TO BELONG TO CEASER

CHAPTER5:THE SUMMON

—Agnes—

"Agnes!"

My heart sank the moment his voice cut through the silence. Before I could gather my thoughts, he called again but sharper this time, edged with something that made my feet move before my mind agreed.

I set down the glass I'd been holding and smoothed my dress with trembling hands. The hallway stretched before me like a sentence I didn't want to finish. Each step felt heavier than the last, the marble cold beneath my feet, the silence of the mansion pressing in from every side.

I knocked softly at his study door.

"Come in."

I pushed it open.

He stood with his back to me, facing the tall window, hands clasped behind him. The fireplace threw amber light across the room but none of it touched him. He seemed to exist in his own shadow, broad shouldered, still, dangerous in the way that storms are dangerous before they break.

I folded my hands in front of me. "You called for me."

He didn't turn around. "Xavier." Just the name. Nothing else.

My breath caught. "I — we only crossed paths in the hallway. I didn't seek him out, I wasn't—"

"I didn't ask for an explanation." His voice was quiet. That was worse than shouting.

The silence stretched. I swallowed.

He turned then, slowly, and his eyes found mine across the room. Dark. Unreadable. Something flickering behind them that I couldn't name but felt in my chest like a warning.

"You don't speak to him," Caesar said. "You don't walk with him. You don't linger near him. Are we understood?"

I blinked. "But I didn't—"

"Are. We. Understood."

The words landed like stones. I pressed my lips together and nodded. "Yes."

He held my gaze a moment longer than necessary. Long enough to make my pulse stutter. Then he turned back to the window.

"You may leave."

I turned quickly, grateful for the dismissal, my hand already reaching for the door handle.

"Agnes."

I stopped. My back still to him.

His voice came lower this time. Almost quiet enough to be something else. "Don't make me repeat myself."

I left without another word, pulling the door shut behind me. My back pressed against the cool wood of the hallway, my chest heaving. I stood there, heart hammering, trying to understand what had just happened.

He wasn't angry about a rule being broken.

He was angry that Xavier had looked at me.

And somehow, that frightened me more than anything else.

—Caesar—

I heard the door click shut and let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

The beast was still snarling.

I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose, eyes closing. The moment Xavier's hand had wrapped around her wrist — her small, pale wrist — something inside me had shifted. Not cracked. Shifted. Like a fault line adjusting its weight.

I didn't want her. I had told myself that clearly enough times that it should have been law by now.

But I didn't want him near her either. That much was certain.

I moved to the window, watching the moon climb higher against the black sky. My skin prickled with the familiar heat, the slow crawl of the curse moving through my veins like a tide answering the pull above.

Not tonight. I couldn't lose control tonight.

I thought of her face when I'd said Xavier's name. The flash of confusion. The quick defense rising in her eyes before she swallowed it down. She hadn't done anything wrong and some part of me knew that. The rational part. The human part.

But the beast didn't deal in logic.

It dealt in possession.

Mine.

I clenched my jaw, turning from the window. I needed to get control of this. She was here to cook. To clean. To be safe from the hands that would have destroyed her in that auction hall. That was all.

Whatever this pull was — this inexplicable gravity — I would crush it before it became something I couldn't contain.

Because the last time I lost control, people got hurt.

And Agnes, with her red hair and her trembling defiance, was the last person I could afford to break.