Page 69 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
Even from my cocoon of blissful subspace, I envisioned the same as I lay curled in his arms.
23
KYLO
Evie was perched on a chair in the dungeons. Groans of pain broke through the air, andnotthe fun kind.
Well, they were fun forme.
One of the born was strapped down to a blood onyx altar, much like the altars on which these demon spawn enjoyed torturing mortals.
I glanced back at Evie, only to find her eyes squeezed shut.
“You don’t have to be here,” I reminded her.
She’d been adamant about coming with me after we’d finished aftercare. As much as I would’ve preferred forcing her to stay home and recover, I would never actually abuse my authority as her dominant to strip her of agency.
“Torture makes me squeamish,” she whispered. “But I’m okay.”
Adorable, and also hilarious. Murder, shadow impalement, and decapitation? Fine. But Evie drew the line at peeling off skin and severing appendages.
Honestly… that was fair.
“We all have our limits, baby,” I affirmed to her.
Not me, of course. My brain was sufficiently broken. In only sexy and desirable ways, obviously.
I chuckled to myself as I did something to this vermin’s eyelids that would’ve made Evie retch.
“Are you laughing?” she squeaked. “During torture?”
“Don’t pretend that comes as a shock,” I drawled. “I’ve proudly worn my badge of insanity since day one.”
She grumbled something under her breath. She was still floaty, riding the high of innumerable orgasms and shots of venom.
“All a part of the process,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been brainstorming and plotting this whole time, of course. Drafting my address to my inner circle, my messages to the clan and our allies. There’s truly nothing like born suffering to get my creative juices flowing.”
“I don’t want anyone else getting your creative juices flowing,” Evie huffed. “Ifthat’swhat we’re calling it now…”
I laughed harder. The born under my knife yelled into his cloth gag.
Evie managed to giggle, a hand over her eyes. She peeked out from a gap in her fingers to meet my gaze.
“Uh-uh. I’ll tell you when to look. I don’t need you getting sick.”
She stole one glance at my bloody tools and obeyed without question.
I continued my meticulous dance. Pain followed by relief and questioning followed by more pain. The trick with the born wasn’t necessarily to get them to spill all their secrets. It was more about what we could get them to inadvertently reveal with their microexpressions and slips of the tongue. The more I could disorient, starve, confuse, and scramble their soulless little brains, the easier they were to manipulate.
The born weren’t used to being deprived nor tortured. They hated unpredictability. They were accustomed to order,indulgence, and their own supremacy. When their reality was flipped, they crumbled.
That was the thing about power that hadn’t been earned. It paradoxically created an avalanche of weakness to exploit. Those who struggled for power, who fought with something to lose, built an inner strength that was harder to crack.
This born man was one of our most valuable captives, which unfortunately made him less prone to slips. Even so, I was getting the sense that he knewsomethingabout the attack earlier today. There was a smugness he refused to conceal, a slight twitch in his lips every time I mentioned the massacre.
