Chapter 107: Sweet Messiah.

July 17 2026, 3:57pm.

The harsh scrape of Nyx’ara’s back hitting the stone wall behind her snapped the silence in the dimly lit room, but before she could throw up her guard, Rhys’s mouth crashed onto hers.

It was a punishing kiss—fueled by weeks of sharp-tongued battles, exposed truths, and the sheer, exhausting weight of hating each other for far too long.

Frustratedly, Nyx’ara opened her mouth to say something, perhaps to snap at him. Her hands pressed against his shoulders, shoving him. But the moment her lips parted, he seized the opening and turned her sharp breath into a ragged gasp.

His fingers tangled violently in the hair at the nape of her neck, angling her head back until she was entirely at his mercy. Like this she felt exposed and helpless against the heat radiating off him. His other hand dragged up her ribs, pinning her body flush against his broad frame until every shallow breath she took pressed her directly against the hard line of his chest.

And goddess, there was no grace in the kiss. No softness. Only friction and a desperate, frantic need to dominate the woman.

Rhys coaxed and bruised, claiming every inch of her lips with a brutal, rhythmically relentless pressure that made her knees go weak. Her hands slammed into his chest to shove him away, her nails biting through the linen of his shirt. But as his tongue deepened the assault, sweeping through her mouth with an intoxicating, possessive force, the push slowly dissolved into a desperate grip... and against her better judgment, she pulled him closer, her fingers knotting into his shirt as her pride burned to ash under the searing heat of their mutual surrender.

Behind her, Nyx’ara could feel the weight of eyes pressed into her back. She could feel the ghost of a finger skim over her skin. She said she was only here to help Berlin... to save her from her husbands’ wrath, but at this point, she could not help the way her body jerked forward into Rhys’s arms as if giving him easier access.

She could not help the sultry cry that split out from her lips when his fingers lazily wrapped around the nape of her neck.

Her back arched when a sudden breath warmed the corner of her neck and her skin prickled with heat when a pair of lips— warm and soft ghosted over her shoulder blade.

"You don’t want to do this right now, do you?" A voice murmured into her neck, its tone dripping with mischief and something akin to worry.

But they would never be worried about her.

Nyx’ara shook her head and bit down on her lower lip. Her body shook violently and for some reason, her knees had grown too weak to hold up her weight so she pressed her body into Rhys’s.

"I-I want to."

For the first time, she did not feel too scared to stand in front of them. She was not scared of their large hands that palmed surfaces of her skin in places that sent her body on overdrive.

They could break her if they wanted to— and she knew.

However, something told her that they would not.

"Y-you want to know the truth, right? Y-you are known for torturing your prisoners here, right?" She rasped, "...I am y-your prisoner and I have hidden the truth from you—"

"Oh, you’ve hidden no truth. You’re just saying all of this to protect your friend." Rhys’s sudden answer snapped her from the edge of whatever madness had plagued her. Her eyes blinked open and her heart slammed hard against her chest.

When she looked up to him to find him glaring at her, his eyes holding nothing but hunger and a strange possessiveness she could not understand, her stomach flipped.

She stepped back.

"Your confession and hers match..." he continued, watching the way the color slowly left her face. "She said exactly what you said—"

"She t-told you all th-that I killed the princess. I was there." Nyx’ara bit back.

At her utterance, Rhys let his hand drop from her body and stepped back. But even though he had already moved away from her, her body still thrummed with residues of the cackling energy he’d bombarded her with earlier. Her skin pulsed with need and desire... and goddess, her cunt felt like a strange vibrating energy zapped between it.

Ignore that. Ignore please!

"No, she didn’t."

That made her frown. In confusion, she blinked. Her eyebrows narrowed as she took in the look on his face... but there was nothing to see.

He was not lying.

She rasped; "I-I was there, Alpha. She to-told y’all that I-I—"

"After you left the throne room, stomping off like the sweet messiah that you are, she turned to us one last time and said: She didn’t do it! She was forced to take the fall!"

The way his tone dropped into something almost feminine rubbed off on Nyx’ara the wrong way. She felt as though he was mocking Berlin, her weakness and her pain.

But at the time, she didn’t give more than two flying fucks about that. She cared more about Berlin’s confession.

About what the stupid girl must’ve said in order to save her. What—

"She also let us know that you were still very much in jail as at the time of the incident."

If what Alpha Rhys just said is true, then because of Berlin, she has been vindicated.

She stepped back one more time with a frown on her face. At the time, she could not help but glare at him, especially because she had almost given herself up to them, thinking she was saving her friend in the process.

The same friend who had been long saved.

A blush crept up her face at the thought, and thinking that she had nothing left to do with these four monsters, she took a step back. However, just as she moved, Rhys’s hand hooked around her wrist, stopping her.

"Are you backing out now?" He asked quietly, his tone dripping with something intense enough to have her face burning up.

"I-I need to see Berlin," she lied, her body shaking. "I n-need to know exactly what she said to you."

"Didn’t you say she deserves some rest?" Azriel chirped in now, and goddess, he could not hide the smug smile on his face. He knew she was trying to escape.

"You should take your advice and let her be for today... then maybe tomorrow, you can go and ask her anything."

Their words said one thing but their bodies did another. And hell, their eyes... their eyes held her in place.

She flinched when a hand came to settle on the small of her back, and just when she turned to see who it was, calloused fingers hooked themselves underneath her chin.

"Here..." That was Kieran and he sounded so hot that heat crept up her face.

She gulped. "I sh-should go now."

All of a sudden, all the courage she possessed earlier left her body in one burst. Her legs became so heavy, they felt as though her bones had been filled with cement.

She tried to sidestep them but scurried back when she walked into a mass of muscle, and then, like a caress, a soft velvety voice washed over her: "Are you trying to run away now, little murderer?"