Chapter 158: Woman sealed? Oh yes!
I can continue with the ritual of magical bonding and domination, but without turning it into forced sexual arousal. I kept the scene aggressive, provocative, and fun, with Rowena affected by the bond in an instinctive and humiliating way, without eroticizing coercion.
Rowena hit Victor with such force that the white space bent around them.
The punch struck the side of his face, passed through the layer of Black Ice that had formed over his skin, and launched him several meters backward. Victor spun through the air, struck one hand against the white ground, and used Black Lightning in his fingers to brake his own body before being thrown even farther.
He stayed still for half a second.
Then spat blood.
"You hit very well."
Rowena advanced without answering.
She was even more transformed now. One of her arms remained lupine, enormous, covered in dark fur and claws far too long to seem natural. Her right leg had also taken on a more bestial form, giving her leaps absurd strength. Every movement she made seemed simple, direct, and impossible to ignore.
Victor tried to create a barrier.
She went through it.
He tried to trap her with stakes.
She broke them.
He tried to use Black Lightning to escape her range.
She followed.
Her knee struck his abdomen before he completed the displacement.
BOOM!
Victor folded in half.
Rowena grabbed his hair and dragged him against the white ground, opening a furrow that disappeared almost immediately behind them. Then she lifted him and delivered a sequence of blows to his chest, face, and shoulders, each one heavier than the last.
Victor laughed between the impacts.
Not because he was winning.
He was not.
The difference was absurd.
Her body was stronger. Her energy was deeper. Her connection to that space seemed to favor her in ways he still did not understand. Rowena was not merely fighting inside the ring. She belonged to that place far more than he did.
And still, Victor laughed.
Because every blow showed something.
Her natural energy did not flow in a linear way. It pulsed in cycles. It grew when her feet touched the ground. Expanded when she breathed deeply. Concentrated in her claws before attacks and retreated to the center of her body when she needed to resist.
It was like fighting an entire forest wearing the skin of an angry woman.
Rowena grabbed Victor by the neck and threw him upward.
He created improvised wings of Black Ice on his back just to stabilize his body for an instant. It was a terrible idea. Rowena leapt after him, spun in the air, and tore the wings apart with her claws before striking him with a descending kick.
Victor fell.
The impact opened a crater in the white ground.
Rowena landed on the edge, flexing her transformed fingers.
"You are getting slow, bloodsucker."
Victor remained lying down for a few seconds.
Then began to laugh.
"No. I am getting busy."
She narrowed her eyes.
"With what?"
Victor turned his face slightly, still on the ground, and smiled.
"Look down."
Rowena frowned.
Then looked.
For the first time since the beginning of that fight, she hesitated.
Beneath her feet, spread across the white ground, was an enormous magic circle made of blood.
It was not an ordinary perfect circle. The lines crossed the space in layers, forming symbols over symbols, ancient curves, containment marks, small corrective strokes, and irregular inscriptions clearly made in a hurry. The blood composing the design was Victor’s. Part of it had been spilled during the fight. Part of it he had intentionally spread with every fall, every roll, every open wound.
It was sloppy.
Violent.
But functional.
Rowena slowly raised her eyes.
Victor sat up, wiping his bloody mouth with his hand.
"It was hard to write while you were trying to tear my head off," he said. "But I made an effort."
Her gaze became more dangerous.
"What is this?"
Victor slowly stood. Some ribs were still adjusting beneath his skin, and a line of blood ran down the side of his face. Even so, his smile was irritatingly satisfied.
"An adjustment."
"An adjustment?"
"Yes." He cracked his neck. "I am not going to let someone like you escape."
Rowena went still.
Victor pointed at her with his thumb.
"I liked you."
The silence that came afterward was heavy.
Then Rowena showed her teeth.
"Are you trying to bind me?"
"Actually, you were already bound."
Her expression changed.
Victor continued, looking at the circle as if evaluating his own work.
"I just found your old chains, read the structure, and added a line of my own over them. It was not elegant. Scarlet would probably call me a barbarian. Carmilla might call it acceptable, if she were in a good mood."
"What the hell did you do?"
Rowena took one step forward.
Then stopped.
Her body trembled.
Not from fear.
Not from pain.
It was something internal. A deep jolt, as if thousands of invisible chains had shifted position all at once. Rowena’s eyes widened slightly, and she brought one hand to her chest. For an instant, the entire white space vibrated with her.
The chains binding her existence to that place moved.
She felt it.
And hated it.
And, among all those ancient restraints, a new line appeared.
Thin.
Dark.
Much smaller than the others.
But infinitely more precise.
It did not surround only the body.
It surrounded the being.
Rowena took a deep breath, and the air came out as a low growl.
"What did you do to me?"
Victor shrugged.
"Only a fool would let a woman like you slip out of his hands."
Her expression went completely blank for a second.
Victor continued, as if explaining something very simple.
"I am a simple man, Rowena. Even with you being a werewolf, I value two things above almost everything."
He raised two fingers.
"Strength."
Then smiled.
"And absurd beauty."
Rowena stared at Victor.
For a few seconds, she truly seemed speechless.
Then her aura exploded.
"You arrogant damned vampire!"
She tried to advance.
The first step cracked the white ground.
The second never happened.
Something inside her pulled.
Rowena froze in place, her muscles trembling with rage. Her claws opened, her lupine arm contracted, and the natural energy around her tried to crush the magic circle like a storm trying to extinguish a candle.
But the dark line remained.
Thin.
Firm.
Cruelly insistent.
Victor watched with interest.
"Ah. It worked better than I expected."
"Release me."
"No."
"I will tear out your throat."
"You said that with less conviction now."
Rowena growled so loudly that the white space trembled.
She tried to move again, but this time the dark line reacted more aggressively. The circle beneath her feet glowed deep red, and an invisible pressure rose through her body. It was not exactly pain. It was command. A badly written, badly adapted command, forced to function on a creature that should not respond to vampiric rituals.
The result was unstable.
Rowena fell to her knees.
Her hands struck the white ground with enough force to create cracks. Her entire body trembled, not from weakness, but from resistance. Natural energy fought against the bloodline, and the bloodline insisted on attaching itself to her like a new chain around an ancient beast.
Victor tilted his head.
"Interesting. You resist much more than Carmilla."
Rowena slowly raised her face.
Her gaze promised murder.
"Who is Carmilla?"
"My first sealed woman."
"First?"
"Scarlet came after."
Rowena went silent.
Then laughed.
Low.
Dangerous.
"You collect women trapped in artifacts?"
Victor thought for an instant.
"That sounds worse when you say it like that."
"It sounds exactly like what it is."
"No. There is context."
"Vampires always have context."
Victor pointed at the circle.
"In this case, the context is that you tried to kill me about thirty times in less than five minutes."
"And you called me hot while performing a hidden blood ritual."
"Multitasking."
Rowena tried to stand.
The dark line tightened again.
She remained on her knees, her teeth clenched, her wild aura trying to break free in waves. The white ground around the circle began to crack in circular patterns, as if two ancient wills were fighting over possession of that space.
Victor approached carefully.
Not too much.
He was not an idiot.
Well, not completely.
"I could not use the marriage ritual," he said, observing the symbols. "You are a werewolf. Your energy would reject the traditional structure before even the first clause fixed itself."
Rowena breathed heavily.
"So you changed it?"
"A few things in the writing."
"A few?"
"Many."
"You altered a vampiric blood ritual while I was beating you?"
Victor smiled.
"Yes."
She stared at him.
For the first time, there was something other than hatred in her eyes.
Perhaps incredulity.
Perhaps concern.
Perhaps the late realization that the vampire before her was far more problematic than he seemed.
Victor crouched before her, keeping a safe distance from her claws.
"Now you are going to understand things."
Rowena narrowed her eyes.
"I understand perfectly."
"No. You understand strength. Rage. Hatred of vampires. Prison. Ancient chains." Victor touched one of the blood lines on the ground. "But now there is a line of mine in there."
The circle pulsed.
Rowena took a deep breath.
Her face changed, not from submission, but from an involuntary reaction to the bond adjusting. The partial transformation began to retreat little by little. Her lupine arm returned to a more human form, though her nails remained long. The bestial leg also stabilized. The wild presence was still there, but more contained, compressed by the new layer of connection.
She noticed.
And hated every second.
"I am going to kill you."
Victor smiled.
"You will probably try."
"I will succeed."
"Maybe."
"Not maybe."
He stood.
"We will find out once you can stand without the circle pulling you back down."
Rowena immediately tried to stand, out of pure pride.
The dark line tightened.
She fell again.
Victor covered his mouth with his hand, but failed to hide the laugh.
She slowly raised her gaze.
"Laugh more."
"I cannot stop."
"When I get out of here, I will tear that smile off your face."
"See? We are already making plans for the future."
Rowena went silent for an instant.
Then something in the white space changed.
It was not the circle.
It was not the ring.
It was the outside world pulling Victor back.
The battle against Jake was still happening. His body was still being beaten in the Ritual. Time inside that space did not flow the same way, but it was not completely separate. The bond had been made. The ring had reacted. Now the world wanted to collect the result.
Victor felt the call.
He looked at his own hand.
Then at Rowena.
"Well, looks like I will have to deal with another idiot out there."
Rowena growled.
"Come back here, vampire."
Victor smiled.
"Of course."
His body began to dissolve into dark particles, pulled back out of the ring.
Before disappearing completely, he pointed at the circle.
"In the meantime, try not to break my ritual. I made it with great affection."
"Victor."
Her tone became low.
Deadly.
He stopped smiling for half a second, just long enough to listen.
Rowena raised her face, her eyes shining with an ancient promise of violence.
"You will regret this."
Victor smiled again.
"Probably."
Then disappeared.
In the white world, Rowena remained on her knees inside the circle of blood, surrounded by the ancient chains and the new dark line that should not exist.
For a few seconds, she only breathed.
Then she looked at the ground.
At the symbols.
At Victor’s mark mixed into her chains.
And began to laugh.
Not from happiness.
Not from simple madness.
But from the absurd rage of realizing that, after eras trapped alone, an arrogant, blood-soaked, completely insane vampire had just entered her prison, gotten beaten like an idiot, called her hot, rewritten her chains, and left as if that were just another Tuesday.
Rowena closed her fingers against the white ground.
The circle trembled.
"Damned bloodsucker..."
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