climb up on the altar, and straddle his waist.
I gasped when I realized what was about to happen, and a new sense of horror tightened my lungs.
“Oh God. Stop. Stop this,” I shrieked, fighting harder. “Please. Stop this!”
The room became absolutely silent as the woman lowered herself to his lap. Luc bit his lip and went still as stone. But his eyes were tightly shut, his face turned as far from me as he could turn it. And his straining features, the torment on his face... I knew this wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t what he’d agreed to. It wasn’t pleasurable for him in any way.
“The only person who can stop this is you,” Luc’s father said in a low voice at my side.
The blonde sighed and began to move.
Sickness surged up my throat, and I looked away, struggling not to pass out. “I’ll do it. Whatever you want. Just... stop this insanity. Please.”
“What we want,” Luc’s mother said in a calm voice at my other side, “is for Luciano to take his rightful place with this family and this House, willingly and without protest.”
My stomach pitched all over again. There was no way that would happen. Luc hated his family. He hated what he’d been born into—an ancient patriarchal nobility that had ruled the world from the shadows for almost two thousand years. Most didn’t know it existed, but I’d come to believe these last few months. I’d seen the ugly truth with my own eyes.
They were monsters. Sadistic, evil monsters Luc had never wanted to join. Ones I despised with every fiber of my being.
“You’re the only one he listens to,” Luc’s father said in that same lifeless, low voice on my other side. “Agree to bring Luciano back to the family, and these kittens will not fuck him to the end of the ritual.”
My head spun. My heart pounded hard.
The kitten—a woman I knew had been coerced and manipulated through Monarch mind-controlled techniques to disassociate herself so she could release her inhibitions and become the perfect beta sex slave to serve the vile men in this House—moaned and grunted, being as vocal as she could as she rode Luc, jostling his body and rattling his chains. Tears burned my eyes. Misery seared my chest. I swallowed hard to keep from vomiting.
“What will it be?” Luc’s father snapped.
The woman began shrieking in Italian. Words I didn’t even want to try to translate.
I dropped my head, shaking through sobs I couldn’t control. Luc would hate me forever if I made any kind of deal with his sick parents to bring him back to this repulsive family.
“They pumped him full of erectile dysfunction drugs,” his mother whispered in my ear. “And GHB to enhance his arousal. He can go all night like this. I wonder how many of those beta slaves are fertile?”
Oh God, no…
“I’ll do it,” I gasped. A new wave of nausea rolled through me. “I-I’ll bring him back to the family. Just stop this. Stop raping him. He’s your son, for God’s sake.”
A victorious look passed over Luc’s mother’s face as she glanced past me to her husband. Luc’s father simply nodded, clenched his jaw, then motioned to someone below.
I held my breath and looked back down. Another black-draped figure moved around the altar and tapped the woman’s shoulder. She slowed her gyrating long enough to angle toward the figure. Then she nodded, leaned forward, and pressed her mouth against Luc’s as she picked up her pace.
My vision turned red, and that scream inside me burst free. “You bastard! You said you’d stop!” I jerked back even harder on the hands holding me. “You said it would be over!”
Luc’s father’s grip around my wrist squeezed so hard, I grunted and gasped as pain radiated up my arm and slammed into me. But it was his icy words in my ear that brought my fight to a standstill.
“You do not say when, worthless female. I say when. I am the Grand Duke, not you.”
The woman below started screaming, and with her, I heard Luc’s strained grunt as he fought what she was doing to him.
“That kitten is going to fuck him to his release so he remembers his place in this House,” his father sneered down at me. “And when she is finished, the ritual will come to an end. Unless you’d like to challenge me again. In which case, I’ll let each kitten in that room fuck him into delirium, as many times as she wants.”