Изменить стиль страницы

They tied her wrists together with rough, hard movements that bit the rope into her soft skin. Her hands started fighting against the rope anyways until she, felt her skin breaking. Only then did she stop, hanging her head in defeat.

Daniel paced around the fire. “Tonight is a great night for our people. Not only will you have a new queen, but I will finally have my mate.”

Cassie’s stomach lurched and bile rose up her throat. She swallowed it back down.

Daniel stopped in front of her. His smile had her cringing away from him, standing as far against the wooden post as she could get.

He grabbed her face in two hands then slammed his mouth down on hers. Cassie did the first thing she thought to, and opened her mouth and bit him. He pulled back with a hiss then landed a wide, open-palmed slap against her cheek.

The crowd grew quiet around her, watching her and Daniel with weary eyes.

“Take her clothes off,” he ordered to the guards. They didn’t hesitate. They pulled out knifes and started cutting at her shirt and pants. She gritted her teeth and swore to herself not to cry. Be strong.

 “As if that would stop me from cutting the dog out of you.” His cruel words were a shock even to her. A reminder just how low he was.

Once again donning a smile for the crowd, he said, “Come on everyone, turn on the music. Tonight is a night for celebration. She has come back to us. To celebrate this fantastic occasion, I shall mate with your queen here for all eyes to see.”

Cassie paled. Her nakedness in front of the crowed was disgusting, humiliating enough. But he was going to...

She shuddered and lifted her chin. He would not best her this night or any others. Free me, her eyes dared, glowing with anger.

“I will kill you,” she said in a quavering, powerful voice. Daniel spun to her and grinned as his eyes trailed down her body.

“Then I will lock you up and ensure that you never have that chance, my darling Cassandra.” Cassie leveled a hard gaze at him. She would not go out without a fight. She would fight for herself, and she would fight for Darien. Because she loved him so much that the thought of never seeing him again was like acid burning over her heart. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t live like that.

“Untie me and let me fight for my freedom.” Daniel held his side as a loud laugh bellowed out of him. He stalked close to her, still chuckling. He pushed his body hard against hers. She kept her body still but couldn’t stop from twitching when suddenly his voice was in her ear.

“Your freedom has never been in your hands, Cassandra. It’s been in mine since you were only a wee thing. Do you want to know how startled your father looked when I stabbed him in the heart?”

Cassie jerked and looked at him with disbelieving eyes. His were wild and wide, his expression evil with insanity.

“My father committed suicide, because he missed my mother too much.” Her words were weak and soft even to her own ears.

He gripped her chin in a bruising grip and kissed her hard. When she opened her mouth to bite him again, he pulled back with a delighted chuckle. “Your father never committed suicide, Cassandra. He loved you too much for that, no matter how much he missed your stupid mother. No, I killed him.”

There was no stopping the sudden, horrible pain that stabbed through her heart like a stake. Tears filled her eyes. For so long, she’d thought....

“Why?” she asked hoarsely.

His mouth fell into a flat line. “Besides the fact that I hated him? He always had everything I wanted. The beautiful wife, the good daughter...it should have been mine. Didn’t your father ever tell you that she was with me first?”

Cassie shook her head side to side in his grip, tears falling loosely down her cheeks. Her mother died that night. Pieces started pulling together like a puzzle.

“Did you...kill her too?” He pulled back and looked at her with dead, vacant eyes. He did. He didn’t need to say it. Cassie tore her head away from him and bellowed her grief to the night. Cries shook through her. A part of her realized the clan had quieted, the music stopped, and everyone was looking at her curiously.

In that moment, she wanted to kill them all. She wanted to rip Daniel’s heart out for killing her parents, for destroying the family she should have had, and she wanted to burn his useless clan for standing by and doing nothing.

She thought of her father, of the pictures he’d shown her of her mother. That’s where she’d gotten her red hair from, her father had said. You have my eyes, and your mom’s hair. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world, doll. Those were his last words to her on the night he’d died. He’d tucked her into bed, kissed her on the forehead, and left.

A power filled her. A serene calm that cooled the fire in her blood, and the rage in her heart to a tranquil level. She looked out over the clan, at Daniel, at the guard’s who’d tied her up. She memorized their faces and made sure they’d remember hers.

“My father made one mistake in his life. He trusted this man Daniel. In giving him his trust, his wife was murdered, and then he was in return. As the ultimate payback, he now tries to have his daughter—the worse revenge to a man like my father. I want all of you to know that the will that binds me to Daniel is wrong, and that any of you who stay here tonight will either spend the rest of your lives rotting in a Justicar’s prison, or will die by my own hand.”

Murmurs and whispers broke out among the crowd. She had to speak up to be heard over it. “Leave now and I will not pursue you in any way, but if you stay and support this murderer, then I will not rest until you are dead beside his cold body.”

The crowd grew restless, looking from her to Daniel. Then, slowly, people started to edge away. Daniel roared and grabbed one of them, a woman. He snatched her by the hair and pulled a long knife out.

“Leave and she dies,” he growled. The crowd came back. No longer were there whispers or even smiles.

Good, Cassie thought, his people should be afraid of him. They had no idea just how mad he was.

“That’s it,” Daniel said, turning to her with anger blazing in his eyes. “We finish the mating ceremony now! Guards, if anyone tries to leave, kill them.”

Daniel stalked back to her. The first time he touched her, had her cringing. The next, she clamped her mouth shut and held her body rigid. He will die for this.

His hands found her breasts, her hips, between her legs. She blinked quickly as he started taking off his shirt with quick, jerky movements. The mating ceremony did not require sex, merely the blood exchange to bond the individuals together. Most couples did have sex while mating, to share the experience at the most intense and wonderful of levels.

His cold pale eyes found her. “Will you beg me not to touch your body?” His hands fell to his jeans and he unbuttoned them, then pulled down the zipper. “Will you beg me to stop?” Cassie stared into his eyes and said nothing.

A sudden, heart-pounding howl ripped through the night. Cassie’s heart stuttered in her chest so hard, she gasped. He’s here! Darien. Her body broke out into a sweat and she fought against her ropes, no longer feeling the biting pain of the cuts in her wrists.

Everyone whipped to see what made that sound, but she knew. She held her chin higher and worked at the ropes. Her real mate was here. She could have laughed in that moment. She’d worried before that Daniel could hurt her lykaen. Impossible, her mate was a primitive beast.

She heard another growl, this one so loud it echoed into the forest around them. She almost smiled.

There was a commotion at the back of the clan. Cassie strained to see him, to see anything, but heads blocked her way. Suddenly, there was a grunting sound, and then a guard went soaring impossibly high into the air. He landed across the other side of the clan with a bone-cracking landing.