It will be worse with him,she thought, dread bubbling under the foreign heat in her blood.When he leaves, it will hurt more.
But why? He had been kind to her, but others had as well. He was no different than anyone else.
Except he was. For reasons that mystified her, Josephine felt a tether between them, pulling tighter with every minute they sat together.
Why was her breath so short? It wasn’t fear that pinched her lungs, but Josephine had no name for the feeling that gripped her when he spoke to her in the rolling, accented timbre.
Dangerous. Everything about him is dangerous.
“No.” She fought the urge to shake her head, knowing on some level that it would not clear it of the strange fog clouding her thoughts. “No, I don’t want to know.”
“Then I will tell you when you ask me for my name.”
“I won’t.”
“How much time do we have today?”
Josephine blinked, taken off guard by the segue. “Six hours. Tomorrow I will be here for twelve.”
“Then by the end of the day tomorrow, you will say my name.” He said it with such confidence, such ease, that she was momentarily taken aback.
“I— no, Iwon’t.”
“Why not?”
Angry and sorrowful at once, Josephine pressed the tips of her fingers into her forehead to block the sight of him. “Because you willhateme when you leave. I do not want to remember the name of one of the few men who has ever been kind to me when I know a week from now you will wish you’d gutted me.”
What levity had been in the air evaporated.“Never,Josephine!”
She felt the words like the crack of a belt across her back. Josephine flinched, her bravery gone, and turned away from him, instinctively presenting her side and the curve of her shoulder rather than her vulnerable front.
The beast held very still inside of her, frozen with a confusing mixture of apprehension, hurt, and outrage. That part of her couldn’t understand why he would speak to her that way, but the rational mind, the woman, was not surprised.
The shifter was not her friend. Either he would figure that out now or later, it was all the same. It was for the best that he had given her a reminder to not get comfortable. Still, it hurt.
Across the cell, she heard him suck in a sharp breath. The chains made their awful music, closer this time, as if he was attempting to crawl toward her, when he rasped, “I’m sorry,kone.It’s been too long since I was around submissives. I forgot that raising my voice would— I should not have done it. It won’t happen again, I promise.”
When she didn’t answer, but instead curled closer to the wall, he made a pained sound in the back of his throat. That single note plucked at something inside of her, though she was at a loss as to what exactly it was.
“I was upset because I don’t understand what’s happening,” he explained. “And when you talk like I will hurt you, it hurtsme.I don’t know why you think this,kone.Please explain it to me.”
Josephine breathed deeply, girding herself, before she answered, “We are in stage one, when my father tests to see if exposure to my air will infect you. After tomorrow, we will be in stage two, where he will see if contact will infect you. When that doesn’t work, we will go into stage three.”
There was a hesitant sort of interest in his voice when he asked, “What’s stage three?”
Her stomach turned, at odds with the urgent, almost pleasurable way the gland in the roof of her mouth pulsed. That pressure built until she felt soreness in the roots of her small fangs.
It seemed that for the first time,onepart of her was eager for stage three. That eagerness both shocked and disgusted her.
“Stage three,” she said, voice thick, “is the bite.”
There was a long pause. When he finally spoke, his voice was markedly huskier than before. “You will bite me,kone?”
“No.” The word burst from her, vehement and full of pain. “I refuse. I always refuse.”
“Then why—”
“Papa demands it, but I won’t. I don’t care what he does to me. I won’t do it, especially not to a shifter.” She began to breathe faster, her heartbeat worked into a frenzy at the prospect of what was to come. “I can’t. I know what happens because I overheard Harrod talking about it. I won’t do it. I don’t care that it means I get the needle. I don’tcare.”
