I never meant any of this. I’d repented and begged. But now, I was here again in this room, surrounded by stone walls.
Karma had caught my scent andcompletelylost his senses.
I was trapped between his massive, warm body and the bed. He was everywhere, a fresh ocean storm, laced with insanity. His fingers gripped my hair, holding me in place as, for the second time since arriving here, teeth grazed my neck.
My breath caught, an unexpected shot of warmth seeping into my heart.
He wanted me.It was a desperate, joyous whisper. We were destined for each other, and hewantedme.
My heart choked instantly with guilt.
What was I thinking?
“She would have seen him suffer hellfire. I need her to feel what that means.”
I was so selfish.
Karma let out a wounded sound, drowning my nightmare. He drew back, and then once more, his teeth grazed my skin. But again, there was no full bite.
I frowned, shaking fingers finding his chest before I realized.
Oh.
He wasn’t pack lead.
That was why he couldn’t bite me into the pack.
And then reality set in.
The inky blackness swallowing his rich brown irises whole. There was nothing left in those eyes but a beast.
What had I done?
I’d corrupted him.
And they were all next.
Sin had claimed me as theirs before they left—they wanted to keep me, I thought, but that would only make this worse.
Karma was mad, already. Corrupted before he’d even completed a bond.
He drew me close, teeth resting against my flesh as he curled up around me as if torn between trying to bite me again, and just holding me close.
I tried to calm my breathing, tugging carefully on the blankets, trying to get another layer between us.
How much more could he take?
CouldI corrupt him more?
But I knew the answer to that from the sparks that rolled through our contact. He tensed at my movement, and I slowed, stroking his arm, desperately trying to calm him as I tugged at the towel and sheets. I hummed a shaky tune, something my mother had hummed as she folded laundry, or cooked.
She’d been taken away for damning me, sent to the Convent so I couldn’t harm anyone else. But in the end, I’d been banished, for the alpha I’d damned was Luke Anderson—the son of a High Priest.
And now, even in my punishment, I couldn’t stop. I was more of a blight than she had ever been.
There was a faint banging in the distance.
A rhythmic, metal-likethump, thump, thumpthat kept going. The shouts and howls of a thousand broken alphas in this place. The noises were sometimes louder, sometimes quieter as I kept up my melody.
