Cecilia lost her balance and sank onto the cold floor. Flabbergasted, she stared at her captor as he pressed his own spine against the opposite wall. Likehewas the one desperate to get away fromher.
The elf’s single visible eye was so wide she could make out a white ring around that fathomless black center. His deep chest rose and fell with labored breaths that rasped loudly through his helmet. Those deadly claws, capped in what looked like black metal, sank into the concrete and gouged deep grooves. The sight of them made goosebumps rise all over her body.
She brought a shaking hand up to her neck. Cool, damp flesh met her fingertips. Her voice trembled when she demanded,“What is this? I thought— I thought you were protecting me. Why are youdoingthis?”
The elf’s eye darted left and right. “I am,” he croaked in that unsettling mix of voices. “I— I?—”
Feeling emboldened for reasons that most likely related to the drugs in her system, Cecilia lurched away from the wall. It was intensely gratifying to seehimflinch backward, like she was the one who posed the threat.
Pointing an accusatory finger at him, she said, “You saved me from Duke, sure. I’m grateful for that. But what thefuckis this? You drugged me, put me in a cell, and now you— youlickme?”
“You required assistance.” There was something like a whine in his bass voice, like he needed her to believe it not for her sake, but for his.
Cecilia stumbled forward, jabbing her glossy, pink-tipped finger at the closed door. “Irequireyou let me go!”
“Stop,” he barked, looking like he wanted the wall to swallow him whole. “Stop walking.”
“Why?” She bared her flat, useless teeth at him. “You afraid of me now? Well, you should be!”
It was an astonishing thing, seeing the moment he decided to run. Him, the terrifying elf who could break her spine with two fingers and half a thought, turned his attention to the door a moment before he made a break for it.
Cecilia let out a screech of outrage as he dove for the door. She wasn’t far from him or it, but he was so much faster than her. Even when she wasn’t fighting off whatever sedative he’d given her, he would’ve beat her to it.
The door slammed shut in her face. Furious at him and her missed chance, she banged on it with all her strength.
“No! Let me out!” Cecilia grabbed the knob and twisted it with both hands, but it wouldn’t budge. A series of clicks along the doorframe told her that whatever lock he had installed, itwasn’t the kind she could pick with a bobby pin or bash open with her shoulder.
A guttural scream tore from her throat. “Don’t you dare do this to me, asshole! Don’t youdare!”
Slapping a hand on the door, she sank into a crouch. She’d been too key-up to notice the ache in her head or the throbbing pain in her cheekbone, but it came to her with a vengeance as she tried to catch her breath.
Gods,she thought, dropping her forehead onto the door,Dahlia is going to be so pissed.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
In some small,withered part of him that still remembered what it was like to be normal, he knew what she was and why he was so drawn to her. He’d always known.
But it was an unmitigated disaster to have it confirmed.
Sloane threw himself away from the door. Clawing at his helmet, he released the latches and hurled it down the empty hallway. It landed somewhere far away with a crash, the compromised glass shattering, but he didn’t care. It was useless anyway.
He’d never fully appreciated how the helmet and its filters protected him. It’d always seemed like over-cautiousness on the part of their handlers, this terror that they’d be slaves to their pheromones one day. He’d had his visor broken before and it’d never been an issue in combat or any other situation.
But of course, everything was different with Cecilia.
Sloane dug his claws into his sweaty hair and sank into a crouch against the wall opposite the bedroom. His chest heaved with every desperate breath as his body rebelled.
Every cell popped and bubbled. The fine strands of his muscles seized one by one. His fingertips burned with exquisitepleasure-pain as his claws retracted for the first time. Every sense sharpened as his brain rewired itself.
In a single breath, he’d gone from her protector to her greatest threat.
My consort,he thought, fighting the urge to crawl back to the door, to her.My mate.
Sloane didn’t think he’d ever been hysterical before. Not since he was five, anyway, and taken from his parents. But the panic that eclipsed him as he realized what he’d done was close to it.
All elves knew the Pull. They knew what it meant when their claws slid back into their fingertips and their insides burned with need. It was the singular bond born in an inescapable chemical reaction, one that tied consorts together for life. Constant contact and pheromone exposure was a necessity. Without it, an elf would gradually die or become insane. Both were common.
