Chapter 7: The Price of the Mark (Silas's POV)
I wanted to kill him.
The way Marcus Thorne looked at her, as if she were a prize he could still steal, made the darkness in my chest roar for blood. My grip on her waist was tight—too tight—but I couldn't let go. If I let go, I was afraid I'd turn back and finish Marcus in front of the entire city.
"You're hurting me, Silas," Seraphina whispered, her voice tight.
I looked down at her. Her face was pale, her stormy eyes wide with a mixture of shock and something that looked dangerously like recognition. I loosened my grip, but I didn't move away.
"He touched you," I growled, my voice sounding like gravel under a boot.
"He didn't touch me. You stopped him," she said, her head tilting back to meet my gaze. She didn't look away. She never did. "Is this what the 'Mark' is for? To start a war every time someone says hello?"
"The Mark is so I don't have to start a war," I rasped, my hand sliding up to her throat, my thumb tracing the edge of the silk choker. "It's a warning. If they ignore it, they face the consequence. And I am the consequence, Seraphina."
I led her out onto the terrace, away from the prying eyes and the suffocating scent of the elite. The rain had started again, a fine mist that settled on her skin like diamonds.
"You're obsessed," she said, her voice soft now, lost in the sound of the rain. "You didn't buy me to settle a debt. You bought me because you're insane."
"I bought you because I was tired of watching you from the shadows," I confessed, the truth tearing out of me before I could stop it. "I've watched you for three years, Seraphina. I've watched you walk through life like you were untouchable. And I decided that if anyone was going to touch you, it was going to be me."
The silence that followed was heavy with the weight of my words. She didn't mock me. She didn't have a quip ready. She just stared at me, her chest heaving under the navy silk.
"You're a stalker with a checkbook," she finally whispered, but there was no bite in it. Only a strange, haunting curiosity.
I leaned in, my lips brushing the shell of her ear. "I'm the man who owns your life. And tonight, Seraphina, I'm going to show you that the cage isn't as cold as you think it is."
I pulled back, watching the way her pulse jumped against the silk of the choker. She was terrified. She was furious. But she was mine.
And for the first time in my life, the hunger in my gut felt like it might finally be fed.