Continued!

A shaky breath escapes Lila’s lips, ghosting over the shell of Elena’s ear as she finally closes the last of the space between them. The scent of her—warm, familiar, hers—fills Lila’s lungs, and for a second, she’s eighteen again, kneeling at Elena’s feet for the first time, trembling with the thrill of being seen. But that was before. Before the serum. Before the need became something more than choice.

“Who are you without me?” The words slip out before she can stop them, low and rough, like gravel underfoot. A challenge. A plea. She doesn’t even know which.

Elena’s head snaps up, her dark eyes locking onto Lila’s with a ferocity that steals the breath from her lungs. There’s no ice in that gaze now, no calculated dominance. Just fire. Raw. Unfiltered. The kind that burns away everything but the truth.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moves. Then Elena’s lips part, her chest rising on a sharp inhale. “You don’t get to ask that,” she says, voice a blade wrapped in silk. “Not after what you did.”

Lila’s stomach twists. She knows what Elena means. The reversal. The betrayal of it. The way she stood in that sterile white room and let Dr. Voss pump the antidote into her veins, watching as her body shrunk, as the hunger that had defined her for months leaked out of her like blood from a wound. She had chosen freedom. She had chosen herself.

But standing here now, with Elena’s heat radiating against her skin, with the ghost of her own submission whispering in her ear, she isn’t so sure anymore.

“You made me need you,” Lila whispers, her voice breaking. “You changed me. And then you acted like I was supposed to be grateful for it.”

Elena’s jaw tightens. “I gave you pleasure you didn’t even know you could feel.”

“You gave me a leash.”