Page 24 of Owned By the Hvrok

And even though the pressure was light, the meaning was unmistakable.

If you will not undress yourself… I will.

Her breath caught.

The collar at her throat pulsed with heat—not from the device, but from her own racing blood.

He didn’t tighten his grip. Didn’t pull.

He just stood there.

Waiting again.

The message was as clear as sunlight through glass.

There was still a choice.

But not for much longer.

CHAPTER 16

She broke.

Not with silence. Not with tears.

Withfury.

Kyhin stood motionless as she burst, voice rising, ragged and raw. A torrent of sharp, tangled syllables poured from her lips in that strange, stuttering language of hers. No translation reached him. The collar she wore was passive—only for containment, not communication. Her meaning was locked inside her throat, sealed in a language he did not speak.

And still, he understood.

Emotion.

So much of it. Wild, unfiltered, spilling out of her like blood from a wound.

She was vibrating with it. Face flushed, limbs tight with tension, eyes bright with fury. Her hands clenched as if they wanted to strike. Her stance—defiant. She did not retreat. She stood in front of him andhowled.

He didn’t flinch.

If she had been Hvrok, she would already be dead.

He had ended warriors for less than the challenge now echoing from her lungs. Insubordination. Disrespect. Insolence.Among his kind, those were not words. They were death sentences.

And yet…

He watched her.

And felt no anger.

Only fascination.

The sounds she made—loud, chaotic, rapid-fire—were nonsensical. But they were also… vivid.Alive.She shouted in a voice too high-pitched for his hearing to fully relax into, a shrill burst of vowels and consonants that clashed against the sterile silence of the chamber like a weapon she didn’t know how to use.

It was absurd.

It wasundignified.

It was human.

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