The dark, thick fluid from his torn neck-line slow-dripped into the shadows.

*Drip.*

*Drip.*

It splattered against the mirror-like black marble floorboards with a soft, wet impact, the dark crimson drops reflecting the dim, flickering flames of the silver candelabras.

Eva stood in his immediate personal space, her breathtaking blood-red velvet gown pooling around her ankles like a river of ancient, frozen silk.

She didn't use her sleeve.

Eva casually wipes the blood from her lips with a silk handkerchief.

The fabric was a stark, flawless white, instantly stained with a dark crimson smear as she dragged it across her bottom lip with absolute, chilling indifference.

She threw the stained silk onto the polished marble floorboards, letting it drop into the mud near his bare feet.

Killian hangs limply from his silver chains, shivering violently, his gaze completely fixated on her like a starved animal.

The 195cm frame of the fallen Alpha looked entirely broken, suspended two feet off the ground by the heavy overhead obsidian beams.

The high-grade silver-poison continued its slow, mechanical hiss against his wrists and shoulders, sending waves of white chemical smoke into the vault.

But his nervous system didn't process the physical agony of the burning metal anymore.

His dilated pupils were completely locked onto her porcelain face, his irises flashing with a desperate, dark violet tint.

The dual-hybrid blood she had injected into his jugular was raging through his veins, rewriting his central nervous system, hardwiring every instinct toward her single frequency.

The absolute lifelong addiction had clamped down on his brain-stem.

He was a creature starving in a vacuum, his lungs locking up as he thrashed against his links just to pull an inch closer to the scent of frozen pine and ozone radiating from her robes.

Psychological Warfare.

Eva didn't reach for an executioner's blade.

She slowly leaned in close, her ink-dark hair cascading over his bare, scarred chest like a heavy cloud of dark smoke.

The jagged edges of the Crown of the Night hovered inches from his eyes, its crimson diamonds pulsing with a faint, predatory brilliance.

Her breath hit his split chin like a draft of mountain ice as she parted her lips, whispering:

"Now, Alpha Vance... who is the master, and who is the dog?"

The words were spoken with a terrifying, low cadence, a clear bell that cut through the steady rumble of his chest.

Killian: Demolition of Leo pride. Total submission.

The massive, unyielding pride that had defined his lineage for four centuries in the northern fortress fractured down to the absolute bedrock.

The great golden wolf commander who had stood on the high dais of the Grand Hall to snap the mate bond was entirely gone.

His facial muscles twitched, his head dropping forward as his skeletal structure slumped inside the suspension wires.

He didn't glare.

He didn't offer a single syllable of tactical defiance to protect his territory.

He accepted the collar she had forged across his mind-core, his entire existence surrendering to her supreme will.

Killian’s wolf confesses he would die just to touch her.

Deep within his consciousness, Thorin did not thrash against the master-slave grid.

The massive golden beast lay flat in the spiritual mud, its front paws tucked beneath its chest, whimpering a low, broken frequency directly into Killian’s thoughts.

"Me," Killian rasped, his voice a raw, bloody scrap of air that dragged over his elongated fangs. "I am... the dog, Eva."

He thrashed against the links, his bones clicking under the sudden pressure as he tried to press his face toward her bare shoulder.

"Let me down..." he begged, his teeth grinding together until the dark fluid dripped onto his chest. "Please. I will burn the fortress myself. I will tear the gates from the stone with my own claws. Just... just give me one touch. Let Thorin touch your hand... even if the silver burns my core to ash. I would die... I would die right here... just to feel your fingers against my skin again."

Eva looked down at his trembling frame, her dual-colored eyes—the left sapphire wolf-blue, the right vampire-crimson—reflecting his total ruin with cold, calculative superiority.

The calculation was complete.

The Alpha of Blackwood was entirely dismantled, reduced to a tethered beast waiting for her command.

Eva turns away, ordering guards to unlock his chains.

She didn't offer a single word of comfort to ease his withdrawal.

She spun on her heel, the train of her blood-red gown rustling precisely against the marble mirror as she faced the heavy oak double doors.

"Release him," Eva commanded, her voice dropping into a low, flat frequency that vibrated through the gothic arches.

"Take the silver links off his wrists."

"Let him crawl behind my train."

Malakai rose from his genuflection near the threshold, his obsidian armor making zero sound as he signaled the black vanguard guards to handle the mechanisms.

"The grid is set, Your Majesty," Malakai murmured, his velvet baritone filling the space.

The heavy iron levers clicked behind the wall, and the silver chains began to slide through the obsidian beams, dropping the broken king into the dark dust of her floorboards.