The wooden fragments of the shattered double doors were still flying through the air when the four silver guards crossed the threshold.
Their heavy boots brought the harsh, grounding smell of wet gravel, ozone, and impending death straight into the pristine, violet sanctuary of the presidential suite.
Their visors instantly locked onto the massive mahogany bed.
Valerius did not move.
He remained leaning directly over Scarlett, his large, ice-cold palm still wrapped firmly around her slender neck, anchoring her body to the velvet mattress.
He didn’t look back at the intrusion.
His pitch-black eyes remained entirely fixed on Scarlett’s silver-ruby gaze, tracking the tiny shift in her pupils.
”Securing the anomaly!” the lead guard bellowed, his voice amplified to a metallic rattle by his armor.
He lunged forward, raising a heavy silver spear crackling with raw electricity.
“Step away from the human, Vampire King!”
For a fleeting second, Scarlett believed salvation had arrived.
As the silver-plated armor of the High Council’s elite flashed through the darkness, a desperate, wild spark of hope flared in her chest.
If they attacked him, if they forced him to unleash his blade, the deadly hold on her neck would loosen.
She could slide off the mattress, wrap her freezing fingers around a discarded weapon, and run.
She wanted them to rip Valerius away from her.
”I told you,” Valerius whispered, his voice dropping to a dangerously calm frequency that completely ignored the high-voltage weapons pointing at his spine.
His thumb swiped gently against her trembling jaw, forcing her focus back.
“Look only at me.”
In a fraction of a second, before the spear tip could even touch the silk edge of the bedding, Valerius acted.
He didn’t draw a weapon.
He didn’t even lift his hands away from Scarlett’s frame.
Instead, the room did not belong to the presidential suite anymore—it belonged entirely to Valerius.
The laws of nature themselves bent around him as he released a concentrated burst of his raw pureblood pressure.
Crack.
The air in the room suddenly became heavier than lead, crushing the oxygen out of the space in a single heartbeat.
The lead guard’s knees buckled instantly, his heavy armor slamming violently into the floorboards as the marble beneath his boots splintered into thousands of spiderweb cracks.
”Argh!” the lead guard choked out, his hands flying to his helmet as his internal communications and audio systems began to implode under the suffocating weight of the aura.
The other three guards froze completely in their tracks, their boots glued to the ground by an invisible mass.
The remaining violet crystal lamps across the walls shattered simultaneously from the atmospheric pressure, plunging the suite into absolute, shadows-deep darkness.
”You dare bring the filth of the Capital into my bedroom?” Valerius growled.
He slowly rose to his full height, finally letting go of Scarlett’s neck, though his towering shadow still completely enveloped her paralyzed frame.
He turned around to face the intruders, his bare, pale chest glistening with a faint, dangerous coat of frost that caught the sudden glare of the storm.
With a casual flick of his fingers, the shadows cornered in the room detached themselves from the walls like liquid obsidian, molding into sharp, serrated blades right behind the paralyzed executioners.
”Wait!” the second guard gasped, his visor cracking open under the pressure, revealing wide, terrified human eyes slick with sweat.
“We are under the direct orders of the High Execu—”
”The Executioner can collect your corpses from the lawn,” Valerius cut him off coldly.
A violent flash of lightning illuminated the room for a single, terrifying heartbeat.
Four shadow blades.
Four terrified, pale faces reflecting in the metal.
Then, a brutal, synchronized sound of steel parting through heavy armor tore through the silence.
There was no theatrical struggle.
There was only the wet, heavy, dull thud of four bodies collapsing simultaneously into the splinters of the door.
The metallic, hot scent of fresh blood instantly filled the room, steaming slightly against the unnatural ice coating the dark floorboards.
Ten seconds later, four bodies lay broken across the floor, and that fragile hope died with them.
Scarlett watched the entire sequence from the velvet sheets, her fingers tightly clutching the fabric until her knuckles turned white.
A sickening wave of guilt washed over her—these men had died because they came to fetch her.
But deeper than the guilt, a terrifying realization settled into her bones.
Nobody was coming to save her.
The walls around her cage had suddenly become terrifyingly real.
The most terrifying thing was not his power.
Her reflection trembled inside his deep, unblinking irises, catching a glimpse of a monster powerful enough to crush every certainty she had ever believed in.
Valerius stepped over the fresh, steaming pools of blood, his bare feet leaving faint crimson footprints on the dark wood as he walked back to the edge of the bed.
He looked down at her, the dark veins pulsing visibly against his sharp jawline, his fangs fully extended.
He leaned down, pinning his hands on either side of her head, locking her back into his personal space.
The scent of copper blood washed over her senses, mixing heavily with the scent of midnight rain pouring through the cracked balcony.
”Now,” Valerius murmured, his voice dropping to a low, seductive frequency that vibrated through her very bones.
He tilted his head, completely indifferent to the slaughter behind him.
“Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted, my woman?”
How could he speak so calmly?
Scarlett’s eyes widened as she stared into his pitch-black depths.
Four people had just died right in front of them.
Their blood was still warm on the floorboards, their broken armor still clicking in the silence of the room.
Yet his eyes held no remorse, no adrenaline, and no fear.
They held only her.
She should have hated him.
She should have feared him.
So why was her pulse refusing to slow beneath his gaze?
Oh my god, the psychological tension is insane!
Valerius completely erased the Capital’s elite guards without even breaking a sweat.
But that ending sequence?
Scarlett realizing her cage has become terrifyingly real, and her pulse refusing to slow down despite the horror…
that is pure psychological mastery!
Now that the inner threat is crushed, what will Lord Kaelen do outside?
Can Ethan hold the courtyard line?