This is not a gentle love story. It is obsession carved into flesh. Possession that bruises. Love that devours until nothing gentle remains.
This novel dives deep into trauma, madness, and the razor edge between desire and destruction. It contains explicit, intense themes that may be deeply distressing or triggering. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
Potential Triggers Include (but are not limited to):
Threats of sexual violence & coercion Kidnapping, captivity, & physical restraint
Psychological trauma, PTSD, panic attacks, & dyspnea Obsessive/possessive love dynamics (psycho elements, stalking, extreme jealousy)
Emotional manipulation, gaslighting, & betrayal Power imbalances & toxic relationship patterns Parental death, childhood trauma, & family betrayal
Self-harm behaviors & suicidal ideation (including poisoning attempt)
Alcohol abuse & substance coping mechanisms Infidelity themes & prolonged grief/abandonment
Supernatural horror elements tied to family curses & dark rituals Explicit, boundary-pushing sexual content (18+ only; includes non-vanilla, intense, & possessive scenes)
Characters make devastating, irrational choices born from pain this is deliberate, explored without sugarcoating. Healing is jagged, non-linear, and never guaranteed. Love here is raw, consuming, dangerous, and sometimes monstrous.
If any of the above topics are sensitive for you right now, please protect your peace. Your mental health comes first. It's okay to pause, skip chapters, step away entirely, or never read this at all.
Recommended for readers who crave:
Dark romance with psychological depth Slow-burn anguish & obsessive tension
Morally gray, broken characters
Love stories that hurt as much as they heal (or don't)
Supernatural twists laced with family politics & forbidden desire
Proceed only if you're ready to descend into the shadows. Some hearts break beautifully. Others never stop bleeding.
This is the fourth part of Novel "She Ruled Until She Became Mine" to better understand go through that then book two "Fate Broke Us Through Love" and at last book three "Heirs Of Golden Curse".
The chain still cut into Ling's palm every night, even after seven years.
She sat on the edge of the unmade bed in the estate's east wing room untouched since the morning Rhea walked out. The metal links had warmed to body temperature from how long she'd held them, clenched like a promise she never got to keep. Rhea's chain. The one she'd fastened around Rhea's neck that last night, fingers trembling not from nerves but from the sheer violence of wanting to mark her forever.
Ling remembered the click of the clasp more clearly than her own heartbeat.
That sound had felt final in the best way like ownership sealed, like no rival family, no ancient curse, no university lies could ever pry them apart. Rhea had laughed then, soft and reckless, tilting her head so Ling could press her mouth to the pulse beneath the chain. "You're insane," Rhea had whispered, but her hands were already sliding under Ling's shirt, nails digging in like she wanted to leave scars too.
They'd fucked like the world was ending because for them, it always felt like it might. Ling's body, cursed and blessed in equal measure, had claimed Rhea in ways no one else ever could. Deep, possessive thrusts that made Rhea arch and beg and curse her name in the same breath. Ling had come inside her that night, raw and unprotected, whispering promises into sweat-slick skin: 'You're mine. We'll burn them all if they try to take you.'
Morning arrived with no warning.
Rhea had risen first, as always. Ling watched through half-lidded eyes as she stood before the mirror, tying her hair with steady hands that betrayed nothing. The chain glinted against her collarbone like a collar she hadn't yet decided to hate. Rhea caught Ling's gaze in the reflection and smiled sharp, practiced, the one she wore for the Kane family boardrooms and rival heirs who still whispered about their university scandals.
"I have to go," Rhea said, voice clipped. No kiss goodbye. No explanation beyond the lie she'd rehearsed: family business. Politics. The usual poison.
Ling had believed it. Or pretended to. She'd let Rhea walk out the door, chain still around her neck, because love like theirs didn't need goodbyes it was supposed to survive anything.
It didn't.
Months later, the chain came back in an unmarked envelope. No note. Just the metal, cold now, smelling faintly of Rhea's perfume and something sharper betrayal, maybe, or grief. Ling had stared at it for hours before wrapping it around her fist until blood welled between her fingers.
She still wore the scars.
Nights were worse now. The estate's shadows moved differently since Rhea left thicker, hungrier. Ling's bloodline curse whispered louder in the silence: visions of Rhea laughing in someone else's arms, of a life built without her, of a child who might have been theirs if Ling hadn't let pride and family wars swallow everything. Hallucinations clawed at the edges of her mind Rhea's voice moaning her name, then screaming it in accusation. Ling drowned them in whiskey and silence, but they always returned.
Across the world, in a apartment far from Ling, Rhea kept one thing from that life: Ling's black shirt.
She folded it under her pillow now. Some nights she pressed her face into it and inhaled until her lungs burned. Other nights she balled it up and threw it across the room, cursing the woman who'd ruined her for anyone else.
A soft cry came from the next room small, insistent. Rhea rose automatically, moving through the dark like a ghost. In the bed, a six-year-old boy with Ling's sharp jawline and eyes that sometimes flickered with unnatural light stirred, reaching out.
"Mumma," the child murmured, voice sleepy and perfect.
Rhea lifted her, pressing the tiny body to her chest. The boy's heartbeat synced with hers steady, alive, secret.
Seven years of silence. Seven years of pretending the past was dead.
But some loves didn't die.
They waited in the dark, bleeding quietly, until the moment the world forced them back together.
Ling tightened her fist around the chain one last time that night.
Somewhere, miles away, Rhea whispered into their son's hair the name she'd sworn never to say again.
"Ling."
The word tasted like blood and longing.
And neither of them slept.