Page 25 of Claimed By the Masked BRATVA
It’s belonging.
The masquerade may have started it. The masks, the music, the danger. But this, Sebastian and me, our bodies, our words, is the only truth that matters.
And when his mouth claims mine in the final, devastating kiss, I whisper the words that seal it forever.
“I’m yours.”
Epilogue
One Year Later
Caitlyn
Applause thunders through the lecture hall.
I stand at the podium, heart racing, my fingers tight around the cool edge of the award they just pressed into my hand. It gleams under the lights, heavy, real. The plaque bears my name and the words I never thought I’d hear in the same sentence:Outstanding Contribution to the Advancement of Botanical Science.
For a moment, I can’t breathe.
Not because of the award itself, though that feels surreal. But because when I glance up, past the sea of faces, my eyes find him.
Sebastian.
He stands at the back of the hall, tall and immovable, his dark suit a sharp contrast to the academic crowd. No mask, no pretense. Just him, arms folded, gaze fixed on me with the same possessive intensity he wore that first night.
My chest tightens.
Even here, especially here, he doesn’t blend. He doesn’tneedto. People instinctively part around him, sensing the danger, the authority. He’s an intruder in this quiet world of microscopes and Latin classifications, yet he came anyway. He wouldn’t let me do this alone.
I swallow past the lump in my throat.
The dean’s voice drones on beside me, introducing the next speaker, but my mind has already drifted. Back to the masquerade. Back to the night that changed everything.
I didn’t want to go. My sister pushed the ticket into my hand, insisting I needed a break from the lab.Go, Caitlyn. Just for one night. Dance. Live.
I told myself I was doing it for her. I wore her dress, hid behind a mask, and promised I’d come home early.
Instead, I met him.
The memory unfurls in vivid fragments. The chandeliers. The masks. The way he watched me from across the ballroom like he already owned me. The way his hand closed around mine, pulling me into a dance that wasn’t really a dance at all, but a claiming.
I never went back to being the woman I was before.
And maybe that’s the point.
Because without him, I wouldn’t be standing here now. I’d still be hiding behind my work, terrified of taking up space, whispering my research into voids that didn’t listen. But with him, because of him, I dared.
Sebastian poured resources into my lab without blinking. He silenced every bureaucrat who questioned my methods. He stood behind me while I worked, not interfering, not demanding, just present, steady, a reminder that I was no longer alone.
And today, when I walked up to accept this award, I felt his gaze on me like a brand. Pride. Possession. Love, though he never says the word. He doesn’t need to.
I lift the award slightly, my hands steady now, and the applause rises again. My sister sits near the front, beaming, clapping hard enough to bruise her palms. I smile at her, gratitude swelling in my chest. She thought she was just sending me to a party. She had no idea she was rewriting my life.
The ceremony ends. People gather around, offering congratulations, shaking my hand, asking questions I barely register. I answer politely, but my attention keeps drifting to the back of the room.
He hasn’t moved.
When I finally slip free of the crowd, my heels clicking on the polished floor, I find him waiting in the doorway.
