Page 38 of Condemned

With a smug look on his face, Takk walked backward then found his own bale of hay to perch on.

She tried to look nonchalant, but her anger had drained away and that had been her true shield, so she settled for stern and annoyed, frowning like one pissed-off huleon. Yes.

“What have I here?” Zo arrived and paced around her, quietly talking. Showing off. Kondio, she noted, stayed further away, as if waiting for some cue.

“Still think I’m something special?” she murmured, glad Kon wasn’t close. Nervous, she twisted her hands inside the circle of the steel cuffs. Maybe Kondio wasn’t happy with this. The older mauleon seemed kind in some ways, just grieved by death.

He let out a strangled groan. “Yes. Minx.”

Her? A minx?

“I listen to what calls me. For days I’ve resisted you, held back, but now... now you’ve set things rolling and the time is right.”

“I did not do anything!”

“Scowling at me doesn’t help your case. You don’t count trying to shoot Timin?”

“I didn’t do it.”

“You came close enough to rile him.”

Why was she arguing? Pointless.

He went to a knee before her and her mouth said what maybe it shouldn’t have.

“Proposing? The answer’s no.”

“Some other time.” He smirked. With ease, he wriggled the spike from the ground, untied the rope where it knotted about the eye of the spike, then tossed aside the spike. Standing, slowly, he assessed her.

“Do you feel it? I thought it only the torm but it’s not just that.”

His eyes held such sureness that she balked and sat back on her heels.

The torm was a mauleon mating thing. The perfect mates succumbed to the perfect mating storm. She knew of it, rejected it. She was not their kind.

“Then why are you doing this?”

“This? You need chastising. Plus I needed to get close to you and take a sample.”

She couldn’t make much sense of his words.

“What if I beg you not to?” Her frown chose then to wobble and she swallowed far too obviously. He tucked one of his sticks under her chin, tapped there.

“Be good and give them a show. Make noises. It will hurt less.”

Tears welled. Where had those come from? “I doubt it.”

“Me too.”

The fierceness that spilled to his eyes told her more. Zo was a sadist.

“You like this?”

“Did I not say it before? I will make you sing. Pain has its rewards, for both of us.” He winked at her as if he knew some secret.

After laying down the sticks, he reached up high. His black braid snaked down his back as he snagged a rope above that she’d not noticed before. The heavy hook at the end meant this was used for hoisting machinery, or perhaps slabs of meat or carcasses.

Only tonight it was to be her.