half seconds, but a twitch takes my attention away.

Dain.

His dumbass blundering hands are too close to her magnificent mind. Our mind, in a way. Gnashing teeth and a low guttural growl vibrate through my veins as Sgaeyl and Tairn voice their displeasure. One look down to Garrick makes me think he could feel Tairn's anger through me.

“Violence, you know your voice drives me wild, but he’s too close. You need to raise your shields.”

Her eyes roll so dramatically that the movement takes her head with it. “What, you don’t think I know what he can do? what he can see?” She lowers her chin and looks up to me across the room, her gaze brushing through the lower curve of her perfect lashes. I blink hard before she lets a wicked smirk grace her lips in what is again the hottest fucking expression I’ve ever witnessed; she keeps out doing herself. “Don’t look so flustered, Riorson, you’ll give away our little secret.” Her mouth opens slightly and I see her tongue play between her teeth. Fuck.

“Is there a problem, Sir?!” The drip of mockery in Dain’s voice gives me every reason to kill him. His face drains of all color as I imagine he's reached the same conclusion. I think he’s had enough time among us mortals.

Half a step towards their table, the searing ball of fire in my chest is dampened to a soft flame and I unclench my jaw. What the fuck?

“What did you do? how did you do that?” My eyes dart to the hazel ones I can’t get enough of.

“Maybe I’ll show you later if you play nice.” Violet stands up and scans my body, quickly, but thoroughly, before she clears her area and leaves the mess hall. Dain starts to stand as well, but with my Violence gone, the full power of my rage descends again.

I push through the heavy doors of the mess hall and into the relative quiet of the stone corridor, my boots echoing with each angry step. The air is cooler out here, but it does nothing to quell the heat flushing my skin. My heart is still hammering against my ribs, a frantic rhythm set by the look in Xaden’s eyes. Gods, that look. It was a storm, a promise of violence so pure and absolute that it had silenced the entire room. And it had been for me. A possessive, feral rage that should have terrified me, but instead, it sent a different kind of thrill, a dark and secret one, straight to my core.

He wanted to kill Dain for touching my hand. The thought is both terrifying and exhilarating. The raw, unfiltered power of his jealousy was a force of nature, and for a split second, I had been the calm at its center, the only one who could gentle it. That control, that connection, was more intoxicating than any wine.

“Violet!”

The sound of Dain’s voice makes my shoulders tense. I don’t slow down. I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to hear his lectures, his concerned sighs, his endless attempts to manage me as if I were a particularly difficult text he was tasked with translating. After the way he’d put his hands on me, after the look on Xaden’s face… I just need space.

“Violet, wait up! What the hell was that?” His footsteps are faster now, heavier, closing the distance between us. He sounds indignant, personally offended that I would dare walk away from him.

I keep walking, rounding the corner into a less-trafficked hallway that leads toward the dormitories. It’s dimmer here, the sconces spaced farther apart, casting long, dancing shadows. Maybe if I just ignore him, he’ll get the message.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” he seethes, his voice right behind me now.

Before I can react, his hand clamps down on my upper arm, his fingers digging into the muscle. The grip isn’t just firm; it’s bruising. It’s an owner’s grip, meant to stop me in my tracks and assert his authority. I stumble to a halt, jerked back by the force of it.

I turn my head slowly, my eyes locking onto his hand on my arm before I lift my gaze to his face. His jaw is tight, his cheeks flushed with anger. The concerned, gentle Dain from the mess hall is gone, replaced by someone I barely recognize—someone furious and entitled.

“What was that in there?” he demands, his voice a low, accusatory hiss. “You deliberately humiliated me. You let him stare you down, you get up and walk out… you made me look like a fool.”

My jaw drops. Humiliated him? “Let go of me, Dain,” I say, my voice dangerously quiet.

“No. You’re going to listen to me for once.” He gives my arm a slight shake, his grip tightening. Pain, sharp and biting, shoots up to my shoulder. “Riorson was about to start a brawl, and you just sat there, looking at him like… like you were encouraging him. Do you have any idea how that looked? How it makes me look? People will think I can’t control my own…” He trails off, but the word hangs in the air between us. Girlfriend. Fiancee. Property. He doesn’t have to say it. I can feel it in the possessive pressure of his fingers.

Rage, cold and sharp, slices through me. It’s so different from the hot fury I saw in Xaden. This is the fury of a cornered animal, a sudden, primal need to bite the hand that holds it captive. He’s not worried about my safety. He’s worried about his reputation. He’s angry that I didn’t perform the part he’d assigned me, the grateful, pliant girl who needs his guidance.

His thumb presses into the tender flesh of my bicep, a deliberate point of pressure. It’s a touch meant to dominate, to remind me of his physical strength. It’s a violation. It’s nothing like Xaden’s touch. Xaden’s hands, even at their roughest, are a question, an invitation. They learn my body, they worship it, they map every curve and scar with a reverence that makes my bones ache. His touch is about shared power, about a pleasure so intense it borders on pain.

Dain’s touch is a cage. It’s a statement of ownership. And I have never, not once in my life, belonged to anyone.

My training instincts, honed over months of brutal sparring sessions, kick in before my conscious mind can even form a plan. Every lesson, every bruise, every moment spent on the mats solidifies into a single, sharp point of action. He thinks I’m fragile. He thinks I’m his to control. He’s about to find out how wrong he is.

I don’t pull back. That’s what he expects. Instead, I move into him, closing the small space between our bodies and using his own forward momentum against him. My free hand comes up, not to claw at his, but to precisely target the pressure point on the back of his hand, right between the knuckles of his index and middle finger. I drive the tip of my thumb into the nerve cluster with all my strength.

A sharp, involuntary grunt escapes him. His grip falters for a fraction of a second, the shock of the pain overriding his anger. It’s all the opening I need. I twist my captive arm, rotating my elbow up and over his wrist, breaking the hold with a sickening pop of his joint. I pivot on my heel, putting a solid three feet of distance between us in a single, fluid motion.

The corridor is silent except for our ragged breaths. My arm throbs where his fingers dug in, and I can already feel the deep, ugly bruises forming under the skin. But it’s free. I’m free. I rub the sore muscle, my eyes never leaving his.

Dain cradles his hand to his chest, his face a mask of stunned disbelief. The anger is still there, simmering beneath the surface, but it’s now mixed with the shock of being so easily, so effectively, overpowered. He’s looking at me as if he’s never seen me before. Maybe he hasn’t. The girl he grew up with, the one he thought he was protecting, is gone. She died on the parapet. Tairn burned her away, and Xaden’s touch forged what was left into something harder. Something that would never again tolerate a cage.

“Don’t,” I say, and the word is as cold and sharp as a shard of ice. My voice doesn’t tremble. It’s flat, devoid of any of the history or affection that once existed between us. It is the voice of a soldier addressing a threat. “You ever,” I continue, taking a small, deliberate step toward him, forcing him to take an involuntary step back, “put your hands on me again.”

His mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. The sheer audacity of my defiance seems to have short-circuited his brain. He, Dain Aetos, the golden boy, the wingleader, has been physically and verbally put in his place by the small, breakable girl he was trying to scold.

“You lost that right,” I finish, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper that carries all the weight of my fury. “You have no right to touch me. You have no say in what I do or who I look at. You are my wingleader. That is all. Do you understand me?”

The question hangs in the air, an ultimatum. This is the line. He can either accept it and retreat, or he can cross it and discover just how much I’ve changed. For a long moment, he just stares, his blue eyes wide with a mix of fury and something else… something that looks a lot like hurt. But it’s the possessive, wounded pride of a boy who has just had his favorite toy taken away, not the genuine pain of a friend. And I feel nothing for him. No pity. No regret. Just the cold, clean certainty that I did what had to be done.

The anger in his eyes flickered, replaced by something softer, something calculatedly wounded. He let his injured hand fall to his side, his posture slumping just enough to feign defeat. It was a performance, and a damn good one. He was trying a new tactic, shifting from brute force to emotional blackmail.

“Vi,” he murmured, the name a soft, familiar caress that felt utterly alien now. He took a slow step forward, and I held my ground, refusing to give him an inch. “This isn't you. The Violet I know wouldn't be this… cold. Not to me.”

His voice was laced with a sorrow that was so expertly crafted it might have worked a few months ago. Now, it just sounded like a lie.

“You don’t know me, Dain,” I said, the words flat and final. “You know a version of me that doesn't exist anymore.”

“That’s not true.” He took another step, and my back met the cold, unyielding stone of the corridor wall. He hadn’t touched me, but I was trapped all the same. He leaned a hand against the wall beside my head, caging me in. “I’m the only one who’s ever really known you. I was there when your father… I was there for all of it. I know your weaknesses, your fears. I know that you’re terrified, and you’re latching onto the first person who offers you a semblance of power.”

His voice dropped lower, becoming a conspiratorial whisper meant only for me, a secret shared between the two of us. It was meant to sound intimate, protective. It felt suffocating.

“He’s poison, Violet. Riorson. Look at what he’s doing to you. He’s turning you against me, against everything you should be. I’m just trying to protect you, the way I promised your father I would.”

The mention of my father was a low blow, a deliberate strike at the most vulnerable part of me. He was using the memory of a dead man to manipulate me, to shame me back into the little box he’d built for me. The audacity of it, the sheer, self-serving arrogance, stole my breath. He wasn't protecting me. He was protecting his own sense of order, his belief that he knew what was best.

“You’re not protecting me,” I whispered, the words trembling with a rage so profound it felt like a physical illness. “You’re trying to control me.”

“I’m trying to save you,” he insisted, his face drawing closer. His scent, a clean, familiar smell of soap and parchment, filled my senses, and I felt a wave of nausea. His proximity was a violation. His gaze dropped from my eyes to my lips, and a horrifying understanding dawned on me.

He thought this was a lover’s quarrel. He thought he could fix this, erase the last few minutes, erase Xaden, with a single gesture. He believed he could kiss away my defiance and reclaim what he saw as his.

“We can fix this, Vi,” he said, his voice thick with a counterfeit emotion that was supposed to pass for love. “We can go back. Just let me…”

His face was inches from mine now. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my skin. My body was frozen, not with fear, but with a disgust so absolute it was paralyzing. Every instinct screamed to shove him away, to knee him, to claw at his face. But my mind was a vortex of white-hot fury. He was trying to overwrite Xaden’s kisses—kisses that were fire and shadow, questions and answers, a claiming that was earned and offered, not taken. Dain’s mouth, soft and condescending, was about to press against mine, an act of erasure, an attempt to stamp out the brand Xaden had left on my soul.

He leaned in, his eyes closing as his lips parted slightly, aiming for mine. He was so certain of his right to me, so confident in his power to bend me back into shape. He saw my stillness not as incandescent rage, but as surrender.

He was wrong.

Something deep inside me, something ancient and primal connected to the very core of my dragon, snapped. It wasn't a conscious thought. It was an instinct, a violent, cellular rejection of his touch, his presence, his entire suffocating history. The air, which had felt thick and heavy, suddenly became thin, electric. A low hum started in my chest, the same thrumming power I felt when Tairn was near, but this was all mine. It vibrated through my bones, a current seeking a ground.

My hand, the one he’d grabbed, was still at my side. I didn’t raise it. I didn’t have to. The energy surged down my arm, a torrent of white-hot power that felt less like a decision and more like a biological imperative. My skin tingled, my nerves screamed, and the space between my palm and his chest became a loaded weapon. He was the threat. My body was the defense.

A raw, instinctual spark of lightning crackled from my palm.

It wasn't a massive bolt like the ones I struggled to summon on the training mats. This was different. It was small, brutally efficient, and born of pure rage. A jagged thread of brilliant, white-gold light, no thicker than my finger, leaped across the inches separating us. It made a sound like a whip cracking next to my ear, sharp and violent, followed by the sickening sizzle of power meeting flesh.

The light was blinding, a momentary starburst that bleached all the color from the stone corridor. The smell of ozone, sharp and clean like the air after a storm, instantly filled my lungs, choking me.

The bolt struck Dain square in the chest, right over his heart.

His eyes, which had been closed in anticipation of a kiss, flew open in sheer, unadulterated shock. A choked gasp was ripped from his throat, his body convulsing as the electricity surged through him. It wasn't enough to kill him, but it was more than enough to hurt. He was thrown backward as if struck by an invisible fist, his head connecting with the opposite wall with a dull, wet thud. He didn't fall. He stumbled, his legs clumsy and uncoordinated, his hands flying to his chest where the lightning had hit.

He stared at me, his face a mask of pain and utter disbelief. His mouth hung open, a silent scream trapped behind his teeth. A wisp of smoke curled up from the front of his uniform, the fabric blackened and smoldering in a small, circular patch. The smell of burnt wool joined the scent of ozone.

The corridor was silent again, save for his ragged, wheezing breaths and the frantic pounding of my own heart. The power receded, leaving my arm tingling and strangely numb, my fingers twitching with the ghost of its passage. I lowered my hand slowly, my eyes locked on Dain.

He slid down the wall, his body losing its fight with gravity, until he was slumped in a heap on the stone floor. He was still conscious, his wide blue eyes fixed on me, but they no longer held arrogance or manipulative concern. They held fear. For the first time since I had met him, Dain Aetos was afraid of me.

I stood there, my back still pressed against the wall, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts. The fury was still there, a cold, hard knot in my stomach, but it was joined by a dizzying sense of shock. I had done that. I had struck him. I had used my signet against a wingleader. But beneath the shock, a dark, fierce satisfaction began to bloom in my chest. He had pushed, and I had pushed back. He had tried to cage me, and I had burned the bars. The fragile girl he thought he knew was gone for good, and in her place stood a woman who would not be touched, would not be controlled, would not be taken. The power was mine. And I had just shown him exactly what it could do.

The sound of a single, slow footstep echoed from the far end of the hall.

My head snapped up. A figure detached itself from the deeper shadows near the archway leading to the quad. For a heart-stopping second, I thought it was an instructor, that I was caught, that I was about to be executed for attacking a superior officer. But the gait was too fluid, too predatory.

It was Xaden.

He walked toward us, not with any sense of urgency, but with a deliberate, lethal grace that consumed the space of the corridor. He moved like a shadow given form, his black uniform melting into the dim light. My breath caught in my throat. He must have heard. He must have seen.

His eyes were not on the pathetic, smoking heap of a man on the floor. They were on me. Pinned against the stone, my body still thrumming with the violent aftermath of my power, I felt utterly exposed under his gaze. I braced myself for his anger, for the cold disappointment of a commander whose subordinate had just lost control and revealed a dangerous secret.

But there was no anger in his eyes. There was no disappointment.

As he drew closer, the dim light caught the sharp planes of his face, and I saw his expression clearly. His lips were parted slightly, not in shock, but in something that bordered on reverence. His dark eyes burned with an intensity that had nothing to do with rage and everything to do with a raw, consuming heat. It was a look of profound, almost brutal, pride. He was looking at me as if I had just single-handedly conquered a fortress, as if this act of violent defiance was the most exquisite thing he had ever witnessed. A slow, dangerous smile touched the corner of his mouth, a slash of darkness that made the pulse between my legs beat a frantic, heavy rhythm.

He finally tore his gaze from me, letting it fall to the man on the floor. The heat in his eyes instantly vanished, replaced by a contempt so cold it could have frozen stone.

Dain flinched under that glacial stare. He scrambled backward, crab-walking away from Xaden’s silent judgment, his movements clumsy and panicked. He pushed himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily, one hand still pressed to the blackened patch on his uniform. His face, pale with shock, was now flushed with a potent mix of terror and humiliation.

“Riorson,” Dain spat, his voice cracking. He tried to inject some of his usual authority into the word, but it came out as a weak, reedy sound. He glanced from Xaden’s implacable face to mine, and the fear in his eyes curdled into pure, venomous hatred. “You see? I told you what he was turning her into.”

Xaden didn’t even grant him the dignity of a response. He simply took another step forward, a silent, deadly promise. That was all it took. Dain stumbled back again, turned, and fled down the corridor, his retreat a clumsy, graceless scramble that was the antithesis of the man who had just tried to control me.

And then he was gone.

The silence he left behind was a living thing. It was thick with the scent of ozone and burnt fabric, charged with the lingering energy of my lightning and the overwhelming force of Xaden’s presence. He was only a few feet away now, but it felt as though the air between us had become solid, humming with a tension so potent I could feel it vibrating against my skin.

The thrumming inside me hadn't faded. In fact, with his eyes back on me, it intensified. It felt like every nerve ending was on fire, every cell alight with a combination of adrenaline and a deep, aching need that was new and terrifying. He hadn't said a word, hadn't moved to touch me, but I felt more possessed by him in this moment than I ever had before. His pride was a physical touch, his approval a brand on my skin. He had wanted me to fight back. He had wanted me to be this.

His gaze dropped from my eyes, tracing a slow, deliberate path down my body, over my uniform, lingering on the hand that had unleashed the power. I watched his throat work as he swallowed. He took the final step, closing the distance between us until only a breath of air remained. He was so close I could feel the heat radiating from his body, see the flecks of silver in his dark, dilated pupils. He lifted a hand, his fingers hovering just inches from my cheek, not quite touching, yet I could feel the phantom sensation of his calloused skin against mine. The look in his eyes was one of dark, fierce possession, a promise of what was to come. The world narrowed to this single, shadowed corridor, to the man in front of me whose silent admiration felt more intimate than any kiss.