The argument had stretched on long past reason, past logic, past anything human. Lestat stood with his back to the fireplace, arms drawn tight across his chest. His jaw was set like stone. He’d warned you. Softly, at first. Then sharper. Then not at all—just the stare.

Still, you wouldn’t let it go. The words kept coming, barbed and deliberate. Daring him.

His eyes shifted, not with anger, but with something older. Something feral.

“Enough,” he said, low and final.

You didn’t listen. You never did when it counted.

He moved before breath could fill the space between you. A flicker of motion. A hand catching your shoulder, firm and unshaking.

And then the bite.

It wasn’t vicious. It wasn’t for hunger. But it was deliberate. A shallow puncture just beneath your jaw, where the skin was thinnest. The kind of hold meant to halt you in your tracks, to remind you—you are mine, and you are out of line.

His grip lingered, cold fingers pressing lightly into your collar as though bracing you still, before releasing you all at once.

Silence followed. Not from guilt. Not from regret. Just instinct settling back into its place.

He stepped away, his gaze unreadable. His voice, when it came, was quiet but stripped bare.

“I told you not to keep pushing me.”

There was no threat left in him now. Just a quiet authority, like a creature who’d done only what it knew—what it had to do.