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My hair stings my face as I blur across the Deadlands. I spot the other candidates, and the monsters on the horizon ready to hunt them.

They’ll have to earn their mates.

And me… I’m the enforcer who will make sure mating is all they will do.

I spot the red eyes of a monster hungry for blood, and I home in on him.

“Shadow,” I whisper to my mates.

An arrow flies past me and snags the monster on the shoulder. It cripples him as he roars and falls to one knee.

I run by him and tag him with one of my crystal shards. It’s all I have to do to tell the tower there’s another soul to claim.

Because I have King Njord’s power now, too.

Or at least, a different version of it.

The beast snarls as chains yank him into the ground and transport him to the obsidian prison where he’ll stay for the remainder of the games.

It takes time for monsters to be tamed. Maybe he’ll come back to his senses next year.

A wild grin stretches across my face as I sprint across the ground, pinging more of the monsters as I filter out the ones who belong here and those who need more time to adjust. Maybe other rulers think I’ve inherited King Njord’s cruelty to do this to my own citizens, but I understand them unlike anyone else.

Only pain and suffering will produce strength in beasts like this. By capturing them, containing them, I teach them how to ultimately be free.

And, in the process, I grow as their queen.

The patter of paws rushing around me gives me a thrill. My pack master’s patience is running thin.

“Your subjects are safe. It’s time for you to be hunted now.”

My stomach flips with anticipation as a new fever sends sweat beading across my brow.

My heat now comes once a year. My mates thoroughly enjoy helping me through it.

The excitement of the games always seems to bring it on.

“Not yet,” I tell him as I make a larger sweep across the grounds.

I find three more corrupted monsters to imprison. But by now, multiple pairs have claimed their mates and are securing bonds within the gardens surrounding the tower.

That was also a new feature I had installed. There are a multitude of private spaces for new pairs to safely learn each other, once a claim has been made.

I dive into the maze of black roses with silky, midnight petals and rush past the open gates as I give my mates a proper chase.

They want to claim me, most of all, over and over again.

They’ll have to find me first.

“Challenge accepted,” Ze’ev says in my mind with a hungry growl. “I’ll have your knees wrapped around my head as I taste that sweet indulgence between your thighs.”

“You’ll have to get in line,” Arwan says to both of us as his dark hand emerges from the shadows, and he drags me clean through a wall.

“Fucking cheater,” I think with a smile.

Then Arwan’s mouth is on mine as he claims his prize.

Godric howls in the distance, signaling that there’s another corrupted beast to contend with.