SYNXED

Chapter Three: Lockdown

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POV: Lucien Kross — Present

Her words are a blade pressed to my throat.

"I want to hear you beg."

The doors seal behind me with a hiss of steel. The AI’s voice cuts through the silence:

> “Lockdown engaged. Level Five containment. No exit without Kross clearance.”

Exactly how I planned it.

I take a slow step toward her, drinking in the sight of what five years had done to Nyx Kade. She’s sharper now. Colder. But the heat in her eyes is the same — molten defiance that always made me want to ruin her.

“Beg?” My mouth curves in something that’s not a smile. “You seem to have forgotten who does the begging in this marriage.”

She doesn’t move. Just watches me like she’s mapping my weaknesses. I almost laugh. As if she hasn’t always been my weakness.

I close the distance, the air thick between us. “You came here to hurt me. To take something. But you walked into my cage, Nyx. And you know what happens to prey in my cage.”

Her chin tilts up, that perfect mouth twisting in a smirk. “I’m not prey, Lucien.”

I let my gaze drag over her, slow and deliberate, until I see her swallow. “No. You’re the hunter who forgot the other hunter knows her every move.”

For a beat, neither of us breathes. The city’s neon light spills across her face, turning her eyes to fire.

Then I move. One hand catches her wrist, the other at her throat — not squeezing, just holding, claiming. “If you want me on my knees,” I murmur, “you’ll have to earn it.”

Her pulse kicks under my fingers. She hates that I can still feel it.

“I already earned it,” she whispers back, her lips a breath from mine. “The night I walked away and you let me.”

I tighten my hold just enough for her to know I could shatter this standoff in one move. “Careful, wife. You’re in my home. My rules.”

“And yet,” she says, leaning in until her mouth almost brushes mine, “you still haven’t thrown me out.”

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POV: Nyx Kade — Present

He’s trying to scare me.

It would work… if I hadn’t spent five years turning fear into fuel.

His touch is still the same — all control, all command, like my skin remembers him better than my mind does. The bastard smells like memory. Like sin and smoke and the nights I almost loved him.

“Throw me out,” I dare him.

His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t move. I’ve won a small battle, and we both know it.

I pull my wrist free and step back, brushing past him deliberately. “You’re right, Lucien. I didn’t come here for a reunion. I came here to take what’s mine.”

“What’s yours?” His voice is silk over a blade.

I turn, letting the fire in my eyes meet the ice in his. “You.”

For just a fraction of a second, the hunter in him freezes. And that was all I needed.

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