Groaning, I planted my hands on the marble and tried to push up. My wobbly elbows gave out, and my headache switched from throbbing to splintering, driving a stake through my brain and making everything wretched and wrong.
By staying you’re one of them!
He’ll think you’re here to bed him or butcher him.
RUN!
I tried again, only...black-framed bare feet appeared in my hazy vision.
I froze as Lucien clucked his tongue, towering over me. “You’re rather bold, aren’t you? Not even bothering to bow like the rest of them.”
He didn’t seem to care a pool of blood seeped from the girl his pet had killed. Didn’t seem to notice the countless other women all cowering around me.
We had numbers on our side.
Even with his panther slaughtering us, if the women who’d come to kill him banded together, they could win.
I swallowed hard as he ducked to his haunches, his eyes narrowing on mine. “Well? Nothing to say for yourself?”
Up close, his eyes were absolutely devastating. Endless and hollow, dark and relentless.
In his stare, I saw vengeance and wrath and bone-deep hatred.
“I...” I licked my lips, moaning a little as the pain became too much. I wanted to pass out. At least if I was already unconscious, I wouldn’t feel him kill me.
“You...?” He chuckled under his breath, mocking and mean. “You what? Why are you here?” Curling his fingers, he ran his knuckles ever so gently along my jaw. “I hope you have a better reply than the others because I’m getting bored.”
I shuddered as his touch sent the same stinging pain that the drone did with its electrical shock. His hot fingers radiated through me, searing my heart with flames.
“I’m...I thought this was a spa weekend.” I hated how weak my voice was, how every word dripped with a plea not to hurt me. “I-I don’t know who you are. I—”
“Liar.” His lips pulled back in a snarl as his hand latched around my throat. “I told you only the truth would save you.”
“Thatisthe truth!” I clawed at his wrist, trying to get him off me.
The cuffs of his loose black shirt fell down his forearm, revealing a wide silver cuff inscribed with emblems I couldn’t read.
He winced as I tugged it, then snarled as he squeezed me tighter.
My vision popped with white stars—not from stress this time but asphyxiation.
He had to be mentally insane.
He’d just killed two people, stood in a puddle of clotting blood, and the only thing etched into his features was barely controlledrage.
No empathy, no sympathy, merely venomous resentment as he forced me to join his victims. His hand shook with malice. My eyelids fluttered—
My life didn’t flash before me, but despair did.
I’d been so incredibly lucky to be born into this life, yet I hadn’t been able to do anything worthwhile with the wealth or power I’d been given. Instead, I’d turned out to be the worst sort of person whose only claim to fame was running away just to survive.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I willed him to get it over with.
He was doing me a favour.
Putting me out of my misery.
My fingers turned loose around his wrist, clinging with the last bit of strength I had to that strange cuff trapped tight around him.
