“Is this the real you?” He almost purrs the words. “The ferocity hidden behind the bowed head and lowered eyes all those years? I should have killed you from the start.”
“Don’t…” I say groggily, pulling myself together. Reality is rushing back. “Don’t hurt him!”
Conri’s hand is like a viper. It whips out and closes around my throat. I croak weakly. His eyes have found emotion again—a singular one, rage. “His life depends on you. On your compliance. And you are trying my patience.”
Evander roars behind us. But I can’t make out the words. The world has narrowed to Conri and I. To the fist around my throat, quivering with temptation. It would be so easy for him to squeeze and snuff out my whole existence.
As long as I breathe, there is hope.
I might not be able to see it with the tunnel vision closing around my eyes. But I can feel it. I can let it fill my lungs and rush through my blood. Hope will be my defiance.
“What will it be?” Conri growls, pulling my face close.
“Take me to the grove,” I say, though the words are ash in my mouth. “And take me as your wife.”
“Good.” Conri releases me and starts to leave, pausing at the entrance. A wicked glint flashes in his eyes as he looks back to the alpha still waiting. “Take him, too.”
“What?” I can’t tell if it’s Evander or me who says it. The rattling of his chains stops as he ceases to strain against them.
“I want him to watch as I take his woman in soul.” Conri slowly walks back, stopping at my side. I resist every urge to step away, even though my muscles scream at me to run. I’m afraid even flinching might give him even more sinister ideas. But my-self control does little good. Conri has skewered us, and now he twists the blade. “Then, I’ll force him to watch with the rest as I fill her belly with my seed, her screams a chorus to the great wolf spirit.”
Conri’s arm slips around my waist but I hardly feel it; my whole body is numb. I am hardly aware of him pulling me from the room, passing the knights and brushing by the alphas who stay behind to tend to Evander. All I hear are the sounds of Evander’s shouts and the rattling—endless rattling—of the chains that keep him from me.
CHAPTER 46
Conri takesme back to his chambers. He says nothing of what happened. Nothing at all.
Neither does Aurora. Upon seeing us, she stands from her place at the hearth, eyes darting between us. Her chin dips slightly, brow shading her gaze in an utterly sinister manner. She knows everything without my having to say a word.
She stands there, silent, as Conri calls in women. I can’t tell if I don’t actually recognize them, or if my mind is too far from the present to place their faces. Even as they touch me, stripping my clothes to expose my skin to the chill of the caves, I continue to stare into the distance—at a singular point that I vow to myself I will one day see:
Evander and me together, underneath a redwood, swearing our fealty to each other before gods old and new. Spirits known and forgotten.
That is the world I place my mind in. A world of light. Of hope. A truth that I know will come to pass because the moment I waver in that conviction, the nightmare begins to close around me, shuttering out my options and smothering my will.
When the women are finished with me, my hair is woven with ribbons, braids pulling half into a basketlike weave. Theother half is loose, oiled, and teased into finger-curls. Perfume clouds the air around me with the delicate aroma of the wildflowers that dot the plains. An almost translucent, plain white shift covers my shoulders and arms, extending down to mid-thigh, just above my knees. It does little to fight against the cold, but I don’t shiver, I’m far too numb.
But I return to the present in a rush the moment they try and take my cape from me. Take whatever they want, but not my family’s legacy and my sole inheritance. Luckily, they don’t fight me over my insistence on keeping it.
There’s no time to.
I’m being ushered out of the back bedroom. Aurora is waiting with knights. But Conri is nowhere to be seen. We are escorted out and into the passageway. I imagine myself to be a soldier, marching off to war.
A year passes between Conri’s room and the entrance to the grove. And yet, somehow it’s over in a blink. The grove is lit by dozens of candles that line the pathway down to the grassy clearing.
The packs fill the spaces between the trees. Lykin look on with curious expressions.Will it really happen? Will our wolf king marry a human?they seem to ask with their eyes. Alphas have been given the most prime locations, on the lower ridge surrounding the clearing where Conri waits.
He wears a wrap of fur that looks distinctly wolfish. Are they the pelts of actual wolves, or of lykin? The latter thought makes my stomach churn. Such a thing would be akin to wearing a cape made of human skin.Surely, he would not… What am I thinking? This is Conri. Heabsolutelywould wear the skin of his fallen foes.
The gap between us closes, though I don’t have a recollection of walking to him. My feet betray every scream of my heart asthey come to a stop at the edge of the large, flat stone he stands upon. Conri extends a hand to me.
I allow him to help me up, adjusting my stance on the boulder that feels more and more like a sacrificial altar than rock. He turns to Aurora next and she takes his hand. Somewhere between Aurora stepping up and her taking her place on Conri’s other side, a soft clanking draws my attention.
Evander is here, and the sight of him returns fire to my flesh. Heat fighting against the numbing chill. Conri made good on his sinister design. Evander’s chains are held by three knights. More surround him. He’s been gagged, a wad of cloth shoved into his mouth and strapped there. Rage furrows his brow and desperation widens his eyes.
Even if we both knew what was about to happen…the moment is nearly unbearable. This is somehow worse than that empty cabin Evander left behind for me to find. Then, the unknown was what tortured me. All that space of nothing that my mind could fill with any explanation. Some worse. Some easier. But all could be banished in time. None of it solid with reality.
This…is happening. It will become a memory that will be forever seared onto our consciousness. There is no escaping what is about to happen. The point of no return for us both. I run my fingers along the edges of my cape, the familiar seaming offering comfort more than protection.
