my abdomen, and Wynn’s stern gaze followed the motion.
“Stay away from me.”
“I can’t have you pregnant with that assassin’s seed. Gods only know what that would do to this process.” His hands reached for my face, and I sank my teeth into the fleshy part of his palm. He barked out a curse, but didn’t drop the imperit. With his free hand, he covered my nose, forcing my mouth open, and dumped the tonic down my throat. Sticky heat burned like whiskey, and I swallowed the medicine with a sob.
“Asshole.”
He tossed the vial to the side and settled before me. “Let’s get to it. We’ll start with the obvious. If you feel any inkling to submit, I’d suggest you do so early.”
Ravenous light showered from his frame, reaching out toward me and licking up my exposed legs. I hated that something so beautiful felt all too violating. Transforming into a statue, he sat mere inches from me. Palms up toward the heavens. Chin angled to his chest.
His light turned smothering, flattening me against the smooth wall of the cell. My mind rewound to the first time I’d seen Wynn tame a creature. His light had been so entrancing. A reminder of the sun-kissed afternoons we used to spend lying in the open wheat field beside our cottage. When had his buttery, yellowed-white light shifted to something so stark? It used to be so calm. Soothing. Now…it was almost sinister. As if something had tainted the purity of his color.
Burying the memory, I tipped my head to the ceiling. “Either you’ve gotten worse, or you’ve forgotten how to tame.”
His light slashed against me. Heated welts rose to the surface of my forearms. Still, he didn’t speak. We sat like that for hours. Me, entirely unaffected by his attempts. Him, burning like the center of the sun. His light was all wrong. Intense from sheer power, but completely devoid of love. Devotion. He was trying too hard to snuff out my last shred of humanity with false brilliance.
Sleep teased my senses, but the incessant static from his beast would not allow a respite. So my mind wandered where it shouldn’t have—right back to Noc.
My chest heaved, and Wynn twitched. A misperceived sign of submission. Closing my eyes, I rested my head against the wall. The gaping hole in my chest was endless and ribbed with bloodstained daggers. Being with Noc in Nepheste’s Ruins was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. We had merged. A true and real connection. A bond stronger than anything I had with my beasts. With any other person.
But he hadn’t listened. His actions had brought me here. And the very thing that gave me hope was now a snaking, angry current pulling me under. I was drowning in him.
Tears squeezed through my tightly pressed lids. I wanted to rip my mind apart and remove every image of both these men who’d hurt me so badly.
The sudden absence of light brought me back, and I peeled my eyes open. Before I could react, Wynn pulled handcuffs from his belt and locked my wrists together. Guiding them above my head, he attached them to a metal hook in the wall.
I jerked against him, glaring. “Was that really necessary?”
He snarled back, “I can’t have you fighting me. You’ve done enough of that already.” Reaching for his other hip, he pulled a curved blade from a worn leather sheath. Polished clean, the silver edge taunted me.
As if the blade wasn’t threatening enough, he pulled another vial out of his pocket. Viscous liquid glowed an eerie scarlet, and he doled a small amount over the knife. It sank into the silver and left an iridescent gleam. “Uloox venom. I’m sure you know what it does.”
My blood ran cold. Uloox venom was downright lethal. That damn poison would cause my muscles to seize and cloud my mind. Between that and the jarring static still pealing through my cell, there was no hope of holding on to my thoughts. And I had no way of stopping him.
He reignited his lure, and the stone walls reverberated with the sudden influx of light. The carving knife glimmered.
“When she found the spell for saving our kind, she also discovered a number of forbidden texts. Scraps of dark practices and magic left behind from some of our exiled brethren. Bloodletting to weaken the resolve—a reminder that the world outside the realm is a cruel and unfair thing. It was used to tame a monster from Kitska Forest.” Eyes devoid of