Chapter 40 I Am Not Yours
(Adelaide)
The silence after he slammed the door wasn’t silence at all.
It throbbed.
It rolled through the chamber in suffocating waves, vibrating across the stone walls and humming beneath the floor like something alive. The iron in the door still rang with the echo of his exit, a faint metallic tremor that crawled up through her bare feet and set her bones on edge. Adelaide stayed pinned against the wall where he’d left her, breath shallow, limbs trembling, her heart clawing up her throat like it was trying to escape her body.
Her lips tingled. Her skin burned. Her legs barely held her weight. The imprint of his hands on her waist felt like phantom bruises, hot and shaping the air around her even though he was gone.
She didn’t move for several seconds. Couldn’t. The kiss — if she could even call it that — had obliterated thought. It had pulled something loose inside her chest she didn’t know existed. Something she wanted to kill immediately. It felt like he’d reached inside and rearranged the way her heart beat without asking.
When her knees finally buckled, she lurched sideways, catching herself on the heavy bedpost. The carved wood dug into her palms, grounding her just enough to breathe again. The ridges bit into her skin, a welcome, simple pain compared to the storm churning in her chest.
“No,” she whispered hoarsely. “No, no, no…” Her voice sounded wrong — scraped, cracked, wrecked. Her fingers rose toward her mouth before she could stop them. She caught herself halfway, hand trembling in midair, then jerked it down violently as if touching her lips would confirm the horror she was desperately trying to deny.
But she remembered. Gods, she remembered every detail.
His mouth had been hot — hotter than any human mouth should be. His hands had held her with a force that stole breath and sense. His kiss had been a storm, a wildfire, a violent claiming that she should have fought against, should have clawed away from—
But for one heartbeat. One tiny, damnable heartbeat. She hadn't fought. She’d answered him.
Her own mouth had pushed back, her fingers had tangled in his hair, her legs had tightened instinctively—
Adelaide slammed her fist against the wall hard enough to sting her bones. The stone didn’t even shudder; the impact ricocheted back into her knuckles, a brutal reminder that in this place, even the walls were stronger than she was.
“You stupid coward,” she choked, fury rising so fast it made her dizzy. “You weak, pathetic fool.” Her pulse hammered so violently she felt it in her teeth. Her vision spotted at the edges, black creeping in like smoke every time her heart thudded too hard.
She staggered away from the wall, pacing the room in frantic, uneven strides. The fur slipped from her shoulders, leaving her bare skin exposed to the hot air. She yanked it back up with shaking hands, clutching it to her body like armour.
The air still smelled like him.
Smoke. Heat. Blood. Something dark and intoxicating she wanted to scrub off her skin with sand. Even when she turned her head away, the scent clung to the back of her throat, as though Hell itself exhaled him.
“No,” she snarled, pacing faster. “No. I don’t want you. I don’t want anything from you.”
Her body disagreed. A tremor ran down her spine — not fear, not entirely. Something deeper. Something she hated instantly. A low, traitorous ache curled in her stomach, humming in time with the throb at her neck.
She stopped pacing and gripped the edge of the stone table with both hands, leaning over it as her breath shook out of her in shallow bursts. The stone was warm, almost feverish, as if the whole chamber kept his body heat in its veins.
He kissed her. The Devil kissed her. And she…
Her stomach turned violently.
“I let him,” she whispered, horrified. “For a moment, I let him.” Her throat closed around the confession. Tears pricked her eyes, blurring the red cracks glowing through the black stone walls. She slapped them away before they could fall.
“You don’t cry,” she hissed at herself. “You don’t cry because of him.”
Her breath shook harder. Her entire body ached — the bruises from the forest, the welt on her ribs, the burning pulse of the bite-mark at her neck. That mark throbbed again now, hot and insistent. She pressed her fingertips lightly against it and gasped.
Pain shot down her spine, licking through her nerves like fire. She staggered back, clutching the fur around herself. “What are you doing to me?” she whispered into the empty room. “What did you do?” Her voice trembled.
The mark pulsed again, as if answering. It felt like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers. A tether. A pull. For a split second, she swore she saw a faint ember-glow bloom beneath her fingertips, a phantom light that vanished when she blinked. She bowed her head, hair falling around her face as panic washed over her in a suffocating wave.
“No,” she whispered. “No. I don’t belong to him. I am not his. I am not—” Her voice cracked. “I’m not yours.” A sharp sob clawed its way out of her throat, surprising her.
She shoved both hands into her hair and yanked hard until her scalp screamed. Anything to drown out the memory of his hands on her waist. His breath against her throat. His mouth—
“Oh gods,” she whispered.
Her knees weakened again. She sank onto the foot of the bed, clutching the fur around herself with bruising force. The bed still held the indent of where he’d laid her when he brought her here. She jerked away from the memory as if burned.
Had he been gentle then?
The question slithered in uninvited, poisonous and soft, and she wanted to throttle it before it could take shape.
Why a bed? A bed of silk and fur at that. She wished he’d thrown her onto a pile of bones. Shoved her into a cage. Done anything monstrous enough to remind her what he truly was.
Instead, he carried her here like she was precious. Laid her down on a soft bed like she was breakable. Then kissed her like that. Like she was his oxygen.
Adelaide buried her face in her hands. “I hate you,” she whispered into the darkness. “I hate you.”
The worst part? The worst, most unbearable part? She wasn’t entirely sure she was saying it to him. Or to herself. The hatred ricocheted back at her, as if the mark at her neck couldn’t decide which of them it belonged to.