Chapter One
It was like dancing in sunlight.
A great lake of it, all golden and warm. Her movements always heavy as she fought against the weight of so much strength.
Until the screams started.
Then she shivered, flesh limned in ice as something evil clawed through her. Ripping her apart. Shredding her thoughts, her sanity, with gleeful disregard. Drowning in the freezing cold while she screamed. Suffocating on chocolate and chilies as she was bruised and beaten from the inside.
Plunged back into the glowing heat, sluggish and weak, she choked on the splendid brilliance. Repeating the agonizing cycle again and again.
The twilight evergreen of his eyes and the subterranean depth of his purr followed her no matter how she tried to escape.
It was easier when he was gone, leaving her shattered and curled up in the nest. Comforted by the soft sounds of sleeping children, their little hearts thumping against her cheeks the thin thread holding her sanity in check. They brought her back from whatever hellscape he had left her in. Their quiet snores and sleepy mumblings kept her whole.
Until he took them away and began his evil all over again.
Like now.
Lying under the oppressive weight of him, still twitching from the pleasure he’d forced from her body, Quinn smothered herself in the rumpled linens. Seeking oblivion in the gasping breaths that failed to fill her lungs, desperate to suffocate the writhing thing in her chest that hummed. It spoke with his measured tones, resonated in the way only he could provide.
It made sure she knew that, too.
She was incomplete now. Not just bound to the man, subject to his will, but he in return. Tobias Kahler had gotten what he wanted the moment he forced her to claim him. He’d invaded not just her body, but her mind and soul far beyond the constraints of social acceptance. No one else would have dared to create the vicious circle between them, throwing away generations of beliefs and plunging headfirst into the taboo. Her will pitted against his was a small and frightened thing.
She never stood a chance against something so devious, so underhanded.
Quinn was the perfect slave now, or she would be once she’d been battered into complete submission. Something that she’d once sworn would never happen to her was an all too real probability now. Each day it was harder to fight her way free of the heady warmth, more difficult to deny the comfort and serenity that basking in his presence gave her. Surrounded on all sides as her sense of self was stripped away one tangled thread at a time, it was him, always him in her thoughts. One touch, one whiff of his scent, and she was lost.
“Shh, little bird. It’s all right,” he murmured against her shoulder, lips moving against the thick scars of his mark. Three bites, all mangling her skin into an atrocity that said she was his and would never escape it. The wet heat of his tongue moved over the wrinkled flesh, tasting the salt of her sweat, swallowing her down.
Whining into the sheets, she tried to jostle away as the sensation of working muscle, heady pleasure, and satisfaction assaulted her. They weren’t hers, but the lines separating Quinn from him were blurred, softening with every ragged breath. With him locked tight against her, she wasn’t going anywhere. Not until he released her.
He had no intentions of doing that anytime soon.
“My beautiful mate,” Tobias purred against her neck. He inched his way up her body, reclaiming the little space she had managed between them. “My sweet little Omega.”
“I hate you,” Quinn wailed as she thrashed beneath him. Kicking her legs and pummeling at the bed did little more than excite the male.
He liked the idea of forcing her to succumb and making her cry out his name once more as her body betrayed her yet again.
“You feel so good, little bird,” he whispered as his arms snaked around her, imprisoning her within his embrace so she couldn’t squirm away when he began the slow rocking of his hips. Dragging the knot back and forth to grind against that spot that made her back arch and a low whine to pour from between her lips. “Gods, I can feel you inside of me. I know you want this. You cry for something that was lost long ago, sweetness, but you’ll see. You belong here with me. No one else makes you feel this way.”
“Y-you think that means a-anything? I came for all of them, too,” Quinn whimpered. Desperate now for some reprieve from his unending attention, unable to bear another moment of his dissection of her soul, she lashed out. She said whatever she could that would send him storming away, leaving her alone to lick her wounds. Maybe to save a little more of herself before he ruined it all.
“Hush now, little bird, don’t speak of those things. We both know it’s more than that. I am your Alpha.”
“You’re just a hard cock, asshole. You think you’re special for that?” Quinn stammered out a coarse laugh, wide eyes fixed on the dark shadows beneath the pillow before her. It was a dangerous game to play. A stupid one, too. She couldn’t stand another second of his touch and would do anything to stop it. He wouldn’t hurt her, not much. That much she could understand and use to her advantage.
“And did you hum and purr over them as well,” Tobias asked through a warning growl against her cheek. Snapping his hips, he drove the knot deeper. A punishment for her daring and a caution in one move.
“I did.”
The truth was a slap in the face. Quinn had done many things in the name of survival and pleasing Lee with her sounds of contentment was among the least of them. Refusing to cringe as she felt the tension ratcheting through his body, she held fast to the knowledge he wouldn’t hurt her too much. Not the mother of his children, the future incubator for another of his offspring.
“I see.”
He was quiet and still for so long that Quinn dared to touch that slimy thread that connected them. Uncertainty driving her to examine the filthy thing, she needed to know what his next move would be. How he would try to destroy her next.
