Elena stopped struggling.
The moment her body went still beneath him, Alessio noticed. His grip remained firm, his dominance unwavering, but something shifted in his eyes. He was waiting. Waiting for her next move, for another attempt to resist.
But she didn't fight.
She didn't pull away.
Because something inside her had snapped—not in fear, not in surrender, but in understanding.
She was never leaving this world.
She was never escaping him.
And maybe… just maybe… she didn't want to.
A shuddering breath left her lips, her body sinking into the mattress beneath him. She was exhausted—physically, emotionally. The war between them had raged for so long, and she had held onto the belief that she could fight him, that she could break free.
But Alessio had won.
Not because he had overpowered her.
Not because he had trapped her.
But because he had taken every piece of her resistance, every moment of defiance, and turned it into something else.
Something deeper.
Something darker.
Something she needed.
Alessio's gaze flickered, sharp and calculating, as if he was trying to determine whether her surrender was real. His fingers loosened just slightly around her wrists, enough to test her reaction.
Elena didn't move.
She only stared up at him, wide-eyed, her breath still uneven. But she didn't push him away.
Alessio's jaw clenched, his body coiled like a predator sensing a shift in its prey. "Elena," he murmured, his voice low and rough, "what are you doing?"
She swallowed hard.
Slowly, deliberately, she turned her wrists in his grasp—not to break free, but to press her palms against his hands. A silent acceptance.
A declaration.
"I—" Her voice trembled, but she forced herself to speak. "I'm done fighting you."
Alessio stilled.
His eyes darkened, his expression unreadable. "You expect me to believe that?"
A part of her didn't know if she believed it herself.
But another part—the part that had felt his claim, the part that had been unraveling since the night she fell into his world—knew the truth.
She had never really stood a chance against him.
She had belonged to him from the beginning.
"I expect you to take what's already yours," she whispered, the words tasting foreign on her tongue, but feeling right.
A muscle ticked in Alessio's jaw. His grip on her wrists tightened again, his entire body tense as if he was waiting for the moment she would turn back into the wild, untamed thing that had fought him for so long.
But she didn't.
She just looked at him.
And something in that look made him snap.
With a low, guttural curse, Alessio crushed his mouth against hers. Not soft. Not sweet. It was a claim, just as ruthless as he was. A possession, a demand—one she no longer had the strength or the desire to deny.
Elena gasped, but she didn't resist.
She opened to him, let him pull her deeper into the darkness that had always surrounded them.
And for the first time, she didn't fight it.
She embraced it.
She embraced him.
Because she was his.
She had always been his.
And there was no escaping that now.