Succubus Diaries: 10. Whispers and the Return of Danger

By dawn, the house was still. The merchant and the soldiers had been ushered out with trembling legs and slack smiles, their coin purses lighter, their bodies marked by something they would never be able to explain.

She should have felt shame. She should have felt fear. Instead, as she leaned back against her door, sweat drying on her bare skin, she felt a slow, heavy satisfaction.

The hunger was silent for the first time in weeks. Her body still hummed from the echoes of it, her thighs sore, her lips tender, but her blood ran steady again.

She had fed. Truly fed. And she had survived it.

But the house hadn’t.

By afternoon, whispers stirred in the parlor. The girls she’d inherited along with the brothel were curious, wide-eyed, exchanging glances when they thought she wasn’t looking. One of them, a red-haired courtesan named Celeste, caught her in the hall and whispered, “They said you didn’t just bed them—you broke them.”

The words weren’t accusa