Page 35 of Bound to the Marak

It was hard to comprehend. A species that created rulers from birth. No elections. No families passing down power. Just fate. Biology.

“And the others? The ones who bowed to you—Yerak?”

He nodded once.

“They are our people. Our warriors, our workers. Our blood-kin. But not Marak. Not like me.”

She processed that slowly. A being born to lead, to dominate… to never be challenged. It was terrifying, in a way. But also lonely.

He watched her with interest, as though measuring her reaction.

Then, she asked the question she hadreallywanted to know since the beginning. The one she had been afraid to ask aloud, for fear of what the answer might be.

“What about me?” she asked quietly. “What have you envisioned for me? What do you want with me?”

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then the translator hummed again, and his answer came—simple, stark, and nothing like what she had expected.

“Pleasure,” he said.

Her breath caught.

He turned to face her fully. Still masked, still unreadable. But there was something in the air between them—electric and tense.

“I want your pleasure. Your trust. Your submission, yes… but not your fear.”

Leonie stared at him, stunned.

“I have watched you. Studied your kind. Long have I desired what you represent—what I cannot have with my own people. Intimacy. Vulnerability. Touch. We Marak… we cannot feel such things with Yerak. We are forbidden from even trying.”

She said nothing, her mouth slightly dry.

His voice, translated as always, remained steady.

“You are not here as a servant, Leonie. Nor as a pet. I want you towantto be here. With me.”

She didn’t know what to say. The floor might as well have dropped out beneath her.

He wanted her. Not just physically, though there was clearly that. Butwantedher in some deeper, stranger way. For connection. For something his kind didn’t even allow themselves tofeel.

And he had chosen her.

Out of all the beings in the universe, he had chosenher.

She looked out the window, her heart drumming like thunder. They were high above the city now, stars all around them, the ocean far below.

The moons watched silently.

And beside her sat the most powerful being on this planet.

Leonie inhaled, trying to steady herself.

Because now, she had a choice to make.

Twenty

“Pleasure,” she echoed at last, the word strange on her tongue. It felt like she’d never really said it before—like it belonged to someone else’s vocabulary. Someone more daring, more reckless.

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