The silence inside the underground throne room grew so dense it felt physical, pressing against the mirror-like black marble floorboards.

The silver candelabras flickered, casting long, erratic shadows of the suspended Alpha across the massive gothic arches.

Killian hung from the overhead rafters, his breath hitching, his 195cm frame entirely pinned beneath the crushing weight of the Southern Sovereign's newly awakened aura.

He could smell her closer now.

Not the phantom scent of winter rain and ozone that had haunted his locked war room for seven hundred and thirty days, but something real.

Something thick, intoxicating, and dangerously alive.

Eva steps into his immediate personal space, the train of her breathtaking blood-red velvet gown rustling softly against the cold stone steps below his hanging feet.

She did not look up at him with the submissive grey eyes of the kitchen girl he had rejected on his grand dais.

Her mismatched irises—the left a piercing, luminescent sapphire wolf-blue, the right a fierce, royal vampire-crimson—burned through the dim light of the vault.

"Eva..." Killian choked out, his teeth grinding together until his gums bled against his extended fangs. "If you are going to burn my pack... if you are going to dismantle the Vance lineage... do not make me watch. Tear the bond completely. Give me an executioner's peace."

"Peace?" Eva murmured, her voice an icy needle that cut cleanly through the low hiss of the smoking silver chains. "Peace is a luxury for the dead, Alpha Vance. And as I told you, your debt to me is not a single entry to be crossed out so easily."

Eva grips Killian brutally by his golden hair, pulling his head back.

Her obsidian-tipped fingers dug deep into his thick, matted strands, twisting the dark gold locks with enough raw, physical force to snap his neck back at a violent angle.

The sudden movement forced his throat open, exposing the thick, pulsing line of his primary alpha jugular to the cold dungeon air.

Killian let out a ragged gasp, his chest muscles straining against the heavy silver links anchored into the ceiling, but he could not break her iron-tight hold.

He was entirely exposed, suspended two feet off the floorboards, looking directly into the porcelain mask of her face.

Without a single word of explanation, her sharp fangs slide out and pierce violently into his neck.

The two silver incisors cut through his thick epidermis, plunging deep into the source of his purebred alpha bloodstream.

Rip.

Killian screams aloud as her dual-hybrid blood rushes into his veins like liquid fire.

The sound tore from his throat, a raw, bloody shriek of absolute, unadulterated agony that echoed off the vaulted obsidian ceiling beams, vibrating through the iron portcullis.

It was a sensation entirely foreign to his system.

It was not the simple venom of a standard eastern coven vampire; it was a volatile, high-frequency cocktail of her maternal northern alpha velocity and her paternal royal blood-magic.

The fluid invaded his central nervous system like a flash of molten iron, scalding his arteries, rewriting his internal biological grid from the inside out.

His veins turned a dark, visible violet beneath his pale skin, pulsing erratically against the lashing silver chains.

Killian: Agony turning into absolute lifelong addiction.

The excruciating burning sensation in his throat-line did not fade, but as the hybrid fluid saturated his brain-stem, the parameters of the pain completely shifted.

The permanent fracture inside his soul-core—the jagged, bleeding fissure left by his rejection of the fated mate bond—was suddenly flooded by her direct presence.

The hollow vacuum behind his ribs was filled to the absolute brim with her dark, terrifying frequency.

His nervous system short-circuited.

The torment morphed into a desperate, suffocating euphoria, a primal hunger that clamped down on his consciousness until his entire existence narrowed to the point of her teeth.

He didn't want her to pull away.

He needed the liquid fire.

He wanted to swallow every drop of her hatred if it meant his inner wolf could breathe her scent for another second.

Her bite binds his wolf soul directly to her supreme will.

Deep within his mind-core, Thorin did not thrash or fight the invasion.

The massive golden wolf beast dropped its head entirely into the spiritual mud, its front paws tucking beneath its broad chest as the hybrid blood-magic forged a heavy, unbreakable master-slave grid across its instincts.

The fated mate bond was not restored; it was completely overwritten, replaced by an absolute, unyielding psychic collar that stripped the alpha lineage of its sovereign authority.

Killian Vance was no longer the supreme commander of the northern ridges.

He was a tethered beast, his central nervous system hardwired to obey the silent frequencies of her mind.

"Eva... more..." Killian whimpered, his fingers curling into bloodless fists against the silver links, his Leo pride completely dissolved into the dark marble floorboards. "Please... do not... do not leave me in the dark again..."

Eva did not answer his plea.

Killian's eyes roll back as Eva tears her fangs away.

The white of his irises showed through the dark gold as her silver incisors broke contact with his torn flesh, leaving a jagged, double-puncture wound that bubbled with dark crimson fluid.

The sudden extraction broke the euphoric connection, sending a brutal shockwave of withdrawal straight into his heart-muscle.

His head dropped forward, his chin hitting his bare chest as his muscles went completely limp within the suspension wires.

Eva stepped back, her leather soles clicking precisely against the dark floor mirror as she wiped a single drop of his purebred alpha blood from her bottom lip with her obsidian fingernail.

She looked at her hand, her dual-colored eyes burning with an absolute, icy superiority.

"The collar looks good on you, Killian," Eva whispered, her voice a chilling bell that signaled the lock of his cage.

She turned her back to his shivering frame, her breathtaking blood-red velvet gown pooling behind her as she walked toward her obsidian throne, leaving the broken king to drown in his new lifelong addiction.