Chapter 29 Truth

• SELENA FELT a sickening jolt, as if the ground had dropped beneath her. The images from the altar, the pleasure witch’s insidious power, flashed behind her eyes, no longer a haunting vision but a terrifying reality interwoven with her very being.
• Waldemar’s arms, which moments ago had offered comfort, now felt like a cage around a ticking bomb. He pulled back from Selene, his eyes, those molten pools of gold that usually held such fierce possessiveness, now wide with a dawning horror that mirrored her own. The Moonbind, which had pulsed with a complex symphony of emotions, now screamed with a raw, agonizing discord. It was the sound of a primal instinct clashing violently with a devastating truth.
• "Consume me?" Waldemar whispered, the words barely audible, torn from his throat. His gaze drifted to his marked shoulder, to the faint, yet ever-present sigil of their bond. The mark, once a testament to his dominance and her captivity, now felt like a brand of slow, inevitable death.