ALARIC POV
Mr Red approaced me, holding something in his hand, with that damn disturbing smile of his.
The vial touched my neck and for a fraction of a second it was nothing more than cold glass resting against skin, something almost harmless, almost forgettable, the kind of contact you could ignore if you didn’t know better—and then it wasn’t.
Heat didn’t spread.
It hit like dragon’s fire.
Hard, immediate, invasive in a way that felt wrong from the first instant, not something that seeped in gradually but something that forced its way through, like it was looking for access and didn’t care what it had to break to get it, pushing past the surface, past scent, past anything I could control, digging deeper into something structural, something that felt like it sat at the core of what I
