Vladimir's Marked Luna-Chapter 107: A Taste

🌙Lilith

The mansion swallowed me just as thoroughly as the forest had.

Only this time, the air was colder—not with earth and shadow, but with stone and silence and the faint, sterile polish of wealth. My claws skidded on marble, momentum carrying me too far before I corrected, shoulder clipping a column hard enough to jolt my teeth. I used it anyway, pivoting off the impact and veering down the first corridor without slowing.

The glow clung to me, reflected and fractured in tall mirrors and glass-paneled walls, turning me into something feral and luminous, something that did not belong here.

I was calling too much attention to my location—I needed to hide.

Kaia withdrew into my flesh, my two feet touching the ground while my forelimbs shifted to hands at my side.

I listened for Vladimir, but came up with nothing. He was still in the fields following the scent I’d left behind.

I still had time to hide.

I took to the stairs, taking them two or three at a time until I reached the landing.

I didn’t really think things through.

When do you ever?

I smiled to myself before I caught myself.

I still needed to hide. Vladimir would catch my scent in the house soon.

I moved down the hallway, sweat beading on my brow despite the cold. My body pulsed with something strange and untamed at the thought of Vladimir going crazy trying to catch me—that look in his eyes, that unraveling wrath.

When I catch you, I won’t be holding back.

Heat flooded through me, unwelcome and confusing, and I shoved it down.

Focus.

Hide.

Survive.

I passed door after door, testing handles frantically. Locked. Locked. Locked.

Then I turned a corner into a familiar corridor—the one I passed through to reach the training room.

My body prickled, every instinct screaming awareness.

And there it was.

The red door.

The one I’d tried before. The one that had been locked.

The one Vladimir had never explained.

I should keep moving. Should find somewhere else. Anywhere else.

But my feet carried me forward anyway, hand reaching for the knob before I could think better of it.

It turned.

The door opened with a whisper of sound, and I slipped inside, pulling it closed behind me just as I heard it—

A growl.

In the fucking house.

He was inside. He’d caught my scent. He was coming.

Panic spiked through me as I pressed my back against the door, chest heaving.

The room was dark. Completely dark.

No windows. No light seeping in from outside. Not even the outline of furniture or the silver glow of the moon that flooded every other room in this mansion.

Just... nothing.

My hands fumbled along the wall, searching for a light switch, but found only smooth stone.

Then I heard footsteps.

Heavy. Deliberate. Growing closer.

I stumbled forward into the darkness, hands outstretched, and touched metal.

Cold. Solid. Vertical bars.

A cage.

My fingers traced the structure—large, reinforced, the kind built to hold something powerful. Something dangerous.

A cage in a room without windows.

What the fuck is this place?

I moved along the wall, searching for somewhere—anywhere—to hide, and my hands found something else.

A box. Taller than me. Taller even than Vladimir.

Padded. Velvet from the feel of it.

What—

Footsteps. Right outside the door.

I dove behind the velvet box, pressing myself into the narrow space between it and the wall, making myself as small as possible.

The door opened with a smooth creak.

Light flooded the room—not from a switch, but from the hallway, casting long shadows that didn’t reach my hiding spot.

Then the light cut off as the door closed.

Darkness again.

But not silence.

Footsteps. Two feet. He’d shifted back to human form.

Slow. Measured. Like he had all the time in the world.

Like he knew exactly where I was.

"Lilith."

His voice cut through the darkness, rough and low and entirely too calm.

I pressed harder against the wall, holding my breath.

"I can hear your heartbeat."

Fuck.

"Smell your fear."

Another step. Closer.

"Smell something else too."

Heat flooded my face even as dread coiled in my stomach.

"You ran well," he continued, his voice almost conversational. Almost. "Better than I expected. The water was clever. Doubling back—also clever."

Another step.

"But you made a mistake, moya."

The endearment sent shivers down my spine.

"You came inside. Into my home. My territory."

I could hear him moving, but couldn’t pinpoint where. The darkness was absolute, disorienting.

"And then—" A soft sound, like fabric shifting. "—you came here."

Something in his tone made my skin prickle.

"Do you know what this room is, Lilith?"

Clank. Clank. Clank.

Chains.

My breath caught, my stomach dropping to my feet.

A cage and chains.

What room had I walked into?

"Lilith." His voice dropped, sultry yet rough.

Molten heat pooled at my core as I dared not breathe.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

What was he doing with the chains?

But the clinking did not stop. It slowed instead, each heavy shift of metal measured, patient, his breathing thick with restraint rather than rage.

Time dragged on, suspended like the breath before a noose finds its mark.

I flinched at every sound he made, my body betraying me with each reflexive recoil.

I screamed at myself to run away, but my feet remained glued to the ground; even an inch felt like a mile, every second an eternity.

The world had slowed down, just to torture me with the inevitability of what I knew would happen next.

I had cornered myself.

Vladimir’s snarl pulled me back, and I stopped as he growled again.

It no longer sounded the same as the others. What reached my ears was akin to a pained groan.

My chest constricted as fear met horror. Not fear for me—worry for him.

What was happening?

It could be a trap, but would Vladimir really use my empathy against me?

Then the rattle of chained stopped, completely.

I was beginning to grow faint with the breath that I was holding.

Breath, Lilith. Kaia urged.

I allowed myself whispers of air, even if they were not enough. Breathing in the oppressive silence felt like a sin that I could not commit.

I waited, waited for him to jump out and spook me out of my skin, to grab me and do what exactly he had promised.

When I catch you, I will not be holding back.

But even as I counted each modicum of breath with every second that passed—nothing happened.

There was only a still, stagnant, type of a quiet.

The weakness wedged in my legs ebbed away, until my strength returned. Inch my inch I forced them into motion,

I supported myself with the box as moved to its edge. I braced myself as I took the last step that would reveal me.

The darkness thinned as I stepped forward.

The cage emerged first—not the bars, but the presence inside it, dense enough to warp the air around it. Then the chains caught what little light there was, steel drawn taut from the ceiling and the walls, pinning a body that did not bow even when restrained.

Vladimir.

His arms were chained above him, muscles carved hard beneath damp skin, shoulders rigid with the effort of not breaking free. His hair had grown—just an inch, the way it sometimes did when control slipped—curling at the nape of his neck, dark with sweat. Stubble shadowed his jaw, rougher than I remembered, as if time had accelerated around him alone.

His eyes were locked on me.

Not searching.

Not startled.

Waiting.

Red rimmed them, raw and feral, the kind of hunger that wasn’t just physical but bone-deep, clinging to him like a second skin. It made my breath hitch—not in fear, but in something far more dangerous.

The bond sang.

Low at first, then louder, a pull that threaded through my ribs and settled in my chest, urging me forward with a certainty I did not question. His scent hit me all at once—winter and steel and something darker beneath it—pressing into me with enough force to make my knees weak, to make my skin ache with awareness.

I stepped into the cage.

The door did not close behind me.

I didn’t look back.

Each step brought me closer until I was within reach, close enough to feel the cool heat bleeding from him despite the cold sheen of sweat, close enough that the chains rattled softly as he shifted.

Then he moved.

Not toward me.

Over me.

He loomed down like a bad omen, shadow swallowing light, the restraint in him trembling but unbroken. Pain lined his features, sharp and unmistakable—and still, he had never looked more devastatingly real.

More beautiful.

I couldn’t believe he existed. That someone like this—this ruin of control and power—was not a myth, not a punishment, but standing in front of me, breathing.

The training exercise vanished.

The hunt, the rules, the fear—all of it fell away.

I reached for him.

My hand cradled his cheek, cold and damp beneath my palm, my thumb brushing the edge of his jaw without thought or hesitation, over the roughness of his stubble. His eyes fluttered, and he leaned into the touch like it was an anchor, like it was the only thing keeping him upright.

He folded into it.

Just enough.

His breath ghosted across my knuckles as his forehead dipped closer, chains groaning softly above us.

And then he whispered, voice husky and wrecked and entirely too intimate in the dim lights.

"Let me have a taste of you."