Outraged, in pain, Carina shrieked her horror. Her eyes bulging from that beautiful, flushed face. An uneven limp sending her careening away from the table when the reality of what I’d done began to sink in.
“You disgusting little bitch!” she screamed, hands clenched at her sides. Gait uneven as she pranced in place. A bruise already blooming on her shin.
I wiped the back of my mouth, watching her without daring to blink. Braced for the strike.
“Fucksakes, Mila,” the captain hissed, and drew me to my feet. Offering a serviette in one hand, another glass of water in the other. “Are you alright?”
I shrugged, eyes following Carina as a flock of slaves fluttered around her. Cleaning and primping. “I tried to tell you,” I whispered, humiliated despite how much better I felt. My stomach relieved, my system flushed with adrenaline.
The captain snorted. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose you did.”
“Well,” the general said, then stood. Chair scraping on the polished tile floor, he folded his serviette with careful, precise movements, and said, “Seems to be a reasonable place to call an end to the festivities. Captain Rawlings,” he added, voice thick with the ring of authority, “I expect to see you at headquarters for an assessment of your newfound power. Bright and early.”
“Sir.” The captain’s jaw flexed at the corner, his chin dipping in a tight nod, he took the back of my neck in the palm of his hand. Fingers almost touching where my throat worked around a tense swallow. “My apologies,” he said, addressing the gathered elites with a tense little smile. “It seems it’s not so simple to take the wildcat out of the forest, after all.”
I blushed, chased from the dining hall from another round of condescending male laughter. My nape soaked through with humiliation as the captain drove me from the general’s manse. Where the last of Tritan’s priestesses knelt in supplication, unable to so much as lift their eyes, their fires were banked with a thick layer of frost.
Strides long and sure, the captain gave me no chance to collect myself until we were well away from the suffocating fog of stolen elite power.
But there, beneath it all, I was flushed with an odd sense of victory. For despite everything—the threats and the lurking, ever-present danger—I had managed to do something profound, no matter how disgusting.
A slimy, chunky victory, but a victory nevertheless.
4
Itook a breath of fresh evening air, a tiny smile spreading across my lips, for with every step, General Tilcot’s stolen manse grew smaller. His threats and lingering glances a problem for another day, as the stink of elites was washed from my sinuses.
All except one.
The very worst—the one I couldn’t escape.
“Mila.” Fingers bracketing either side of my throat, the captain took the back of my neck in his rough palm. A possessive collar stiff with the simmering promise of violence. His shoulders still rigid, despite the distance his long-legged strides put between us and the manse.
I tried to shake him off and failed.
“Feeling brave again, I see,” the captain drawled, but his grip only tightened.
“And why not?” I replied, flush with a newfound arrogance and adrenaline. “You’ve lost your leverage,Asher. And until I find a way to free my people, I take solace in knowing that pig of a general won’t kill the Head Priestess.”
Tension rippled through him, into me. A tight, “Is that so?” said in an aristocratic purr the only indication of the nerve I’d struck. The weakness I’d found that might be exploited.
“You’re parasites,” I added as we rounded a corner and the captain’s residence came into view, clinging to what remained of the confidence I’d found in ruining Carina’s pretty shoes. “And without a host, the parasite is nothing. It’syouwho needus.”
The captain said nothing. Made no effort to interject and showed no reaction, except for the bulging muscle twitching at the corner of his jaw. It wasn’t until he’d driven us through the front door of his townhouse that I felt a tingle in my wrists and throat—the only warning of the captain’s influence surging in my veins before I was held immobile.
“Have you forgotten?” he said, and pressed my pliant body against the nearest wall, kicking the door closed with a snap. “I don’t need leverage to bend you to my will.” Heated breath traced the shell of my ear, his head dipping low so full lips might brush my skin. So the rasp of teeth could leave my skin scored with a trail of reddened gooseflesh in their wake.
I swallowed, trembling in his shadow, but that was all. Held still, unable to speak with my jaws sealed shut.
“Even before you were mine,” he murmured, and let his fingers trail down my throat. Over each bump of my windpipe, before he paused to trace the hollow between my collar bones. “Irrevocablymine…” Rough hands slipped down, traced the crease between my breasts, then found purchase beneath. Thumbs and forefingers teasing the underside of my breasts, he squeezed my ribs and trapped my breath in a tight band of compression that made me feel grounded and untethered all at once. And then, through a smirk, he whispered, “You were made to kneel, Mila.”
With the fuse on my temper lit, his influence faded away, leaving me free to hurl, “Is that so?” back in his face, but with only half the sinister intention.
A smile flicked against the edge of my jaw, just beneath my ear. Drawing up a cascading wave of shivers that pimpled my nape. My scalp. “Mmhmm. No matter how hard you fight to deny it,” he hummed, and drove me back with his hands still tight around my ribs, “it’s where you long to be.”
Despite everything—the press of his body against mine, the humiliation and anguish, the loss of all control—I laughed. “I long to see the empire fall. To see—”
His fingertips trailed along the skin peeking above my waist, at the base of my spine where I was bare and vulnerable. A ticklish invasion that saw me lurch away from his touch, our hips bumping together.
