Chapter 12: Quinn

He comes back the next night. There’s no sound. No greeting. Just the weight of being watched by someone who never blinks.

By the time he steps into the light, I’ve already tensed. My muscles lock around the cuffs, my wrists burning where the metal bites deep. I haven’t moved much since he left—I can’t. I’m exhausted, dehydrated, pissed beyond reason.

But it’s the silence that’s worst. Hours of nothing. No guards. No footsteps. No sound except my own breathing and the thoughts I can’t shut off.

And now he’s here again.

Kieran moves slowly through the dungeon like he’s returning to something that belongs to him, like this whole fucking place bends around his will. He’s shirtless again—of course he is—his tattoos darker in the firelight, his expression unreadable.

When he finally comes close, it’s quiet. Controlled. He stops in front of me, gaze roaming from my ankles—dirt-smudged and bare—up to where my arms are stretched above my head. I know how I look. Weak. Strained. Unwashed. But I hold his stare anyway, because it’s all I have left.

His hand lifts slowly. Not threatening. Not harsh. Gentle.

He brushes his knuckles down my cheek, and my breath catches before I can stop it. That’s all it takes. His smile curves like he was waiting for that exact moment, for that one reaction he can sink his teeth into.

“You missed me,” he murmurs, voice low and warm.

I glare. “I fantasized about stabbing you with your own jawbone.”

He laughs—soft and real, not mocking. “That’s new. We’re getting creative now.”

I twist in the cuffs, the metal screaming as I try to shift away from him, but he steps in closer, too close, and my back hits stone. I can’t escape him. I never really could. Not here.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, eyes trailing down my body in a slow, deliberate sweep. “Maybe I’ve been going about this the wrong way. Maybe pain isn’t what breaks you.”

His fingers trail down my arm, brushing against the tender skin of my inner elbow where the cuff chafes. The bond between us flares like an exposed nerve. My breathing staggers. I hate that he feels it. I hate more that I feel it.

“Maybe,” he says, dragging his fingers over the top of my ribs, “you don’t need a punishment.”

My chest lifts under the touch, involuntary. Betrayal by biology.

“Maybe,” he continues, voice like honey thick with poison, “you need something else.”

His hand settles low, just above my hip, and my body tenses so hard it aches. I want to scream at him, at myself, at whatever cruel god wrote this scene—but I can’t. Not when the bond thrums that hard, like it’s begging for friction.

He leans in, his breath brushing my neck. “Tell me what you are, Quinn.”

I shake my head. “No.”

He drags his mouth across my jaw—not kissing, just… hovering. Like he knows he could, and that’s worse than if he did.

“Tell me,” he whispers again, his hand sliding up to rest against my waist.

I bite down a gasp. My mind’s unraveling. My body’s betraying me in waves. Every inch of me is on fire, and I can’t tell where the bond ends and his hands begin.

He hums low and deep, darker than a threat, softer than a promise. He’s not even trying to be cruel now. That would be easier. I could brace for cruel. I could block it out, wrap myself in spite and fury and fight back with silence.

But this gentle touch is more devastating than any blade. “Good girl,” he murmurs.

“I didn’t say anything,” I snap, but my voice cracks, thinner than it should be.

“You didn’t have to.” He leans in closer, his chest brushing mine, his mouth ghosting over my cheek. “The bond speaks louder than your mouth ever will.”

He inhales slowly, like he’s dragging the scent of my surrender into his lungs, storing it like a drug. His nose grazes the line of my throat. My skin aches for contact I don’t want to need.

“You know what I could do to you right now,” he whispers. His voice is velvet over broken glass. “You’d let me. Not because you want to. But because you’re so desperate to prove you don’t.”

“Go to hell,” I whisper, barely audible.

“I’ve been there,” he breathes. “It looked a lot like this. But you weren’t in it.”

His hand trails down from my hip, curves around the top of my thigh, slides across the soft fabric that still separates his palm from skin.

He applies the faintest pressure and the bond surges. My head rolls back against the wall with a breath I can’t catch, my legs instinctively trying to close, but the position of the cuffs forces me open.

He moans like he felt that too.

“Kieran—”

The name comes out like a plea and a warning at once, and I hate how much of me is in it. He doesn’t answer with words. Just leans in and presses his forehead to mine, our noses brushing. His other hand comes up, fingers framing my jaw, not gripping, just holding.

“Breathe,” he says, soft as anything. “I want you to feel this.”

He lets his hand dip lower, dragging the backs of his fingers down the seam between my legs, and I jump, wrists yanking at the chains with a sound that barely escapes my throat. My body is caught between pain and fire, and I don’t know which is worse.

“You’re wet,” he says, not smug, not teasing—just stating it. Like it’s a truth we’ve both known all along. “You hate that I feel it. But the bond doesn’t lie. You’re aching.”

My head jerks away, but I can’t escape him. Not when his hand moves again, this time cupping me over the fabric of my panties, pressing just enough to make me whimper. The noise is soft, strangled, broken—ripped from a place I’ve buried under a thousand layers of no.

His smile curves against my cheek as his fingers move in a slow, steady rhythm, not enough to give me what I need, but more than enough to make my hips twitch. The cuffs rattle. My thighs shake. I try to hold on to anger, hatred, or spite, but every second he touches me, the bond surges louder, screaming mine until I don’t know where the pain ends and the need begins.

“Let me feel you break,” he whispers. “Let me feel you come undone, Omega.”

My back arches before I mean it to. My breath catches in a sob. My legs tremble hard enough that he has to step in closer to keep me upright. I hate this. I hate this. But I’m so close, and I can’t stop it, and his hand—

Disappears.

Gone.

He pulls back with one smooth, practiced motion, like he never touched me at all. Like he’s proud of how perfectly he timed it—how close he got me, how high he lifted me, only to let me fall.

I choke on a noise, fury and loss and betrayal curling together into something I can’t name. My whole body is shaking, my wrists are burning and my thighs are clenched so tight it hurts.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you come, did you?” he says softly, brushing a thumb over my cheek again, soft as a prayer. “You’ll come when you tell me who you are.”

He steps back slowly, gaze drinking me in, savoring the sight of me undone and aching. I’m flushed, panting, trembling from the inside out. He looks at me like I’m art he made with his hands.

Then he smirks.

That slow, merciless smirk that cuts me open deeper than his touch ever could.