Page 1 of Ravaged Devotion

Prologue:

Three Years Ago

“I’m sorry, Imperial Hart, I’ve done all that I can. The game is still in testing stages. It should have never fallen into your son’s…” the female doctor’s voice drowned out.

Ryker wasn’t listening to it anymore. Heard his father’s clipped tone, but the sounds were echoes, a range of noise from loud to louder with no distinction. His eyes remained glued to the sleeping form inside the gaming pod—the stasis pod now.

The pod would keep its occupant alive. Would use electricity and chemicals to prevent atrophy from setting in. Would ensure vitals remained stable and adjust the fluids being pumped regularly into the occupant’s system according to need. There were temperature controls, discrete waste removal tubes, and the pod itself was fire resistant and virtually unbreakable.

His lips curved upward in a humorless smile at those words. First at virtual, which now held an entirely different meaning to him since this whole mess was being caused by an incomplete—and nowhere near ready for live trial—virtual reality game.

Second on the word unbreakable.

Because it was growing increasingly harder to believe that anything in this universe could ever truly be unbreakable when here he was, the great Ryker Hart, shattering from the inside out. Cracking apart chip by chip, piece by piece, all the carefully constructed restraints and tools he’d been taught as a child to rein his demons in and make himself more palatable to society, buckling as the broken bits inside of himself expanded and pushed, demanding an out. Demanding to be released and unleashed and—

“With all due respect, Imperial, your son chose to enter the game. A game he had no legal business getting involved in.” The doctor was still talking.

Still making excuses.

Still filling the room with her nonsense and her bullshit and her petty explanations that landed nowhere and answered nothing.

Sit still.

Keep calm.

Be quiet.

Present only the best version of self publicly at any given time.

The Harts may not be emperors now, not since a distant relative had abolished the system in some misguided bid for democracy, but they were still the oldest Imperial family on planet. Still the ones the people turned to in time of tragedy or hardship.

Only, who the hell were they meant to turn to?

Now that there was a tragedy, who the hell was Ryker meant to look to for guidance?

Certainly not motherfucking Rhys Hart, who was standing there, listening to this garbage, putting his pride above his son like fucking always—

“We’ve spoken to the technician who supposedly leaked it, and he stands by his story that your son and Urial Jayce threatened him into handing over a copy,” the doctor stated, the edge of a warning in her tone.

“I’ll remind you to watch yourself, Doctor Aura,” Rhys replied coldly.

Evenly.

As though she hadn’t just accused his heir of a crime.

As though she hadn’t just tried to hand off the blame and place it on a man who was currently trapped in a damn stasis pod getting his muscles electric shocked hourly and his piss and shit carried out of his body through plastic tubing and—

Ryker snapped.

The veneer exploded, the porcelain doll, the outwardly perfect Ryker Hart sending pieces of himself like shrapnel in every which direction in a flurry of motion.

His body acted on its own, mind too gone to track or control or process. The scalpel left on the medical table was in his hand in a flash, the space between himself and the other side of the room where the doctor and all of her excuses had been sucking up the air and sullying it with her filth eaten up by his boots.

She had just enough time to turn her head and see him coming. For her eyes to go wide and her spine to stiffen and the fear to show in bright, brilliant technicolor that honestly fed something within him he thought was also now trapped in fucking stasis.

Rhys tried to stop him, another half assed comment telling him to stand down in a voice that barely lifted loud enough to be heard over the beating of Ryker’s racing heart.

Even if he had heard it clearly, it was too late.