My cousin?
I shook my head, delirious with fear.
She was in on this too? Was she collaborating with Erik? Without any explanation, in this shell of my mind, I latched on to the first idea that came to me. That I had to be in my husband’s home. Or in another holding cell. Somewhere.
If Erik and Yusef hadn’t yet been informed about where I was, they would be soon. And the punishment due my way for trying to escape…
Sobs left my lips as I fought the nurse. She could shut up with her urges to calm down. To stay put. To relax.
Calm down?
Relax?
I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but suck in desperate, heaving breaths and fight to get free again.
“Kalina!”
She was here. Raisa. Running into the room, she wore the same scared expression of alarm that the nurse did as she found me panting and trying to escape.
Raisa.
She wasn’t the young teenager I recalled. It’d been so long since I’d seen her. So many years had passed, and surely, she’dchanged. She was no longer a young lady like I had been back then, but a woman. Taller. Stronger.
In my mad rush to break free, I let my gaze fall to her stomach. Swollen with a baby.
Oh, God. No. No!
She’d already met the same fate that I was destined for.
Bred.
Knocked up by a man to bear strong sons.
It was the whole plan. The entire purpose that Erik and Yusef had prepared me for.
No!
She couldn’t be trusted. Not when she was a participant in this nightmare.
“Alexsei,” she called out, clearly too worried to help the nurse physically restrain me. With a hand on her belly, she furrowed her brow and backed up. “Help! Ivan!”
Shaking my head violently, even when moving it at all worsened my headache, I fought it all.
Alexsei? Ivan?
I didn’t know those names. But I knew they were for men.
No men.
No one.
I didn’t want anyone to touch me and hold me captive ever again.
“Fuck.”
A tall man with short brown hair appeared in the doorway.
The sight of a tall brute like him was the final push for me to dig in harder and fight like hell. He was bigger than Yusef, muscled and the embodiment of strength, such power I could never dare to hope to fight off.
