“The prisoner is nothing,” I muttered.
As the words left my lips, pain struck me, starting in my thigh where the blade had sliced through my flesh, racing up my torso before reaching my heart.
The pain was so quick, I had no time to react. I sucked in asharp breath, tried to keep from flinching—from showing weakness in front of my king—but as quickly as it came, it disappeared.
It left my brain foggy. Made my stomach churn.
I shook my head, focusing on the beast at the king’s feet once more.
And yet, my mind wandered to the bed behind me…
And the female laying upon it.
25
Ivy
“Where are you, my flower?” a sweet voice asked me, the caress of his fingers under my chin sending bolts of electricity through my body.
For some reason, I couldn’t open my eyes. My mouth refused to form words, wouldn’t answer his question.
Where was I? I couldn’t remember. Now, my mind refused to tell me what he wanted to know. It was lost in a sea of darkness, and I went with it.
“Wake up,” he whispered, fingers moving to my cheeks, startlingly warm as they grazed my flesh. “Wake up and fight, my love. You must not let him win.”
Let who win?I wanted to ask, but no words would pass my lips. I had no idea who he was talking about, who he wanted me to fight.
I didn’t want to fight anymore. I felt that deep in my bones. It was the only certainty I knew.
Fighting meant losing. I knew that, too.
“Get up.” His voice softened, somehow clearer than before. “And win.”
Sharp,unimaginable pain coursed through my body like a thousand bolts of electricity. A scream tore freefrom my lips, one that burned my throat as it filled the otherwise silent air. The pain wrapped around every muscle, burned every bone. I felt my entire body tense from the explosion, which gave me no way to escape—to break free.
“What the hell is wrong with her?” a familiar voice growled.
I squeezed my eyes shut against what I knew would be waiting for me once the pain subsided. I knew I wouldn’t be in my isolated cell deep below the compound where Dante first dragged me, and I knew I wasn’t in my cage with the other shifters.
I remembered being dragged from the prison, the creepy stares from the soldiers who leered at me, being taken to the waiting elevator where Dante exposed the Seer’s secret.
The thing she’d been hiding from us all.
Pregnant. The words echoed in my ears, matching the pulsing pain radiating through my body.
“I don’t know,” another voice slurred. “It might be the magic finally working.”
The male grunted. I felt his presence near me, the wrongness of his magic slithering over my flesh. Somehow, I threw up a block in my mind—as futile I knew it was. There was little use in trying to fight him if he wanted access to my thoughts, and still, I tried.
It wasn’t like I had anything left to hide. He probably knew every little dark and dirty secret I had.
He growled again, and this time, something crashed. The pain subsided only long enough for me to flinch, but it hit me harder. Claimed me entirely.
The urge to curl in on myself overwhelmed me, like if I could just escape into myself, I might be able to escape the pain. It wasn’t an aching, thrumming pain that was easy to ignore. This was all consuming, twisting throughout my body. A couple of Tylenol and a hot water bottle wouldn’t save me from the agony.
It wasn’t the same pain I’d felt when I shifted, with mybones breaking and reshaping into something else. I couldn’t even begin to describe this feeling.
“There is nothing I can do,” the female said, her voice still slurred.
