Chapter 545: Hypocrite: Unfathomable Reaction

Cassiopeia dropped like a stone—straight toward the floor.

Phei moved faster than humanly possible. One arm snapped out, catching her around the waist mid-fall, hauling her against his chest before she could hit the ground.

The wine sloshed in the glass she was still holding but didn’t spill—her fingers had locked around the stem with the death-grip of a woman whose body had learned, in the span of one second, that dropping things Phei gave her was not an option.

He lowered her gently onto the bed—her body still quaking, breath coming in short, shattered gasps, her pussy still leaking his cum and her squirt onto the sheets in slow, pearly rivulets.

He leaned over her, voice low and steady.

"Don’t be a

hypocrite,

Cassiopeia."

Her eyes—still glassy, still half-lost in the space between her old self and whatever she was becoming—snapped to his face.

"You came here to

bind me,"

he continued, tone almost conversational with the wine he was currently enjoying while his cum dripped out of the woman, he’d just soul-branded.

"To turn me into a vegetable that only listens to your orders. A soulless thing whose only purpose was to obey when you want, alive only as long as you found me useful."

He took another sip. Unhurried. The wine really was excellent.

"And yet..." He tilted his head, eyes dark with something almost like sorrow. "...you have the

audacity

to fight when I do the same to you?"

Her eyes widened—pupils dilating in shock so fast the green of her irises almost disappeared.

She hadn’t expected him to know.

Not anything or the cold, clinical future she had scripted for him—where he existed as a puppet with and no thoughts that her familty hadn’t put there.

She’d been so careful.

So precise, she’d been carefull not to give away anything for days in his presence without a single flicker of intent to give it away.

And he’d known since the moment she walked through the door.

"How long?" she whispered.

"How long have you—"

"Since the moment you walked through my penthouse door," he said. Casual. Almost bored. Like the admission cost him nothing.

"That’s—"

Her voice broke. "That’s impossible. The bracelet is undetectable. Even to—"

"To beings above your pay grade?" He raised an eyebrow. "Maybe. To me?" He shrugged. "Cassiopeia. I have made out with you. Multiple times. Do you think I didn’t feel the cold spot on your wrist every time your hand was on my back? Do you think I didn’t notice the way your pulse changed when I got too close to it? Do you think a dragon doesn’t know when something in his rear

is carrying a cage?"

She had no answer for that.

Because she’d been so focused on the binding—on the mechanism, the timing, the perfect moment to spring the trap—that she’d forgotten the most basic rule of hunting:

the prey might be hunting you back.

Phei shook his head, almost sadly.

"I was even more

merciful

than you intended to be." He took another slow sip of wine, eyes never leaving hers. "At least I’m not turning you into a

soulless husk.

You’re free to do anything you want—

live, laugh, love, hate—as long as you never harm me, my family, or my women. That’s the only chain I’ve placed on you."

He set the glass down. Leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that brushed her lips like smoke and smelled like blackberry and oak and the particular cruelty of a man who was being kind and wanted you to know how easily he could stop.

"So, tell me, Cassiopeia... who’s the heartless one here? Me—for letting you keep your soul and your freedom? Or you—for planning to strip mine away completely?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. No sound came out.

The dragon inside her seemed to have purred. She felt it—

Finally—barely a whisper:

"What happens now?"

Phei studied her for a long moment—her flushed cheeks, her swollen lips, her trembling thighs still parted, her pussy still leaking slowly onto the ruined sheets. The wine glass in her hand, still held perfectly upright. Not a drop spilled.

He reached out, brushed a sweat-damp strand of hair from her face with surprising gentleness.

"Now?" he said softly. "Now you decide what kind of prisoner you want to be."

He leaned in, lips brushing her ear.

"Because I’m not going anywhere."

And for the first time since the mark ignited—

She didn’t fight.

She simply closed her eyes.

Cassiopeia opened her eyes again and stared at the wine glass in her trembling hand for a long moment—fingers still unsteady from the aftershocks of soul-fire and endless orgasm.

Then, slowly, deliberately, she lifted it to her lips and took a sip.

The deep crimson liquid slid over her tongue. She swallowed. Rolled the taste around her mouth. Considered it with the particular attention of a cruel hottie who had just been enslaved by a seventeen-year-old and had decided that wine criticism was a reasonable next step.

Phei blinked.

He had expected hysterics. Rage. Collapse. Not... this quiet, almost elegant motion.

Not her tasting the vintage he’d poured like it was any other evening.

Not the way her throat worked on the swallow—smooth, controlled, the same throat that had been screaming his name five minutes ago now performing the civilised act of wine appreciation like the two events existed in the same universe.

What the hell is wrong with this woman?

What the hell is wrong with this entire family?

She set the glass down on the nightstand, rose from the bed on legs that still shook but refused to buckle, and walked—naked, glistening, hair plastered to her sweat-slick back—toward the dresser.

She bent at the waist to place the glass beside the bottle.

The motion was deliberate.

Her

ass lifted high

, thighs parting just enough that her swollen, freshly fucked pussy came into full view from behind—lips still flushed dark rose and puffy, glistening with their combined cream, inner petals slightly gaped from the brutal stretch of his cock, a slow trickle of her arousal and his cum leaking down the inside of one thigh in a thick, pearlescent line.

She held the position for exactly one second longer than necessary.

Then straightened.

Turned.

And walked straight back to him with the stride of a woman who had been soul-branded by a dragon, and had apparently processed the entire experience in the time it took to drink half a glass of wine.

Her eyes were clear now. Not glassy or broken.

Clear

and burning with something that Phei recognised because he’d seen it in his own mirror often enough: the particular light of someone who’d been cornered and had decided—calmly, precisely, with full knowledge of the cage—to live inside it on their own terms.

She was not going to beg.

She was not going to grovel.

She was going to make this her choice even if it wasn’t.

And that—more than the bracelet, more than the planning, more than the centuries of her family’s scheming—told Phei exactly what kind of woman Cassiopeia really was.

When she reached the bed she didn’t hesitate. One hand wrapped around his still-hard cock—fingers curling tight around the slick, veined shaft, the mark between her brows pulsing once at the contact, like a lock recognising a key—and she leaned in close enough that her breasts brushed his chest.

"Let’s see,"

she whispered, voice hoarse from screaming MASTER, lips brushing the corner of his mouth with every syllable,

"if I really have as much

free will

as you claim."

Before he could respond she pushed.

Phei fell backward onto the mattress—more from surprise than force, because the woman who’d been shaking and soul-broken thirty seconds ago was apparently already back to shoving dragons around like it was foreplay.

Which, for her, it probably was. Cassiopeia climbed on top immediately, straddling his hips, knees sinking into the soaked sheets on either side of him. She

aligned

herself with practiced ease—swollen, dripping pussy hovering just above the thick crown of his cock.

Her outer lips parted slightly as she lowered, brushing the fat head, coating it in fresh slick.

The mark between her brows flared.

The dragon inside her soul stirred—not with pain, but with something that felt horribly, confusingly like anticipation. Like it

wanted

this. Like the chains weren’t just allowing her to fuck him—they were

encouraging

it.

Phei’s mind raced.

He had just burned

Tiamat’s Claim

into her soul—chained her essence with dragon-fire, rewritten her intent so she could never harm him or his. And her first reaction—the very first thing she did after the pain faded and the terror passed and the wine was tasted—was

climb

back on his cock to test her freedom?

What the hell is wrong with Legacy families?

But one thing was undeniable.

He had succeeded.

Completely.

Utterly.

Cassiopeia—the woman who’d come to enslave him, who’d worn a soul-binding bracelet for days waiting for the perfect moment, who’d planned to hollow him out and wear his body like a suit—was now straddling his hips with his mark burning between her brows and her pussy dripping onto his cock and her eyes daring him to stop her.

And that victory came with its own... prizes.

Cassiopeia sank down slowly—her stretched entrance kissing the crown again, lips peeling open around him with a wet, obscene sound that echoed off the walls like a confession.

And somewhere in the back of Phei’s mind, between the triumph and the terror and the absurd, relentless horniness of it all—

[DING!]