Page 50 of The Sin Binders Ascent

The cuff doesn’t move.

Lucien’s eyes darken to something cruel. Not angry.Dangerous.

He grips her wrist. She gasps, not in pain, but something flares through the bond, and I feel it. A shudder down my spine. Lucien's power roars inside him, and hecommandsthe metal to submit.

The cuff glows hotter. A flare of gold,

andburns him back.

Lucien jerks his hand away, blinking at the charred line that snakes across his palm. Smoke curls from his fingertips. He flexes them once, as if testing his body’s betrayal.

“I can’t break it,” he says quietly.

Not disbelief. Not defeat. Just a fact. The words punch the breath from my lungs.

Caspian swears low. Elias mutters something I don’t catch, already backing up like this just turned from inconvenient to catastrophic. Orin is still watching everything. His brows knit, calculating. Ambrose doesn’t move, but he’s watching Luna, notthe cuff. Watching how she’s gone pale, how she clutches her arm now like it’sturnedon her, foreign and wrong.

Theo shifts his weight, the chain tugging gently between them. His voice, when he speaks, is low. Not smug now. Not teasing.

“Guess I’m not the only one stuck in this, sweetheart.”

Lucien turns to him slowly. The fury on his face islethal.“You come near her again without one of us there, and will personally erase you. Permanently.”

Theo meets his eyes and, gods, the bastardsmiles.Not wide. Not triumphant. Just… tired. Hollow around the edges. “You already tried that once.”

And the cuff glows again, just faintly, like itknows.

Lucien’s stare stays locked on Theo, like he’s deciding whether to kill him slowly or surgically. Power still coils at his fingertips, but the metal on Luna’s wrist, onTheo’s, has burned the authority right out of him. Whatever this is, it doesn’t answer to Dominion. And that’s a fucking problem.

“We take this to Blackwell,” Lucien says, his voice low and precise. Every syllable is a scalpel. “If this is his doing, he can undo it.”

“No,” I snap before I even think it through. “We’re not dragging Luna back into that bastard’s office just to play whatever game he thinks this is.”

“She’s alreadyinit,” Lucien bites back. “Whether we like it or not.”

Theo shifts beside Luna, the cuff pulling taut again, and I watch the way it tugs against her skin, too possessive, tooconnected.It makes something inside me splinter.

“You think Blackwell’s going toundothis?” I grind the words out, stepping toward Lucien. “He did this to prove a point. He did this towin.”

“He’s still the only one who knows how it was forged,” Orin says calmly, stepping forward now, voice like a fucking stormwrapped in silk. “And the only one who might know how to unbind it.”

“Orin.” My tone sharpens. “We locked Theo away for areason.And now Luna’s chained to him,literally.And you want to goaskthe man whoreleasedhim for help?”

“It’s not about trust,” Orin replies, still maddeningly calm. “It’s about strategy. Blackwell’s never done anything that didn’t serve a purpose. The question isn’t why he did it, it’swhy now.”

Lucien’s jaw clenches. He looks at Luna again. She hasn’t said a word. She’s holding her arm like it’s foreign, like it doesn’t belong to her anymore. The bond between us is fraying, too many voices in her head, too much chaos in her veins. And Theo.Fucking Theo.Standing beside her like he’s already claimed something.

He hasn’t. He won’t.

Lucien exhales, sharp and decisive. “We go to Blackwell.Now.”

I grit my teeth. Every instinct I have screams to keep Luna away from that office, away fromhim.But right now, her wrist is wrapped in something ancient and unnatural, and the only person sick enough to do this, and smart enough to undo it, is waiting on that hill with his smug little smile and his mouth full of lies.

I turn toward Theo.

“You so much as breathe in her direction the wrong way before we get answers, I swear to the old gods, I’ll,”

“Yeah, yeah,” Theo interrupts, dragging his fingers through his wet hair, the chain rattling faintly. “You’ll kill me. You’ve all made that very clear.”

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