Vampire King's Pet

Avery ------- “On your hands and knees.” The words didn’t echo so much as they settled into the room—heavy, absolute, like they owned the air itself. My body reacted before my mind did. My knees hit the stone floor hard enough that pain flared up my legs, sharp and immediate, but my hands stayed clenched at my sides. The cold of the throne room seeped through the fabric of my dress, crawling into my skin. Even the stone beneath me felt curated—polished, expensive, made to impress visiting nobles—not to witness this. Not to witness me. The throne room was enormous, designed to remind anyone who entered exactly who ruled here. Tall arched windows lined the eastern wall, but the glass was stained with dark sigils that dimmed the daylight into something bruised and colorless. Gold-veined pillars rose in perfect symmetry, carved with old kingdom histories that no one looked at anymore. And yet all I could feel was the people. Dozens of them. Maybe more. Nobles clustered along the raised perimeter. Council members stood in their formal black-and-silver robes near the dais, their expressions carefully neutral in the way only practiced cruelty can be. Guards lined the walls like statues, hands resting on weapons they would never draw for me. And in the center of it all—him. Alexei. Sitting on the throne like the entire room had been built around the shape of his authority. One elbow rested against the armrest, his posture relaxed in a way that felt deliberate. Controlled. Like he didn’t need to move to make everyone else feel small. The women in the room looked at me like I was something beneath them—something unworthy of breath in the same space. I recognized that look. It wasn’t just disgust. It was permission. Permission they had been taught to give men like him. The men looked worse. Curiosity and interest. And hunger they didn’t even bother to hide well. It made my stomach turn. My fingers curled against the stone as I forced myself not to react. I’ve done nothing to them. Nothing. And yet I was still here. “Get on your hands, pet.” The shove came before I could brace myself. My upper body pitched forward violently, and my palms slapped the floor just in time to stop my face from meeting stone. Pain bloomed up my wrists, sharp enough to make my breath stutter. A ripple went through the room—gasps, soft murmurs, the sound of fabric shifting as people leaned in to watch. Watch. Not intervene. Never intervene. I pushed myself upright again, still on my knees. My arms trembled slightly, but I refused to let them see that. Refused to give them the satisfaction. Refused to give him the satisfaction. Alexei’s gaze didn’t leave me. That was the worst part. Not the room. Not the audience. But him. Because there was always something in his eyes that made it worse than it needed to be. Not confusion. Not hesitation. Expectation. Like he was waiting to see how far I’d bend before I broke. The council elders stood off to the side, watching with the same detached interest one might give a performance. Some of them even looked… approving. As if this were tradition. As if this was how power was meant to look. I hated that realization more than anything. This wasn’t an exception to them. It was normal. “Avery,” Alexei said again. Lower this time. Sharper. My name sounded wrong in this room when he said it like that. Like it didn’t belong to me. Like it was something he only used when he wanted to remind me I was still human enough to respond. He never called me Avery in front of them. Not unless it was a warning. I lifted my chin slightly anyway. “You’re not my king, Alexei.” The words didn’t feel brave. They felt like stepping off a ledge and realizing too late there was no ground waiting below. The room shifted instantly, and whispers tightened into silence. Even the guards straightened slightly, like something in the air had changed shape. My chest tightened as I felt it—the pressure of his aura trying to push into me. It wasn’t physical, not exactly. More like gravity deciding I should be smaller than I was. It used to work. It used to make my thoughts blur at the edges. Not anymore. “You are my kidnapper. Remember?” The moment I said it, something in my throat tightened painfully, like my own body was warning me not to continue. But I did anyway. “You stole my youth from me.” That landed differently. I saw it in a few faces—subtle discomfort. A council member shifting his stance. A noble woman looking away too quickly. Not denial, no, never denial. But recognition. That was almost worse. Movement flickered to my left, and my attention snapped there immediately. Marcus. My breath caught before I could stop it. Not fear exactly. Something sharper. Urgency and instinct. Because I knew what would happen if he stepped too close at the wrong moment. His expression told me he understood too. Deep blue eyes locked onto mine, steady but strained, like he was holding himself back from doing something irreversible. "Don’t." The word formed in my mind before I could stop it. It wasn't spoken out loud. Not here, never here. But Marcus felt it anyway. After Daniel died, I never thought I would let myself care again. And yet here I was. Caring too much. Again. For both of them in ways that made no sense and made perfect sense all at once. Alexei knew. Of course he knew. He always knew more than he should. But Marcus—Marcus was the part I had managed to keep hidden in fragments. A stolen softness in a world that punished softness. A secret I had tried to protect even from myself. Because secrets in a court like this weren’t just dangerous. They were weapons waiting to be found. “Avery, don’t do this.” The voice wasn’t spoken aloud. It appeared in my mind. The witch link snapped into place with a familiar pulse, like pressure behind my eyes. I’d built it. I taught him how to use it. I didn’t need to look to know Alexei was there too. The link had always been unstable that way—two anchors instead of one. Two forces pulling at the same space inside my head. Now it felt like my thoughts were being split down the middle. “Avery,” Alexei’s voice cut in—closer, heavier, controlled. “Enough.” My temples throbbed. I reached up instinctively and grabbed my talisman. Cool metal. Familiar weight. The one thing that had never changed no matter how much else had been taken. My fingers tightened around it until it pressed into my palm. My throat burned. “Daniel…” My voice broke on his name. “I’m coming home, baby.” The motion was small. Almost gently, I brought the talisman up to my lips and kissed it before I pulled the necklace free. The moment it left my skin, something inside me dropped. Not physically but deeper. Like a thread snapping that I didn’t realize I was hanging from. A sharp intake of breath came from somewhere in the room. Someone shouted my name. But it all sounded distant now. My body started to fail me in pieces—first my breath, then my balance, then the edges of my vision going soft and dark like ink spreading through water. Something was wrong. Wrong in a way I didn’t have words for yet. “Non—!” The cry cut off as arms caught me before I hit the ground. Strong grip. Immediate. Familiar in a way that made my chest ache. Marcus. His face filled my vision through the blur—too close, too real, like the world had collapsed until only him remained. Blue eyes. Wide now. Uncontrolled. Stripped of every careful composure he usually wore like armor. “He killed—” I tried to speak, but my lungs wouldn’t cooperate. Air caught halfway, refusing to become sound. “He—” My throat tightened violently as if my body was trying to stop the memory from surfacing. But it came anyway. Not as a full scene—just fragments. Sensation first. Then meaning. Heat. Shock. The sudden, irreversible impact of something I hadn’t been able to stop no matter how fast I moved after it happened. The way everything in the room had gone silent afterward, like even the air understood something had changed forever. My vision wavered. “My baby…” The words broke apart as soon as they formed, like they couldn’t survive being spoken. “He killed—.” I couldn’t finish it. I never could. Because finishing it made it real in a way my mind still refused to fully accept. I had told Marcus pieces, though; I gave him carefully rationed truths. Enough for him to understand the shape of it, but never enough to let it destroy him the way it had destroyed me. Marcus went still. Not gradually. Not gently, but instantly. Like something inside him had been cut off mid-function. The pressure of his arms around me changed subtly—not loosening, not tightening. Just… frozen. As if even breathing had become optional. “I know,” he whispered. His voice cracked on the second word. “I know, Avery.” The words should have brought relief. Some kind of shared understanding. Some easing of the weight. Instead, they landed like stone. “Please,” Marcus said suddenly, his voice breaking in a way I hadn’t heard before. His grip tightened slightly, not forceful but desperate, like he was trying to anchor me to him through sheer will alone. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “We can try again—” His breath stuttered. Tears slid down his cheeks openly, unchecked, and tracing paths through the tension in his face and falling onto my skin as he looked at me like I was already halfway gone. Like he could see it happening and couldn’t stop it. “I will leave,” he added, his voice cracking under the weight of it. "Just save her. Please. Save her.” The words weren’t directed at me anymore. They were thrown toward the throne. Towards Alexei. “Marc....” Alexei’s voice cut in before Marcus could finish, low and dangerous, scraping through the air like something sharpened just for him. Half growl. Half snarl. My stomach twisted at the way he said it. Not a name, but a warning. Alexei knew him better than anyone. Not just as a man in the room, not just as my guard. He had trusted Marcus to keep me safe inside these walls, inside my assigned rooms, inside the boundaries Alexei believed were enough. And Marcus hadn’t just failed that trust. He had crossed it. My chest tightened painfully as I felt the weight of everything unsaid between them press into the space. Because Alexei wasn’t only reacting to betrayal. He was reacting to ownership being interrupted. And Marcus—still holding me, still shaking, still pleading—looked like a man who understood exactly what line he had crossed… and didn’t regret it enough to stop loving me anyway. “I, King Alexei Petrov Nikolson, banish Marcus Ivan Sorensen from the Petrov Kingdom of America and Russia. And I sentence him to death for treason—r**e of the king's ward—and impregnation without consent.” For a fraction of a second, the throne room didn’t react. It absorbed the words. Then everything broke. A ripple of movement ran through the assembled court—gasps snapping open like shutters, robes shifting, boots adjusting on polished stone. Somewhere behind the council line, a noblewoman covered her mouth too late, as if horror was something she could politely delay. But I couldn’t hear any of it properly because my world narrowed to a single point. He knew. The thought didn’t arrive calmly. It hit like impact Alexei knew I had been pregnant. My stomach clenched so hard it felt like my body was trying to fold in on itself. My lungs forgot how to complete the next breath. Rage and grief collided so violently in my chest that it felt physical, like ribs trying to crack outward. “No,” I gasped, the word tearing out of me raw. My hand reached instinctively toward Alexei, fingers shaking. “Alexei—don’t—please—” The distance between us became impossible in an instant I didn’t even register Marcus moving until the air around me shifted—until the pressure of his arms was suddenly gone. Then hands were on me. Not gentle. Not cruel but final. I was pulled backward through bodies and space, the throne room blurring into motion and color. The weight of the court’s gaze pressed against my skin as I was physically separated from the only solid thing I had left. Marcus. My vision swam. The hall’s structure flickered in pieces around me—the tall blackened pillars, the elevated council tiers, the gold inlays in the floor forming a geometric pattern meant to guide attention toward the throne. Toward him. Always toward him. And then I was in different arms. Stronger arms that were more controlled than Marcus' had been. Familiar in a way my body recognized before my mind did. Alexei. His presence hit like gravity reclaiming me. Up close, I could see the fine details the room couldn’t hide—the slight tension in his jaw, the way his breath wasn’t as steady as he wanted it to be, the faint tremor in his restraint. But it was his eyes that shattered something in me. Blue. Always blue. But not the cold royal blue he wore in court. This was fractured, like glass cracked from the inside. And hurt lived there—deep and unfiltered, barely contained beneath something far more dangerous. I had never seen him like this. Not once. “Take him to the dungeons,” he ordered. His voice didn’t echo this time. It dropped heavy enough that it felt like it pressed into the stone itself. Around us, guards moved immediately—armor shifting, boots striking the floor in synchronized obedience. Marcus fought them, I could feel it even without looking fully. The resistance of him being dragged away, the strain of something being taken from me again. Another loss forming in real time. I couldn’t breathe through it. My chest felt locked, like the air had been sealed out of my lungs entirely. Alexei and I stared at each other. And everything else in the room stopped mattering. No court. No throne. No guards. Just him. Just me. Just the space between us that felt too small and too vast at the same time. My thoughts slowed, dangerously slow. Because I saw it then—really saw it. Not the king. Not the monster they whispered about. Not even the man I had once… loved. Just something breaking. Something deciding. Then he moved. I didn’t have time to react, because oain came sharp and immediate—hot, piercing, and absolute—as his fangs broke through my skin at my neck. My entire body jolted. A sound escaped me before I could stop it—half breath, half shock, half something I didn’t recognize as mine anymore. The throne room reacted again, but it felt distant now, like I was underwater and the world above me was watching through thick glass. This wasn’t feeding. Not in the way he had fed before, this was not need either This was possession. His grip tightened instinctively as my body trembled against him. I could feel him through the bond before I even processed the physical sensation—rage still burning, betrayal still sharp, but underneath it something darker rising. Like fear. Not fear of me leaving, but of him losing control of what was already slipping. The emotions slammed into me through the bond like a flood breaking a dam. It was too much too fast, and too unstable to comprehend. I shook in his arms, my fingers curling weakly against his coat, not even sure if I was trying to push him away or hold on. “Alexei—” My voice barely worked. And he didn’t pull back, Alexei didn’t even hesitate. He marked me in front of them all. Every witness. Every council member. Every guard. Every noble who would carry this moment like a story for the rest of their lives. The bond ignited violently, not like warmth, but like pressure collapsing inward. The old spell—Genevieve’s binding—reacted, snapping tighter around something that was already too constricted. It didn’t feel like connection anymore. It felt like reinforcement, like walls being raised higher. And I understood, with a sick clarity that made my vision blur further—this wasn’t just claiming. This was containment. And something in me hated him for it so sharply it hurt more than the bite. “You can’t ever leave me now,” he murmured against my skin. His voice was lower now. Not loud enough for the court. Not performative anymore. Just for me. A confession disguised as a warning. “Even if you tried…” His breath brushed my neck, and I felt the tremor in it. “I’ll always find you.” His hands shifted and the talisman was there again. Cold metal sliding against my throat, settling into place with final precision. My throat tightened instantly, not because of the weight. But because of what it meant. A cycle closing. A door locking. A promise I didn’t agree to. Where it belongs. Where it traps me. “Don’t do that again,” he said quietly. My body stopped fighting the edges of awareness. The room tilted—not physically, but like reality itself had lost alignment. The pillars, the throne, the court, the voices all dissolved into something distant and unimportant. The only thing left was the pressure of his arms and the bond tightening like a chain being pulled closed. Darkness didn’t come gently. It rushed in and I didn’t stop it. I let it take me.