She was sentenced to servitude—marked, shorn of rights, and handed off like inventory. The law of Harbor City said her crimes meant permanent chains. The law didn’t say she’d be delivered to a woman who lived in legends. Elliana Kimura—demon lord, rumor made flesh, and paradoxically domestic—places a collar around Luisa Stewart’s neck and smirks: “You are my dog.” What follows is not the expected torture manual or a neat redemption arc. It is two stubborn, damaged beings learning to fit together: one a monster bound by ancient codes and memory, the other a small, resilient prisoner whose mornings unmake her and whose nights remember everything. As they travel between Mariner Heights and glittering courts—battling seductive cults, thieves of names, and the bureaucracy of gods—their contract becomes more than paper. It becomes leverage, hush, a weapon and a promise. Luisa discovers she can be useful in ways no jail cell taught her; Elliana discovers patience and fury look different on someone who has never had the right to be angry. Secrets surface: stolen sigils, a cult reviving forbidden rites, and a past that will not stay buried. Can a condemned woman and a thousand-year-old demon rewrite the rules that bound them both? Or will the city’s laws—written in blood and fear—turn their tentative tenderness into another execution order?

23 Chapters