Perhaps she enjoyed allowing that false sense of security to blanket around him that he so found comfort within her absence. But had she truly gone? He had truly forged his own empire from the ruins of another as he crafted his own kingdom from the bones of the weak. Tetradore was a fighter, she expected nothing less from her panther, but he acted on his emotions and let it consume him and that was his weakness. She would harden that shell around his heart once more, make him stronger than he ever was without the vampire woman.

In that very moment, they were mirror images on each other, draped across their own thrones of bones, after all, they had not gotten where they were without corpses in their wake. She tapped a long slender finger, noting his lack of promptness was notable and disappointing. Oh, how he fought with all his own willpower to struggle against that undeniable pull. But try as he might those hooks were in him deep, and that sway she had over her cats still flowed strongly through her. The more he fought, the stronger that pull. Surely her sway was stronger with him, it always had been, since she forged him from a youngling. Intentionally built those calluses upon his skin and fashioned that unbreakable link that had years upon years of time to be reinforced to the ends of time. Even after it all, he still fought her and even still he was her greatest masterpiece. As much as his insubordination irked her, it amused her, drawing in that twisted fascination with her panther that she so liked to test, even with his attempts to deny her. It was a sick and twisted game that fed into the other, even if he wanted to deny it, there was no escape from it. There was no escape from her, no, not really. Not even the truth death would offer him that. She made sure of it. There was a devilish humour to it all that only wicked fiend could find.

When Tetradore had finally bothered to show, she could feel this very presence. The sway she possessed over felines and his energy. Within that office there was a thick, static tension that billowed from her, her suffocating power filled up the entire, room, no, the entire building. She lets that power brush against her once obedient preferred obsidian cat. The man that lead Tetradore averted his eyes from the vampire queen, bowing his head respectfully, not daring to anger the fickle cruelty she often executed. Oh how she wielded it well, like a second fluent language of terror and fear.

Tetradore wore his perfectly placed concrete mask, created of his self-made deluded sense of control, so carefully positioned there upon unsteady ground. The feline goddess knew how to make it crumble and yet he still attempted his control and she decided to allow him to cling to his safety blanket, for now. With an idle flick of her slender pale hand, that skin like moonstone, taking on a luminous quality of its own, she dismissed the other man who lead him here, deep within the den. It was almost amusing to watch him scramble off, closing the door behind him as smoothly as the burly man could muster, she could sense his nervousness as it was palpable. A tiger with a brittle nerve. There was a sick humour to it.

Sit.. that one word was all she said, and the two were hardly alone with the black panther with lilac eyes that lay perfectly content at her feet, in the hollowed nook beneath her desk. "Do you really wish to begin this way, Tetradore?" She cooed, her words like a serpent seeking to ensnare prey, her voice smooth like the satin skin and colder than death. Those very words held an unspoken threat, all whilst being deviously amused at the same time. A wicked little smirk dancing upon her lips, that look within her multifaceted pale blue eyes was perfectly smug, calculating and knowing as they devour him from where he stood.

The blue-black haired vampire queen watched him in that predatory way, sensing every breath, every twitch of his muscle, every expression. She could peel him apart to see that very heart beat its pace, every single beat, even the very one that might have skipped despite the careful resolve he so desperately clung to. It was amusing how he still tried take his own slice of control, even now.

She still sat there, perfectly poised, eerily unmoving, barely breathing. She hardly looked human, more like something terrifying and unnervingly god-like. "Well if you are going to remain standing, you might as well greet me, properly." A sultry queen expecting to be obeyed and nothing less. There is an underlying dark undertone, impatience flickering obscuring behind every word. If he was so dead set on holding onto that control he would pay, didn't he always? How familiar this whole scene was, how quickly old habits clicked back into place.

"You remember how to do that still, don't you? Please don't tell me you have forgotten all your training, kitten?" There was a dark flash in those pale eyes, as she readjusted in her seat leaning forward and tracing that silver tipped finger to scrap across that table in a sick kind of anticipation, her words baiting him. How she would delight in reminding him of their training, after all they had a lot to catch up on. Didn't he realize that the more he fought her, the more she would push and bend and break? He was most certainly the most tenacious creature she had ever known. But that only fueled the fire and added to her entertainment.

Surely he would be her puppet once more.

Risque

just face the moon and put your death mask on