He sucked in a breath as I sagged forward, crashing against him as his fingers continued to cut off my air.
My headache became a thousand times worse, determined to come with me into death.
I’d often consoled myself from the horror of dying that at least in a grave, pain couldn’t find you. On the day of my parents’ funeral, I’d repeated that over and over again, praying they were in a better place, together, happy, and free from the agony at the end.
But now...now I wasn’t so sure.
What if I always felt this pain?
What if I was condemned to eternal misery, reliving the moment of him squeezing the last droplet of life out of me?
I lost control of my body and tumbled completely against him.
His fingers unlocked around my throat as I knocked him off balance, sending him crashing into the congealing blood on the floor.
Even without him actively strangling me, I was too far gone to get off him. My chest crashed against his, my forehead landed somewhere on his shoulder, and our legs tangled.
We ended up in a pile on the ballroom floor.
And for the longest moment, as I hovered between living and death, he trembled beneath me.
He groaned low and deep, the noise vibrating beneath my ear where I lay on him. The sound didn’t sound pissed off or angry but tortured. Tormented.
Shoving me off him, the growls of his panther circled around me, either holding back the other women who wanted to kill him or preparing to finish me off.
He kicked me away from him, and I had just enough strength left to watch as he shot to his feet, clutched his heart with white-knuckled fingers, and twisted the black shirt as if he could tear the organ out of him.
“Mr. Ashfall?” An eager, stupidly brave woman raised her head. “If you’re unwell, I can—”
“Leave,” he snarled, panting hard as he twisted his shirt into a knot, pulling up the hem and revealing a flat, muscular stomach. His gasps were drenched in agony.
“But if you’re hurting, I—”
“LEAVE!” he roared. “All of you. SCRAM!”
The boom of his voice ricocheted off the high eaves and bounced off the mother-of-pearl walls. The pitter-patter of racing feminine feet told me more than my failing eyesight could that they’d obeyed.
And as the shadows finally came for me and as silence blanketed my stress, Lucien Ashfall looked down at me splayed on the floor.
His eyes narrowed as he studied me, then, with a sweep of his black coat, he left me dying all alone in his ballroom.
Chapter Nine
I MADE IT TO MY QUARTERS before the pain crippled me.
Her.
Why did she make the vitalsync core react?
Why did my heart spike, setting off the chain reaction that always happened if I couldn’t control my pulse?
My fingers clawed at the inserted device in my chest. Embedded in my skin, its cables wriggled through my body and were surgically attached to my heart, ensuring every secret I’d ever had, every misery, every hatred, every fucking heartbeat was captured and assessed by those holding my chains.
I staggered as whoever monitored my vitals pressed a button.
Ripping my shirt open, I snarled as the lights on the vitalsync core flashed from green to red.
I didn’t even have time to make it to the couch before the familiar haze flooded me, potent sedatives seeping directly into my bloodstream and stealing my consciousness—not because I’d been affected by a woman for the first time in my miserable life but because the pulse spike probably looked suspiciously like when I tried to kill myself.
