Page 52 of The Sin Binders Ascent

“Of what?” Silas steps closer, eyes glittering. “The fact that you’re cursed with a bond that none of us chose for you? That you got the easy way in, no work, no devotion, just magic fucking shackles and a sad little backstory? No thanks. I’ll keep my pathetic poetry and thirty years of earned chaos.”

Luna shifts behind him, and Silas glances back at her, just once. Just long enough to see that she’s shaking, maybe with rage, maybe with exhaustion, both. And maybe that’s why the ridiculous drops from him just enough to lace his next words with something that cuts.

“She doesn’t need another fixation,” Silas says, quieter now, voice threading seriously. “She needs to breathe. You walk around like you invented want, but Luna’s been wanted every damn day of her life. You don’t get to rewrite that.”

Theo leans in, eyes locked to Silas’s, and there’s no smile now. Just something colder.

“She doesn’tbreathe,Silas,” he says. “Shedevours.And you all let her.”

Silas’s jaw clenches, fingers twitching at his side. “Yeah, well. Better she devours us than wastes a bite on you.”

Theo’s eyes flicker toward Luna, as if he wants her to weigh in. But Silas is still there, unmoving, unflinching, grinning like he’s already sabotaged Theo’s next twenty lifetimes.

Luna finally speaks, and her voice slices through the heavy quiet like rain through smoke.

“Back the fuck up, both of you.”

They do, but not because she asked. They move because her wrist jerks with sudden heat,gold cuff sparking like something ancient just woke up.

Silas watches it glow, then mutters, “Well that’s not terrifying at all.” Then louder, to the group now catching up: “Someone bring me a hacksaw, some sage, and a very large bucket of tequila. Preferably in that order.”

She stumbles, just a step, barely a shift, but the gold at her wrist flares and pulls taut.

And Luna jerks forward.

Straight into Theo.

It’s not a slow reel-in, not a gentle draw. It’s violent, fast, like the cuff’s got a mind of its own, and for one long second I swear I feel something ripple through the earth beneath us. Like the world itself flinches at what just happened.

Theo catches her. One hand at her waist, the other hovering at her hip like he wants to touch more but doesn’t dare,not with seven of us watching like gods deciding whether or not to smite him.

A growl claws out of my throat before I register it. I step forward, closing the gap in three long strides, dragging Luna back into my side, into the safety shechosefor three fucking decades. I wrap my hand around her wrist, the one bound in that twisted metal, and the cuff pulses,warm, then burning.

“What. The fuck. Was that,” I bite out, not looking at her, not looking at anyone buthim.

Theo just shrugs like it’s nothing, like Luna isn’t rattled, like the cuff didn’t justmoveher body without her consent. “It reacts to proximity,” he says, voice low and maddeningly casual. “Distance stress. Nothing intentional.”

“You keep pretending like you know how this thing works,” Ambrose snaps from behind me. “You don’t.”

Theo’s gaze flicks toward him, unreadable. “I know it brought her closer.”

My jaw tenses. Lucien's beside me now, his Dominion curling under the surface of the ground, cracking through soil and stone, restrained only because Luna is watching us.

Theo takes that moment,thatfucking moment, to glance down at her again.

“You okay, sweetheart?”

And that’s it.

Lucien doesn’t answer with words. He moves, fast, the heel of his boot carving a gouge in the dirt as he takes a step forward that rattles through the ward lines around the property.

Orin stops him with a single raised hand.

“This isn’t going to be solved with violence,” Orin says, voice calm but full of thunder, the kind that comes before storms,not during. “Whatever this is, it’s not a bond. It’s not our magic. It’s something else entirely.”

“She didn’t choose this,” I growl.

“I didn’t say she did,” Orin replies.

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