Devotion Novels & Stories

"I bet what you're doing to me right now is hurting you more than it's hurting me." "Shut up." "Why?" Annie's voice grew stronger. "Because I'm telling the truth?" She took a shaking breath. "You love me, Belarie. You love me. You love—" "Stop!" Belarie clapped his hands over his ears like a child trying to block out a nightmare. His eyes squeezed shut. "Stop saying that!" "What you feel for Annitore isn't love," Annie said, and her voice was gentler now, almost pleading. "It's devotion. Obsession. It's gratitude for her sacrifice. You've let that gratitude consume you for five centuries."

Riven said lowly, “if you say ‘we don’t know’—” “We know some,” Saint interrupted. “The bond adapts to its host. With Luca, it’s not feeding on guilt.” “Then what?” Luca asked. Saint looked at him carefully. “Devotion.” The word landed heavily. Riven’s hand stilled. Luca frowned. “Devotion to what?” Saint’s gaze flicked—just once—to Riven. The room went quiet. Wolf straightened slowly. “You’re saying the thing inside him is tethering itself to—”

Even though she had never attended college, Nicholas had made an unprecedented exception by allowing her to work beside him, becoming increasingly indulgent toward her. Over three years, Madison had barely worked at all, while he and Brandon had both been extraordinarily devoted to her. Yet, with me, his actual girlfriend, he had even... Nicholas didn't even dare to think any further. Madison glanced at him, panicking when she noticed his silence. She didn't know when it started, but lately, both Nicholas and Brandon had grown cold toward her. They definitely hadn't been like this before. Madison wondered—didn't they dislike me? She was just one step away from being able to replace me.

“You know I could make all this go away. I can make the charges disappear, but I’m going to need something from you first.” I knew what it was before he even said it. “Sign the papers,” he leaned down to tuck a strand of hair from my face while maintaining eye contact with me. “And then disappear from my life, forever.” He said it with so much certainty that I felt like he had driven a stake clean through my heart, impaling me with his words. I blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of it all before it finally settled in my head. Curtis Blackwood was the fucking devil.

“You are safe here.” She remembered scoffing internally. Safe had become a word people used too easily. “Devotion Assurance is designed to support clarity, purpose, and emotional alignment,” the voice continued. “Participation is voluntary. You may disengage at any time.” A pause. “Do you wish to proceed?” Mara had hesitated. She told herself she was just tired. That this was no different from meditation protocols, from the grounding exercises Rowan himself had once taught during a brutal winter. “Yes,” she had said.

But beneath the steel in his voice was something else. Strain. Because if this were easy for him, the words would not weigh so heavily. “True devotion,” he finished, “is proven not in the absence of feeling… but in the mastery of it.” Silence. Then soft applause as he stepped back. Applause. As though he had delivered a beautiful, noble teaching. As though he hadn’t just drawn a line through my chest. Mass continued. I stood, knelt and responded automatically. But my mind replayed every word.

The world feels frozen. Like the end of the world rests on my shoulders. In this minute, everything can change. No one seems to move once I start speaking. The clouds open up and lightning strikes. I’m running out of time. “Devotion isn’t about your soulmate. It comes from so much more. From the bond created to cement a life beyond what we all thought was possible. From friendship that has a power to destroy a person once their gone. Devotion to a mother that could transpire the grave. To the ability to stay friends with the nobody, everybody else hated. To a bond so strong you stayed by her side and helped her find her way home

I gave myself to it, to him, because I trusted him in ways that made my chest ache. “Mine,” he growled softly, forehead pressed to mine as his hand slid over my waist. “Always mine.” “Yes,” I breathed, the word tumbling out unbidden. “Always.” What followed blurred into fire and need, into the kind of intimacy that made the rest of the world fall away. Devon’s dominance was steady, unyielding, yet laced with a tenderness that made me tremble. He pushed, yes, teased and claimed and reminded me with every movement that I was his but he also worshiped, as though every inch of me deserved his devotion.

He holds it in front of me, silent, waiting. I close my eyes. The silk settles over them with a softness that contrasts with the hands that place it — firm, calloused, absolutely certain. The knot behind my head is adjusted with precision that doesn’t tighten but allows no doubt. The world disappears. “Yes, my treasure,” he murmurs, voice rough and low against my ear. “Now you don’t see. You only feel. And I’m going to make you feel every fucking thing I want.” The Devotion What remains are sounds — light rain outside, gentle wind entering through the dome, Declan’s breathing closer than my eyes would tell me. And smells — cold stone, Irish night air, and him.