If she didn’t value her own survival, she would have found a way to end her life long ago. It would have made sense. Ending Harrington’s blood supply would endanger him. It would hurt Visage. But when it came down to it, she hadn’t been able to do it. Though if he said one more thing about fucking açaí berries, she might reconsider smashing her brain in with a free weight.
“Reyna, you seem absent today,” Harrington said. It was a warning.
“You haven’t turned on the machine.”
“It can wait a few minutes.”
“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” the nurse said.
Reyna shot her a look that saidWhose side are you on?But it was a stupid question. The nurse worked for Visage. That’s whose side she was on.
“Explain to me where your head is.”
“Not caring about my diet,” she got out.
“And why not? I think it’s very important that you—”
“Stop,” Reyna told him. “Just stop it.”
He arched an eyebrow. She should have seen the warning in it, but she was beyond that. Between the dream and her isolation and the needles, she was losing it. She couldn’t hold it together today. She couldn’t sit here and have this murderous jackass lecture her on proper nutrition.
“What is this?” he asked, gesturing to her as if she were a strange specimen he couldn’t figure out.
“Thisis a human being. An actual human being. I’m not your science project. I’m not even your blood bag. I am a human. I live and breathe and feel, and right now I’m feeling pretty pissed. So turn the machine on, because I’d like to get high in peace without you fucking ruining everything with your stupid fucking speeches.”
“Reyna,” he growled low.
But she wasn’t finished. “And you know what, I can’t seem to care about anything. Definitely not about you and your goddamn diet or this fucking place or this fucking prison cell. I’m concentrating on surviving. On dealing with these fucking needles and not wanting to smash your fucking face in.”
“Sir, maybe we should give her the venom now,” the nurse said quickly.
“Leave it off,” Harrington snapped at the nurse.
The edge to his voice and the lethal cut of his eyes said that she’d gone too far. The nurse retreated. The machine stayed off.
Harrington stood, towering over her, and she shrank back in her seat. She knew a predator when she saw one. His physical presence was demanding enough, but it was the sadistic brain behind that mask that terrified her. That made her literally quake in her seat.
He reached forward and without preamble ripped out both of her IVs.
Chapter Three
Reyna screamed.
From the pain and the shock and the needles that had been in her arms…and the blood. She gagged at the sight of it.
Harrington’s hand closed over her throat as he pushed her roughly back against the chair. Her eyes locked onto his, and she remembered exactly who was standing over her. Exactly how much she had fucked up.
“You are not invincible here, Reyna. You are not actually a queen of this domain. You are here at my whim, and you will find that if you do not cooperate, your life could become much more unpleasant. Do you understand?”
She choked out a garbled, “Yes.”
He removed the pressure from her throat, and she coughed and sputtered as air filled her lungs again. That was going to bruise.
Harrington swiped a finger over one of her open wounds, then brought it to his lips, tasting her openly. For a clinical man who saw a scientific process in all their interactions and treated her more like a treasured pet than anything, she had never seen him so…wild. It was the only way to put it. Even when she had been furious and screamed and cried in the beginning, he had sat calmly by and watched it all as if it were a television show. Some melodrama he could dissect later.
But this was the monster behind the facade. His true nature. The vampire.
“You may be a very rare match, Reyna, but that does not mean you are irreplaceable. Right this moment, the Blood Census is registering people all over this nation. The city is already complete, and soon it will cover the nation, then the world,” he said menacingly. “I will find more of you yet.”
