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Until I realized the air was laced with male tricks, sweetness saturating my tongue so I could not resist.
Cyderial was drugging me.
Fighting his unfair influence, I knew a sense of betrayal that he would think to manipulate when I already submitted.
What had I done to deserve it?
His answer was immediate when I tried and failed to push him away. “You’ve done nothing wrong, my love. But you need rest, so sleep.” He pressed a kiss to my head. “Dream of our baby, and leave your worries to me.”
Dazed, one breath away from oblivion, I watched him stand and pull on a fresh uniform. “Where are you going?”
He smiled at me, yet his order was undeniably forceful, every trick in his power coming to life, as he demanded, “Sleep now.”
His command landed, my eyes closing no matter any sorry resistance. And sleep did come, hard, deep, and dreamless.
* * *
Stiff, I woke groggy and nauseous to pitch-black.
With nothing to orient myself, cocooned and a little dizzy, it took me far too long to realize the ground shook—that I had been pulled out of sleep by a growing rumble vibrating through the floor.
Unsettling noise registered.
Long, groaning, reverberant booms traveled through solid matter. Earthquakes.
I’d only ever read of earthquakes. Never before had I felt one.
Calling out to the dark, I reached for my mate. “Cyderial?”
“You are safe here.” Light flashed on near the door, low and gloomy, to illuminate General Murdoch. Dressed for battle, armed with extremely dangerous weapons.
The fact that he was anywhere near where I lay vulnerable and pregnant with the daughter he craved made it clear I was anything but safe.
Calculating my odds of making it out the door before he might strike, I showed him my teeth. “Where is Cyderial?”
Maintaining his distance, Murdoch sat back in his commandeered seat, relaxed as he gave me a devil-may-care grin. “Leading the charge in the North Quadrant. Your mate ordered me to assure you that he will return before heat might set in. I am to watch over you”—his eyes darted down to my abdomen hidden in blankets—“and her in the meantime.”
That was an inadequate answer!
“Charge against what?” Eyes narrowed, I dipped a toe out of the bed, then another, until I stood free of tangling blankets, at best advantage to defend myself from an assault. Naked, swollen belly and scarring shoulder, wild tangles of dark hair streaming free around me, I demanded, “What the hell is going on?”
He looked upon me with something far removed from lust. An examination that was almost clinical, while also drinking in every last bit of flesh as if memorizing the whole of me.
But it was my torso that drew his lingering gaze. As if he could already see her, the speck that she was, growing in my womb.
When at long last his eyes traveled up from my belly to meet my furious gaze, he lost his grin and let me see how dark he really was on the inside. “I swore myself to your mate. Lower your hackles and put away your claws. What you carry inside you is more precious to me than you can imagine.”
“She belongs to me!” I shouted, distrustful down to my bones.
His menacing grin returned. “Only until she is twenty-two. That is the pledge you made. The rest of her life, she will be mine.”
“Get. Out.”
The ground shook, really shook, and I almost lost my footing.
But I was caught—by a male who moved so quickly I had not even seen a blur. A man who dared put a hand to my belly once I had been braced. A man I struck with every bit of strength I could muster.
Stumbling back, General Murdoch only then seemed to realize what he had done. How far he had pushed me. And how near he was to being gutted when my talons continued the assault, slashing where he was weakest.
