Taming Fire with Fury
Kaia
The streets of Zareth were slick with fresh rain, glinting like a spilled secret under the moonlight.
I moved like a shadow—unseen, silent, unstoppable.
I'd stolen a burner phone, hacked an old contact for cash, and was now making my way to the old cathedral on Aderyn Street—the last place Damon Alaric Valen would think to find me. It was also the one place I could stash what I'd stolen from his vault.
The USB drive was burning a hole in my jacket pocket.
Information on it could tear the Valen Empire apart—corruption, blackmail, shell companies, a list of names bought and buried. Including my father's.
My hands curled into fists.
Damon might think he could chase me down, corner me with sweet promises and smoldering eyes. But he wasn't chasing a bride.
He was chasing a reckoning.
---
Damon
"Find her."
I stood at the center of the war room inside the Valen compound, surrounded by screens, intel, and operatives who'd kill without blinking.
"She's only been gone three days," Lucien, my second-in-command, muttered. "Let her cool off."
My voice came out like thunder. "She walked away with classified intel and put a target on her back. She's not cooling off—she's planning something."
I didn't add that she'd also walked out wearing my ring.
I didn't say I'd woken up every night since the ambush tasting her name on my tongue.
I didn't admit that the fury wasn't just from betrayal.
It was from need.
I needed to see her again.
To touch her.
To punish her.
---
Kaia
The cathedral smelled like smoke and old prayers.
I tucked the drive into a crevice beneath the altar and turned to leave—only to freeze.
He was already there.
Damon.
Framed by the broken stained-glass window, drenched in rain and shadows. A black suit molded to his tall, brutal frame. His dark eyes didn't burn.
They devoured.
"How did you find me?" I hissed, backing toward the stone pews.
"I never stopped tracking you." His voice was velvet soaked in poison. "You really thought you could disappear on me?"
"I didn't want to disappear," I shot back. "I wanted to destroy you."
"You almost did."
We stared at each other, breath heaving, heat coiling in the thick silence.
And then he moved.
Fast.
He had me pinned against the altar in a second. Hands braced on either side of my head. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to kill.
"You stole from me," he said, voice low.
"You stole everything first."
His gaze dipped to my lips.
Then lower.
"You're shaking."
"No, you're shaking," I snapped.
He leaned in, teeth grazing the shell of my ear. "I should punish you for what you've done."
I should've shoved him away.
Instead, I arched into him.
"Then do it," I whispered.
---
The kiss wasn't tender.
It was a clash of war-torn souls and shattered vows. His mouth crashed onto mine like a claim, and I bit back like a dare. Clothes tore. Hands roamed. Sanity cracked.
He lifted me onto the altar, and for a moment it wasn't about power or revenge.
It was about the fire only we could set.
The fury only we could tame.
My body betrayed me, melting against his, craving the danger, the dominance, the twisted safety in his arms.
But just as quickly as it started, it ended.
He pulled back.
Chest heaving. Eyes burning.
"This changes nothing," I panted, lips swollen.
"No," he growled. "It changes *everything*."
---
Kaia
Later, as I slipped away through the cathedral's underground tunnel, I realized something terrifying:
Damon had let me go.
On purpose.
And that meant I was walking straight into the next trap.
---
In a hidden surveillance room beneath the Valen estate, Lucien stared at the screen.
"She took the bait."
Damon smiled coldly.
"Good. Let's see what she does when she finds out her father's name wasn't on the list… because he put the hit out himself."