74 Torture
Lucian
When we got to the room, she went straight into the bathroom and locked the door. I stood outside for a moment, stunned. I hadn’t even known she locked doors around me. Thirty minutes passed before she came out, hair damp, wrapped in a towel. She didn’t say a word. Just started dressing.
I showered quickly and stepped out to find her already in bed.
Sort of.
She wore a red lace hipster and a tank top that showed way too much cleavage to be innocent-and yet, my side of the bed was stripped. The pillows. The duvet. Gone.
I froze.
“You’ve been a bad boy, Lucian,” she said calmly. “You get the couch.”
I groaned. I wanted to go to her. To kiss her shoulder. To beg.
But I knew she wasn’t ready to hear it.
So I did the only thing I could-I laid on the couch.
“Mara, I’m really sorry,” I linked to her.
Her response came swiftly.
“You embarrassed me in that warehouse, Lucian. You yelled at me. You could lose your cool with anyone-but not me.
You made me feel like I was nothing to you in that moment. Like there were no limits, not even with me. And I’m mad.
Really mad.”
And she was right.
I had crossed a line. Not just as her mate-but as her Alpha.
And I hated myself for it.
“I wish I could take it back, Mara,” I said, my voice low. “I just… I knew that Benard guy was lying. And I needed the truth. I
needed to know who was behind the attack-who almost killed us.”
She didn’t look at me right away. Then, calmly-too calmly-she asked, “And did your brute methods work?”
Her words hit harder than a punch. Brute methods. The same words someone might use to describe a mindless animal.
My chest tightened as my mind flashed back to what Darian once said about me-that I was a monster. And now… I
wondered if Mara saw me that way too.
“Do you think I’m a monster?” I asked, more fragile than I’d intended.
Silence.
And her silence said everything.
It wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t fear. It was something worse-honesty she didn’t want to say aloud.
I had no words left.
Then, softly, she spoke.
“If you think you’re a monster, Lucian… what does that make me?”
172
43 Points
21 Torture
I looked up, confused.
“You have anger issues, yes. But you’re not a monster. You just need to learn control,” she continued, her voice like a scalpel-precise, cutting, necessary. “I was just as angry as you were. I believed he was lying too. But I knew beating him wouldn’t work. He was ready to die with that secret. You let your rage blind you to what he was willing to endure.”
She leaned against the headboard, her eyes steady, unflinching.
“I’m more brutal than you, Lucian. Just not with my fists. I was ready to take his family-one by one-and murder them in front of him. Slowly. Methodically. And then? I would’ve left him to rot in a cell, living every miserable day haunted by their screams, blaming himself.”
I stared, speechless.
“I hold the highest score in the academy’s history for psychological warfare and tactical breakdowns,” she said flatly.” Rowan only beat me in physical endurance-and that’s because he’s a tank. That’s why he’s Beta. But don’t confuse passi on with power. Your strength is a weapon, Lucian. But your mind is a greater one. You need to sharpen both.”
And just like that, she silenced every excuse I had.
I lay back down on the couch, her words circling through me like a storm I couldn’t escape. She was right. She’d always been right. And now I felt like an i***t. I was glad she came with me-but I wasn’t thrilled that she’d put me on the damn
couch.
Sleep didn’t come.
An hour later, I heard soft moaning.
I looked up.
Mara lay in bed-her hands between her thighs, her body moving slowly under the sheets. Her eyes met mine.
She was doing this on purpose.
She wanted me to see.
My c**k responded instantly, painfully, but I didn’t dare move.
“Like what you see, Lucian?” she moaned, breathless and wicked.
I couldn’t answer. My wolf was battling me, begging to take her-but I didn’t deserve her yet.
“Next time you decide to lose your s**t and disrespect me…” she said between gasps, “you remember this.”
And then she came.
Right there.
On display.
On purpose.
And I realized something in that moment-Mara didn’t just know how to punish a man.
She knew how to own him.
<75 Emotion
*9 Powity)
