Chapter 48 Enlighten Me
(Adelaide & Apollo)
By the time he reached the final hallway, the bond was a roar — her heartbeat slamming through him like it belonged in his chest, her trembling breath scraping his throat as if it were his own.
He didn’t knock. Didn’t hesitate. He reached for the door.
The tightness in her belly quaked. The wetness between her thighs slicked her movements. Her legs trembled violently, threatening to drop her again, but she refused to fall. Refused to look helpless. Refused to let this place, this magic, this creature, see her collapse.
“Do you hear me?” she whisper-shouted into the darkness. “I’m not yours. I’m not your offering.”
A loud THUD echoed down the corridor. Adelaide froze. Another. Closer. Heavy. Measured.
Her heart stopped for a full beat.
She backed away instinctively, her spine hitting the carved wooden bedframe. Shadows shifted beneath the doorway. Firelight flickered at the edges. The air grew thick, heavy, crackling with dark energy she recognised now as him.
Her breath stuttered. “Oh gods,” she whispered.
The footsteps stopped right outside her door. The fur around her shoulders slipped.
The bite throbbed. Her pulse hammered against her throat.
The doorknob turned.
The heavy iron latch turned with a slow, scraping click — a sound that vibrated through the chamber like a warning. Or a promise. The magic stitched into the metal flared briefly, a ring of red light circling the handle before winking out, as if the door itself bowed to its master.
Adelaide’s pulse leapt into her throat.
The door swung open. And he stepped inside.
Apollo didn’t enter the room like a man. He entered like a force — heat and shadow rolling off him in waves. His eyes glowed like molten gold, the faint lines of the mark on his arm still smouldering under his skin. His chest rose and fell in sharp, controlled breaths that made it painfully clear control was exactly what he was fighting for.
And losing.
She took one step back without meaning to.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
His gaze swept over her slowly, and something in his expression sharpened — not surprise, not confusion, but recognition. Like he was seeing something he’d expected.
Or something he’d hoped for.
Adelaide tried to lift her chin, to glare, to gather whatever scraps of fury she still had—but the moment she met his eyes, heat shot through her body so abruptly she gasped. The bond flared, a hot, invisible thread snapping taut between his gaze and the mark on her neck, as if her body answered him before her mind could form the thought no.
Apollo inhaled. Deep. Slow. Deliberate. And his pupils widened.
Her body tensed.
He could smell it. Her scent. Her heat. Her desire.
Not desire she wanted — not desire she chose — but the echo of his release still reverberating through the bond, tangled with her fear, twisting it into something she couldn’t untangle.
Her cheeks flushed hot. Her thighs pressed together instinctively, but it couldn’t disguise what he knew was between her legs. He could basically taste her wetness in the air. Her breath stuttered.
He saw all of it. And he smiled. Slow. Sinful. Knowing.
“Well,” he murmured, stepping inside fully and shutting the door behind him with a soft thud that made her flinch, “that explains the spike.”
Adelaide opened her mouth to speak — to deny, to scream, to threaten — but nothing came out except a thin, broken inhale.
Apollo stalked closer. Not rushed. Not frantic. Predatory. Measured. Each step was silent on the stone, but she felt them in her body like tremors. The flames along the walls leaned inward with every pace he took, as if the entire room were inhaling with him.
Her back hit the bedframe again. He stopped in front of her. Close enough that she felt the heat radiating off his skin. Close enough that she caught the scent of smoke and blood and something darker beneath it—something that made her shiver.
Close enough that she could hear his heartbeat. It wasn’t steady. Neither as her.
“Why…” she managed, her voice barely audible, “did it feel like that?”
Her chest heaved. “Why can I feel you at all?”
Apollo’s eyes dragged down her body. The fur was hanging loosely around her shoulders. All that bare skin, his for the taking. The swell of her breasts, the rise and fall of her chest, and the sheen of sweat along her collarbone. Her flushed skin, trembling legs, and the way she clutched the fur around her fingers, probably as a way to stop herself from reaching for him.
“Because I bit you,” he said simply.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. “That’s not how biting works,” she snapped, trying and failing to steady her voice.
He laughed under his breath. A dark, amused sound that slid under her skin like silk dipped in poison.
“With humans? No.” He leaned in just enough that his breath brushed the shell of her ear. “With mine? Yes.”
Her knees nearly buckled. She shoved herself back against the bed to keep upright.
“I’m not yours,” she whispered, breath shaking.
His jaw flexed. The room heated. Steam seemed to sizzle from his skin.
“Little Flame…” He tilted his head, his voice dropping to something impossibly soft and impossibly dangerous. “Right now I can smell every lie you tell yourself.”
Her breath hitched.
His gaze swept lower again — the way her thighs brushed, the way her toes curled against the cold floor, the faint tremor racing down her spine. Yes. She was hungry.
Adelaide clenched her jaw. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, no? Enlighten me.”
“It’s—It’s just—whatever you did.” She swallowed hard. “What you did with that woman—”
His smile vanished.
“All that… leaked through this—this thing between us,” she said, gesturing sharply toward her bite. “That doesn’t mean anything. It’s not me. It’s you.”
A pause. Then Apollo stepped closer. So close his chest brushed the fur she held. Her knuckles brushed against his bare skin. So close she could feel every inhale.
“So…” he murmured, “you felt that?”
Heat burned up her neck. “N-no.”
One brow lifted, slow and predatory. “No?”
“It was—It wasn’t—damn you, I don’t know what it was!”
Another step. They were pressed together now, though his arms stayed at his sides.
She tried to retreat again, but there was nowhere left to go. Her calves hit the edge of the bed. Her breath came too quickly, too shallow.
Apollo placed one hand on the bed frame beside her hip, caging her on instinct. Not touching her. Just… controlling the space around her.
“Your body,” he said softly, leaning down enough that their noses were an inch from brushing, “is responding to mine.”
“Not by choice,” she hissed.
“No,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t make it any less real.”