a hand to my wound, but I suppress the urge. I turn to him, my eyes fixed on the tan skin of his hard jaw. He’s clean-shaven, not a hint of stubble anywhere. I expect him to shove the blade into me for a third time, but I should know better by now. Morax is never predictable. “Kiss me, Sable,” he commands, and I don’t even give myself a chance to think about it, I just lean forward and kiss him.
My lips land just below the bottom corner of his mouth, and I’m pulling back before he can correct my trajectory. He never said where to kiss him or how, just that I should. But a feral snarl fills the room, and it’s all I can do not to look and see what’s going on.
The vicious growl calls gooseflesh to the surface of my arms, and Morax’s head snaps in the direction of Toreon’s cage.
“I’m going to rip you limb from limb for that,” Toreon bellows, his hands gripping the bars like he’s trying to crush them or will them to spread so he can escape and get his hands on the Ophidian. “She’s not yours to claim. You have no right to take what isn’t offered freely,” Toreon says, his hands coming away from the bars so he can pace like a caged beast just looking for some weakness to the enclosure that’s trapping him.
“She’s mine now,” Morax retorts tauntingly, his snake eyes tracing Toreon’s every agitated and enraged move with curiosity.
I want to tell Toreon to calm down, that his getting upset isn’t going to help anything. That he’s just giving Morax more leverage to use against him, but I can’t do any of that. I’m stuck watching pain etch itself into Toreon’s features as impotent fury places him in a stranglehold.
Morax turns back to me and wraps his hand around the back of my neck. Toreon growls but doesn’t say anything as he continues to pace, the chains around his torso clinking as he moves.
“Let’s try this again, Sable. And this time, kiss my lips,” Morax says, and the order makes my skin crawl. The first time he commanded this, I didn’t see it coming. I could only react, otherwise risk giving myself away, but this time when Morax’s lips part and he pulls my mouth closer to his, my skin wants to shudder with revulsion and panic skitters up my spine.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want my mouth on this monster. I don’t want to know what he tastes like or feels like. I want to rip his face off, not press my lips against it.
But I do it anyway, because what choice do I have?
“That is my mate, you fucking soulless abomination! You will not touch her,” Toreon screams out, his voice laced with all the fury and rage I wish I could purge in this moment. But it doesn’t stop Morax’s lips from crashing to mine, or his tongue forcing its way into my mouth to take what would never be his.
I don’t respond in any way. He can think that he can make me kiss him, but he can’t force me to do it passionately. He’ll get no faking from me. I’ll stand here like a dead fish, doing all I can to pull this off for the good of all of us, but Morax might as well be kissing a plastic doll for all the effort he’ll get from me.
But Toreon only sees red, and Morax’s mouth on mine pushes him over the edge.
He rages against the bars.
As Morax’s tongue slides like a snake into my mouth, Toreon screams threats upon threats of all the things he’ll do to him given the chance. He calls out the Ophidian’s entire bloodline, which gives Morax pause for a second before he pulls away from me, ending the half kiss.
He turns and narrows his eyes at Toreon, but Toreon is lost to his anger. It’s like everything he’d been bottling up the entire time he was here just exploded out of him, and it breaks my heart.
“If you’re not dead by the time I take over all the realms, I’ll be sure to make you watch while I fuck my progeny into your mate over and over again,” Morax says, his threat forcing chills down my spine. “I’ll have an army of Annuli by the time I’m done, and you won’t be able to blink without seeing your fated underneath me and