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The Danforths didn’t hide their violence. They insulated it.

The first thing the Danforth complex taught you when you took the job was that rich people didn’t silence screams—they designed rooms that swallowed them.

Sound died strangely here. It vanished into velvet walls and carved wood, into the thick old carpets imported from countries the Danforths pretended to respect and exploited anyway. It sank into the marble. It slipped behind portraits of dead men with powdered faces and mean eyes. The estate was too large, too polished, too aware of itself, all black iron gates and manicured gardens and endless service corridors designed so the wealthy never had to see the people who cleaned up after them.

Tonight, the house was eating noise whole.

Somewhere beyond the west wing, a gunshot cracked through the grounds.

Then another.

Then silence.

You sat in the private medical room with your hands folded in your lap, staring at the brass clock over the cabinet because it gave you something to do besides think. The room smelled of antiseptic, old leather, and the faint coppery ghost of blood that never really left, no matter how much bleach the staff used. The surgical tray had already been laid out. Sutures. Gauze. Hemostats. Sterile gloves. Local anesthetic. Silver scissors. Everything arranged with the quiet, awful precision the Danforths expected from their staff.

You weren’t a doctor. Not officially.

Officially, you were a private household medical attendant.

Unofficially, you were the person they called when someone important got hurt doing something no one could report.

Most estates had gardeners. Drivers. Housekeepers.

The Danforths had crisis staff.

Another sound came through the walls: a low mechanical groan, followed by the distant blare of an alarm that stopped almost as soon as it began. Someone on security must’ve killed it. The house settled again, vast and watchful.

You told yourself not to count the minutes.

Counting made it worse.

The intercom on the wall clicked alive.

Static hissed.

Then his voice poured through, low and amused and ragged around the edges.

“Grace, darling, you’re making this tedious.”

You went still.

Titus Danforth sounded different over the intercom. Larger somehow. More theatrical. Like the whole estate had been built not for parties or power or ritual, but for the particular pleasure of carrying his voice into every room.

“You can keep running,” he continued, breath faintly uneven beneath the taunt, “but there’s only so much house.”

The intercom clicked off.

A second later, a crash rang out somewhere in the corridor beyond the medical room.

Not the distant violence of the hunt.

Close.

You stood before you could think better of it.

There were voices outside. Two of them. One sharp and female, cold enough to cut through the old oak door.

“You look embarrassing.”

Ursula Danforth.

Your stomach tightened.

Then Titus, closer, rougher, amused through his pain.

“And you look disappointed I’m still walking.”

The door swung open hard enough to hit the stopper.

Titus Danforth appeared in the doorway, and the room seemed to brace for him before you did.

He was bleeding.

Not dying, your training decided for you.

Unfortunately.

He’d been hurt badly enough to look furious about it. His dark grey T-shirt was torn open at the side, the cotton stuck to him where blood had soaked through and turned the fabric almost black. The collar sat crooked at his throat, one shoulder pulled out of shape, his hair mussed like he’d dragged a hand through it too many times. Blood marked his neck. His fingers. The hard line of one cheekbone. It should’ve made him look shaken. Instead, it made him look like someone else had made the mistake of touching him and hadn’t survived the lesson.

He looked less injured than interrupted.

And he looked deeply insulted that anyone had noticed.

Ursula stood just behind him, immaculate in a way that made his damage seem even more obscene. Not untouched exactly—there was a streak of dirt along the hem of her skirt, a tiny red bead near her wrist—but composed. Always composed. She looked him over with flat disgust, as though he’d tracked mud into the foyer instead of blood into the medical wing.

“You’re bleeding on Father’s floor,” she said.

Titus gave the marble a brief, contemptuous glance. “He’s hardly in a position to complain.”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

“Don’t be sentimental.”

Her gaze flicked to you. “Patch him up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Titus’s eyes moved to you for the first time.

That was always how it felt with him. Not attention. Appraisal. The kind rich men gave paintings, horses, weapons, and people they didn’t consider people for long.

You lowered your gaze on instinct, then hated yourself for doing it.

His mouth curved.

“Oh,” he said softly. “This one’s nervous.”

Ursula didn’t turn. “Everyone’s nervous around you. Don’t mistake that for charisma.”

“I don’t have to.” Titus’s eyes stayed on you. “Not when they’re this pretty about it.”

Your face went warm.

You reached for the gloves because they gave your hands something to do besides betray you.

Ursula’s mouth tightened. “Sit down, Titus.”

He smiled at her. “Ask sweetly.”

“You’re bleeding through your shirt.”

“And still standing.”

“Barely.”

“You wound me.”

“Someone already did.”

His smile sharpened.

“Careful, Urs. That almost sounded like love.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “Love would imply I’d miss you.”

For the first time, his smile thinned.

“I’d prefer you alive until you’re useful,” she added.

Titus laughed once, sharp and humorless. It almost passed for contempt. Then his breath caught, and the lie came apart—pain, badly hidden, worse than he wanted anyone in the room to know.

Ursula noticed too.

Of course she did.

Her eyes narrowed with something that might’ve passed for concern in another bloodline. In theirs, it looked more like calculation.

“You’re compromised,” she said.

“I’m inconvenienced.”

“You’re reckless.”

“I’m effective.”

“You lost the girl.”

That landed.

Not visibly, not to anyone who didn’t know how to watch monsters pretend not to bruise. But Titus’s face changed by a degree. His smile stayed. His eyes went colder.

“The night isn’t over.”

“No,” Ursula said. “Which is why I need you stitched and back on your feet before you become more liability than asset.”

He stepped farther into the room, the torn edge of his jacket dragging wetly against the cut at his side. For one brief second, his jaw clenched.

Then the smile returned, polished over the pain like a fresh coat of varnish.

“Always so managerial.”

“Always so disappointing.”

He brushed past her and dropped into the chair beside the examination table instead of getting onto it, spreading his knees and leaning back like this was a club lounge and not a room designed to quietly remove bullets from billionaires.

Ursula looked at you again.

Not unkindly.

Worse. Practically.

“If he bites, hit him with the tray.”

Titus grinned. “Don’t flirt on my behalf.”

Ursula ignored him. “He needs to be mobile. Fast.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She started to leave, then paused at the door.

“Titus.”

He didn’t look at her. “Ursula.”

“Try not to bleed out in front of the staff. It lowers morale.”

His smile thinned.

The door shut behind her.

Silence settled.

Not real silence. The house still breathed around you. Somewhere in the vents, air shifted. Somewhere distant, the game continued. But in the medical room, it was just you and Titus and the blood steadily darkening his shirt.

He watched you snap on your gloves.

“You always this quiet?”

You moved to the tray. “When I’m working.”

“How professional.”

“You’re going to need to take off the jacket.”

“Bossy.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I noticed.”

“You’ll bleed more if the fabric pulls when I clean it.”

He studied you for a second too long, then reached up with his uninjured hand and shrugged out of the jacket. Or tried to. The movement tugged at the wound and his breath caught through his teeth.

You stepped forward automatically. “Stop.”

His eyes snapped to yours.

It was a mistake, meeting them.

Titus Danforth had the kind of stare that made your mouth correct itself before your pride could object.

“I mean,” you said carefully, “let me help.”

His mouth twitched. “Better.”

You ignored that.

You came around behind him and eased the jacket down his shoulders, trying not to notice the heat coming off him. He was tense under your hands. Not fragile. Never fragile. More like a coiled thing that’d been forced to sit still against its nature.

The jacket fell into your grip, heavy and expensive and ruined.

You set it aside.

His shirt was next.

Of course it was.

You reached for the hem of his T-shirt, then stopped. “Can you—”

“No.”

You looked at him.

He smiled. “I’m wounded.”

“You just took off your jacket.”

“And suffered terribly.”

You stared at him for half a second.

He stared back, delighted.

You picked up the scissors instead.

“Shame,” he said as you began cutting the shirt open from the tear at his side. “This was Italian.”

“I’m sure you can afford another.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What’s the point?”

“That I liked this one.”

The scissors slid through blood-wet fabric with a soft, awful sound. The ruined shirt parted beneath your hands, revealing skin smeared red over lean muscle, the wound at his ribs ugly but clean-edged. A slash, not a bullet. Deep enough to need stitches. Not deep enough to kill him unless he kept pretending consequences were for other people.

You reached for gauze.

“Knife?” you asked.

“Something like that.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“Neither was she.”

Your hands paused.

Titus noticed.

He always noticed.

“Oh, don’t look so intrigued,” he said. “It wasn’t Grace. If she’d gotten this close, one of us would be dead.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I appreciate competence.”

“You appreciate winning.”

His smile sharpened slowly, like he enjoyed the accusation more than he should’ve.

“There’s a difference?”

You pressed gauze against the wound.

His body jerked once, not enough for anyone else to call it flinching. His hand shot out and clamped around your wrist. Hard. Not crushing. Not yet. Just enough to stop you. Just enough to remind you he could.

Your pulse kicked.

Titus looked down at your caged wrist, then up at your face.

“There it is,” he murmured.

You swallowed. “You’re bleeding too much for games.”

“Everything’s a game tonight.”

“Not this.”

“Especially this.”

You held his gaze because looking away felt worse. “Let go.”

His thumb found your pulse with insulting ease, pressed once, and lingered just long enough to make sure you knew he’d felt it jump.

You hated the tiny shock of absence it left behind.

You pressed the gauze down again, gentler this time, though you weren’t sure why you bothered. Titus felt the difference anyway. His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping once beneath the skin, his throat working around whatever sound he refused to give you.

“You should let me numb it,” you said.

“No.”

“It’ll hurt.”

“I didn’t ask you to make it pleasant.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

You looked at the wound, then at him. “You don’t have to make everything a point of pride.”

His eyes lifted to yours, bright with pain and amusement.

“Careful,” he said. “That almost sounded like pity.”

“It was medical advice.”

“How disappointing.”

You cleaned the wound in silence after that, or tried to.

Titus didn’t make silence easy.

He watched your face while you worked. Not your hands. Your face. Like the wound bored him but your reactions might entertain him if he waited long enough.

The antiseptic made his breath go sharp again.

You pretended not to hear.

“Do they train you for this?” he asked.

“For wounds?”

“For not asking questions.”

“Yes.”

“And what’d they tell you?”

“That curiosity’s dangerous.”

His smile widened. “Sensible.”

“And expensive.”

That surprised a laugh out of him.

Real, maybe. Brief.

It turned into a wince before he could hide it.

You took advantage of the distraction to inspect the wound more closely. “It missed anything vital.”

“Lucky me.”

“You’ll need stitches.”

“Lucky you.”

You threaded the needle.

Titus tilted his head back against the chair, eyes still on you from beneath lowered lashes. There was blood drying along the side of his throat. A line of it had run beneath his collarbone before the shirt came open. He should’ve looked diminished.

He didn’t.

He looked like violence that had briefly put on human skin and found it irritating.

“Does Ursula always speak to you like that?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

His eyes sharpened.

Too late, you realized your mistake.

Curiosity was dangerous.

The corner of his mouth lifted, pleased in a way that made you regret the question before he answered. “You’ve been listening.”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No. But you did.”

You tied off the first stitch in your mind before beginning. “Forget I said anything.”

“I don’t forget what interests me.”

You pushed the needle through his skin.

This time he didn’t move.

Not even when the thread pulled tight.

A faint sheen of sweat had gathered at his temple, but his voice stayed lazy.

“Ursula speaks to everyone like that.”

“She doesn’t speak to everyone the same way she speaks to you.”

“Because everyone else is less fun to disappoint.”

His gaze drifted over your face like he was looking for the next thing you’d give away.

“Go on, then. What else have you noticed?"

ou pulled the second stitch through and kept your eyes on the wound. “You enjoy making people uncomfortable.”

“That’s not an observation,” Titus said. “That’s gossip.”

You should’ve stopped there. The sensible part of you knew it, the trained part of you knew it, but Ursula’s voice was still in the room, cold and cutting, and Titus was watching you like he already knew you’d give him one more thing to use.

“And Ursula doesn’t sound like she’s worried you’ll lose. She sounds like she’s worried you’ll win.”

His smile stayed exactly where it was, which somehow made it worse. If it had vanished, if he’d snapped, if he’d given you anything loud enough to brace against, you might’ve known what to do with it. Instead, the expression remained polished in place while the room seemed to lose several degrees around him.

Your hand paused against his side.

Titus went still beneath your touch, not with restraint, but with the terrible patience of something deciding whether to strike

“Is that so?”

You kept your attention on the wound. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I overstepped.”

“You did.”

“I won’t again.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether I liked it.”

Your hand hesitated.

His gaze dropped.

Not to the wound.

To your mouth.

Heat crawled up your throat, humiliating and impossible to hide. Titus saw that too. Of course he did. The faintest satisfaction touched his face.

“You’re very bad at pretending,” he said.

“I’m stitching your ribs.”

“And yet.”

You tied off another stitch. “Hold still.”

“Yes, nurse.”

“I’m not a nurse.”

“No?”

“No.”

“What are you, then?”

You looked up despite yourself.

Wrong move.

Titus’s face was close enough now that you could see the tiny flecks of blood on his lower lashes, the bruising starting to shadow one cheekbone, the vicious brightness in his eyes. He was hurt. Angry. Alive in a way that felt almost indecent.

“I’m staff,” you said.

His expression shifted.

Not softened.

Possessive, maybe. Amused by the answer. Offended by it too, somehow.

“Staff,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“What a small word.”

“It’s an accurate one.”

“For them, perhaps.”

You didn’t ask who them meant.

The Danforths. The Council. The portraits on the walls. Every old family in the complex hunting two women through a ritualized slaughter and calling it tradition.

Titus leaned forward slightly.

The movement pulled at the fresh stitches and made blood bead bright against his skin.

You pressed a hand to his shoulder without thinking. “Stop moving.”

His eyes dropped to where your hand rested against him, and the silence that followed made the touch feel suddenly louder than it had any right to be. You pulled away too quickly. Titus caught you before you got far, his fingers closing around yours this time instead of your wrist, the grip lower, warmer, almost polite if you ignored the flaking blood on his skin and the way he held you like politeness was just another kind of trap.

It should’ve felt less threatening.

It didn’t.

“You give orders very easily when you’re scared,” he said.

“I’m not scared.”

“No?”

“No.”

His thumb brushed over the back of your glove, slow and deliberate.

“You know,” he said, “lying to me is much worse than being afraid of me.”

“I’m not lying.”

He leaned closer.

You could smell blood and expensive cologne and smoke, like he’d been running through fire in a tailored suit.

“Your pulse disagrees.”

“You’re hurt,” you said. “And you’re bored.”

“Partly.”

“You want a reaction.”

“I want many things.”

“Titus.”

His name came out too quiet.

His eyes flashed.

For one reckless second, you understood something about him that you wished you didn’t. He liked obedience, yes. Expected it. He’d been raised on it. But there was something in him that liked resistance more. Not defiance from equals. Not Ursula’s cutting superiority or Grace’s survival-spit fury.

Something smaller.

A line drawn by someone who knew they could be punished for it and drew it anyway.

He smiled like he’d heard the thought.

The door opened.

You pulled your hand free so fast the stool behind you scraped the floor.

Ursula stood in the doorway.

She took in the scene in one glance: your flushed face, Titus leaning too close, the unfinished stitches, the blood on the tray, the ruined shirt open around him.

Her expression didn’t change.

That was worse.

“Really, Titus?” she said. “Bleeding all over Father’s chair and harassing the help? Must every injury become a performance?”

Titus leaned back, all lazy cruelty again. “Don’t be jealous because they’re better with their hands than you are with a knife.”

Ursula’s eyes moved from the stitches to you with the quiet precision of someone taking inventory, and you lowered your gaze before she could find anything else to count.

“Leave them alone,” she said.

Titus gave a soft laugh. “That sounded protective.”

“It was practical. We’re short on competent staff.”

“How maternal.”

“How pathetic.”

His smile went thin.

For one moment, they looked so alike it was disturbing. Not in face, exactly, but in construction. Two blades from the same set. One kept polished. One still wet.

Ursula stepped farther into the room.

“You’re wasting time.”

“I’m being repaired.”

“You’re playing with your food.”

Your stomach dipped.

Titus’s gaze didn’t leave Ursula.

“Careful,” he said softly.

“No.” Ursula’s voice lowered too. “You be careful. This isn’t one of your tantrums. This is the High Seat.”

“I’m aware.”

“Are you? Because you’re limping back here after losing Faith, Grace is still alive, and the other families are moving while you flirt with the only person in this wing capable of keeping you upright.”

His jaw tightened, and there it was again—the names cutting through the room like a match struck too close to gas. Faith. Grace. The hunt. The game. All the violence waiting outside the door, patient and hungry, bigger than the little medical room pretending it could keep any of you safe. Titus stood suddenly, too suddenly, and the half-set stitches pulled open before you could stop him. Blood welled bright against the dark grey cotton.

You moved without thinking. “Sit down.”

He ignored you, eyes fixed on Ursula.

“You don’t speak to me like I’m one of your little committees.”

“I speak to you like someone who knows exactly what you are.”

“And what’s that?”

Ursula stared at him, her composure holding so perfectly that you almost missed what moved beneath it: not fear for herself, but fear of him.

“A mistake with a crown in his sights.”

The silence afterward was absolute.

Then amusement cut across his face, cold enough to make the room feel smaller.

It was beautiful in the way a knife was beautiful.

Ursula saw it and didn’t look away. That was the terrible thing about her: fear lived in her, but it didn’t rule her. She was afraid of him, yes, but not enough to retreat. Not enough to bend. She’d killed their father beside him and still looked at Titus like he was the greater danger.

Maybe he was.

“You should go,” he said.

Ursula’s eyes narrowed.

“Should I?”

“Yes.” He sat back down slowly, gaze never leaving hers. “Before you say something honest.”

Her mouth twisted.

Then she looked at you.

“Finish the stitches. Don’t let him leave until the bleeding stops.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

At the door, she paused again.

“Titus.”

He smiled. “Ursula.”

“You are not invincible.”

“No,” he said. “Just inevitable.”

She left, and the door shut behind her, leaving the room colder than it had been before she entered. For a while, neither of you moved. Then Titus glanced down at the torn stitch and sighed like his own blood had become tedious.

You grabbed fresh gauze with more force than necessary. “You ripped it.”

“So fix it.”

“You need to sit still.”

“I was provoked.”

“You’re always provoked.”

His eyebrows lifted just enough to make you freeze. You realized too late how revealing that had sounded, but instead of anger, Titus only looked pleased, as if you’d finally handed him something worth keeping.

“There,” he said softly. “That was almost a personality.”

You pressed gauze to the wound. Harder than before.

He hissed through his teeth, and you regretted it immediately—until he laughed, low and rough, too close to a groan to feel like amusement.

“You’re getting brave.”

“I’m getting annoyed.”

“That’s better.”

“You could bleed internally.”

“I’m touched.”

“You could die.”

“Everyone dies.”

“Not everyone treats it like an inconvenience.”

“Not everyone’s important.”

You looked at him then.

Really looked.

The blood. The arrogance. The expensive ruin of him. The way he sat in pain and still made it feel like the room belonged to his body first and the furniture second.

“You actually believe that,” you said.

His eyes sharpened with delight. “You don’t?”

“I think important people bleed the same as everyone else.”

“Dangerous opinion in this house.”

“It’s not an opinion. It’s anatomy.”

“And here I thought you weren’t a nurse.”

You cut the ruined stitch free.

He watched you work.

This time, when you pushed the needle through, he let out a slow breath and said nothing.

The silence was worse now. Charged. Full of Ursula’s warning and Titus’s smile and the distant knowledge that somewhere else in the estate, women were fighting to survive men like him.

You should’ve hated him cleanly.

That would’ve been simpler.

Instead, you were too aware of the heat of his skin under your gloved fingers. The flex of his stomach when the needle pulled. The way his throat moved when he swallowed pain. The obscene intimacy of repairing a man who’d go right back into the dark once you were done.

“You’re thinking loudly again,” he said.

You tied the next stitch. “I’m concentrating.”

“On my wound?”

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

Your breath caught, and Titus leaned forward with the slow certainty of someone who’d found a line and wanted to watch you notice him crossing it.

“Tell me,” he said, “do they warn you about me?”

You should’ve said no. You should’ve said nothing at all, should’ve swallowed the answer the way this house swallowed every scream that echoed through it. But the night had been blood under your fingernails, alarms cut short, doors locking from the outside, and rich people turning murder into ceremony. Some tired, reckless part of you had finally had enough of pretending silence wasn’t just another kind of fear.

“They don’t have to.”

The expression didn’t fall away. That would’ve been too easy. It emptied instead, mockery draining out until all that remained was attention sharp enough to feel like pressure against your throat.

“And why’s that?”

You cut the thread, the snip of metal sounding obscenely loud in the medical room.

“Because you warn people yourself.”

Titus stared at you for one long second, and the worst part was that he didn’t look angry. Anger would’ve given you something simple to brace against. Instead, he looked interested, as if you’d just opened a door in yourself and he’d decided he liked what he could see through it.

Then he laughed, quiet and real enough to be worse than any threat.

The intercom clicked on.

Both of you looked toward it.

Static.

Then the Lawyer’s voice, smooth and empty.

“All active families are reminded that the game remains in play until dawn. Any unsanctioned interference with the rules will result in immediate disqualification.”

The intercom clicked off, and Titus went still in a way that made the room feel secondary to whatever waited beyond it. The taunting ease left his face, and what remained wasn’t duty or loyalty, but hunger dressed up as purpose.

He looked toward the door like he could see through the walls to the game beyond them. Grace. Faith. Ursula. The High Seat. The ring. The altar waiting underground.

You taped gauze over the stitches.

“You’re done,” you said.

“Am I?”

“Medically.”

His gaze returned to you, and the room seemed to shrink around the attention of it. You reached for a clean bandage roll, more to give your hands something safe to do than because you needed it, but Titus caught your wrist before you could turn away. Again. This time, you didn’t tell him to let go, and the silence that followed made the choice feel louder than it should’ve. Maybe that was your mistake. Maybe it was his. His thumb found your pulse with infuriating accuracy, pressing where your body had no choice but to answer.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“So are you.”

His eyes flashed.

Pain. Anger. Interest.

“You’re very bold for someone disposable.”

You swallowed.

Then said, “You’re very arrogant for someone who’s only upright because I let him be.”

His grip tightened around your wrist, not enough to hurt, but enough to empty your lungs before you could pretend it hadn’t. Enough to remind you that you were still seated while he wasn’t, still caught while he rose over you with all that ugly, effortless Danforth ownership.

Titus stood slowly this time, each inch deliberate, dragging your attention up with him whether you wanted to give it or not. The movement brought your face level with the blood-streaked bandage at his side first, then the hard, exposed plane of his stomach where the cut-open grey T-shirt hung apart around him. He was close. Too close. Close enough for the heat of his skin to reach your face, close enough to see the shallow pull of muscle under blood and sweat, close enough that your gaze dropped, traitorous, to the low line of his waistband before you caught yourself. It wasn’t professional. It wasn’t careful. It was blunt and physical and humiliatingly obvious, and Titus noticed the exact second your breathing changed.

It was obscene, somehow, being that near for a reason you could still call medical.

Then your gaze lifted, and you found him already watching you.

The room went small around the look on his face.

Not warmth. Not kindness. Not even simple attraction. Something sharper than that, something satisfied and possessive, as if he’d caught the exact moment your professionalism failed and intended to keep it.

“You have no idea,” he said softly, “what kind of night this is.”

“I have some idea.”

“No.” His voice dropped. “You have keyholes. Corridors. Little pieces. You hear screams and think you know the shape of the thing making them.”

“I know enough.”

“You know nothing.”

“Then why are you still here?”

That did it.

His gaze dropped to your mouth again, slower this time, and he didn’t bother pretending it was accidental. There was nothing accidental left in the room. Not the way he stood over you. Not the way your wrist stayed caught in his hand. Not the heat still rising off his bare skin beneath the cut-open grey t-shirt.

Outside, another shot cracked through the estate, distant enough to feel unreal.

Neither of you moved.

Titus lifted your hand slowly, still trapped in his, and turned it just enough to study the blood smeared across your glove. His blood. Your careful work. The proof that you’d had your hands on him because you had to, and kept them there a little longer because you wanted to.

His thumb dragged over the stained latex, pressing your fingers open one by one like he was inspecting the damage and enjoying the evidence.

Then his mouth curved.

Not kindly. Never kindly. There was nothing soft in it, nothing safe, nothing that pretended this was anything but ugly want finally given shape. Just intent, hot and unmistakable, sharpened by pain and blood and the unbearable fact that you were still close enough to touch him again.

“You should be very careful,” he said.

“Of you?”

“Of what you start with me.”

“I didn’t start anything.”

“No,” he said. “You just touched it.”

The space between you disappeared.

Not gently. Not sweetly. Not like a confession or a promise or anything clean enough to belong outside the walls of this house.

It was heat and blood and bad judgment.

His hand came up to the back of your neck, firm enough to stop you from retreating but not enough to force you forward. He waited. That was the worst part. The tiny pause. The chance to step back. The proof that whatever monster he was, he wanted your choice because winning it pleased him more.

You should’ve moved away.

Instead, you grabbed the torn edge of his shirt and pulled him down.

Titus made a sound against your mouth that was half laugh, half pain, and all satisfaction.

The kiss was ugly-fast, exactly like him. No softness at first. No patience. Just his mouth on yours, hot and demanding, his hand locked at the back of your neck while your spine hit the cabinet hard enough to rattle the glass bottles inside it. His tongue pushed into your mouth with the same entitled certainty he brought into every room, and the filthy little sound it pulled from you made him press in closer, pleased and punishing. You tasted blood where his lip had split, sharp and metallic, but he didn’t slow down. If anything, he kissed you harder for noticing, teeth catching your lower lip, tongue dragging against yours until the whole room seemed to narrow to his mouth, his heat, his body crowding yours against the cabinet. He tasted like violence interrupted, like the hunt had followed him inside and found a new way to use its teeth.

When your hands hit his ribs, the latex of your gloves dragging over the edge of the fresh bandage, Titus hissed against your mouth and bit back something ugly enough to sound like a curse before it ever became one.

You pulled away just enough to breathe. “Your stitches—”

“Fuck the stitches.”

“You’ll tear them.”

“Then you’ll fix them again.”

He kissed you before you could answer, like he’d decided your concern was just another form of touching him. His mouth came back harder, tongue sliding against yours with a filthy kind of insistence, his body crowding you into the cabinet until there was nowhere left for your professionalism to hide. The glass rattled behind your shoulders. The tray sat beside you with bloody gauze curled like evidence. Your gloves were still stained with him, and Titus seemed to know it, seemed to like it, his hand catching one of yours and dragging it back to his side as if daring you to remember why you’d touched him in the first place.

For a few dangerous minutes, the game outside the door became distant. Not gone. Never gone. It pulsed under everything: the intercom, the gunfire, the old house with its rotten heart, Ursula’s warning, Grace running somewhere through the dark. But the medical room narrowed to heat and breath and the wet, obscene slide of his mouth on yours, to the hard line of his body pressing too close, to the way he kissed like a man trying to prove he could still take something from the night.

And you let him.

That was the part you’d have to live with later.

His mouth moved to your jaw, your throat, not tender but precise, learning how your breath changed and punishing you for every reaction by chasing another. His teeth grazed skin, not quite biting, not quite merciful, and the sound you made against your own better judgment pulled a low laugh out of him.

“Listen to you,” he murmured against your pulse. “So careful with your hands a minute ago.”

Your fingers curled into the cut-open grey fabric hanging loose around his shoulders, then slipped beneath it to the hot skin at his waist, low enough to make the touch feel less medical than damning. For one breath, all you felt was him. Then the room came back: the blood, the locked door, the hunt still tearing through the estate beyond it.

Titus felt the hesitation and smiled into your throat like he’d been waiting for it.

“Don’t go shy on me now.”

His mouth left yours only to drag along your jaw, your throat, the sensitive place beneath your ear, not tender but exacting, like he was taking notes on every reaction and planning to use them against you later. Your hands slid up before you could stop them, fingers catching in his hair, and Titus made a low sound against your skin when you pulled just hard enough to make him feel it.

For one stupid, breathless second, you forgot who he was. What he was. What the house was doing beyond the locked door.

He didn’t.

He laughed against your throat, soft and wicked, his mouth still close enough that you felt the shape of it more than heard it. “Better.”

“Titus—”

“Say it like you mean it.”

“I don’t know what I mean.”

“Yes, you do.” His hand tightened at the back of your neck, not cruel, not gentle, something worse because it understood both. “You’re just deciding whether you hate yourself for it yet.”

You shoved at his chest, careful of the bandage and furious that you were careful. “You’re bleeding.”

“And you’re stalling.”

“You’re impossible.”

“I’ve been called worse by better people.”

“You mean richer people.”

That made his mouth curve against your throat, the near-smile pressed directly into your skin. “Careful,” he said. “I’m starting to enjoy you.”

“You enjoy everyone you can scare.”

“No.” His mouth moved lower, slow enough to feel intentional, his breath dragging over your pulse before his lips followed. “I enjoy when someone’s smart enough to be afraid and stupid enough to stay.”

Your breath broke before you could hide it.

His grip went still, and the whole room seemed to pause with him. It wasn’t softness that came over him. Titus didn’t soften. The change was worse than that: a sharpening, a focus so complete it made the air feel touched. Every cruel, restless, wounded part of him narrowed down to the sound you’d failed to swallow.

He’d found it.

Not the wound. Not the weak place in the stitches. You.

A terrible kind of satisfaction moved through his face, and your stomach dipped before the rest of you knew why. Not surprise. Not tenderness. Recognition. Like he’d found the seam in you and already knew how easily it would split. For the first time all night, you understood that being hunted didn’t always require running. Sometimes it was standing there with his mouth at your throat, his hand at your neck, and realizing your body wanted him closer in every filthy way your mouth was still too proud to say.

You’d seen him bored. You’d seen him cruel. You’d seen him wounded and furious and arrogant enough to treat blood loss like something happening to lesser men.

This was worse.

This was Titus no longer wondering what you wanted from him, only how badly he could make you admit it.

“Still worrying,” he murmured, his voice a low rasp you felt through his chest where he had you pinned. “The stitches. The hunt. Whether anyone’s going to walk through that door and see exactly how badly you want this.” His thumb pressed into the nape of your neck, dragging once over the first vertebrae in your spine, while his other hand tightened on your hip hard enough to promise bruises. “You should be worrying about what I’m going to do to you before they interrupt.”

“Maybe I’m not worried at all.” The words came out steadier than you felt, your chin lifting as you met his gaze. His eyes narrowed, the lazy cruelty in them gathering into something darker, hungrier, and far too pleased. “Maybe I’m wondering how long it takes before you bleed through those stitches and pass out on top of me.”

A low laugh rumbled from his chest, rough and mean. "That's cute." He shifted, his thigh sliding between yours, the pressure of it against the heat gathering between your legs making your stomach clench. "You're trying real hard to pretend you don't want this. Don't want me." His hand slid from your hip to your waist, fingers curling into the fabric of your uniform top, pulling you closer until there was no space left between you. "But I felt your hands shaking when you were stitching me up. Felt your breath go shallow when I pulled you in here." His head dipped, his mouth brushing the shell of your ear. "You had every chance to run."

"Maybe I like watching you bleed."

His teeth grazed your earlobe, a sharp nip that sent a jolt through your whole body. "Liar." His hand came up, fingers wrapping around your throat, not squeezing—just holding, a warning and a promise in the press of his palm against your pulse. "I can feel your heart racing. Smell how wet you are." He inhaled slow, deliberate, his eyes dropping half-lidded. "You've been thinking about this since I walked into your little room. Since I made you look at me."

Your breath stuttered, and he felt it, his thumb pressing against the hollow of your throat. "Maybe I have," you said, the admission scraping out of you. "What are you going to do about it?"

His grin was sharp and wolfish. "There she is." He pushed you back, your spine hitting the medical cabinet hard enough to rattle the instruments inside, the cold metal biting through your shirt. His body followed, pinning you there, the heat of him seeping through your clothes. "I'm going to fuck you so hard you forget your own name." His free hand dropped to the button of your pants, working it open with rough, impatient fingers. "And then I'm going back out there, and you're going to stay right here, feeling me drip out of you, knowing I'll be back."

He yanked your pants down, the denim catching on your hips before he shoved it past your thighs, leaving you exposed to the cold air and his burning gaze. His hand slid between your legs, two fingers pressing through the slick fabric of your underwear, and he let out a low groan. "Fuck. You're soaked." He pushed the cotton aside, his fingers sliding through your wetness, circling your clit with a pressure that made your hips buck. "Look at that. Soaking wet for a man who's bleeding through his stitches." He pushed one finger inside you, then a second, the stretch making you gasp, your hands flying up to grip his shoulders. "And you still want to talk shit."

"Daddy." The word came out breathy, almost a whimper, and his eyes went dark, his fingers curling inside you, finding that spot that made your vision blur. "Please."

"Please what?" He pumped his fingers faster, the wet sound filling the small room, his thumb circling your clit in rough, sloppy strokes. "Use your words, baby. Tell Daddy what you need."

"You." Your voice cracked. "I need you inside me. Fuck me, please, I need—"

He pulled his fingers out with a lewd pop, slick and glistening, and brought them to his mouth, sucking them clean while holding your gaze. Then his hands were on your hips, spinning you around, bending you over the edge of the steel table. The leather restraints pressed against your stomach, cold and unyielding, as his body crowded behind you.

You heard the quiet rustle of his belt unbuckling, the mechanical whisper of his fly unzipping next, all loud in an otherwise silent room. Then you felt his cock press against your soaked cunt, the head of it sliding through your slickness, teasing your entrance. "You're going to take every inch," he said, his voice low and rough, his hand fisting in your hair, pulling your head back. "And you're going to be quiet about it. Can you do that for me, baby?"

You nodded, a broken sound escaping your throat as he pushed inside, the stretch of him filling you, thick and hot and deep. He didn't stop until his hips were flush against your ass, his breath ragged against your ear. "Fuck," he groaned, his hand tightening in your hair. "Tight little cunt. Been thinking about this since I saw you."

He pulled out slow, dragging against your walls, then slammed back in, the force of it driving you forward against the table. His hand came down on your ass, a sharp crack that echoed off the walls, and you cried out, the sound swallowed by his palm clamping over your mouth. "Shh," he breathed, his hips setting a brutal rhythm, each thrust punching the air from your lungs. "You're doing so good. Taking Daddy's cock so well."

His hand slid from your mouth to your throat, pressing down, cutting off your air just enough to make the edges of your vision go fuzzy. His other hand gripped your hip, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks, as he fucked into you with a frantic, desperate rhythm. The obscenely wet squelch of skin slapping against skin filled the room, mixing with his grunts and your muffled moans. "That's it," he growled, his pace quickening, his breath hot against your neck. "Squeezing me so tight. Gonna make me come."

Your body was trembling, the coil in your belly winding tighter with every thrust, your cunt clenching around him. "Daddy, please," you gasped, the words barely audible. "Please let me—"

"Not yet." His hand tightened on your throat, his thrusts growing sloppy, desperate. "I'm not done with you. I'm going to fill this pussy up, make sure you feel me for days." He drove into you one last time, a guttural groan tearing from his throat as he came, hot and thick, pumping into you in deep, shuddering pulses. The feeling of it, of him spilling inside you, pushed you over the edge, your orgasm ripping through you, your body convulsing around his cock as he kept thrusting, riding it out.

He stayed there for a moment after, still pressed against you, his forehead resting against the back of your neck, his breath ragged and hot against your skin.

For the first time since he’d entered the room, Titus Danforth was quiet.

Not softened. Not gentle. Not safe.

Just quiet.

His hand flexed once at your hip, fingers digging in as if some part of him still hadn’t decided whether to let go. Behind you, his chest rose and fell too hard, the cut-open remains of his grey shirt hanging ruined around him, his bandage pulled crooked beneath it. You could feel the heat of him everywhere. The sweat. The blood. The blunt, obscene evidence of what you’d just let him do while the house tore itself apart around you.

Then he pulled out slowly, a wet sound that made you shiver, and you felt his cum leaking down your thigh, the absence of him making you go weak at the knees.

You braced one hand against the steel table, breathing hard, your uniform twisted, your skin damp, your body still carrying him in ways you couldn’t fix with soap or silence. The medical room hummed around you: fluorescent light, rattled glass, bloody gauze on the tray, the torn scraps of his shirt on the floor like evidence neither of you had bothered to hide.

Titus turned you around with a hand beneath your chin, his touch not rough enough to excuse your reaction and not gentle enough to trust.

He made you look at him, his thumb resting beneath your jaw, his eyes still dark with hunger and something more dangerous than satisfaction. His mouth was bruised. There was blood at the corner of it, maybe his, maybe from where he’d kissed you too hard. The bandage at his side had started to bloom red again, staining through white gauze in a slow, ugly spread.

“You’re bleeding,” you said.

His mouth curved. “You keep saying that.”

“Because you keep doing it.”

A low laugh moved through him, rough with leftover heat, but it caught at the end. Pain still had its hooks in him, no matter how badly he pretended otherwise.

The intercom shrieked alive, a burst of feedback splitting the room so violently that you both jerked still.

Then Grace’s voice came through, breathless and furious, somewhere between panic and threat.

“You want me? Come get me, you rich fucks.”

The intercom cut out, and the silence it left behind felt louder than the static.

Titus went very still.

The man in front of you disappeared by degrees. Not physically. He was still close enough to touch, still breathing hard, still standing between your open legs with his hand beneath your chin and blood seeping through the bandage you’d taped to his side. But his eyes had gone elsewhere, pulled back to the hunt, back to the throne, back to the thing he wanted more than warmth, more than blood, more than whatever impulse had bent you over a steel table in a private medical room while the estate screamed around you.

His face changed with the silence that followed, hunger rearranging itself into purpose.

“Oh, Grace,” he said, almost fondly. “There you are.”

The cold of it sobered you instantly.

You let go of him, and he noticed. Of course he noticed. His gaze flicked back to you, darker now, reassembled into Titus Danforth, son of Chester, twin of Ursula, would-be High Seat of the Council, with fresh stitches under his ribs, blood on his mouth, and the hunt calling him home.

He stepped back, and the absence of him felt like air returning after suffocation.

You reached for the cabinet because your hands needed something to do besides shake. Halfway there, you remembered the gloves still clinging to your skin, stained with him, tacky at the fingertips. You stripped them off and dropped them into the bin, one after the other, the snap of latex sounding too loud in the room.

“You need a clean shirt,” you said.

He looked down at the ruined grey one hanging open around him, as if only just remembering it. “Do I?”

“Yes.”

“How domestic.”

“You’ll bleed through that.”

“I’ll survive.”

“That wasn’t my concern.”

His mouth curved again, faint and knowing. “Liar.”

You opened the supply cabinet and pulled out a folded black shirt kept there for exactly this kind of emergency. The Danforths had supplies for everything: blood loss, bullet wounds, ritual contamination, wardrobe replacement. The house had been built to make violence convenient.

You handed it to him without stepping too close.

He took it, and for a second, his fingers brushed yours. No glove this time. Skin to skin, brief enough to pretend it didn’t matter and warm enough to make pretending impossible.

It shouldn’t have felt like a decision.

Titus pulled the shirt over his head carefully, only wincing once as the fabric settled over the bandage. The black hid the blood better. Of course it did. Everything in this house had been designed to hide blood better.

The intercom crackled again, this time from somewhere farther down the hall, Ursula’s voice slicing through the static.

“Titus. East wing. Now.”

His eyes stayed on you for one more beat.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “She does hate being ignored.”

“She’ll notice.”

“Ursula notices everything.”

“That wasn’t reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

He moved toward the door, then stopped with his hand on the handle. For a moment, you thought he might say something cruel, or clever, or nothing at all. Instead, he looked back at you with that same terrible, entertained focus.

“Lock this door.”

You blinked. “What?”

“When I leave.”

“Why?”

His expression shifted, faint and wicked, the closest thing to tenderness he probably knew how to ruin.

“Because Ursula was right about one thing.”

Your mouth went dry. “What’s that?”

His fingers tightened around the handle.

“I bite.”

Then, after a beat, softer and worse, “Stay.”

It shouldn’t have sounded like an order and a promise at the same time.

But it did.

Then he was gone.

The corridor swallowed him almost immediately, the sound of his footsteps fading into the old house, toward Grace, toward Ursula, toward the gunfire starting up again somewhere beyond the walls, toward whatever hell waited underneath the estate with its altar and its ring and its pit full of offerings.

You stood alone in the medical room with the lock still waiting and your skin still refusing to feel like yours. Behind you, the steel table remembered everything: leather restraints shoved crooked, blood smeared across the edge in the shape of your gloved fingers, red handprints dragged over cold metal from where you’d held on while Titus fucked every careful rule this house had beaten into you straight out of your head. The trail continued across the cabinet, the drawer handle, the spot where your palm had landed when he’d crowded you back against it. Not just his blood anymore. Your fingerprints in it.

For a moment, you didn’t move.

The fluorescent light buzzed overhead. The steel table gleamed cold behind you. Your uniform was still twisted, your skin still marked by his hands, your thighs still sticky with his cum. His scent clung to you—blood, smoke, sweat, expensive cologne, something violent and warm that had no business feeling familiar.

Then the intercom clicked on again, static breathing through the speaker like the house had leaned in to hear what he’d left behind.

For a moment, you stayed exactly where he’d left you, every nerve still listening for him.

Stay.

The word didn’t echo. It settled.

That was worse.

You crossed to the door and turned the lock, not because he’d told you to.