While Otto’s tone was pleasant, the insult was clear even to her.
Eyes swinging up to gauge Harrod’s expression, she was shocked to find his pale face reddening. Speaking stiffly, he sneered, “A smart man would know better than to be proud of a scratch he was too stupid to avoid, but then again, you’re an animal, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Josephine’s heart jammed itself into her throat as her eyes swung back to Otto just in time to catch the spread of a slow, terrifying smile. A shiver of awareness danced down her spine. It was the animal staring at Harrod, plain as day, with hunger in his eyes.
“Oh, I’m proud all right, but a man such as yourself will never know the pleasure of a good clawing.”
“Continue speaking, shifter, and I’ll have you muzzled.” Harrod made a dismissive sound and pivoted on his heel. He took her with him as he stomped out of the cell, his face still ruddy and his eyes glittering with anger. It seemed that her mate had pricked a nerve. He might have done much more than that if Harrod understood the double entendre.
As it stood, she was surprised by his jerky movements, how he cast poisonous looks over his shoulder at the cell door. Doctor Harrod Pierce had always seemed rather unflappable, even in his anger. He didn’t flinch when subjects raged at him and he endured her father’s temper, his unreasonable demands, with neither sweat nor complaint.
The only times he seemed moved were recently, as he’d begun to turn his attention toward her, but even that had a cold, almost clinical edge to it.
She never would have guessed that the implication that Harrod was a coward for not fighting on the front lines would vex him so much. It shocked her to realize that perhaps the man who had been a figure of such terror in her life wasinsecure.Weak.
But of course he was, she realized. A man who was sure of his place would not grovel at her father’s feet, nor jump to fulfill his every command. He would not find joy in exerting power over those below him. He would not take great pains to cover his accent, nor in presenting a precise image to the world. He would not exact petty revenge on the bound.
And he certainly wouldn’t force the woman he desired into a union. He wouldn’thaveto.
Josephine looked at him with new eyes as he dragged her out of the barn, his lips pressed into a bloodless line and his grip tight. When he glanced back at her, she no longer felt the compulsion to look away. She met his gaze with the frank stare of one disgusted with a person’s very existence.
The beast wasn’t afraid of him. The woman wasn’t either.
“What?” he snapped, stopping in the middle of the yard. Dry weeds and pebbles crunched under the heel of his fine, if dull, leather shoe when he swiveled around to loom over her.
Thiswas the man who’d tortured her? Locked her in her room? Helped steal the lives of all those her father infected? Demanded she bed him and birth his babies?
He was a limp coward.
Josephine was not entirely sure what came over her then. She got the sense that her fear swept back, opening up a yawning chasm inside of her. What rushed into that empty space was a breathtaking rage and contempt so deep and dark it was practically its own element. Like a drop of ink bleeding into the delicate, interlaced fiber of paper, she was forever changed by it.
“Do not touch me,” she commanded, ripping her arm out of his grasp with one sharp jerk. Her fingertips burned as her claws, long and razor-sharp, slid out once more.“Nevertouch me again, Harrod.”
For the span of a heartbeat, he looked truly astonished by her show of spine. As she watched, that surprise was clouded by a storm of cold anger. The dreadful lines of his long face drew tight with unconcealed malice. Her heart raced. Cold sweat dewed between her breasts and along her spine.
Even so, she held firm.
“Submissives have power,”Otto told her. She was not weak. She had endured more than Harrod could ever withstand. What would he do to her? Strike her? Hurt her?
Try it,the beast snarled.
Harrod took a step toward her, the tendons of his neck standing taut above the edge of his collar, and hissed, “You don’t get to—”
Whatever threat waited on the tip of his tongue, Josephine would never find out. At that moment, a once familiar sound carried over the prairie: the clatter and steady beat of a carriage coming down the road.
They turned as one to stare at the dilapidated gate and the dusty, groove-ridden road beyond. The land around the homestead consisted mostly of low-lying hills and grasses, making it easy to see the dark, boxy shape of a horse and carriage making its way toward them.
A hurried glance at Harrod’s face told her this was not a planned visit, nor their usual supply delivery. In a moment he’d gone from ruddy with anger to starkly pale. The ball of his throat bobbed against his stiff collar with an almost palpable nervousness.
She expected Harrod to run off to get her father, but he stood rooted to the spot beside her, his gaze locked on the nearing carriage, expression slack like he didn’t know what to do. Seeing asshewasn’t inclined to go get her father, Josephine watched it too, a knot of unease tightening in her belly.
It took only a moment for the sleek, modern carriage to crest the low hill that stood just before the entrance to the homestead. For a moment, the yard was a cacophony of sound and stirred dust. Josephine covered her nose and mouth with her hand as the cold wind blew grit into her face.
When she no longer felt the dust battering her skin, she blinked cautiously into the harsh midmorning sunlight to see a glamoured man — human, by his stature — hop out of the driver’s seat to open a black lacquered door.
A guard emerged first, also glamoured to obscure his features but dressed in a dark burgundy uniform. He quickly stepped aside, spine straight and legs spread, to allow room for the other occupant to step down into the dusty, churned earth.
Going by the rigidity of the men she’d seen, the subdued opulence of the carriage, she expected an intimidating being to emerge from the shadows.
