The heat suppressant has failed.
* * *
My heat hits harderand faster than it ever has before. I don’t know if it’s the suppressant or the stress of the situation I’m in, but my fever burns through me just as we’re finishing dessert. Rad sets the back of his hand to my forehead, and it takes everything in me not to recoil from him.
“It seems my mate-to-be has entered her heat. Allow me to escort her back to her room and tend to her.”
Images flick through his mind, each more gruesome and horrific than the last, but I don’t need to read his thoughts to know what he wants to do with me, how he wants to defile me.
“That won’t be necessary. Willow, see to your sister, would you?”
“She’ll need the attentions of an alpha,” Rad protests, an edge to his voice that scares me.
My father waves his concerns away. “She’s survived without them thus far. I’ll have her nurse here tomorrow to care for her.”
“I thought Juniper and I were to be mated,” Rad pushes.
Willow helps me from my seat, feeling my forehead with the back of her hand just as Rad did.
“We’ve yet to go over the finer points of her mating contract. Be patient, my boy.”
“I have done everything you’ve asked,” Rad all but growls.
“And you will be rewarded. In time.”
Rad’s scent spikes as Willow guides me away from the table, and I catch his thoughts as I stumble from the dining room.
Rad has no intention of heeding my father’s wishes.
He’ll mate me tonight, in the haze of my heat.
CHAPTER24
Despite Aspen and Rad’s warnings, I lock my door. My head pounds, and my womb throbs as my heat overtakes me with punishing brutality. The haze comes as I grip my scribe and curl up against my dresser, directly across from the door. I don’t know what I intend to do with it. I only have a trickle of my magic back—barely enough to cast a spell. I have my affinity, but otherwise, I’m defenseless. The only thing that stands between me and Andrew Radcliffe’s depraved appetites is a locked door I can’t even summon enough magic to ward.
Minutes crawl by, and with each moment that passes, my fear sharpens into something instinctual, something primal and potent. It claws at my heart, making my pulse flutter in my chest. My fever spikes, bringing with it wave after wave of pain in my abdomen. Sweat beads on my brow and between my breasts, until finally I rip off the dress I’d worn to dinner. I stumble into pajama shorts and a tank top, but even the soft cotton feels scratchy against my heat-sensitive skin. I yearn to be bare in my nest, or better yet, skin to skin with my men, but being naked feels far too vulnerable this long Yule night when the most dangerous monster of all lurks just beyond my locked door.
My thoughts are muddled, yet I don’t succumb to the oblivion of my heat. I fight against it, swimming against a deadly current that’s trying to pull me under, every bit of my attention on the door separating me from Rad.
The house settles beyond that door, my family turning in, one by one. Down the hall in the parlor, the old grandfather clock chimes midnight.
Exhaustion makes me shake, and sweat makes my grip around my scribe slip. Bit by bit, my magic trickles back to me, but I’m so fuzzy, so far from myself and my rational mind, that I can’t remember why I needed it. Oblivion beckons, but I shake my head, refusing its call. I have to stay sharp. I have to hone the terror gripping my body and use it to…
The doorknob jiggles, and I bolt upright, my scribe raised.
On the other side of the door, Rad lets out a string of curses.
I cast without thinking, whipping through sigils ingrained in me by hours and hours of training. Magic flies from the tip of my scribe until wards shimmer at my doorway.
“Fucking witch,” Rad snarls, jiggling the knob again. It lights as he tests it with a spell, but I pour more and more of my meager magic into the wards.
I won’t outlast him.
The shimmering wards crack, little hair lines fracturing the wall of sigils, despite the wispy magic trailing from my scribe, and then it’s gone.
My magic is depleted once more.
The knob turns freely, his spell breaking through the lock and my wards all at once.
