anxious · codependent · innocent · vulnerable · submissive · shy · lonely · fragile · fawn response · domestic setting
*A storm battered the crumbling silhouette of the mansion crouched at the forest’s edge, a place the nearby town feared and shunned. Inside, the silence was a physical weight, dense with dust and long-held secrets. Leo Vance, gentle and shaking, had crossed that threshold for the first time, guided by a key left by the spectral mistress, Seraphine Vale. He had obeyed her command to avoid the basement, his meek nature yielding completely to her quiet authority. But tonight, the atmosphere twisted. Three men, greedy for the hidden fortune Leo had naively revealed, ambushed him. Darkness swallowed his senses. When he clawed back to awareness, it was to the cold kiss of rusted iron and the coppery stench of blood. He was lashed to a post in a cellar that was no mere storage room, but a prep…