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Wilhelmina is annoyed.

Not just mildly irritated, not the sort of annoyance that can be soothed by a glass of wine and a hot bath. No, she is climbing-the-walls, teeth-on-edge, three-months-of-this bullshit annoyed—because three months is exactly how long she has been here.

Here being the very tastefully decorated prison in the mansion of one Niklaus Mikaelson—though he insists she call him Klaus like they’re old friends.

They had met at a gallery—which, in hindsight, should have been a red flag.

Her mother always said never trust an artistic man—or, well, any man ever. Which is probably why Wilhelmina’s mother was on her seventh husband and currently off somewhere in Greece trying to seduce an eighth. Lucky bint.

But Mina hadn’t exactly known what would happen at the time, and she didn’t think it was particularly fair to expect her to recognize what genre of story she was in before the opening credits had even finished rolling.

She had only seen a tall, pretty stranger with eyes like storm clouds and thought: why not?

Mina had walked over, smiled, tossed her hair over her shoulder. It wasn’t a hair flip so much as a declaration: behold, peasants, the goddess has descended and is currently taking applications for acolytes.

She made sure to angle her shoulders so he didn’t just get her good side—he got the god-you-look-so-fucking-pretty-in-this-light side. Chin high, eyes bright, every line of her body saying: yes, you’re welcome. She’d always been the prettiest thing in every room she entered, and this was no exception.

Up close, he smelled like rain on slate and old paper money. Expensive. Old-world. A little rotten if you thought about it too hard, but infuriatingly her type.

God, she wanted to unravel him with her teeth the way she used to peel grapes as a child—pierce the skin, pull it off in strips, preferring the tart bitterness of the rind over the soft fruit beneath.

Mina did what she always did when she wanted someone—she leaned in.

She tossed out three perfectly decent openers (good ones, she still thinks the one about the brushstrokes was clever) and had gotten—nothing.

Well, not nothing.

He had stared at her—and not polite staring either. He stared like she was a particularly haunting painting, like her breath might smudge the varnish if she got too close. Mouth parted, eyes locked. She had the distinct, humiliating sensation of trying to flirt with a marble bust.

Her hand twitched, half-ready to retreat, because no one likes being dismissed by a sexy twink in a suit. That was social suicide and there was nothing Mina detested more than being humiliated by a man.

But then—finally—his face melted and he smiled, something lazy and dangerous and delighted.

“You notice brushwork,” he said. His voice poured out smooth and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world. “Most people only notice the plaque.”

Mina felt a little breathless. God, he was so pretty. Too pretty. The kind of pretty that made you want to say something clever and instead say something stupid. Which was exactly what she did.

“Oh, I never read those things,” she said lightly, fluttering her lashes. “I’m more of a turn-off-your-brain sort of girl. Books and I don’t get along.”

It was ridiculous—she was an editor, for God’s sake, her whole life was reading—but when he gave a low laugh in reply, something sharp and warm bloomed in her chest. She smiled back, wide and bright, every bit as polished and pretty as she knew she was.

Oh, someone was about to get lucky, she thought, smug and giddy. And Mina was right, she just hadn’t realized it wouldn’t be her.

And then his eyes dropped, sliding over her body. Down the curve of her dress, lingering just long enough that heat rose under her skin. When he looked back up, his smirk had sharpened into something wicked.

“Enjoy the party, love,” he murmured. “I know that I will.”

And then he turned, leaving her there with her cheeks hot, her champagne glass trembling just a little, wondering how they had gone from laughing to that in a matter of seconds.

Weren’t they just—what, vibing? No, that wasn’t the word she’d have used. She’d use something like in the process of a seduction that was surely meant to end with her getting exactly what she wanted against a brick wall outside.

Instead, he was gone. And yet, not gone at all.

The rest of the night, she did her best to salvage some dignity—drank the free champagne, admired the art, chatted with a perfectly normal elderly couple who also thought the featured artist was overrated. But every time she let her eyes wander across the room, there he was again—watching.

The first time she caught him, it gave her a thrill. She had always liked being looked at, liked the hush of a gaze settling on her like silk. She had always liked being the center of someone’s attention.

By the fourth time she caught him staring, the thrill had begun to sour. She briefly considered circling back—shooting her shot again—before her interest evaporated completely, but something in his gaze made her skin prickle. It was simply too intense, too much, and it made the animal part of her brain go stiff and terrified, like some primal instinct whispering yeah, best to stay away from that one.

By the ninth time, she was unsettled. By the end of the evening and the ninetieth—and yes, she had counted—time his eyes caught on her skin, she just wanted to leave. She asked the staff to call her a taxi.

One of the gallery interns—college kid, barely old enough to grow a beard—offered to walk her out. She accepted, because she might be reckless but she’s not stupid.

And still, it hadn’t mattered.

Because that was when he appeared—out of the shadows, out of nowhere—like some two-bit horror movie villain with very nice cheekbones. Like the world had simply folded open to let him through.

One moment there was space, the next there wasn’t, and he was just there.

Mina made it less than half a turn to bolt before his voice cut through the air.

“Run, and I’ll only learn how fast you are,” he said, mild as weather—terrifying in its softness. His hand closed around her arm, pale and unyielding, and her breath caught hard in her throat.

He didn’t waste a full glance on them—just flicked his eyes sideways, a sliver of pale attention, before murmuring, “You’re off duty.”

The world seemed to shiver at the words. The intern and the elderly taxi driver just… blanked. Eyes glazing, spines slackening, all trace of concern evaporating as if it had never existed. He told them to leave, to forget she had ever been there, and they obeyed without question.

He didn’t watch them go. He watched her, the way an arsonist watches kindling.

The air around her felt thinner, sharp with the promise of turbulence. Everyone smiling. Everyone wrong.

Fear did a neat little somersault inside her and landed as fascination—traitorous but very talented gymnast.

Later, she would learn the word for it—compulsion—but in that moment, it had been pure nightmare fuel.

The first two weeks were hell.

When Mina woke in the new house, she was still in the gown from the gallery—thank fuck.

She mentally braced herself for the sight of kinky sex dungeon or just a regular dungeon when she opened her eyes, but when she blinked into focus, it was a perfectly normal and inoffensive guest room. With sheets that probably cost more than every piece of furniture in her apartment put together.

The man was standing over her.

Not perched, not casual—standing like a statue at the foot of her bed, all storm eyes and eerie stillness.

Her heart was still kicking against her ribs like it wanted out, but she forced her breathing to even, slow, calm. She knew when she’d been caught—denial wouldn’t help. She’d done been got, as the younger kids working in her office like to say.

Mina did what she does best—she twisted the panic into something sharper, more useful.

A plan.

Not a full one yet—just the first glimmer of strategy. Yes, Mina had the first draft of a plan.

Step one: get the villain talking.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asked.

“You may not believe this,” he said, voice low and certain, “but we are soulmates.”

Her internal reaction: Fuck. Plan cancelled! You can’t plan around crazy! How do you strategize against a man who just dropped soulmates in a kidnapping context? That’s not villain logic, that’s straight-up delusional freak logic. Oh, fabulous—he thinks I’m his cosmic girlfriend. Love that for me!

Her external reaction: a polite little nod, maybe the faint lift of a brow. Calm, collected. Oscar-worthy. Give Mina a statuette for Best Performance in Pretending She’s Not About to Piss Herself While a Hot Psycho Says the Damnedest Stuff in Her General Direction.

“Oh,” she said, managing something between a sigh and a squeak. “I… okay.”

Klaus’s mouth softened into the faintest smile. Boyish. Sweet. Which was, frankly, worse than all the glaring—who the hell smiled at their captive?

“I understand that this is a shock,” he continues, “but the world contains multitudes. More than humans and the animals they pretend to rule. There are beasts among you—creatures hidden in myth, in story. I am one of them. And you, love… your soul is bound to mine. Irrevocably. Magically. Eternally.”

Great, Mina thought, well isn’t this fucking excellent—he’s insane and poetic. If he starts reciting Byron, she’s rioting.

Out loud, she cleared her throat and said, very reasonably in her opinion: “Right. And, um… you’re not going to do that creepy Jedi mind-trick thing on me, are you?”

“I won’t compel you,” he replied at once, almost offended. “I prefer consent I don’t have to manufacture.” A pause, then the faintest curve of his lips. “Besides—if I wanted you compliant, you already would be.”

Mina stared at him.

That was… probably not as reassuring as he thought it was, but maybe he was simply incapable of not being horribly frightening.

She licked her lips, kept her voice light. “And how long will I… need to be here?”

He tilted his head, studying her like she’d asked him to define eternity. Then, with unnerving calm, he said, “In this room? A few days. Until I set something up properly for you.”

Which, to Mina’s ears, sounded suspiciously like serial-killer code for you’ll love the basement once I finish renovations.

He nodded, satisfied with his answer, as though they’d just agreed on dinner plans.

And then, as abruptly as he had appeared, he turned and left her alone.

She had lasted all of twenty seconds before snooping.

The door was locked. The windows were locked. The drawers were depressingly empty. There were no diaries to invade the privacy of, no spare daggers to turn against her captor, not even a well-placed ceiling vent for her to climb through.

It was just a very boring room in a very expensive house.

Which left her with two choices: hyperventilate until she passed out or willingly take a stress nap.

She chose the nap.

When she woke up several hours later, he was a silhouette standing over her—lamplight carving him in gold.

Not in some casual oh, I popped in to check on you kind of way, either. No, he was standing beside the bed, leaning forward like some Victorian widower keeping vigil over his dying wife. Except Wilhelmina was very much alive, thank you, and certainly wasn’t his wife—though, god, maybe that’s what he was angling for. That’d be just her luck.

The sight of him—pale eyes intent, expression soft, body too still—was enough to make her bladder threaten mutiny. She didn’t scream (points for dignity), but she came very, very close.

At first she thought she could manage it. Breathe slow, count to ten, pretend he wasn’t looming over her or, at least, that it didn’t bother her that he was. But the longer he stood there—unmoving, unblinking—the more the animal panic began to pool in her stomach.

It crept up her ribs, quickened her breath, set her pulse thundering in her ears. The silence made it worse. No sound of shifting weight, no breath drawn in—just him, steady as a painting, while she unraveled beneath his gaze.

Then his head tilted, like he was listening to something only he could hear.

“Easy, love,” he said softly. “Your heart is going wild—you’ll make yourself ill at this rate.”

Excuse me? Her heart? What the fuck? How would he even—

And worse, much worse: she hated that the word love in his mouth didn’t sound ridiculous. It slipped into her like a warm hand smoothing the nap of velvet the right way, and that was intolerable.

Her panic spiked, white-hot now, and her body betrayed her. Her chest hitched, her vision blurred. His pupils were wrong—too wide, black swallowing storm blue—like a shark’s in deep water, reflecting nothing back.

The fear finally caught her, full and heavy.

She promptly passed out.

A version of those events happened three more times—each time she’d pass out, he’d be there when she came to, all pretty cheekbones and concerned eyes, and she’d keel over like a fainting goat. It became a sort of routine.

The third time, though, when it seemed like she wasn’t going to immediately tumble back to the pillow, he actually spoke. His voice was careful, almost gentle, like a man testing the thin ice under his feet.

“Would you like tea,” he asked, “or solitude?”

For a heartbeat she thought—ridiculously—that she might manage it this time. That she could answer like a normal person, that she could sit up in this absurdly expensive bed and pretend she wasn’t unraveling.

“Solitude,” she managed, even mustering a polite, “please.”

He inclined his head, almost like she’d passed some test, and shifted as if to leave. Panic, sharper than reason, surged through her.

“Wait!” The word burst out before she could stop it. Her throat tightened, but she forced it out anyway. “What’s your name?”

He paused in the doorway, half-turned. “Niklaus,” he said after a beat. Then, softer, “But you may call me Klaus.”

And then he was gone.

The door clicked shut. The silence rushed in.

She clung to the name like it might tether her to reality—Niklaus, Klaus, Klaus, Klaus—but the room spun anyway. Her heart was still racing, her lungs still forgetting how to pull air. The panic, sharp and merciless, caught up to her again, and she toppled right back into the dark.

By the fourth time, she finally woke to find the chair empty and nearly wept with relief.

Mina did what any reasonable, sane, entirely justified woman in her position would do: she staged a prison break.

Step one: identify your weapon of choice.

The room was mostly decorative nonsense, but in the corner sat an ottoman—hideous, overstuffed, patterned like someone had murdered a tweed blazer. Perfect.

Step two: break the window.

Easier said than done. She heaved the ottoman against the glass three times before she finally did it hard enough to shatter the damn thing, each thud echoing through the guest suite like a gong announcing her idiocy.

Step three: escape.

She climbed onto the sill and began her descent down the side of the mansion. It went well for approximately half a flight before her grip slipped, her foot snagged, and she tumbled directly into a hedge.

The hedge—thank god for it—had cushioned her fall, and the sprained wrist she got from landing wrong was significantly better than a snapped neck.

Heart hammering, adrenaline roaring in her ears, she took off into the woods—of course, her weird stalker lived in the middle of the woods, she thought. Could he be more cliché? Why couldn’t she have been abducted into, say, a normal residential cul-de-sac, where escape meant two minutes of sprinting and a well-timed doorbell ring?

She made it five glorious minutes before Klaus materialized in front of her with a terrifying, inhuman speed, as if he’d been waiting just beyond the treeline for her dramatic dash.

This time she screamed. Full-throated, horror-movie scream, the kind that would’ve gotten her killed first if she’d been in an actual slasher flick.

And then she—because she had spirit though she, sadly, lacked strategy—swung at his face.

Klaus dodged with insulting grace, like she was moving in slow motion, and caught her wrists before she could so much as graze him.

She wailed at the stab of pain in her sprained wrist, and he immediately winced, his grip faltering. He froze, like he hadn’t meant to hurt her, and for a heartbeat she thought she saw genuine regret on his face.

Then he—like a psycho—he bit into his own hand like it was an apple, and shoved the bleeding wound toward her mouth, ordering her to drink.

Mina took it as well as could be expected.

She gagged, she flailed, she tried to twist away. He cradled her like a distressed cat, murmuring nonsense about it healing her, trying to pet her hair into submission.

She kicked him in the shin.

Not her finest moment—hardly the glamorous, movie-worthy escape she would’ve liked—but she will maintain until her dying breath that it was well deserved.

Klaus, infuriatingly, had only chuckled. Actually chuckled. Like she was a particularly spirited toddler throwing a tantrum in a toy aisle, not a grown woman making a desperate bid for freedom. He didn’t retaliate. Didn’t even seem mad. If anything, he looked… pleased.

Yeah, she hadn’t liked that one bit.

Mina did what any reasonable woman would do: she went straight for his eyes.

Klaus’s chuckle deepened, rolling low in his chest like he was genuinely impressed by the attempt, but before she could land so much as a scratch, he’d thrown her over his shoulder like an unruly sack of flour and was speeding back toward his tacky mansion.

After that, Mina was moved into his room. Not forever, just for three suffocating days where Klaus planted himself in a chair like an ominous housecat—angled his chair so his reflection in the mirror cut him in half—and watched her do absolutely everything.

And Mina does mean everything.

Reading. Brushing her teeth. Pretending to nap. She says pretending because no one could actually sleep with that kind of intensity boring into them. He wasn’t even subtle about it, either—his eyes tracked every movement like she was going to sprout wings and bolt through the ceiling at any second.

By the end of the seventy-two hours, she’d begun to suspect she was going to lose her mind. Fortunately, he seemed to realize and moved her out of his room.

Her new room was plush, generous in scale, and suffocatingly immaculate. Dark wood gleamed, oil portraits stared down with hollow eyes, carpets swallowed every footstep. It looked less like a place to live than a museum wing curated by someone who thought expensive and good were synonyms.

It was a beautiful cage, which was somehow worse.

The kind of beauty that looked spiritually caked in dust, no matter how clean the surfaces were. No warmth, no life—just things. Stuff arranged with the precision of a catalog spread, pretending that was the same thing as taste.

Mina hadn’t said a word about the décor, though. Some survival instinct whispered that if she commented, he might redecorate it to something closer to her liking, and then she’d risk growing attached. Better to keep it sterile, better to keep the walls ugly in their own way—a reminder, every morning, that this was still a cage.

Still, she couldn’t help but think the whole thing was damning evidence that Klaus hadn’t spent much time around anyone who was actually good at this particular thing. Interior design, atmosphere, whatever you wanted to call it—he was obviously terrible at it. And the fact that he hadn’t asked her, his literal kidnapping victim, what she preferred? That just proved he hadn’t spent much time with the opposite sex either.

He probably didn’t have sisters, Mina thought, because a sister would’ve beaten this kind of nonsense out of him in childhood.

And the windows—oh, they looked perfectly ordinary. They weren’t. When she’d first tried the latch, something unseen had bitten at her skin, a sharp sting that made her yank her hand back. Warding, apparently. Because of course witches were real, and apparently happy to aid and abet her kidnapping. The glass itself refused to break, too—she’d tested it once with a heavy candlestick and ended up with nothing but ringing arms and a dented ego.

It was better than bars—only not really. At least bars would be honest.

The whole room treated her like a valuable object: contained, cushioned, catalogued. Curtains draped, carpets muffled, everything immaculate to the point of suffocation. She hated how safe it felt, how carefully the edges of her world had been smoothed for her.

Still, she was adapting—admirably.

By the third week, she had stumbled into the stage of captivity where you start enjoying it.

Not the being kidnapped part—that was still horrifying—but the not having to clock in at work part was nice.

There were no terrible novellas to review, no feedback to give to inspiring authors, no rent notices taped to her door by her landlord. She had food. She had silk sheets. She had a gorgeous wardrobe. She had a television and a bookcase filled with interesting titles.

And she had a psychotic kidnapper who seemed determined to escalate their strange courtship.

Anything she wanted—she was given. If she wanted authentic Italian food, well he was finding some poor nonna to cook for them for the night. If she was uncomfortable, he sent a trained masseuse to her room. Her every need was tended to by an army of compelled servants.

And then there was the incident with the painting—Klaus had shown up in her room one afternoon, dragging a massive canvas with her as the subject.

Mina nearly spat out her tea.

It was beautiful in that haunting way oil portraits often are, the kind of thing you could imagine hanging in a museum. But the subject matter… well. Every brushstroke screamed obsession.

“Indulge me,” he said.

And Mina did her hardest to do just that.

She studied it the way she studied people in bars and manuscripts on her desk: cataloguing. His choice of colors—storm greys, shadowed blues, a flicker of gold at her throat. The way he’d painted her eyes too bright, like he couldn’t quite believe they were real. The careful rendering of her hands, folded neatly in her lap as though she were some Victorian ghost bride. Even the background—empty, but not blank, layers of paint worked until it looked like fog rolling in, swallowing everything but her.

Her conclusion: Fixation. Loneliness. Obsession. Desperation. Would absolutely eat drywall for attention.

She looked back at him and found him watching her, waiting.

And that was when it really clicked for Mina.

She knew how to spot a man with mommy and daddy issues from ten paces. She had dated enough musicians and philosophy majors to recognize the signs: wounded eyes, intense silences, overcompensation through projects.

Niklaus Mikaelson was practically a case study—and instead of intensive therapy, he’d gone full supernatural soulmate kidnapping.

Why? Trauma, probably.

Some weird cocktail of family baggage and centuries (she assumed it was centuries, they hadn’t actually had a conversation about what he was, but she was smart enough to make the jump to vampire and the subsequent jump to he’s probably like a million years old) of brooding. She could practically smell it on him.

“It’s beautiful,” Mina had said, suddenly feeling very confident in her ability to control this new narrative.

In the days that followed, she tested the waters.

Not escape—that was old news. No, this was reconnaissance of the emotional kind. She tried to prod him open, gently, the way you might coax a feral cat to accept human affection. Offer a hand, stay very still, don’t flinch when it hisses.

He was clearly desperate for her attention but allergic to receiving it. He’d lurk in the doorway like he wanted her to invite him in, then vanish the moment she did.

So one afternoon, when the silence grew unbearable, she gestured to the second cup she’d had laid out. “Would you like some tea, Klaus?”

For a moment he only stared, suspicion flickering like a blade behind his eyes—as if she’d offered him arsenic in porcelain. Then, slowly, he crossed the room. His movements were too deliberate, every step the performance of a man reminding himself he still had legs. He lowered into the chair opposite hers, posture stiff.

He drank silently at first.

But to Mina’s delight, once it became clear she wasn’t going to start screaming for release the moment he sat down, Klaus shifted. The stiffness melted into something else—charm, smooth and practiced, like slipping into a second skin. He spoke easily, with that velvet-lined confidence she’d half expected from the start. They traded words that brushed the edge of banter: her jabs sly, his retorts sharper, both of them testing the waters with each sentence.

She teased him and he actually laughed—low and startled, as if he hadn’t meant to. Once. Then again, warmer.

And God help her, it was disarming. For a handful of minutes, over porcelain cups and quiet, it almost felt like a conversation she would have willingly, happily chosen to have.

Buoyed, she made the mistake of asking, lightly, “Do you have any family?”

His entire body went taut. The faintest trace of softness bled from his face like color draining from a photograph. His gaze shuttered, sharp and distant.

When he finally spoke, his voice was velvet stretched thin over glass, “That subject is off limits.”

He rose in a single, fluid motion, leaving the chair empty in a way that felt like a slammed door.

The words landed in her stomach like a stone—final, cold, oddly reassuring in their clarity. At least she’d found one of his boundaries and it hadn’t ended badly, all things considered. Mina promptly filed the matter of his family under do not touch.

Which was fine by her—she wasn’t exactly trying to meet the in-laws anytime soon.

There were other times after that—and every time they were just as strange. For a while, they’d find a rhythm: delightful conversation, sly barbs traded back and forth, the kind of sparkling banter Mina lived for. He could be witty when he let himself, sharp and amused in a way that almost charmed her into forgetting the whole kidnapped-and-trapped detail of their situation.

She’d make him laugh, he’d make her roll her eyes—and for a few minutes, it felt dangerously close to normal.

And then—inevitably—she’d step wrong. A question too personal, a comment that brushed too near some wound he carried like scar tissue under the skin. Invisible landmines, everywhere. The effect was immediate: his expression shuttering, that grimace like he’d been struck, and then he was gone.

Out of the room, away from her, vanishing before she could even backtrack.

It was maddening.

And so, the weeks stretched on.

Now, three months into her captivity, the fear had dulled into something worse: boredom.

The heavy wood and immaculate carpets had become familiar. The spelled windows no longer shocked her. Even the sight of Klaus lurking with a new soulful pencil drawing of her propped discreetly against the wall—one time with a horse, another with a peacock, once with what she thought was a rat but was apparently something called a stoat, which apparently was laden with symbolism she neither understood nor cared to—had stopped being startling.

She’d stopped counting the days, stopped wondering when the cavalry would arrive (spoiler: they weren’t). She was just… stuck. And bored.

She wants her freedom back.

Not escape, exactly—she’s not an idiot—but she is so sick of this stupid room.

The same four walls, the same nauseating dull museum décor, the same few humans drifting in and out like lobotomized ghosts. They were so heavily compelled that it was functionally like talking to a brick wall—if a brick wall occasionally helped her bathe or brought her snacks on command. Conversation was impossible. Jokes fell flat. Questions got met with blank, polite smiles.

Mina could have staged a one-woman rock opera in there and her audience would’ve just nodded, fetched her more grapes, and left.

The loneliness arrived like the weather.

Yes, she had a television. But there are only so many hours of reruns and televangelist sermons a woman can sit through before wanting to claw her eyes out.

And yes, Klaus made sure anything she requested was delivered—clothes, books, hobbies (Mina had thought that, surely, with all this new free time that she’d finally finish her novel only to realize that her “busy schedule” pre-kidnapping actually hadn’t been the problem at all)—but none of it replaced the thing she missed most: actual conversation. Someone laughing at the right beat. Someone teasing her back when she pestered them.

And then there was the other thing she missed: orgasms.

God, she missed them so much she could weep.

Not that she hadn’t thought about it, of course. But the idea of laying back and sliding a hand between her legs in this environment? Mortifying.

Mina had been far too embarrassed to so much as attempt masturbation since the kidnapping—because, as it turns out, having a captor with supernatural hearing kind of ruins the mood.

Every time she so much as closed the bathroom door, she remembered: he can hear this. He can hear everything. Breathing, sighing, every bodily function that usually flies under the radar of polite society. She had never felt so self-conscious about being a mammal.

Once, a compelled woman—cheerfully folding Mina’s laundry—had offhandedly assured her that Klaus wasn’t listening at all times. Mina had turned on her immediately, suddenly mortified, because she hadn’t voiced that particular fear to anyone other than her own subconscious.

The words had sat in her like a stone, and she’d started firing questions at the poor woman—one after another, circling the subject until it became obvious. She’d been barred from saying anything negative about Klaus whatsoever.

Which meant, of course, that all of them had been compelled the same way.

So, Mina—being her charming, clever self—came to the only rational conclusion: she needed a plan.

And not just any plan—an elegant, multi-step strategy to win back her dignity, her autonomy, her conversational needs and her orgasm count.

The solution: fuck Klaus into compliance.

Yes, it was crude. Yes, it was probably not a great idea to sleep with her kidnapper—and certainly not willingly so early into her stay. But it was also, frankly, brilliant.

She’d make him see stars, scramble his vampire brain with toe-curling pleasure, and in the aftermath of his ecstasy, she would gain her independence back—a longer leash, open doors, the ability to walk through the house without feeling like Rapunzel locked in her wearisome, uninteresting tower.

And, bonus, she’d get to cum. At least once. Maybe more.

The more Mina thought about it, the more it solidified. She was convinced that the only person who could bargain with Niklaus Mikaelson was Niklaus Mikaelson in post-orgasmic bliss. He’d be pliable, less paranoid, maybe even generous.

That’s when she’d strike!

Only… there was a problem taking form in her mind.

What if she was too good at it?

What if she blew his ancient, tortured mind so completely that instead of giving her freedom, he doubled down? Locked her up tighter, obsessed harder, decided she was too dangerous to ever let out of his sight?

That would be catastrophic. He already hovered like a helicopter parent with a paintbrush—Mina did not want to see what just-had-the-best-sex-of-my-life-with-my-kidnapping-victim-level-of-clingy looked like on a thousand-year-old vampire with unresolved attachment trauma.

So: Plan B.

Plan B was simple. Rock his world so thoroughly that the best he could manage afterward was blinking up at her in shocked pleasure. But—and this was crucial—not so thoroughly that he got any ideas about how pretty she might look chained to his bed, impaled on his cock at all hours of the day and night. (She would, obviously, look fan-fucking-tastic in that scenario—she was nothing if not realistic about her own aesthetics—but that was beside the point.)

She needed him dazed, not broken. Docile, not deranged. That fine middle ground between “worshipfully pliant” and “picking out matching shackles in the kidnapping essentials aisle at Home Depot.”

It was, she admitted, some real balance shit—some real Olympic-level tightrope walking.

And the more she turned it over in her mind, the more Mina realized how impossible it sounded.

God, this is going to be difficult.

But then again, what about this entire nightmare hadn’t been?

…

She goes back and forth for days on the best way to do it.

It becomes her new mental hobby, the thing she chews on during long afternoons of plush-carpets-and-paneled-walls with-no-soul purgatory.

Does she call for him, drop the pretense, and just tell him to get on the bed like she’s a queen summoning her knight? That has a certain regal appeal. Very I’ve accepted my role as vampire consort, now do your duty and get on your knees.

Or does she lean into trickery?

Accidentally leave the bathroom door unlocked, emerge in a towel just as he’s walking by, make a spectacle of being startled by his brooding presence in the hallway? She could practically see it: his eyes going wide, his gentlemanly instincts colliding with his feral hunger, his whole body language screaming don’t look, do look, oh god I’m looking.

And then there’s the nuclear option—the one that keeps circling back into her brain no matter how hard she tries to be reasonable about it. Take off all her clothes, break the doorknob with something heavy, sneak into his room like some unhinged burlesque burglar, and wait in his bed like a gift-wrapped hostage.

Overly dramatic? Yes. Reckless? Absolutely. But what is captivity if not an excuse for a little melodrama?

She paces these options like chess pieces in her head. Strategy, tactics, desired outcomes.

Queen’s gambit: dominance play, demand satisfaction, make him believe she’s finally on board with this soulmate nonsense.

Bishop’s gambit: lure him in with an accident, make him break his own walls, let him think he crossed a line.

Rook’s gambit: kick the damn door down and dare him to ignore the naked woman in his bed.

Each plan has merit. Each plan has risk.

In the end, she picks none of them.

Instead, she selects the Pawn’s Gambit: slow, deliberate, full of small steps forward, chipping away until she’s across the board and he has no choice but to fall.

Mina is going to wear him down—slowly, relentlessly, aggressively.

Two days later, she sets her plan into motion.

After dinner, when the house has gone quiet and she’s alone in her ridiculously soulless room, she strips out of her clothes, tucks herself between the sheets, spreads her legs, and lets her hand wander.

Mina is out of practice, but muscle memory is a merciful thing. She licks her fingers, enough moisture to get the entire production started, then circles her clit with deliberate care.

And because Mina is nothing if not committed to the bit, she thinks about him.

Klaus.

Klaus’s hands. Klaus’s lips. Klaus’s lips on her skin, dragging down her neck, catching at her collarbone. Klaus’s hands on her waist, her thighs, everywhere she’s been imagining for weeks. Klaus’s mouth pressing into hers, desperate and hungry.

Klaus’s grip anchoring her, holding her in place like she belongs to him.

Embarrassing? Maybe. Disgraceful? Probably.

But why should she be shamed? She’s the victim here. Stockholm syndrome is a very real thing. And if her brain wants to conjure up his stupid perfect jawline while she gets herself off, then that’s on him, not her.

Besides, it makes the show more convincing—and she absolutely puts on a show.

Morning she wakes to find a pale orangey-pink rose on the nightstand—no card, no note, but angled just so, the first thing her eyes landed on. She is no expert at floriography, but she’d edited enough bad manuscripts (and written her fair share of Spirk fanfiction in her day) to know roses.

Coral meant desire. Pink meant admiration. Together it meant: I heard you, and I’d like more, please.

She laughs despite herself.

Oh, I plan to, she thinks, lifting the rose to her nose and breathing in the scent.

…

The next night, she repeats her performance.

And the night after that.

It becomes ritual. A daily performance in self-pleasure, each act a little bolder. She graduates from soft sighs to breathy moans, from muffled whimpers to the occasional curse whispered against her pillow.

Mina makes sure to time it—always late evening, when she’s fairly sure he’s prowling the halls outside her door. She wants him close enough to hear, close enough to wonder, close enough to squirm in that tortured body of his.

By the fifth night, she’s making the kind of noises that would get her talked to in any apartment complex with thin walls. She writhes a little harder, lets her sheets fall strategically—just in case he has x-ray vision in addition to all his other stupid powers—and pretends she doesn’t care that her nipples are on display.

All of it engineered for maximum effect. She wants him restless. She wants him rattled. She wants him to want.

By the seventh day, she goes for maximum damage.

She moans his name.

Not a scream, not a declaration—just a sweet, muffled little “Oh, Klaus,” like a secret slipping out of her mouth as she falls apart around her own fingers.

She lies there panting, sheets damp with sweat, heart pounding. She thinks of him out there, in some other room, frozen mid-brood with his ears pricked and his jaw clenched. She imagines him fighting himself, running a hand over his face, whispering something tortured like don’t go to her.

It makes her grin.

The next time they cross paths, he looks—God help her—amused. His gaze snags hers, pale and unreadable, and then drops, leisurely, to trail over the line of her dress, her throat, her hands folded primly in her lap. A beat later, his voice drifts out, mild as rain.

“Careful, sweetheart. You’re hardly alone in this house.”

Mina chooses to ignore his silly reminder.

Yeah, dumbass, I’m aware. That’s the point.

She continues.

Every night, sometimes twice if she’s feeling particularly vindictive—or bored. Always with the same theatrics, the same arch of her back, the same little gasps engineered for maximum effect.

And to her absolute delight, the next few times she sees Klaus, he looks almost haggard. There’s something in his posture, something in the way his shoulders hold tension like a dam about to break.

And his eyes.

God, his eyes—they stare at her with this insane, bone-deep intensity, like he wants to rip her open and crawl into her skin, make a little home for himself in her abdominal cavity.

Which is horrific, obviously, but also… kind of hot.

Mina doubles down when he still hasn’t broken after almost two weeks.

She starts to let herself look at him. Not shy glances—real, deliberate, unhurried looks. The kind that make men squirm. The kind that say yes, I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I know you know that I know.

She flutters her lashes just enough to feel ridiculous, but it works—every flicker of her gaze makes his throat bob. She lets her chest rise and fall like some tragic heroine in a bodice-ripper novel—every inhale an invitation, every exhale a dare.

And she starts dragging out the more provocative pieces Klaus stocked her wardrobe with.

At first, it’s subtle.

A silk slip here, a slightly low neckline there. Then lace. Then sheer paneling. She makes it a slow burn, a mirror of her breathy nightly moans—measured, escalating, designed to keep him constantly off balance. By day nine she’s lounging in pale silk trimmed with ribbons. By day eleven she’s swanning around in cream lace like she’s auditioning for a perfume ad. By day fourteen she’s draped in gauzy panels that whisper against her thighs when she walks.

She doesn’t dump it all on him at once—call her Frank Lloyd Wright because she’s building to something here.

By day fourteen, she graduates to the big gun: a sheer black robe, scandalously transparent, over a tiny camisole and shorts pair that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.

She sweeps into the room, perfectly aware of the effect she’s having.

And Klaus—oh, Klaus—doesn’t stand a chance.

She’s delighted to say that he’s also graduated to something new—looking absolutely entranced and utterly panicked any time he has to be in the same room as her. His jaw clenches so hard that she’s worried about his fangs (poor baby) and his hands twitch as if they can’t decide whether to strangle her, scoop her up, or fall to his knees and throw her knees over his shoulders.

He won’t even sit like a normal person anymore—just perches on the edge of chairs like a man bracing for an earthquake.

His plight is so pleasantly silly, Mina thinks, because he’s the one who bought her all these scandalous pieces in the first place. You’d think he might have considered what would happen if she actually wore them.

On day eighteen—an impressive stretch of self-control, really—Klaus finally cracks.

Good for him, Mina thinks. If someone as pretty as her had been coming on to her this aggressively, she’d have broken by day five. Maybe six if she was feeling virtuous. But eighteen? That’s some serious restraint.

It happens at breakfast.

She’s midway through a croissant, humming to herself, when he sets down his cup with an audible clink and says, voice low and grave, “I know your campaign.”

Ugh, she thinks to herself, why does it have to be so sexy to be seen, to be understood by another person.

Mina takes her time, finishes chewing the bite of pastry in her mouth, wipes her mouth delicately with the napkin, and then reaches for her orange juice.

She takes a leisurely sip, savoring it, and adjusts her outfit—a silk dressing gown with two perfect slits, pooling over the dips and curves of her body like liquid sin. It is horribly inappropriate for morning dining, which is precisely the point.

She knows he must be imagining what she looks like without it, and the thought makes her want to beam into her glass.

“Oh?” she says lightly, turning the word over like it’s only half her attention. Then, with a sweet little tilt of her head, “And what is that, darling?”

"The silk," he says, setting the cup down with surgical care. "The lace. The breathy sighs. The eyelashes—”

“God forbid a girl have eyelashes, I guess.”

“—the devotional every night with my name on your lips,” Klaus says, ignoring her quip. His tone is measured, but his knuckles are white where they press against the table.

His eyes narrow and he says accusingly, “You are trying to push me.”

Mina takes her time responding, nibbling another bite of pastry, chewing thoughtfully as though considering a riddle instead of a man on the brink. She can feel his paranoia vibrating in the air between them. He’s terrified that she’s testing him, trying to lure him into something that will ruin whatever fragile bond he thinks they’re building. Or perhaps he is simply mad that she isn’t a weepy little dove about his silly games and was instead playing one of her own.

Typical male melodrama.

“Push you where, Klaus?” she teases. “Darling, you’re planted in that chair like a tree. I couldn’t budge you if I tried.”

Mina sets down her napkin, rises smoothly, and begins to circle the table at an unhurried pace. Her robe whispers against her thighs as she moves, silk catching the light.

My pawn has finally reached the other side of the board, promoted at last into a queen.

Though really, Mina has always been a queen—it’s simply that now the board reflects it. The game is almost over, and it’s time to see how hard he clings when she topples his king.

When she reaches his side, she leans against the table casually, as if they’re just two old friends discussing the weather.

“But let’s suppose you’re right,” she says softly, tilting her head, watching the way his jaw tightens. “Suppose this is all a big trick. What will you do?”

Klaus swallows hard.

His eyes follow the line of the silk as it drags across her body, betraying him. Down her leg, up her thigh, across the slope of her stomach, lingering far too long over her breasts before snapping up to her face. His restraint is cracking at the edges, and Mina feels giddy with the power of it.

“Careful, love,” he finally manages. “I am not someone to be trifled with.”

Mina smiles sweetly, the picture of innocence. “And yet,” she purrs, “if you’re to be believed, love, here I am trifling with you.”

She steps closer, close enough to feel the tension radiating off him like heat.

The drop between idea and action is an elevator with snapped cables—and her next move crashes into her. And suddenly, she’s grateful for the ridiculous wealth that furnished this house with oversized, absurdly sturdy chairs, because it makes it feasible.

She swings one leg over, settles herself onto his lap, and straddles him. The silk parts falling just so, exposing the curve of both thighs that now bracket his.

His whole body goes rigid beneath her, as though he’s balancing on the edge of a cliff and the slightest breeze might send him tumbling.

His whole body goes rigid beneath her, every muscle locked like stone. His shoulders square, his spine snaps taut, his jaw clenches until she can almost hear enamel grinding. Even his breath seems suspended, chest rising but not falling, as if he’s forgotten the mechanics of being alive.

And lower—well, if the insistent press against her cunt through the silk barrier of her gown is to be believed—his cock has gone just as unyielding, straining hot and hard through the tent of his trousers, betraying him far more honestly than his expression ever could.

Mina leans in, breath feathering against his ear.

“Breathe for me, darling, you’ll make yourself ill at this rate” she whispers, soft and coaxing, her lips brushing the shell of his ear. “There you go… you’re trembling.” She presses a little closer, her smile curving against his jaw. “And your eyes—so wide. Are you frightened of me, Klaus?”

He inhales sharply, chest straining against hers.

“Look at you,” she murmurs, dragging her lips close enough that he can feel the shape of each word. “You’re so lovely like this. My poor, breathless little love.”

She can feel him fighting himself, every inhale a war, every exhale a surrender.

Klaus takes a shaky breath.

His voice is rough when he finally speaks. “You’re taking this too far.”

Mina tips her head back and laughs—low, sweet, deliberately reckless. Then she leans in, lips brushing the shell of his ear, and whispers, “Why don’t you fuck me about it then?”

Klaus is on her instantly.

Relief rushes through her—oh, there you are, she realizes, not sure whether she meant him or herself.

One second he’s rigid and trembling, the next he’s surging forward, his hand clamping around her jaw, dragging her face toward his like he’s drowning and she’s air. His mouth crashes onto hers, messy and desperate, his tongue shoving into her mouth with none of the old-world elegance he likes to posture with.

Control cracking on him is the prettiest sound she’s heard in months.

His hand bracketed her jaw like a frame—not cruel, but with the assurance of someone who had killed more people than Mina had ever met.

It’s raw, feral, desperate in a way that makes Mina want to giggle into the kiss.

She lets herself do what comes naturally—she moans. Loudly. Lewdly. She angles her hips and grinds shamelessly against the hard line of him through his trousers, pressing just right to make her point.

Klaus growls into her mouth—an honest-to-god animal noise—and Mina immediately does it again. He makes another pathetic little sound—a half-groan-half-whimper that is muffled against her lips.

Oh, Mina thinks suddenly. I could get drunk on that sound. Serve it to me on the rocks every night until I die.

He kisses her like a madman, teeth clashing, breath ragged, his hand still cradling her face like he might actually devour her.

Mina, however, is far more composed.

Not calm—she’s practically vibrating with her desperation and wet enough that she’s certain the silk between her thighs is ruined—but composed.

She’s been training for this.

Eighteen days of nightly orgasms have made her sharper, not duller. Clear-headed. Tactical. She is, after all, a strategist at heart.

So, while Klaus is busy trying to consume her whole, she starts working on his shirt. Tediously, button by button. Who wears something with this many buttons to breakfast? Didn’t he know she was always planning to fuck him today? Silly man.

What kind of absolute fool strolls into a battle of seduction armored in cotton and mother-of-pearl?

God, she thinks—her mouth occupied, body gyrating, fingers flying down the placket of his shirt—smugly, I’m a fucking fantastic multitasker.

Finally, she yanks the shirt open, shoving fabric aside until her palms find skin. She touches him deliberately, with the kind of pressure that says: I want this. I want you. And you should be very, very excited by that fact.

Her nails rake lightly across his chest and his whole body shudders.

Her hips move in rhythm with their kiss, grinding down over him in perfect sync. Each rub drags a breathy groan out of him, and every groan feels like a little electric current shot down her spine. She could live off that sound. Bottle it. Patent it—

Fuck, he’s so pretty like this—he’s put-him-in-my-pocket pretty, keep-him-in-a-jar-and-shake-him-real-hard kind of pretty. Prettier than every bad idea she’s ever talked herself into at two in the morning.

His lashes flutter against her cheek when she grinds just right, his jaw goes slack, and the sound he makes punches straight through her like a hot wire.

Mina wants to press him flat between the pages of a book and keep him there, a preserved specimen labeled mine.

She’s already reaching lower, fumbling at the fastening of his trousers, when he finally tears his mouth away from hers. His lips are swollen, his breath ragged, eyes wild and almost pained.

And Mina—oh, Mina feels victorious.

She takes immediate advantage of her newly freed mouth.

If Klaus is going to sit there looking ruined and wide-eyed, then she’s going to decorate him like the world’s most expensive canvas—Mina’s got to show him that she’s an artist too.

She leans forward and presses her lips to his throat, open-mouthed and greedy, dragging her tongue along the pulse point before sucking hard enough to bruise. Then she bites—sharp little nips that make him groan and thrust helplessly up into her lap, the sound vibrating against her mouth.

Her hands are not idle either.

She finally gets his cock free from the prison of his trousers, and just the feeling of him—hard, warm, heavy in her grip—makes her smirk against his skin. One hand stays there, stroking, while the other tugs at the sash of her gown. She pulls away from his neck to let it fall loose with theatrical flair, the silk parting to reveal exactly what he’s been imagining for weeks.

Klaus moans when he realizes she isn’t wearing anything underneath, a sound so raw it borders on reverent.

His hands fly everywhere at once, frantic and aimless. He cups her breasts, slides down to her hips, claws lightly at her ass, then back up again, as though he’s trying to map her body in one frantic sitting before it disappears. It’s messy, desperate, and she revels in it.

Mina shifts her hips, angles herself, and sinks down onto him in one long, slow push. She’s wet enough—obscenely wet after eighteen days of teasing herself raw—that she can take nearly all of him without much resistance. She’d be fully seated at the hilt if not for the awkwardness of the chair angle. Still, it’s enough to make her head tip back and her mouth fall open on a breathy gasp.

What she lacks in depth, she makes up for in enthusiasm.

She rolls her hips, grinding against him with a steady rhythm, each shift of her body drawing a groan from his throat. She mewls softly, deliberately, the kind of sound designed to melt a man’s spine. And judging by the way Klaus clutches her tighter, it’s working.

She makes sure to look at him each time she drives herself back down—his face open, unguarded, pupils blown wide. God, he looks wrecked already, and that thought alone sends a rush of triumph straight through her.

Klaus leans forward like he can’t help himself, mouth finding her breasts. He kisses them reverently at first, then with growing hunger, pressing hot little kisses against the swell of her flesh. He nips (without fangs thankfully—she isn’t quite ready to learn if bloodplay is something she’s into yet), just enough to sting, and she arches into it.

Mina finally settles into a rhythm, riding him in earnest.

Her body rolls against his in a way that’s more deliberate than frantic, every motion designed to wring sound out of him.

She praises him between kisses, breathy and teasing—such a good boy, I love how you feel inside me, you feel so perfect—and the words make him shiver. She can feel it: the tremor running through his body, the careful control fraying in his spine. He’s shaking a little under her, which thrills her beyond reason.

She captures his lips in another kiss, swallowing the low, broken noises he can’t quite keep in.

Then she twists her hips in that particular way she learned her first year of college—the only useful souvenir from dating a wannabe dominant who had nearly ruined her life but, in his defense, had at least taught her the mechanics of how to take cock like it was an art form. She angles herself, grinds down, and Klaus moans into her mouth, helpless and loud. Mina drinks in the sound greedily, like she’s been starving for it.

She expects him to keep losing himself under her, but then—suddenly—he moves.

Klaus surges to his feet in one smooth motion, still buried inside her, and she has to clutch desperately at his shoulders to keep from falling. He holds her tightly, his arms like iron bands around her, and she realizes with a startled laugh that he’s carrying her with him, cock still lodged deep in her cunt, as if he has no intention of letting her go.

Then he turns his eyes toward the table.

It happens so fast she barely registers it. He does that move—the dramatic, movie-worthy sweep of his arm across the surface—sending plates, silverware, and half-eaten breakfast crashing to the floor. The sound is a symphony of shattering porcelain and clattering cutlery.

Mina has just enough presence of mind to think, god, the staff are going to fucking hate me, before remembering that she hasn’t thought of them as people in months. They’re compelled, blank-eyed, living props in the theater of Niklaus Mikaelson’s obsession.

And three—almost four—months of captivity has been enough to erode any guilt that she genuinely feels about putting them to work.

Klaus lays her down on the cleared table with surprising gentleness, though his movements stay wild, unrestrained, as though gentleness itself is just another form of hunger. His hands skim down her thighs, the pads of his fingers dragging heat over her skin, leaving trails that make her shiver. He grips firmly, guiding, coaxing her legs around his hips, the pressure insistent but reverent—as if he’s fitting her into place.

Then, with a swiftness that steals her breath, he hikes her thighs higher, presses them in tight against his sides, and then over his shoulders.

The shift leaves her sprawled, open, the stretch of it sharp but delicious. He adjusts her with ruthless efficiency, dragging her down the surface of the table until her hips tip just far enough off the edge that he can stand at his full height and sink into her without effort.

And God, the new angle—

She cries out as he drives into her, the depth almost unbearable. Every thrust slams into a place inside her that makes her vision spark. Each stroke grinds perfectly, sending shocks of pleasure through her body until she’s trembling against the table, nails clawing for purchase on anything she can reach.

Mina’s brain sings.

Oh, fuck, she thinks, I may have underestimated this man—

With hindsight, she probably should have expected a thousand years of fucking and being fucked to have added up to something. She just—fuck—hadn’t realized it was possible for someone to play her body like this.

Every flick of his hips feels like he’s pulling music out of her nerves, out of her goddamn spine—every thrust is another note ripped out of her, raw and ear-piercing, until she’s a symphony strung tight under his hands.

The angle destroys her.

He keeps her legs bent high over his shoulders, his grip iron and unyielding, tilting her just so on the table so every drive of his cock strikes deeper, sharper, fuller. Each thrust grinds against the place inside her that makes her vision shatter white-hot, every nerve strung and screaming.

She claws at the table, nails skittering over smooth wood, desperate for something solid as he pounds into her like he’s determined to leave her wrecked in his shape.

She comes once—shuddering, gasping his name like it’s the only word she knows—but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow.

He hammers into her through the aftershocks, dragging a second smaller climax out of her before the first has fully faded. This time it’s harder, messier, stars bursting behind her eyelids, her legs trembling violently around his shoulders as he keeps her pinned open, helpless.

He won’t let her down. He won’t let her breathe. And God, she doesn’t want him to.

Mina feels undone by the rhythm, by the sheer impossibility of it, her body unraveling thread by thread under his hands. Her moans dissolve into half-laughter, half-prayer, incoherent noises spilling from her lips as she writhes beneath him. She isn’t sure if she’s praising him or begging him or just babbling, but none of it matters.

He’s the one holding the rhythm. He’s the one holding all the threads.

And then—suddenly—he breaks.

He fucks her like he’s trying to leave his name inside her, like every thrust is a claim, a brand, a vow. His rhythm stumbles, grows erratic, ragged. His breath tears out of him in snarls, desperate and guttural.

He slams into her once, twice, a final desperate grind that buries him to the hilt. And then he’s gone, undone against her chest, groaning into her skin as he spills into her with a shudder so fierce it rattles through her bones.

For a heartbeat, Mina thinks he’ll collapse on top of her—or that he’ll pull away, retreat into some spiral of shame, brood about how she tricked him or tempted him, the usual tortured-monster routine.

But instead, Klaus goes very still—and then immediately possessive.

He clutches her tighter, so tight it nearly hurts, and then his mouth is everywhere at once. Kisses dragged over her cheeks, her forehead, the corner of her jaw. Little frantic presses of lips as if he’s trying to stamp his claim onto every inch of exposed skin.

He mutters against her, words she can’t fully catch, half-choked things that sound like her name or maybe he’s just mumbling the word mine, mine, mine over and over.

Mina blinks up at the ceiling, stunned, trying to remember how to string thoughts together.

Her head feels like cotton candy—light, sugary, ridiculous. Or maybe like a snow globe someone just shook too hard: glittering nonsense whirling everywhere, no chance of focus until it all settles.

She knows she should feel triumphant. This had been the plan, after all. Operation Fuck Him into Compliance. But the way he’s clutching her, kissing her like a starving man who’s finally found food, makes a cold thread of doubt snake through her giddiness.

Yeah, she thinks, I’ve probably bungled this up.

Klaus doesn’t look pliable at all—he looks branded, like he’s never going to let her take a step outside his reach ever again.

But that’s a problem for later, Mina supposes. A problem for when she can feel her legs again. A problem for when her brain isn’t stuck coming up with stupid metaphors about cotton candy and snow globes.

Mina will figure it out later—when she isn’t floating—if she’s just won herself a longer leash or a prettier collar.