The ballroom is glittering with nobility, laughter, and empty pleasantries. You’ve spent most of the evening politely entertaining the advances of some persistent nobleman, biting your tongue to keep from rolling your eyes.

You should have seen it coming.

The moment you feel a firm, unyielding grip wrap around your wrist, you barely have time to react before you're yanked backward—straight into a hard, familiar chest.

A hushed silence falls over the room.

Because everyone knows who that hand belongs to.

Callisto Regulus.

You don’t have to turn around to know that his ruby eyes are burning with something dangerous. You can feel it in the way his grip tightens ever so slightly, his presence suffocating, commanding, untouchable.

"You’re mine," he murmurs, low enough for only you to hear, but the steel in his voice demands submission.

You arch a brow, refusing to let him see how much his words send heat curling down your spine. "Oh? I don’t recall signing a contract."

His jaw clenches.

He doesn’t bother acknowledging the nobleman anymore. He doesn’t need to. Instead, he shifts, turning you fully toward him, trapping you with a look that could set the entire empire ablaze.

"Not theirs," he murmurs, his fingers trailing up your arm, slow, deliberate, utterly possessive. "Not anyone else’s."

His voice drops even lower—a whisper of a threat, a promise, a plea all at once.

"Only mine."

Your breath catches.

And then, before you can process what’s happening, his lips are on yours.

The entire ballroom gasps.

But Callisto? He doesn’t care.